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[00:00:00] Mike: All right, guys. Michael Hicks here. I’m with Annette Grant from Thanks for Visiting, and today we’re going to talk about land. Annette has been out last week searching for that perfect piece of property, and she has all kinds of questions. So we’ll get into that a little bit. I know you’ve got tons of questions, but hit me with the easy ones first, and I’ll make sure we’re not missing anything on the front end.

[00:00:23] Annette: All right. Well, I do. I have so many questions, and the thing I’m most scared about, Mike, is that the questions I don’t even know to ask yet, but I can tell you that I am excited but overwhelmed because when you go and look at acres, and I’m talking hundreds of acres, the possibilities seem endless. And we have all these dreams of putting multiple short-term rentals on it.

[00:00:46] But we’re like, wait a second. And we went with the person. He owns all the properties, so, of course, he’s trying to sell us. So I need you to help me sift through some of the things that he was saying and the questions that we had that we need to answer for ourselves before we actually put a bid in on the land. So let me give you a little bit of both of them.

[00:01:09] We’re looking at two pieces of property, and both of them are a little over a 100 acres. And they both have a primary residence on it, where the owners have lived both of them for decades. I’d say 30-plus years each. So the houses, they’re there, but they are not anything that we would put up for short-term rental at all at this point in time.

[00:01:32] They are completely cleaned out and very different. One is a farmhouse, an old, old 1800s farmhouse, and the other one is basically a cabin that this gentleman used for decades. But I think the promising thing on both of them is that they did have utilities and septic up until very recently when they both sold the land.

[00:01:50] So my first question is, does the value– because of these homes on the property, to me, that seemed like a huge value add because, a, the city– they already had utilities, the septic, electricity. It’s already there. So when you’re looking at land, is that a huge bonus out of the gate? It seemed like one to me.

[00:02:11] Mike: It’s obviously a plus, but there’s things that you still need to be concerned about, especially with an 1800s home. Years ago, septic was not what it is today, and that septic tank might’ve been an old refrigerator. It might’ve been an old car. You don’t know. Whatever that farmer could figure out and put in the ground, that’s what they used.

[00:02:32] So it’s important to always have that inspection. They’ll pull the lid off the tank, pump it out, inspect the inside of the tanks for cracks, make sure the lid’s not cracked, that sort of thing. So you want to make sure that first off, that tank is in good condition, not an old refrigerator.

[00:02:48] Annette: Okay. But both of them just having septic period– so basically you’re telling me that might not be a good thing. It might not be up to any current day code.

[00:03:01] Mike: Correct. And you’ll want to get with– in Georgia, it’s called Environmental health. They will come out and take a look at the property and tell you these are the possibilities. What they put septic in 40, 50, even 15 years ago in Georgia might not be allowed today.

[00:03:20] So today, in Georgia, we have to have a soil analysis. And they’ll come out with an auger and dig a hole and tell you what type of dirt is at different levels in that hole. And then that tells the soil scientist what type of system will be required for the types of soil that are there. It also tells them the linear footage of leach field or septic field lines that will be required for that property as well. Some properties will perc at a different rate, meaning that the waste in the lines will–

[00:03:55] Annette: What’s percolate? I know coffee percolation. I don’t know poo percolation. I don’t know what that is.

[00:04:01] Mike: It’s mainly your liquids that are coming out into the leach fields. So the solids drop to the bottom, the liquids go out, and then they will seep out at their own rate, depending on the soil. Some soils will dissipate a lot quicker than others. So that’s how they determine the type of system that you need, how many feet of line you need, and where that needs to be.

[00:04:23] Annette: Okay. Oh, it’s going to be a lot more work than I anticipated. So with the septic and the soil test, is that something very basic that’s part of my due diligence? I let him know we need to have a soil test before we even go into any contract. Or is that something that would be in the contract?

[00:04:43] Mike: I see so many people purchasing property and then not being able to put septic on it. And unknowingly that they even needed to do that. Whether they’re buying it off-market or maybe the agent didn’t know and is not familiar with vacant land, but we looked at a property last week, 140 acres, and it might have six acres on that property that’s usable. The rest is just a shelf of rock, and you can’t put septic in rock. It just doesn’t work that way.

[00:05:11] Annette: Right. So it takes this– because I will let you know. The gentleman that’s selling it, it’s pretty much– obviously, there is the price of it, but he is pricing it per acre. So in something like that, would the price change significantly when you’re like, okay, great, there’s a 100 acres, but only six is usable. Would you debate that?

[00:05:30] Mike: It might for you. So it all depends on the use. So if somebody else is coming in there to run cattle on the property, it might have that value, where if you’re wanting to build on the property, it might not. But I will never buy a piece of property that is not on sewer without a soil analysis.

[00:05:47] And I want my due diligence period to equal that of the amount of time it will take to get that soil analysis. Here, lately, it’s been taking six to seven weeks just to get a soil scientist out to a property, and then another week or so to get your report. So my due diligence period will always be longer than the amount of time it takes for that soil scientist to come out.

[00:06:10] Annette: And so that is no matter– any piece of land that you’re buying, you’re always doing the soil–

[00:06:14] Mike: I’m doing a soil analysis.

[00:06:16] Annette: Can you give me an idea, if I’m putting my budget together, what does the soil scientist charge, just an average?

[00:06:25] Mike: In my area, it’s four to 900 depending on the property. Now, that’s per site. So if you’ve got a 100 acres and you want 30 sites–

[00:06:32] Annette: Oh, wow!

[00:06:34] Mike: It’s per site. They are testing each area because you have a different system for each house.

[00:06:38] Annette: And could I trust if they said they’d already done a soil analysis? Could I take documents, or could I trust them that they’ve had it done at all?

[00:06:48] Mike: If they’re submitting documents to you where they perform this test, but typically, when a soil analysis is performed, they file it with the county and then– we have bought properties where a soil analysis was done two or three years ago, and we’re still allowed to use that. Some counties will flex on that a little bit.

[00:07:08] Annette: All right. So it sounds like I can get excited, but step number one is the soil analysis will let me know the septic situation. My first thought before the soil analysis was, how could I budget if, let’s say the land, I want to put at least a minimum of four places. That’s what we’ve planned. Is there a range? Is there a spreadsheet somewhere online that I know that we wanted to take these four properties and take them further off the road because both of the homes are right near the road, I’m sure, for utility and septic purposes when they were built. But we want to go further back. Is there a way that I could start to run the numbers on how much it would cost me to get the septic back further into the woods where we’re going to need it?

[00:07:56] Mike: The septic isn’t going to be the issue back in the woods, but before we go to the septic, let’s dig in into a little bit about maybe what you’re allowed to do on the property. If we start, my first call is to the Planning and Zoning commission, and that’s, hey, can I– but that’s before we even decide to make an offer or put septic or have a soil analysis done.

[00:08:17] We’re calling Planning and Zoning and saying, hey, what’s your minimum square footage? Because we like to build small, unique structures. So if they have a minimum square footage of 800, we’re passing on the property and we’re not wasting a lot of time digging into that property.

[00:08:33] And we’ll also say, okay, most counties in Georgia will have a minimum lot width regardless of the size of the property. So where I’m working, they’ll say it’s an 85 foot minimum lot width. We bought one property that was 20 acres, but it was only 190 feet wide. So that would limit me to two structures on that 19 acres.

[00:09:00] Annette: Got you. Yeah, that was one of the things of figuring out how many structures we could put on the specific property. So that’s something– when we go to Planning and Zoning, though, do we just ask them for their “rules and regulations”, or do we tell them what we want do?

[00:09:19] Mike: Most of the time they’ll have a spreadsheet telling what you’re allowed to do. What I like to do is take the spreadsheet and look at what they allow, and then figure out what I can do. So malicious obedience. What can’t I do? And then I figure out what I can do. One of the places we work has a rule where you can put eight units on a private drive. So you can have that narrow lot width upfront. And if you have a deep piece of property, you run a drive up the middle and put eight units off–

[00:09:50] Annette: That was our idea. Yeah. One driveway that shoots off into all the different properties.

[00:09:55] Mike: And then you get into the health and life safety aspect of it– the Fire Department side. They might allow that, but then they’re going to say, we want to have a 30-foot road width with a cul-de-sac in the end. It could be gravel, but we want enough room for the fire truck to turn around

[00:10:12] Annette: What did you just call it? Life and safety?

[00:10:14] Mike: Life safety.

[00:10:16] Annette: Life safety. Is the spreadsheet that you’re talking about with the city or the county, are they going to be happy to give me this, or are they like we don’t–

[00:10:23] Mike: Yeah, it’s in the planning zone book.

[00:10:24] Annette: Okay. They’re not going care.

[00:10:25] Mike: And if you go to the permit office, they can talk you through and answer a lot of these questions. And just because it’s not in their book doesn’t mean you can’t ask for a variance and get what you want. But we try not to do that.

[00:10:39] Annette: Do we tip them off that we want to create short-term rentals or do you hold off on that? Do you find that–

[00:10:47] Mike: That’s my phone call.

[00:10:49] Annette: There’s either pro or con?

[00:10:49] Mike: When I’m making the phone call, are short-term rentals allowed? That way, they’re not putting the idea with me because I did that over the phone. Then when I go to the office, I can get that information and just walk through it. Most of them don’t care.

[00:11:06] Annette: Now, one of the things that is just popping in my head that I didn’t have this question for is, these plots of land, they’re actually in different counties. And so I’m making more work for myself. When you’re looking for something new, do you try to stay within the same county so you’re only making one call? Do you plan on that, or is it just you’re out there looking?

[00:11:30] Mike: So when we started, it was an A, B, C triangle. We have three large cities, and then we want to be somewhere in the middle of that, and then we try to find a state park or something like that. So once we’ve narrowed down our search, then we’ll figure out a two to three county radius, and then we’ll start making those phone calls and asking those qualifying questions. And if they don’t hit our need, we’ll go to the next county.

[00:11:55] Annette: Wait. Now I’m feeling like I’m doing it all wrong. Should I have done the calls before I even went to look at the land probably to get excited about what’s the point of driving, looking at it? Because that was a whole Friday afternoon or Friday. I’m just thinking now. We could have wasted– and there was me, Sarah, and some of our potential partners. That was four or five people taking an entire day when one phone call probably could have cleared up some of the–

[00:12:22] Mike: Yeah, I want to qualify the property before I ever spend time looking at it.

[00:12:26] Annette: Okay. When you’re saying qualify the property, what does that conversation– do you feel confident calling one time? Do you have a tried-and-true list that you could share? These are the four questions I ask, or what’s that list look like on your first call?

[00:12:42] Mike: I’m going to ask about density. I’m going to ask about square footage, minimum short-term rentals, and then, yeah, road frontage. That’s usually my go-to.

[00:12:53] Annette: I might be dense, but talk to me about density. What type of density am I going to–

[00:12:59] Mike: Units per acre. I went on a tour Thursday down in Georgia, and these communities are working with high density projects, so they’re putting 15, 16 units an acre, and a lot of that’s townhome style or small homes. And they’re doing that by stripping the rights of another property. So they have a property in a less desirable area. They’ll pull the property rights off of it, make it a park, and then assign those property rights to this property to get that increase in density. Now, that’s not common to what doing.

[00:13:36] Annette: I was like, that sound like some funny business to me.

[00:13:38] Mike: That’s common in land development with big tax incentives, but not to what we’re working on.

[00:13:46] Annette: So let’s go through that again. You said the density, so the property density. I need to check on the square footage, short-term rentals. And then what was my fourth question that I needed to ask? Was it soil and septic? Zoning? I can’t remember the fourth question.

[00:14:00] Mike: Yeah. The minimum road frontage.

[00:14:02] Annette: Oh, minimum road frontage. Okay. So those are my four questions I need to ask before I even go look at the land because, I will let you know, the person that was selling it, I felt like they were telling us all the things that we wanted to hear, and so it feels like there’s a lot of other work that we need to do behind the scenes there.

[00:14:24] All right, so let’s say these counties, they check all the boxes. We’re allowed to do all the things that we think we’re going to want to do. What are some of the roadblocks? Are there still some other things besides the soil, like before I get the contract, things that you still confirm before you actually close on buying the land?

[00:14:44] Mike: A lot of sellers will advertise property as no restrictions or utilities available, and when you get down to it, those aren’t always the case. So just because they say there’s no restrictions on the property, that might mean there’s no subdivision restrictions. The county will still have restrictions so most of the time.

[00:15:07] Another piece to that is the utilities. You might have this long dirt road, depending on how rural you are, but you might have a long dirt road, and there’s utilities over here, but they’re a 1,000 feet from your property line. So somebody’s got to get that water line to the front of your property.

[00:15:26] So I always want to make sure that there’s water available, and that the power is available. We’ve purchased property where the power was across the street, and they have a new rule where everything has to go underground. Well, guess what? We just had to bore under a state highway, and that wasn’t cheap.

[00:15:44] So you’ve got to take those things into account. We will usually walk it with an engineer from the power company, and they’ll give us an idea. They base their cost, at least where I am, on the potential usage, future usage of the project. So if you tell them you’re building one house, it’s going to cost a lot more than if you tell them you’re building five houses.

[00:16:08] So they’re able to set the infrastructure and spread that– the same thing for them. They’re spreading their cost over five units instead of one. So there’s been cases where we’ve not had to pay at all to have the utilities run. We did the tree house, the last tree house we built, I think it was around $9,400 to have the power in about 700 feet. And we had to dig it on top of that.

[00:16:32] Annette: That seems pricy to me, but oof.

[00:16:35] Mike: It is. The same way with the cost of the land, you divide it across the number of units, and you get a cost per lot. You got to break it down into smaller pieces, and it’s a little more palatable.

[00:16:48] Annette: That helped me. Actually, that was eye opening. The plan is, let’s say we want to do four plus. We should let the utility company know exactly what our longer term plan is, even with just pulling one. And then when we’re running our numbers divide by the amount of homes that we’re anticipating putting on the land.

[00:17:08] Mike: Sure. And that evens up the cost across all five or four, five lots. And even if you’re not planning on running all that power now or using all that power now, we cut ours in half at the tree house because we went ahead and put in two meters. We decided later that we’re never going to add a second unit, but the option’s there. But it cut our cost in half.

[00:17:30] Annette: Can I ask why never?

[00:17:31] Mike: The guest experience. So that property is a narrow property. It’s only 200 feet wide. Again, it’s 19 acres. We feel like if we put them both on the brow, it can adjust the tree house and takes away from that guest experience.

[00:17:51] Annette: No, that’s fair enough. That was something that we were obviously looking at too, of like how close can they be, but yet far enough to where we could put them towards the front of the land. One of the plans right now, because this is a large dollar amount purchase is to offload some of the land almost immediately to recoup some of the investment.

[00:18:18] But we already have questions about that. Is this land still going to be desirable? Can we flip it like that? When we’re thinking about reselling some of it immediately, and this is part of the business plan, what are some things that we need to think about there of like, no, a, no one’s going to want that 25 acres because you took the best part. Or, like you said, you’re too far off the road front. How do we preserve some of the land to still make it marketed to another buyer? Or is that something we want to hold on to?

[00:18:53] Mike: We always try to hold on because it creates a buffer between us and neighbors. And it’s also a potential for future expansion. Now, if the land is straight off a bluff or a cliff or down in a hole and it’s not usable to somebody else, then you know you’ve dropped your per acreage price from 10,000 to 2000 an acre.

[00:19:15] So what you’re giving away or selling might not be near as valuable as what you kept. That’s a case by case basis. So if the land’s all similar and it has access, you can get utilities back there. You’re talking large tracks. If they’re going to have to drive 3,000 feet to get to their property and they’re going to have to run utilities 3000 feet, that drops the cost. When I’m making an offer on a piece of property like that, I’m going to reduce it by the cost of those utilities.

[00:19:43] Annette: Okay, so we could do that too. Here’s one thing that I did notice. Obviously, with the house, you can have it inspected. It’s pretty easy. It can be done in a day. If you’re buying a 100 acres, do we need to inspect? Are there land inspectors to go out and actually map out the land and say, hey, there’s something– I don’t know. Maybe the EPA.

[00:20:03] Something the guy was telling us was like, a lot of these properties will have private dumps on them, where the landowners have had their own garbage dump. And he was like, this land is pretty clean. And they don’t have that. How can we inspect the 100 acres when it’s a 100 acres?

[00:20:21] Does someone come in and do that? How can we make sure the land is– we drove through a little bit and walked a little bit, but it was barely scraping the surface. How do you look at that when you’re dealing with that many acres?

[00:20:33] Mike: I think it’s mostly visual. I’m sure there are groups or companies that will come in and inspect land. And yeah, they’re 100% correct. A lot of people, especially farmers, would dump everything. If they had a sink hole or something, they would fill it in and cover it up. So then you have a possible environmental issue.

[00:20:54] If you see those things and you can clean it up fairly easily, that’s something that wouldn’t concern me a whole lot depending on what they put in them. You never know. I But I guess if you found a problem that you were concerned about, you could have somebody come out and do an environmental study on it and see if there’s been groundwater impact or any kind of contamination.

[00:21:15] Annette: One thing that we’ve already ran into, and I just want to know if this is common, the land, there’s two separate things. I know sometimes the landowners rent the land to farmers nearby, and they have that agreement already. There’s that. And then there’s an agreement also. There is some gas line on the property or the oil, something there that is rented to a utility company.

[00:21:40] And so the house was getting, I think, gas for free, but then they rent that, and it was right in the middle of the land. And it sounded like a– I don’t know if it was a handshake deal. I didn’t know what was going on there. If you find something like that, the land is already being in use some way, how could we research that? Is that a common thing?

[00:21:59] Mike: Yeah, it sounds like an easement and an agreement. I would go back and look at the deed and just research the deeds. It might be several back, and see if you can find where they’ve recorded that agreement. But yeah, that’s always a possibility.

[00:22:14] Annette: Yeah, it seems like there’s a lot of handshake deals going on in these areas, which I’m not mad about. Okay.

[00:22:21] The biggest thing to all of it, is, again– I’m going to quote the gentleman that was showing us around. It’s a very popular area here in Ohio, and he was like, yeah, everybody comes out here. Everybody’s got their dream because everyone wants to buy this acreage.

[00:22:38] Yeah, we have our own dream too. When you are looking at your unique builds and in your acreage, your land, how are you really reverse engineering the numbers of what your nightly rate needs to be? Are you dialed in that much? Are you just like, I’m going to build this dream and they’re going to come? How can we reverse engineer these numbers when the price for the land is so hard to swallow?

[00:23:05] I’m trying to do that math. How would you even start when we don’t have anything on this land that’s able to rent at this point in time? How can we work the numbers? Especially, do we start with one property and what we think that one would do, or would you go, hey, we’re going to build all four at one time? What would Mike do?

[00:23:23] Mike: That’s tough. I don’t mind sticking my neck out sometimes and throwing a shipping container in the middle of nowhere. But when we did our first project with the shipping containers, we didn’t have a clue. We had a guess of what we thought they would do based on–

[00:23:39] Annette: Did you do one? I can’t remember. You do one or you did two?

[00:23:42] Mike: Did two.

[00:23:42] Annette: Why is that?

[00:23:43] Mike: Because my wife wouldn’t let me do three. She wanted me to just do one, I was like, economies of scale. I’m doing two while I’m here. And it did so well. We added the third, and then once we got those three in the ground, we’re able to predict. And they performed a lot better than we thought. But now we’re able to predict, because we’re staying in that general area, what the numbers will be.

[00:24:13] Annette: And they’re smaller, just two people. I don’t want to say you had a minimal amount of investment, but you probably had the lowest amount of investment you could put into the land to get the guest–

[00:24:24] Mike: We’re paying a premium for the land for what it is. It was two and a half acres, but an acre and a half of it’s off the side of a mountain. So you’re really getting an acre. And at that time, it was 80,000. A similar piece now would be probably 150. We just closed two lots at 150 a piece for one unit each. And that’s hard to swallow.

[00:24:50] Annette: Especially when you have the other for the other price. But you know what? The return on investments. You’re saying economies of scale. This is the other thing that makes me really nervous. How in the world are we going to get teams out there to do all this work? That is probably the thing that went through my head the most.

[00:25:09] These were out of the city, out of the country roads, and I’m thinking, I know how hard it is to get contractors and things built in the city. My mind started racing on, how long is this going to take? Who is going to GC this? What does that add on when you are building in more rural areas? That is the part that was really difficult for me because I’m like, who’s going to GC it?

[00:25:35] Who’s going to be out there? Not only that, who the heck is going to do all of this work? Because, a, to get to the piece of land first off. But then if we want to go deeper into the property, that just seems like the labor would be one of the most difficult parts.

[00:25:49] Mike: I’m doing it for so long. I have a large list of subs and–

[00:25:54] Annette: I have no list.

[00:25:56] Mike: It’s been really easy for me.

[00:25:56] Annette: I’ve a really short list.

[00:25:57] Mike: So for me to sit here and say, yeah, this is how you do it, there’s no clear cut way other than just trial and error, reaching out, and asking for connections and referrals. And just starting down that road. You got to take bids, get three or four bids and go at it. But we’ve got a list a mile long of subs that we’ve used for 10 to 15 years, so it’s easy to– they don’t mind driving 30, 45 minutes to do the project.

[00:26:29] Annette: That’s what I was wondering too. Let’s say this is about an hour away from where we live. It’s like, okay, are there some subs, are there some people that we work with that I would just be willing to say, hey, we’ll pay travel time because we trust them? Would you do something like– do you pay extra when they have to travel that far, or is it just included?

[00:26:47] Mike: I’ve paid drive time, and I give them accommodations while they’re there working. I feel like as networked and connected as we are now, you can easily tap into your network and say, hey, you built a cabin over here. Can you refer any–

[00:27:09] Annette: So that wouldn’t scare you, the labor.

[00:27:12] Mike: No.

[00:27:12] Annette: Okay. The other part with the land is, again, trying to make it as profitable as possible, as quick as possible. We were also thinking, is there a way to, in the interim, while we’re building, to maybe do some glamping, do some yurts, something in the summer months here in Ohio that we could take advantage if we do have all of this land?

[00:27:38] What are some things we need to be thinking about there for temporary structures to rent those out? What’s something there that I just don’t even know about? Can I do outhouses, like I don’t have to provide bathroom?

[00:27:53] Mike: That all goes back to planning and zoning. You can be in one county that will say yes, and the next county over will say absolutely not. So we can’t have power without getting a septic permit. So we’ll never get power or water to the lot where we are without having the septic in place first.

[00:28:13] Annette: Got you. Those compostable toilets, do those–

[00:28:17] Mike: A lot of them do composting toilets. I love the vintage camper idea. I love seeing those 20 foot Shasta from the ’70s restored and put on a piece of property. There’s several cool trailer park, is what they’ve called them.

[00:28:34] Annette: Oh yeah. Actually, that’s got me thinking. I’m sure this is a county thing too, but let’s say we did the campers or your yurts. Could we do a public bathhouse, if you will, like a central–

[00:28:48] Mike: Yeah, sure. Throw a bathhouse in there as long as you had an approved septic system.

[00:28:52] Annette: To me, I’m just thinking, to get something up fast, that’s marketable, that could check all the boxes for a guest and also the county, that sounds like more of a bath. It’s not a bathhouse. What’s it called? A showerhouse?

[00:29:11] Mike: Yeah, I mean it would be a bathhouse.

[00:29:11] Annette: Bathhouse. Okay.

[00:29:12] Mike: That’s what I would call it if it was in the middle of a few campers. And the way I look at that, and the way I would try to set that up is I would try to put that bathhouse near where you’re planning on putting the permanent structure. So say you get a few campers out there with a bathhouse. I would try to figure out, okay, we want our structure right here, and I would put your bathhouse right there. That way, bathhouse goes, and you’re right over your clean out, your sewer.

[00:29:41] Annette: All right. Man. I feel like the call to the county is the number one thing that definitely needs to happen. And I don’t know why I skipped over that because that’s the number one thing. When people ask Sarah and myself about short-term rentals, we’re like, first call has to be to the city. And I don’t know why I thought, no, I’m going to go look at land and spend all day dreaming up things when I don’t even know if it’s possible.

[00:30:08] Mike: It’s never bad to go out and look at land. A lot of my experience came from when I was early 20s, even in high school. I dreamed of developing land, and I would pull up the county maps. Even if I had no clue what I wanted to do, or even if I wanted to make an offer on the property, I was getting out my ruler and scaling it and drawing off lots. I would say, okay, this one’s got 400 feet of road frontage.

[00:30:39] I can cut it up into 80-foot lots and put four quadraplexes, or three duplexes, or whatever it might be. So it doesn’t hurt to get out and walk property. The more you walk it, the more experienced you’ll become. Look for the rocks, look for cedar trees. If you see cedar trees, it’s rock, and you’re probably not going to put a lot of septic.

[00:30:58] Annette: Okay. This is a thing that I was terrified of, by the way. Trees are down everywhere. All the land that we were walking, there was just trees down. I don’t want these falling on guests. Is that a common– can I have someone come out and look at the trees, or do I chalk that up this is going to happen?

[00:31:17] But that was something I saw on all of the land. And some of the trees were blocking things, and I was like, wait, this is a huge issue when there’s hundreds if not thousands of trees. Is that anything that you take into to account or we just have to like it?

[00:31:31] Mike: Every piece of land’s different.

[00:31:32] Annette: It’s nature. Oh, the trees were down.

[00:31:35] Mike: You get out there, and I think Pete Nelson calls it his interview with the trees. I call it my interview with the land. I just get out there, and I’ll sit down in about 10 different spots and I’ll just look, and I’ll take 30 minutes in each spot and say, this would look good here. This would look good here. I could do this here.

[00:31:52] Annette: No, definitely like I said, I’m not that disappointed that we went and looked because, I will say, these questions that I have for you today, I didn’t even think about these. I didn’t have these questions in my mind even a week ago because the gentleman that we looked at, he mentioned septic several, several times to us.

[00:32:09] Both of the properties had– you could see where the owners had paved their own way. They had their own roadways, if you will, back into the property. Ideally, we were like, oh, this is great. There’s already a cleared path back here. We were already envisioning how we would shoot the properties off of the main road that they had driven. They had carved through the land.

[00:32:33] But I like what you’re saying, to interview the land. We probably need to spend some more time. I will tell you, there were nosy neighbors already, and there was a lot of acreage. What do you do? I feel like there’s nosy neighbors everywhere, but I feel like when you have land, it might be even more protective because you moved out there for a reason.

[00:32:54] Have you had any issues with you doing short-term rentals and having neighbors that are very, very close to their land and went and bought acreage on purpose to be out and not around a lot of people? How have you handled that?

[00:33:09] Mike: I think when we build, we want to be respectful of the neighbors and everybody that’s around. We want something that’s win-win for everybody. We want to do a project that’s beneficial to the neighborhood and us as well. And we want to build structures that reflect that as well.

[00:33:26] When neighbors hear short-term rentals, their spidey senses go off, and they get nervous. Where we’re building the current treehouse right now, the neighbors to the north of us, they hear these rumors. Because you did this over there and built three on one property, you’re probably going to put 10 over here. And without having any conversation, they hurry and put up an eight-foot privacy fence, which I’m glad because now I don’t have to do it.

[00:33:59] Annette: Wait, they already did that?

[00:34:01] Mike: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Annette: Oh, wow.

[00:34:01] Mike: And I said, great. I don’t have to put a privacy fence. But if we’d had a conversation, and we did have it after the fact, they were relieved that, hey, we’re only building one unit. We want this type of experience, and we’re having two guests as the max occupancy in our unit. So we’re not having parties, and we’re not having that type of guest.

[00:34:20] Now, if you’re building a different type of unit, that’s still a conversation to be had. But I think it’s good to meet your neighbors and discuss your intentions early on and set the expectations and relieve them a little bit of their fears.

[00:34:36] Annette: They were driving around in their four wheelers checking us out, and I did the small wave, but I was like, hey. They were like–

[00:34:44] Mike: They’re territorial. They’re protective.

[00:34:45] Annette: Yeah, they’ve had the same neighbors for 30 years, and they see a bunch of people–

[00:34:49] Mike: We had one property we purchased, and it ended up selling a lot due to the neighbor. Because every time we went over there to walk the property, he would come out and shoot. And I’m fine with that. He’s out there shooting guns. But I thought, is this what we want happening while our guests are on the property?

[00:35:07] Annette: No, I’m going to go ahead and say no.

[00:35:09] Mike: No, we don’t want that. So we sold it and moved on.

[00:35:18] Annette: What do I not know that I should know? What’s been one of your biggest mistakes in purchasing land? Help me out. Help me and my partners out. What are some of the things that I haven’t asked you yet that I need to be asking?

[00:35:34] Mike: One of the biggest things is water on the property. I’m not talking about the water you’re getting from the street, but the water that might be running across the property. Might be a pond on the property.

[00:35:44] Annette: They all had water, whether it’s a stream. Yeah. They each had a creek running through it.

[00:35:50] Mike: So EPD, EPA can get involved when it comes to the water. Again, I’m relating to Georgia because that’s where I work, but we have a 50-foot buffer where you can’t disturb within 50 feet of a state water. Now, a state water can be a ditch, by their classifications. We had a property that was three and a half acres.

[00:36:13] We still have this property. We’re going to build some apartments on it. Not a piece of water, not an ounce of water on this property, but the state of Georgia has a trout stream going across it. Yeah. So we had to call in EPD. They come up, and they looked at the property and said, okay, obviously there’s no trout stream here. You’re good to go. 

[00;36:44] But that’s still a hurdle that we had to cross. After the 50-foot buffer where you can’t disturb trees or you can’t cut up to that point, you have to leave everything between that 50-foot butter buffer and the stream. After that, there’s a 200-foot buffer. If you’re within that 200 feet, you have to have an engineered soil erosion and sediment control plan. So saying, once we clear it, we’re going to have silt fence. We’re going to have best practices in place to keep this sediment from entering that stream. So those are some big things.

[00:37:07] Annette: So our idea of putting a structure over the creek might not be–

[00:37:12] Mike: It all depends on how–

[00:37:13] Annette: We might get diced on that one. All right.

[00:37:15] Mike: I’m seeing it happen. I’ve seen it happen up here. I’ve seen it happen in Georgia. It’s happening in the rural locations to where the oversight is not there. Not saying that’s right, but it is happening. There’s one builder now that’s putting a shipping container across a creek. That would never happen in Georgia if it was being permitted–

[00:37:40] Annette: Ahead of time.

[00:37:41] Mike: Ahead of time. Another one that we ran into on a coastal property, we bought this property on Tybee Island, and we’re getting ready to build. And I had to have Department of Natural Resources come out and mark the shorelines. So anywhere along the coast, they come out and mark the shoreline.

[00:38:06] And so I called, set up the appointment, and she comes out and puts these flags up everywhere. And I get out there and the shoreline’s marked. But then I get to the front yard, and there’s flags all over the front yard. She’s marking wetlands is what she’s marking, marsh. So I call and say, well, I see in the front yard, you have it marked.

[00:38:28] And she said, anywhere this flower grows is considered marsh. So now I have to put a bridge where all my neighbors, they’ve had it mowed, and it’s just part of their front yard. Because mine was an undeveloped lot, and it wasn’t clear, it has this flower in the front. I have to build a bridge over this ditch. So it’s an engineered bridge that has to go over this ditch. So those are the little things that you run into that I would– I wasn’t expecting that.

[00:38:54] Annette: I thought of something else. He was really excited to tell us about the wildlife on the land. He was going through the laundry list of what we will see. Are there any animals that you would steer, be, for lack of a better term, afraid of, or like, hey, if that’s on the land, you want to steer clear of that? Is there anything there when it comes to wildlife that we should be concerned about?

[00:39:20] Mike: Not me.You’re going to run into snakes and probably, yeah, maybe even bear. I don’t know if they’re bear up here.

[00:39:25] Annette: I think it was more like deer, raccoons, squirrels.

[00:39:28] Mike: Deers and raccoons, squirrels, you’re going to have that.

[00:39:31] Annette: So no animals that I should be–

[00:39:32] Mike: I wouldn’t worry about it.

[00:39:33] Annette: Nervous about. Okay. Ah. All right. My last question I think is I’m still stuck on the utilities in the septic. Is that something that if we’re, again, getting ready to put an offer in and go into contract, and I’m like, I need to wait for the soil inspection to come back, is there something where I can say I need to actually get quoted on what the utilities are going to cost for me to install them to not seal the deal on that? Is that something that I can put in there along with getting the soil checked? How would I add that into the contract of confirming that I can actually get utilities out there exactly where I would want them to go on the planned properties?

[00:40:19] Mike: Just write that in your offer, or put that in your due diligence, in that piece of the offer to where you have that due diligence period to meet with the engineers from the power company, from the water company. Is it on city water, or is it well? That’s the question you need to ask.

[00:40:34] Annette: I’m writing that one down. I don’t know.

[00:40:36] Mike: City water or well. I want to be on city water. The well is doable. And it might be a common practice up here, but man, the river house, we’ve went in deep for.

[00:40:48] Annette: I don’t know if guests like the well water.

[00:40:50] Mike: We don’t have any problem with the guests complaining about the well water, but the system was more than the septic, to put the well system in to filter, and all the different treatments, and then the under sink treatments. But that was along a river. It might be different out here in the country coming up out of the rocks. I don’t know.

[00:41:10] Annette: Okay.

[00:41:10] Mike: If you are on well, I would talk to a few well diggers and a few drillers and see what they think about the area. And if they’ve done wells in the area before, how deep are they having to dig? Are they having to sleeve? Are they having to filter, or what are they getting into there?

[00:41:29] As far as the septic off the road, the septic is self-contained, so it doesn’t matter where you build. If you build 800 feet off the road, that’s where your tank and field lines are going to go. If you build a 100 feet off the road, that’s where they’re going to go. I like to try to clump mine together.

[00:41:50] So if you can build close enough together to where they can share a leach field, you would end up with a tank at each unit and then a shared leach field that would save you some money. But if you’re wanting to put your units really far apart, then you’re going to end up putting–

[00:42:08] Annette: I actually love this because I’m checking myself. I stayed at some properties, and they clearly bought a lot of land, but then built the short-term rentals really close together. I understand why now.

[00:42:20] Mike: Yeah, you’re saving.

[00:42:21] Annette: I don’t fault them anymore. I’m like, why are we right next to them? And I’m like, I get it now. Because they probably saved–

[00:42:27] Mike: We’re looking about seven grand a system. So that’s the other piece. When you’re doing your soil analysis, it’s going to tell you how many bedrooms you can have for that unit. So if this piece of soil over here doesn’t perc at the right rate, it might be approved, but it might only be approved for one bedroom, where this one might be approved for four.

[00:42:49] In Georgia you can put four bedrooms on a 1,000-gallon tank. When we did our tiny homes, we had to put a tank per tiny home. And then we shared our field lines. So different areas will have different requirements. But those are ways you can– if you say, okay, this will perc for four bedrooms, and you’re doing two, two bedrooms, you could do a tank for each and then a shared system in that area, and then do another two, two-bedroom system over here.

[00:43:21] Annette: Okay, so Mike, you’re going to help me do all this.

[00:43:24] Mike: Oh yeah, we’ll get it done.

[00:43:26] Annette: Oh my goodness. So it sounds like most of the time too, in this process, I should already know. It’s going to be a minimum of eight weeks just doing due diligence on the land itself, which is different than just purchasing another home.

[00:43:39] Mike: Unless you can get a rush on your soil analysis. We have a couple of companies back home that you can double what you pay them, and they’ll put it to the front of the line if you have a short due diligence or your seller won’t go for a longer due diligence.

[00:43:59] Annette: Okay. And so that’s probably normal. So when we ask for that due diligence period, they’ll be used to–

[00:44:05] Mike: Yeah. If they’re not willing to give you the due diligence period, then that’s– I walk away anyway.

[00:44:11] Annette: No. Fair enough. Well, I have a lot of due diligence I need to go do right now. I need doo doo. I got to do due diligence on the doo doo on the new property.

[00:44:20] Mike: Do the doo

[00:44:22] Annette: Oh, all right. Well, I’m sure those aren’t my last questions for you.

[00:44:26] Mike: Free to reach out and hit me up.

[00:44:28] Annette: I will. Thank you, Mike. We don’t have our ending yet, but that’s okay.

[00:44:31] Mike: That’s a wrap.