How To Invest in Land? Pros and Cons of Land Investing

What does it entail to invest in land? Where are the opportunities and how can you monetize land investing? Today we are talking with Ryan Pettitt from Prosperity Aid.

You can read this interview here: https://montecarlorei.com/how-to-invest-in-land-and-what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-land-investing/

Tell us what your experience has been with regards to investing in land.
When we first got started we were introduced to some folks in the industry. One Mark Podolski with the Land Geek, and then also to Jack and Jill with Land Academy, understanding the premise behind investing in land and creating a business around it. And this is undeveloped raw land specifically, and looking for those opportunities to resell and generate cash flow from it. Like any investments, you can either do it actively or passively. So we had the passive experience and our goal was to expand into active investing and creating a business structure around it, so that was the first venture into doing that. But we first got started with finding opportunities to buy vacant land below market value, and find an end buyer and continuing to sell it below that market value to be competitive in the marketplace, and ultimately being able to sell it to them as a flip transaction, or creating cash flow by fronting the capital and collecting monthly payments. So that's how we get started with the business. And then there are opportunities within land to expand beyond just the parcel itself, because you can look at ways that you can turn it into a more productive and sustainable piece of property and doing things like a better use with agriculture, potential developments, a lot of people land bank and so there's a lot of different routes that you can go within the land that can be considered an investment, either from an active or passive standpoint.

Are there any tax advantages of holding land, as there are with commercial properties?
If you talk about land itself, it's actually not an incentivized asset, you can't collect appreciation on it. And the purpose of the land being vacant is that there are no structures on it. So there's nothing that you could utilize from a taxation standpoint. However, as you look into different opportunities to change the use or classification, for example agriculture, you can always make those improvements to the land and create some tax incentives. Right now, there's actually a huge push in the marketplace to continue to focus on agricultural land, farming use because of the need of our surrounding communities and access to those fresh fruits and vegetables. The government is actually providing grants and low interest loans as an incentive to develop those properties and create something that is sustainable. The land itself is not but then you change it into a better use, and then you can realize some tax advantages from that.

What are the potential downsides of investing in land?
It's not a tax advantage asset on its own. You have to create those opportunities, and especially as we talk about cashflow, that's not something that resonates with a lot of folks that invest in structures. But you can generate that cash flow by holding that property and being able to collect monthly payments. 

The other thing is that a lot of folks believe that this can be set up very passively from a business perspective. And I'd say that there are a lot of moving parts and there are a lot of intricacies to the business that it takes some time to establish those structures, those processes, and it's definitely a very active business and a lot involved with it.

Ryan Pettitt
ryan@prosperityaid.com

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