This episode details a strategic neighbor outreach system for properties struggling to sell after 3-4 weeks on market. The three-tiered approach targets immediate neighbors (20-30 contacts), nearby LLCs (investor buyers in larger radius), and local builders through cold calling, with total campaign costs under $500 using Click2Mail for flexible, small-batch mailings.
Key Takeaways:
- Trigger Timing Matters Deploy neighbor letters after 3-4 weeks of minimal listing activity, not immediately, to avoid unnecessary margin erosion on quick-selling properties.
- Three-Tier Strategy Target direct neighbors first, expand to nearby LLCs (investor profiles), then cold-call local builders for infill lots suited to single-family development.
- AI-Enhanced Copy Weave AI-generated listing descriptions into neighbor letters for property-specific messaging rather than generic templates, improving response rates.
- Active Clearing as Pressure Starting visible site work (bulldozers, bush hogs) forces hesitant neighbors to commit before value-add begins and prices increase.
Listen to learn the complete neighbor letter workflow and when to deploy this disposition tactic.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital vacant land funding partner. Uh, today wanted to go over some additional. Dispo tips in relation to that longer, um, Claude project that I had for some troublesome properties that are being pretty difficult to move right now. And we’ve just been aggressively, um, uh, taking all of those tips in, uh, uh, you know, executing on them to try to find some way to move these things. So
Um, you know, it, it, it mentioned, uh, you know, neighbor contact campaigns, which is nothing new, right? Um, I think most people within the land industry have considered doing, uh, uh, neighbor, um, neighbor contact campaigns, usually in the form of, of letters. Um, but you know, there are different strategies on how to do that. And I know there’s some automated solutions like, um, you know, Lisa Jarrett has a buyer finder.io.
that kind of automates the process of just, you know, prepping letters for everybody within a certain radius. I like to be a little bit more targeted and creative with that. And so, you know, we’re not always sending out neighbor letters. Like it’s always kind of a debate because, you know, some properties, like they just might move within like a week or two of listing and, at least getting like significant activity.
So I’m usually waiting on doing neighbor letters until maybe three to four weeks in to listing a property. And it’s maybe not moving as quickly as I would like. Or maybe the markets are just changing on me so quickly that like, I would need to really take advantage of every avenue here. But yeah, it’s usually not an immediate thing just because like it eats into margin, right? So you have to kind of gamble. Okay, is it worth spending additional funds here? Usually less than a.
thousand bucks for neighbor letter campaign. But, still depending on how much equity you’re putting into a deal, it might, you know, reduce your, your overall, profit that you can get on it with, you know, potentially questionable benefits. So it’s kind of a risk reward mentality here. I’m when you might pull the trigger for doing neighbor letters and some properties are going to be better suited to.
sell to a neighbor versus others. know, obviously if they’re like, it’s a nice tract of land next to somebody who owns a whole bunch of land in the area. And this would be like a nice addition for them. Great. can try to go after them. you know, whereas if it’s just like a standard infill lot that, you know, people are kind of like one-off lot owners in an area, particularly if it’s like HOA, like it’s not always.
It doesn’t always make the most sense to think that neighbors are just going to be looking to scoop up extra land in the area. Not always, but you know, there are some areas that are going to be more likely to neighbor buyers and also price points as well. You know, the cheaper the property is probably going to get more interest. In our experience, we often found like, yeah, neighbors always, you know.
They want first look and they’ll say they’re interested, but when it comes time to actually put down a written offer, there’s a lot of hemming and hawing going on as well. And we’re kind of dealing with that with that larger Louisiana subdivide that we’re doing at the moment where there’s been a neighbor who’s been interested for a couple months now for one of the child parcels that borders their property. And, you know, they’ve just been.
Yeah. Not willing to put anything down on paper. And now they have like one more day to decide because we’re actively, you know, doing clearing on all three of the child parcel lots. And we deliberately saved the last lot to be the one that they border directly so that the broker can just pressure them more with like, Hey, like as soon as we start doing work on this, like you’ve lost your chance to purchase the property or you’re going to have to go at a way higher price to.
to purchase because we’re committed to the value add here. And so that’s just an avenue where it’s like, Hey, you, you, can start to, they see you’re not just like blowing smoke, in terms of, we’re going to sell, we’re going to sell all this type of stuff. It’s like, Hey, we’re actively doing work here. can see the, you know, the cranes and the bulldozers and bush hogs and all that, right outside where they live. And they’re like, okay, yeah, these guys are serious here. So.
You either have to make a decision or or move on from it So that that’s another strategy you can use in situations like that is start, you know Make a bunch of noise and start clearing When it actually makes sense to do that for certain properties, but then in terms of like actual letters and reaching out here Usually our strategy is kind of threefold within this so I’ll usually have my assistant prep a smaller radius of neighbors, you know, definitely the ones who live right next door and
Um, yeah, I usually want like a list of at least 20 to 30 people nearby. Um, obviously farther out, are less likely. They’re probably going to be that interested. And then we do a slightly larger radius. I don’t actually have the exact numbers here, but, um, just know, yeah, smaller for like the actual just neighbors here. And then a slightly larger radius for all LLCs within the area, cause they’re more likely to be investor.
type of buyer, sometimes they’re just individual sole proprietor or sole member LLCs, identity protection, whatever. Not that it really protects your identity. Any lawyer especially can find, even if you’re in Nevada or Wyoming, all that, you think it’s actually protected, but it’s not, it’s not confidential. So just FYI, there’s no real advantage to it.
doing an LLC within that state, just do within your home state, unless you’re raising, planning to raise a whole bunch of money or not even a whole bunch of money, but have investor involvement, then you want to do Delaware, that’s just an aside. I’ll probably talk about that at more length in another pod. But finding these LLC buyers or owners in the area, rather slightly larger radius, we’ll do a separate.
letter campaign for them. We’ve actually had success doing that in the past, as well. And then I also want to figure out who are all the local builders in the area too. And they’re generally not going to be letters. I just want to cold call them and just try to figure out, how our email, how do we get in touch with these guys and have like a multi-touch campaign, across a couple of weeks to figure out, Hey, is there an avenue that we could, work together?
to, or, are you interested in, in, know, potentially purchasing this, this property? And again, that’s going to be most relevant for areas that are, know, infill lots, especially in set up for, single family residences, which a lot of our properties are, but, know, not always. so we usually do like a three tiered campaign for, that local builder and LLC and neighbor outreach and then send off the mail and, you know, try to.
provide our realtor as the main contact person versus calling us directly. But I’ll still put my name in the business owner, just in case they want to check. yeah, who’s the owner of this lot, if they really care, but yeah, contact our broker. And now I’ve actually used AI even more to weave in the AI generated listing description into the neighbor letter. Cause you know, we used to use like more generic copy and so forth. and, and, now it’s just a bit more sophisticated with developing that copy.
More uniquely oriented around that particular property. So that’s our updated Strategy on how we’ll handle those and we usually keep it below like 500 500 bucks maybe closer to 300 bucks Total and that one’s still like a click to mail send out Just because I you know click to mail. I know it still has like a poor UI We initially got started there, but like it’s You don’t need to do any bulk packaging or anything. You could even send like one, you know one person mailer
if needed. And I like the flexibility and it’s still a pretty cheap option for getting out some of these packages. So, and usually pretty, still pretty quick to work with. So that’s our strategy on how we’ll handle the neighbor letter piece and the multifaceted approach to it. It has worked with us in the past. It’s definitely not a 100 % hit rate, but like, again, you can consider doing it right at the front end.
As soon as you buy a property or as soon as you anticipate buying a property, all titles cleared and everything, or wait until things are like, maybe a little shakier and see if you can still get some hits. Uh, because initially listing on the market just wasn’t able to get you, uh, the results that you wanted. So hopefully this, um, neighbor letter strategy is helpful for you. Um, maybe even using clay.com. thought about that when I saw Callen talking about it within her.
Accelerate to automate program where you might be able to you know, you could use like fast people search and all that, but you know, maybe be able to skip trace a little bit easier. Even phone numbers and emails for neighbors. To me that’s a little trickier of a strategy to do that. And like, yeah, if you really want to cold call, I mean, you can be as aggressive as you need to like.
Dispos Dispo, right? I get if things are not going well on that side, like you got to you got to pull off every last avenue to figure out how to sell your property. So, you know, letters are obviously the easiest to to get out there in terms of a time perspective. Yeah, maybe most upfront work. But yeah, if you’re having to try to call a bunch of numbers and so forth, you know, that that could introduce
other time commitments, try to sort that out, but you know, it might still work too. So, that that’s just another adjunct method that we usually don’t take advantage of, but the more I talk about it right now, it’s something I should probably consider. so with that serious land dot capital for any of your funding needs, zero cost review of your land deals at land daily diligence, Facebook group, then landpricer.ai for most simple and accurate way to price land.
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