This episode documents active deal flow during March 2025 macro uncertainty, demonstrating continued market activity across acquisitions and dispositions. The portfolio update covers a Georgia lakefront lot going under contract after strategic spring relisting, a Tennessee property finding its price floor at $55K after cuts from $70K, and the prize Dallas deal receiving a $750K cash offer ($15K per acre, nearly 2X the $8.2K basis) with negotiations pushing toward $17K per acre through creative owner finance structuring. Simultaneous acquisition activity included closing the $500K+ Louisiana deal and multiple Tennessee parcels, with one Central Louisiana child parcel potentially pre-sold to a neighbor before formal closing.
Key Takeaways:
- Seasonality Still Drives Lakefront Activity: The Georgia lot generated multiple site visits and an offer within one week of March relisting after zero activity during winter months, validating strategic seasonal timing over continuous price cuts into dead markets.
- Price Discovery Requires Aggressive Cuts, Not Incremental Ones: The Tennessee lot sat dormant until a $60K to $55K cut triggered immediate calls and a cash offer, demonstrating that meaningful price reductions (not conservative 5-10% trims) reveal true market clearing levels.
- 2X Exits Still Clear in Under 90 Days on Quality Assets: The Dallas 50-acre tract attracted consistent offers every 7-10 days at $15K per acre (vs. $8.2K basis) despite macro volatility, proving that properly underwritten assets in development paths move regardless of broader economic uncertainty.
Hear the full episode for detailed deal structures, buyer negotiation tactics, and how to maintain aggressive acquisition activity when others pause.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hey Chris over at Serious Land Capital Vacant Land Funding Partner. Today I just wanted to give more of a state of the market as well as our own portfolio. There’s been a lot of activity over this last week both on the acquisition and Dispo perspective here. I know I’ve commented back and forth and you know.
have to be living under a rock not to, you know, I’ve heard a number of the various macro uncertainty indicators to put it lightly. Assuming you live in the US and, you know, effect on things globally too. lot of trepidation. You know, people aren’t sure where to turn. Nevertheless, we’ve been in worse
situations in the past. If you’ve had any market exposure or involvement in various industries over the past few decades, the key is to stay focused and adjust as needed here. But nevertheless, we are still heads down and
you know, keyed in on what has been working for us and is still continuing to work from us, even amidst the uncertainty here. you know, I think it, it can serve as a bit of reminder, you know, those of us who’ve been in land for, you know, five plus years now at this point, you know, close to when we were getting involved in this, you this was right after COVID hit, you know, March, April of 2020. Yeah. I know you have to put your.
your mind back to that period of time. you know, just that, that, that to me like was, was worse. The markets were tanking way worse across, you know, multiple industries. Everything was shutting down. it’s, you know, it seems like so it’s such a crazy time in, And definitely felt more uncertain than, than it does now. But I remember as we were
you really starting to get into the land game then. Um, and this is before, you know, kind of the second half, 2020 things started to take off and so forth. But those first couple months when, you know, the economy was kind of cratering and then starting to recover, um, you know, we were still getting, you know, two X, uh, offers on land routinely and they were cheaper properties. And we were, we were a bit newer in the game, but
Um, that was kind of the first indication. Wow. You know, everything else seems to be shutting down all these other businesses struggling. mean, my, my gosh, if, if you were a restaurant owner back then, just how bad things were. Um, whereas in the land game, um, you know, that there was still an active market amidst all that uncertainty. So, uh, you know, just a reminder that cycles happen. Um, and as long as you stay focused and, and, you know, continue to pursue solid assets.
It’s not like the entire economy goes to zero. So that’s what we’re finding now. We had cleaned out a lot of our portfolio after the end of the year and have been acquiring more, especially some larger assets. So I think I’ve commented on a couple of these. just give a few quick bullet points. We had this lakefront property in Northern Georgia that
We had bought maybe around August of last year and it just, the whole local market pretty much right after we bought it just closed off entirely. mean, homes weren’t moving, no land was moving. We tried, we went through a few price cuts, but we were just cutting it into a vacuum. And ultimately we’re like, okay, by the end of December, like, you know, heading into winter time here.
Uh, if we really haven’t gotten any hits yet, like let’s just take our listing down. Um, you know, we anticipate there’s some seasonality here. You know, it’s maybe, you know, there, there, there’s some permanent home buyers out there, but it could be a bit more of a vacation lot. Let’s just put it up in spring. Um, because that’s what seemed to be a hotter market, uh, the previous year as well. Um, so we decided to relist first week of March and we got.
activity right away. I there was at least three or four site visits with a lot of questions being asked about the property. And they’re like, okay, this is definitely solid. Plus there was another lakefront lot that had moved or went under contract just north of ours, near identical lot, but it was even inferior to ours at a pretty premium price point. And we were utilizing the same realtor. So
had some inside info there and then yeah, within a week of relisting the property, still a double of what we had bought it at. We did go under contract. It’s a little bit of a trickier situation. The buyer was trying to utilize, initially they wanted to owner finance and then they weren’t able to do third party finance. And then they tried to do a key lock so they could disclose cash.
That ended up not working out and so now we’re trying to do an owner finance situation again. As funders, I’m always looking to exit notes. So we were already lining up a note buyer so we can just reverse engineer the terms. And we also bumped the price that we had previously agreed upon from a cash perspective to account for the 20 % discount. We’d have to eat for a note sale. I know I’m kind of speaking
quickly through this, I’ll do another podcast that kind of breaks down that that whole process on how we work through owner finance type deals and how to exit them. But just giving you an idea, OK, we can be a little bit more creative here. And it seems like we’re still going to be able to exit that one effectively. So, you know, this has all been happening within the last week or so. There was another property in Tennessee, middle of Tennessee, that
We bought toward the end of last year in 2024. Um, wasn’t getting any hits. Uh, we had bought it at, and I thought it was kind of higher variance. We bought it at like roughly 30,000 listed at 70. I thought maybe exiting around 60 was going to be likely, but I wasn’t positive. You know, at some of those lower.
Price points and and that’s low for us like sub 50k purchase price, know We might be willing to take a little bit more risk on it. This is not that much capital allocation and We might accept a bit more variance that was the case for this lot and thought it may Exit around 60, you know plus or plus or minus 10k maybe 15k worst worst case But we weren’t getting any site visits for the first couple months of the year
cut down to to 60 and then just earlier this week, cut it down to 55 and almost immediately got a couple calls, one site that we even got a cash offer just earlier today. But then we had a sabotaging neighbor who told the presumptive buyer that it wasn’t buildable, which is just completely false. But either way, they got scared off and backed off the offer.
It’s unfortunate. It was going to be a quick cash close, full price. But at least we found the market in terms of pricing. that’s like another good indicator. And again, this is amidst kind of a crazy macro at the moment. And then we have kind of our prize deal that 400K purchase I remarked on multiple times just south of Dallas, 50 acres, just prime parcel for development.
And also is split up into three child parcels roughly 60 and a half acres each The parrot parcels actually gotten more activity. We’ve been averaging offer on this Property like every seven to ten days or so and we bought it at eight point two K per acre 15 K per acre Seems to be the absolute bottom So we did get a 15 K cash offer 15 K
per acre cash offer earlier this week to close in less than a month. Pretty wild, almost a 2X. I mean, this is $750,000 cash offer from a RV site developer. We wanted to bump it a little bit. were saying, if we can, you know, there’s again, a lot of macro volatility. You know, if we took this one out longer, waiting for long, like who knows what the U.S. is going to look like, you know, a week from now, let alone six months from now. So you’re like, hey, we’re…
We’re willing to take some chips off the table, especially for these higher price properties, but can we bump this, you know, an extra, you know, 2k per acre, if we can get up to like 17 K per acre, we’ll be feeling really good. You know, so then the, net profits that, both our firm as well as our, land investor partner who brought us the deal, we’d each be taking home net roughly 200 K cash and, and, you know, less than 90 days.
you know, who’s going to complain about that? Just an incredible return. So we’re trying to work with him on that. The guy’s a little cagey about moving forward. He’s still doing more DD and might have to get a little bit creative. it’s right now we’re trying to structure it where the 15K per acre, so roughly 750,000 would be cash.
Effectively a down payment and then try to own or finance out the remaining 2k per acre roughly another hundred grand Though we’re trying to get you know an extra 20 % premium built on top so that if we sell that remaining note Then we could effectively net out 17,000 per acre For the entire parcel, so that’s what we’re trying to work through now again really good position to be in from from that side a lot of movement on the Dispo side and
Yeah, we’ve been getting a lot of others coming in for acquisitions. We actually just closed. the buy seller side docs are coming in on Monday, but all our funds are in. for that 32 acre, roughly half million dollar purchase includes inclusive of value add expenses for that central Louisiana property. know I’ve remarked on a number of times on this podcast. We got all those funds in everything signed, ready to go.
So and that one we may already have pre-sold one of the child parcels to a next-door neighbor for a very healthy profit. We will know that shortly and I’ll be sure to update you about that. But yeah, just to give you an idea of what our acquisitions are looking like and we just closed another three parcels today for a 90k buy price in Tennessee as well.
and have a few others that are closing imminently as well and some others coming in. So just to give you guys an idea, I know I kind of went through these pretty quickly, but bottom line, lot of acquisition activity still, a lot of dispo activity, especially dispo activity that that’s what I really want to hammer home that amidst all this macro wall, we’re still…
you know, having real activity for, for solid assets. Like, you know, regardless, you know, regardless of what the stock market is doing, like not as many people have exposure to that as you would think. So it, you know, it gets a lot of attention. Um, but there’s plenty of folks who are, you know, still focused on, you know, consumption led behaviors outside of, um, you know, publicly traded equities. So, uh, just something to keep in mind. Yeah, obviously we would all love more certainty. don’t know.
wouldn’t when it comes to economical the macro economy overall. But you know, we work with what we have. hopefully that context helps along your land journey and looking forward to speaking with you next time. If you want funding, SeriousLand.Capital, zero cost review of your land deals at Land Daily Diligence Facebook group.
and LandPricer.ai. Just got off a super long call with my engineering team. Beta invite should be going out this Monday, March 17th. Happy St. Patty’s Day. Stay safe out there. Take care. Bye.
