In this episode, the strategic shift from volume-based deal sourcing to high-value partnerships is reaching its next phase, scaling from $500K purchase price caps to smaller seven-figure properties through institutional capital partnerships. The constraint has been identified: operators originating $1M+ in weekly contracts exist, capital partners with multi-decade land experience and significant liquidity are available, but the bridge between them requires systematic calibration before committing to pooled capital structures.
Key Takeaways:
- Fund vs. SPV Definition Matters True institutional funds require $100M+ in capital to justify SEC compliance costs and risk structure, while anything below that threshold is more accurately termed a larger SPV or joint venture despite similar operational appearance.
- The Underwriting Bridge is the Moat Positioning as the central node between institutional capital and high-volume operators creates defensible value, most players can either manage investors or manage assets well, but bridging both through reliable underwriting of alternative assets is rare at scale.
- Test Before Structure Execute single deals with both capital and operator sides before building pooled structures to verify money actually wires and underwriting standards align, since talking capability differs vastly from execution at the $500K+ check level.
- Calibration Determines Capital Requirements Mapping operator throughput ($1M weekly contracts) against actual acceptable deal volume (potentially 50% or less after filtering) across quarterly periods establishes the true capital deployment timeline needed before formalizing fund-like structures.
Listen to the full episode to hear the specific relationship-building process and multi-year execution pathway required to operate at this level.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. We’re at Serious Land Capital. We have successfully funded over $6 million of land deals with industry-leading 41 % operating margins. So today I wanted to chat more about kind of the future outlook on some of the partnership structures that we’ve started to explore more recently and are starting to shape up over the course of 2026. We’ll see what comes to pass.
but some really interesting conversations recently here. So I think I had remarked on a pod the other week that, you know, after we adjusted our Hormozy ACQ AI to really figure out our core constraints, it’s like, yeah, leads got to get more outbound out to, you know, higher.
quality and more established operators and try to build more of these longer term relationships, less of a volume game and going just after higher quality assets, higher capital outflows accordingly here. And we had a number of these colleagues and operators sidelined previously because we were sorting out.
kind of continued track record over the course of the last year in the midst of, a dangerous buyer’s market, to say the least, prior to over-levering ourselves and committing more capital than we expected. But based on some conversations we’ve been having both on the capital side and the operator side more recently, it’s allowed us to start to accelerate our anticipated growth as a company and the types of deals that we’re willing to do.
You know, whereas previously, you know, that kind of minimum 50 K purchase price, which is still the case at the moment, but we prefer, you know, 150 K plus, but largely capping out around the half million dollar purchase price, range more or less. Now we’re more open to doing, you know, double that or, you know, closer into the, you know, smaller seven figure purchase price.
type of properties and projects that by their nature tend to introduce more complexity, notwithstanding the extra capital requirements. But yeah, mean, also are just going to have increased timelines on average and just are going to need to require more.
capital to fund these deals than we might have internally as management equity here. So with all of this in mind here, again, based on some of these conversations that we’re having, it’s starting to make more sense where, know, traditionally what we had done for deals that were a bit larger and, you know, we wanted to distribute the risk across
more investors than just ourselves internally. We would bring on outside investors with equity or capital in the form of equity and we would just form a separate LLC in the form of a special purpose vehicle or an SPV and let that be the effectively the entity that’s housing that particular asset and that investment.
but not going after or not having pooled capital to go after different assets that might be available here. was a single raise targeted for single asset and then distributions accordingly upon realization of anticipated profits from those assets. So that’s kind of the simple plan there, but the next stage is like,
Do we look at what a fund setup might be? that word gets thrown around a lot here. But the thing is, as with everything, it’s important to actually utilize the same definitions and explanations for each word. So everybody that’s a part of the conversation is on the same page. And the thing with
You know, funds, my core business partner works at a large hedge fund and you know what a true fund set up is, you know, with all these various SEC regulations and so forth and investor requirements. they typically don’t make sense to set up both from a risk standpoint as well as just a cost standpoint, unless you’re at, you know, a hundred million dollars minimum.
of capital collected for the purpose of investing via a fund. So there’s a lot more particulars to that. you know, we just like to put that definition out for what, you know, a true fund would look like from an institutional perspective, which I tend to think is, you know, the better route to go when we’re laying down financial definitions. And so anything below that, you know, might have the
at first blush kind of look like a fund. But in reality, it’s just what you could call a larger SPV, know, special purpose vehicle or a larger JV joint venture is what the more appropriate definition would be, but still allows you to pull capital together to go after multiple assets, similar to how a fund setup would look like.
You know, I like to throw that out there just again. we’re working from, you know, the, same definition, together here. And in this case, what has become very interesting here from some of these conversations is looking at some of these operators who are, you know, starting to, get throughput of, you know, a million dollars in contracts to land deals.
under contract, not money deployed yet, it’s not closed, but under contract on a near weekly basis. And then we have these external capital partners who have experience within the land industry over a multi-decade period of time, some more than others, some are sitting on significant liquidity and are comfortable investing into real estate assets.
And so it’s like, okay, how do we start matching up these higher level operators with the external capital here? then, know, position ourselves as, you know, serious land capital is kind of the central note that that’s what I might have remarked before, but I keep kind of coming back to this as, you know, what’s our zone of genius here. And it’s really, you know, serving as that bridge point between
you know, significant institutional capital or significant capital sources that trust our ability to underwrite alternative assets and land certainly is alternative and underrate operators who can bring quality deals to the table and kind of serve as that bridge. So not many folks can do that well here. And oftentimes like
you’ll want to typically either manage investors for the most part, or in manage assets for the most part, trying to do both is, um, you know, from what I hear, uh, for people who’ve done this a long time, like that’s a very difficult pathway to walk. Um, and I think longer term will probably settle into more of the, um, investor manage manager side of things. Um, and just understand.
like our ability to underwrite deals, like that’s just core to our identity. But ultimately, if we calibrate enough with operators, we develop a relationship with and understand that their selection criteria for how they’re underwriting assets and managing them is aligned with us. Then we can…
shift more from being as deep in the weeds from the asset management side of things and just continue to nurture and bring in more capital in order to match it with those particular assets. that’s where I see this starting to go medium to longer term here. And what that looks like logistically, not too concerned from the paperwork perspective of a number of folks that can call on.
that have done these type of things before. And to me, the biggest piece to sort out is, you know, because, you know, if we do a fun setup, it’s not clear whether we would just work with, you know, one operator. I don’t think that might be the case if I were to…
throw out a hypothesis there. I think if we have kind of a range of assets, know, particular operators bringing in certain type of deals and other ones bringing in different, you know, deals with perhaps different levels of risk, timeline, geography, et cetera. And so we have kind of a blended pool, all of which we feel comfortable investing in, but it also gives us a different
diversity across different operating teams and timelines geographies, like I mentioned, matching it up with this pool of capital and to kind of fully understand, okay, how do we match this up in terms of total number of deals that we might expect across all operators that we’re working with on a roughly quarterly basis, maybe every couple quarters to how much capital we might need to deploy within that period of time.
That is kind of the big piece that I want to line up over probably the first half of this year, as soon as possible is ideal here. And those conversations are happening on a daily basis. But we also have to make sure that we’re calibrated well with those operators on the asset management side.
because it’s like, okay, I might have a million or so of deals coming in on a monthly basis, but we only prefer from a risk standpoint, like half of those, or maybe a little bit less, we have to start figuring out, okay, what’s actually gonna fit more reliably before we can kind of commit to, all right, this is a proper amount of deals that we can reliably say is going to be coming in on this particular period of time.
So we need this amount of capital to be able to put to work across this number of assets. So that is what I’m trying to bridge here. Of course, the first steps always is trying to figure out the execution pathway on both sides, like do a test deal, a one-off deal. It doesn’t even necessarily need to come all the way to fruition, but can you get the capital into a particular deal, which is, you know.
one of the hardest things to do anyway. So people can talk a big game or say, yeah, they’re willing to invest. But when it comes to actually wiring the money, we all know that’s the hardest part to get done. can we set up a particular deal and maybe have underwriting happen on both sides, the capital as well as the operator side, and start to figure out how do we actually work well within a smaller partnership structure here before potentially trying to do something longer term or larger.
so that is, kind of our multi-step game plan, that we’re trying to, to accomplish here. Again, a lot of folks could work a play like this. think it’s, you know, simple in, you know, my ability to speak about it and, know, like 10 minutes or something. but in terms of actually executing and having the relationships that, allow this to come to fruition is, you know, a multi-year process.
Like we would not have been able to do this when we first got into the business. Like we had to build up a reliable track record and brand recognition and so forth, as well as just the capital base to work from, which just takes time of doing this day in, day out and doing the thousands of reps necessary to properly underwrite deals and feel comfortable writing 500K checks or more.
Again, there’s only a handful of folks in this space that are willing and able to do something like that. But if you want to play at the highest levels, that’s what it takes. just to share what we’re trying to do. And if some of this resonates, both from the capital side or the operator side, and you’d like to share in this vision with us, we’re not greedy about our
know, particular capabilities and like, you know, building a gated infrastructure. Like you can see how much content we put out. We share, we share all of this, um, for, for what we’re doing here. So, um, you know, again, real estate is literally the biggest asset class out there. No one can do it. It’s not a zero sum game. Uh, no one can do it, you know, but by themselves here. So, um, to us, it’s all about creating larger pies and sharing in, um, you know, smaller slices for each particular entity or each player within it.
but the absolute values continue to get larger and larger. So, you know, the more high level folks that we can do that with in this particular industry, the more the merrier in that case. So if this resonates, please reach out. Love to have a conversation. That is my number one focus on at the company right now. So SeriousLand.Capital for any of your land funding needs, subscribe and share everybody. Looking forward to next time. Take care now. Bye.
