Quynh and Tri Vu, two professionals who transitioned from pharmacy and IT careers into real estate, share their journey into investing in raw, vacant land and building Secure Land Co.
Episode Summary
Quynh and Tri Vu, two professionals who transitioned from IT and pharmacy to real estate, share their journey into investing in raw, vacant land in this episode of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast.
Joined by hosts Nate Hedrick, PharmD, and David Bright, PharmD, Quynh and Tri walk through their early steps in real estate, starting with single-family rentals and moving into the world of short-term rentals like Airbnbs. As their experience grew, so did their ambition, leading them to explore diverse markets and ultimately carve out a niche in the often-overlooked space of raw, vacant land.
They break down what makes land investing unique, detailing the due diligence required, the creative value-add strategies they use, and how they evaluate properties with potential. Along the way, they also share how they balanced their demanding careers while building a real estate portfolio, leaned on community and mentorship, and eventually took the leap into full-time investing through their business, Secure Land Co.
Whether you’re just getting started or looking to diversify your real estate strategy, this episode offers valuable insights, encouragement, and practical advice from two people who made the leap and never looked back.
Key Points from the Episode
- 00:00 Welcome and Introductions
- 00:21 Quynh’s Pharmacy Journey
- 01:43 Tri’s IT Background
- 02:12 Diving into Real Estate
- 02:32 First Steps in Real Estate Investing
- 03:45 Transition to Land Investments
- 12:44 Balancing Careers and Real Estate
- 19:04 Starting a Land Investment Company
- 19:57 Why People Sell Their Land
- 20:12 Methods of Acquiring Land
- 21:35 Becoming Private Lenders
- 22:17 Due Diligence in Land Investment
- 23:40 Understanding Mineral and Water Rights
- 25:46 Value Add Potential in Raw Land
- 26:50 Owner Financing and Selling Notes
- 31:17 Diverse Uses for Raw Land
- 34:18 Getting Started in Land Investment
- 35:31 Final Infusion Questions
Episode Highlights
“If someone doesn’t want their property, sometimes they’re just happy for someone else to take it over. And a lot of the opportunities that we’ve gotten are from people, sometimes they don’t want the land anymore. They may have inherited it, and they’re just paying back taxes on it. They never wanted it to begin with. Or maybe they bought land thinking that one day they’re going to move there and retire, but their retirement plans might have changed.” – Quynh Vu [19:41]
“When I first thought about land, too, I was thinking beautiful farmland, really green rolling hills. We don’t have that. We have mostly a lot of land that’s in the desert, and people who want land in some of those areas, it’s high desert, higher elevation. So they may want the land to go camping. They may bring out their RV there for, you know, a weekend, a long, like a week trip, or something like that. But they just want land for that purpose.” – Quynh Vu [31:54]
“ We have properties that are as low as $2,000 and some of them around $20,000. So there’s a huge range in terms of the cost of the land. So, for a lot of families, it may be more reachable for them.” – Quynh Vu [33:50]
Mentioned in Today’s Episode
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00]
Nate Hedrick: Hey, Quinn, try welcome to the show.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Hi. Thanks for having us. Hey.
Nate Hedrick: Absolutely. Yeah. Really excited to have you guys here. Uh, Quinn, you and I got the Connect a couple weeks back, and I just, I loved your story, loved that you guys were doing this together. And so we wanted to have you on to discuss, uh, all things real estate, all things pharmacy, and, uh, uh, why don’t we start there then with pharmacy.
Nate Hedrick: Tell us a little bit about your background, um, your, your professions and kind of, uh, uh, how you got there.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Okay. Um, well, I graduated from the University of Texas in Austin and when I graduated I became a pediatric clinical pharmacist. Um, so I worked as a pediatric pharmacist for most of my career. And then even within pharmacy, I was like super involved. Like I did, um, you know, the C-B-I-C-U, the PICU worked night shift, IV room.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Just pretty much everywhere. And I also worked in retail too. So I worked in a community pharmacy ’cause I was a intern, a tech, like all of that stuff, even before pharmacy school. Um, and then back in like 2014, I started kind of [00:05:00] like getting really tired of like working night shift, weekends, holidays, all that stuff.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And my kids were pretty young. I. So I transitioned into like being a manager in the inpatient pharmacy. ’cause I thought it would be like a little bit easier to be a manager, but it was still like pretty crazy. Um, uh, so then after that we went, I worked at an adult hospital too. Went into management, worked, did healthcare administration at adult hospital.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then the last few years of my career, I worked at a biotech company and did, um, you know, worked with the development team so they can create software for analytics for healthcare organizations.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah, that was for pharmacy. We had a sweet Walmart, 10% discount back, back in the day. Really helpful.
Nate Hedrick: Tri, you are, you are not a pharmacist, right? So I, that doesn’t exclude you from the podcast, obviously. But we still, we still love hearing everyone’s background, so.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah. Um, I’m a recovering IT guy. I was doing it in Dallas and then Austin doing the big boom with [00:06:00] Dell. And uh, then we moved out to California and, uh, yeah, just stayed in that space till about two years ago.
Nate Hedrick: Yeah, we’re gonna dive into that for sure. So it’s great. Thank you.
David Bright: Yeah, both of those careers at face value don’t really scream like real estate, so I’d love to hear how that jump happened. Or how that expansion happened, or what got you excited about real estate. Maybe just give us like the 32nd overview of the things you’ve done in real estate. Just like you gave us the 32nd overview of the variety in your career.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah. So, um, I think we just bought single family houses just for ourselves, right? Just as a owner. And then maybe about eight years ago is when we broke into like Airbnbs and, uh, all the bigger pocket stuff kicked in. Like we did it all like long term rental, short term, midterm. And then, uh, out of state we got into doing burrs and flips.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And uh, I think the last one was like commercial with [00:07:00] partnerships. We moved into, uh, uh, vacant land, raw vacant land. No power, no literacy, nothing. The best one.
David Bright: So. And I feel like that is a, a departure, like you hit long-term rentals, short-term rentals, midterm rentals. We’ve talked about those on different episodes, and we can link to some of those in the show notes where that feels like the very kind of traditional real estate investing, a residential house just like you had bought personally, and then you buy that to rent it out outta state.
David Bright: Flipping those kind of things make sense, but vacant raw land. Is such a departure. So can you just give us the quick pitch of why anyone would invest in raw vacant land?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Okay, so I was actually, so I had left pharmacy, um, back in 20. Was it 2022? Yeah, 2022. And during, when I left pharmacy, I was working as a residential [00:08:00] real estate agent. And part of it was because our friends kept asking us like, Hey, what are you guys doing? And I was referring a lot of. Clients to my realtor and he was like, why don’t you just get a license?
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then I was like, okay. So I got a license and I started selling houses and um, I was also in a mastermind, so twice in like GoBundance men, and there was a female mastermind, GoBundance women. And I had a good friend who was a land investor. She was doing like Airbnbs, she had long-term rentals, short-term rentals, commercial property, all that stuff.
Quynh & Tri Vu: But she said the thing that she liked the most was land. And I actually didn’t really understand it at all. And she told me she just, you know, bought land from people. She didn’t really, um, she bought land from people who didn’t want it anymore, and then she would sell it to someone else. I was like, well, what would you do with it after you buy it?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Like, do you have to improve it, make it better? And she’s like, no. She just remarket it to someone who’s looking for that type of property. And I was just really [00:09:00] fascinated by it. So then I was like, well, I wanna do what you’re doing. ’cause it sounds to me like you’re just a bank that happens to sell land.
Quynh & Tri Vu: ’cause she told me she also did own our financing for those properties as well.
Nate Hedrick: Hmm. Yeah, and I wanna dig into that because I feel like there’s so many things to unpack there. So, so again, this journey of like. Short-term rentals, long-term rentals, traditional real estate, all the way to this, this step that really we haven’t discussed before in the show. I think it’s unique to a lot of people. Um, but how did you make that initial switch? Like whose idea was it to say, you know what, pharmacy it, like, it’s fine, but let’s think about adding real estate into our, into our portfolios.
Quynh & Tri Vu: We, I think Quinn read like Rich, that poor dad way back in the day and uh, you know, the four hour work week. And we were like, we’re, we’re too poor to do this. Right? We didn’t have any money. We had, we had like a thousand bucks savings after two years or something, and we were like, we can’t afford it. So it just kind of sat there in the back of our heads thinking.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Awesome. And, uh, you fast forward to about [00:10:00] eight years ago, nine, nine years ago, I had, uh, probably my second or third midlife crisis and, uh, she went into management and then first and like 10, 11 years ago. And then I went like shortly after. But, um, man, they don’t, sometimes they don’t train you and you just, you know, ’cause you’re, you’re doing technical stuff, you’re doing well and then you just kinda.
Quynh & Tri Vu: You know, uh, get promoted. I’ve seen a lot of pharmacists too, right outta high school. They’re managers now. Like, how did that happen? You know, you know, so it’s kind of the same situation where like, uh, you’re doing well, they think it would transfer over to other areas. And, uh, we had just a lot of issues with, um, with a lot of outages.
Quynh & Tri Vu: ’cause I was doing operations and um, I was just pulling, I was working like 9:00 AM to like 9:00 PM and after about six months, Quin was like. You gotta find another job. Like it was just, this is too much. And uh, that was like, all right, I gotta do something. I can’t keep, I can’t sustain [00:11:00] this. And years of bigger pockets, like all that.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So subconscious stuff was kicking in, like, try, sell everything, get into real estate. And, uh, I went to meet up, met a realtor that was pitching an invest, like how to invest in, you know. And, uh, single families. And I was like, all right, sign me up. And I didn’t know about loans, I didn’t know about anything.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then he was like, you don’t have any money. So I had to get a heloc. It took another month. I came back to him, I got money now, and he’s like, all right, let’s go find land, or, uh, let’s go find a house. And I was pretty much making an offer in every house. Like the walls were crook and all sorts of stuff.
Quynh & Tri Vu: We had like GCs coming by, they were walking away like, don’t get it. And I was like, no, we have to do it. We have to do it now. Um, yeah, we was just like, you know how like when you suffer and struggle so much, like the pain is so like you had to do, like, it causes the change. And we were kind of at that point where we were just like struggling with like just too much work and uh, and we didn’t [00:12:00] know how to manage other, and we had to change something.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So that’s kind of when the, when all the equity was like, you gotta do something with equity, it just sits there. It makes no no sense. And all those books and podcasts just kind of kicked in.
Nate Hedrick: I love that we’ve got both of you guys on the show because one of the things that we don’t get to talk a lot about is like, what that was like as, as a couple, like figuring that out as partners. So Quinn, were you immediately on board, like, no, no reservations, like he’s taking. The HELOC and you’re like, yeah, let’s do it.
Nate Hedrick: Buy a house.
Quynh & Tri Vu: No, I was like very, very nervous ’cause I was not listening to BiggerPockets and I was scared and he kept like leaving to go to these meetups and come back, like really excited. And um, every time he would. Know, find a deal. He would like show me. And he was like, oh, what do you think? I’m like, oh no, that’s not good.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Not a good deal then. And then he would like keep coming back to me and say, Hey, like, what questions do you have about it? Let’s talk through that. And then, you know, I felt like that was, he was really patient with the fact that I was like still like nervous and trying to work it through [00:13:00] it with me. And then eventually he was like, okay, well at what price would it make sense?
Quynh & Tri Vu: So I like couldn’t say, no, it’s not a good deal. He was like, what price would it make sense where like all of the risk and stuff would not feel like risk. Um, so then I started like doing like more research and kind of like reading some of the books that he was listening to, listening to the podcast and just getting a better understanding of it.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And I was so nervous because I, I even told him like, we already have one mortgage, like, why would we want another mortgage? And we have four kids. So we wanted to live like in a nice neighborhood, good school district, flat street, cul-de-sac, like very traditional. We never wanted to even get a fancy house where we could only afford under two incomes.
Quynh & Tri Vu: We wanted a house we could afford under one income. ’cause that’s how conservative we were. Um, financially, I. So I was really, really nervous when we started, but I’m, I’m glad that I didn’t like just say, you know, I had to like, learn [00:14:00] more about what made me nervous. But I do think that if you’re at the point where you don’t know the difference between a good deal and a bad deal, you shouldn’t do anything.
Quynh & Tri Vu: You need to figure out at least that much.
David Bright: Yeah.
Nate Hedrick: think that’s great advice and I really like how try approached it of like, Hey, what is the number that makes sense? Is it a dollar? Are we buying this house for 10 bucks? Like, is that the only way this makes sense? Like, well no. Okay, so what is the number? Right? Rather than just none of these work, we’re not buying anything.
Nate Hedrick: I think that’s a great, like bring you along sort of a thing. And then you took the initiative to actually learn the pieces and do the deal analysis and I, I, I think that’s great. ’cause that’s hard for a lot of people out there and I’m sure there’s a ton of people listening right now. One of them is super interested in real estate.
Nate Hedrick: The other one has. No radar for that at all. And so how do you bring those pieces together?
Quynh & Tri Vu: And you know, the other thing too, Nate, that I was, I thought I was being like very conservative because, um. I didn’t wanna invest and try was like saying, well, you know, having only one source of income is kind of risky too. And I never looked at it like that until [00:15:00] he said that.
Nate Hedrick: great point.
David Bright: Yeah, that I, I love that mindset shift of what really is risk. And I think taking that on the question of like, what questions do you have? Creating a lot of that conversation, open communication, I. Sounds like that was all part of this trick that got you to buy the first house, right? And then eventually, it sounds like there was more than that, right?
David Bright: So how did that growth look? And uh, and particularly from a pace standpoint, like you guys described eight or nine years and you’ve already done all these different things, like I think that feels really intimidating to a lot of people. So I’m curious how that story evolved, uh, into the next house, the next house, the next house.
Quynh & Tri Vu: We were just all in. So we got the HELOC that first year, and we bought a house. Then six months later, we’re like, all right, it is working. Just do it again. We spent the rest of the HELOC and then we had to save up ’cause we ran outta money. We’re like, all right, let’s do it [00:16:00] again. So. I saw this chart, you can’t see it back here, but it was a little pyramid, like one year, two doors next year, four doors next year.
Quynh & Tri Vu: It was just a stack, right. It just stacked up and I loved it. And uh, it was two doors, four doors next year, eight doors, and then there’s a little break ’cause we were literally broke. Right. And, uh, ’cause like when you’re in real estate, you’re just stacking money away. All the money you make just goes right back into more property.
Quynh & Tri Vu: It’s delayed for, for sure. Uh, yeah. So that, that little pyramid really helped us, like kind of see the vision and it was kind of gamifying it. Um, but yeah, so we just saved money and reinvested everything.
Nate Hedrick: And during all that, like again, you’re both pretty serious careers. I mean, again, really involved in your careers at the time, even though you’re trying to start making this transition out like. Did you manage that? How did you maintain the balance? Like, was that, was that difficult or, or try, did you just totally step away and say, okay, I’m all in on real estate, let’s make this happen.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Well, the first [00:17:00] couple were Airbnbs and they were local and.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Pretty, um, assertive, uh, property manager helping us. We hired a property manager before we self-managed, and then, uh, we’re like, she’s not doing anything. We could do it. And we got greedy and we started doing rentals by the room. And, uh, that made a ton of money, but that was a ton of work too. Um, so we’re like, all right, we can’t, this is not sustainable.
Quynh & Tri Vu: We had like four listings outta one property. Like it was like four times as much work. But, uh. Was it the Bur book or the long distance investing book? Um, we started like looking, uh, out of state. It was a commercial and BiggerPockets, one of the intros or outros they had is promo, Hey, we do it all. We buy, flip and find a person and then you just buy it from us and we manage it.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And I was like, easy button, let’s do it. And uh, we went the, the property managed route, they find flip property, manage it. And we just did that for, uh, the next couple. [00:18:00] Um. We, we had this problem of shiny object syndrome. So you’re one market and you just keep on buying in that same market. So we got into like eight states or something, uh, just because that looked cool.
Quynh & Tri Vu: That looked cool. Okay. That number looks right, just buy, buy, buy. And um, so yeah, that’s how we kind of scaled, uh, unnaturally through all these other states and through property managers helping us scale.
Nate Hedrick: That’s awesome. Wow.
Quynh & Tri Vu: As far as the balance, yeah, we just had to leverage the, the other, uh, the teams and the, uh, the property managers teams to, to take care of everything.
David Bright: It sounds like it’s part of your story because you hinted earlier, like up until a few years ago, you were doing these things, so it sounds like there. Was some kind of like titration away from your careers and into more real estate. Um, and I know that there are some people out there that are looking to that.
David Bright: There’s some people out there that love their, their pharmacy job and they wanna stay in that. And I can totally [00:19:00] respect both of those avenues, but you guys have done both. So I’m just curious, since you’ve been in, in both of those, you know, the kind of the pros and cons or what made you think now is the time to make that jump?
Quynh & Tri Vu: I, I love this question because when we got to the point where we’re so busy between work and family, and then even if you’re not managing the rentals directly. Everything bubbles up to the owners. If there’s an insurance claim that needs to be made, if there’s some type of complaint, sometimes Airbnb calls us directly.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So we were still like involved and try kind of mentioned like, Hey, one of us needs to leave our job. Do you wanna go first or do you want me to go first? And I was like, I definitely wanna go first. I don’t even know what going first means. I,
Nate Hedrick: That’s awesome.
Quynh & Tri Vu: and then shortly after the following year left his. Those, those good advice that someone gave us. Like if you both were gonna check out and leave your careers, don’t do it the same year. Like one person [00:20:00] does it one year, someone else do it the next year. And um, I guess we were in the circles where like everybody was entrepreneurs and it was like, man, I gotta be one.
Quynh & Tri Vu: I need to leave my job. But. You know, I still, I, I really liked it and, um, it was kind of like a part of a identity thing, to be honest. It’s hard separating it. I’m sure you guys know, like, you know, what do you do? Who are you? You just naturally say, Hey, I do a tech, or I, I’m a pharmacist, and separate. It was hard.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then when you all in as a entrepreneur, you still kind of miss it. So, um, I don’t think it’s for everybody, like some people are, if you’re good and you like what you do, just stick with it and give someone else money. And then invest passively. Like, you don’t need to like, figure out how to do real estate.
Quynh & Tri Vu: It’s a, it’s still a job until it isn’t a job. Right? So, um, I didn’t think about that initially. Like, flipping houses is literally another career. Like, why would you, if you’re good at tech, why would you learn another skill and have to like rema, you know, take [00:21:00] years to master that before you get good and great at it when you just gave someone the money and then they do it and still enjoy your job.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So. In hindsight, like you didn’t have to follow, we had like shiny object syndrome where I did at that point, like, I need to leave, I need to do, you know, entrepreneurship, give it a shot when like, I liked tech still, like even though it was like operations support, long hours, like it was super fun with the team fixing stuff.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So it really depends on your person.
Nate Hedrick: Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned the identity thing too, because I think a lot of people struggle with that. Even just in like, like for example, like when I got my real estate license, people were like, oh, so you’re done being a pharmacist? Like, well, no, hold on. Like I’m still working. Like you can have two things, but nobody talks that way.
Nate Hedrick: You just like, what is the thing you do for work? Like, or what is what? What do you do? Right? It’s not like. And everyone expects you to be like, I got a degree in blah, blah, blah, and I do x like, and that’s it. Uh, and so I think that’s, that’s a good thing for people to hear is like, it, it can be many things and that’s, that’s enjoyable as well.
Nate Hedrick: So I [00:22:00] think that’s, that’s a really good point. You, you, you landed on.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah. And you know, there’s a lot of skills that I think we learn in our professional careers that translate into real estate investing, which it’s not like, okay, completely foreign. I mean, it’s very data-driven, which pharmacy is. Um, and just like kind of following, hey, what worked well for other people?
Quynh & Tri Vu: So like, just looking at actual case studies, um, other people who have been successful around us, I felt like has really helped us. So having that professional background, I feel like I. Really did kind of give us an advantage. Um, but if you were to just start researching and learning, like we didn’t go to school for, for business, so we kind of felt like when we’re learning about real estate, we had to like learn, we had to read books, we had to listen to podcasts, we had to like go to like a different type of school to learn about it.
Nate Hedrick: I think that’s great though. Like, and, and you have the skills. Both of you like to go in, out and do that, right? We’re all lifelong learners if [00:23:00] we, if we believe that, so that there’s a way to go out and, and get that information, so that’s great. So, so I know now you guys, today you run this, this, land investment company.
Nate Hedrick: I, I want to dig into that. ’cause again, that’s something we’ve not discussed on the show in the past. I think there’s a lot to a lot there. Um, so those listening are probably more familiar with, again, the long and short term rental stuff. But, but give us kind of the background of like, what does it look like to flip raw land?
Nate Hedrick: Like you’ve mentioned it a little bit, but like give us the kind of the, the details of like, looking for these properties and, and how you turn that around.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So great question. Um, in terms of like land, it’s very similar to traditional real estate in that you wanna buy low and you wanna sell high, right? And if someone doesn’t want their property, sometimes they’re just happy for someone else to take it. Take it over. And a lot of the opportunities that we’ve gotten are from people.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Sometimes they don’t want the land anymore. They may have inherited it, they’re just paying back taxes on it. They never wanted it to begin with. Or [00:24:00] maybe they bought land thinking that one day they’re gonna move there and retire. But their retirement plans might have changed. They may have had grandkids in a different part of the country and now they wanna live closer to their grandkids.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So, um, in terms of like how we get deals, we similar to like, you know, people who are doing flips and developments, they’ll send out letters to people asking like, Hey, do you still want your property? Or Have you ever considered selling? Do you know how much your property’s worth? So we do those things in terms of outreach.
Quynh & Tri Vu: In order to acquire land and acquire is sometimes people, even within the land space. They want a change, like everything looks greener on the other side. So they might like, Hey, I don’t wanna be in this state anymore. I wanna be in another state to buy my land. So then they’ll sell us all of their land.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So that’s another way that we can, you know, acquire property. So there’s a lot of different ways. Um, sometimes we buy land from wholesalers. Sometimes [00:25:00] we buy land from tax auction, and sometimes we buy like loans from people. So a lot of different ways in which we can acquire land.
Nate Hedrick: So really similar, honestly, it sounds like, again, we’re talking wholesalers, talking, you know, multiple people that want to get out of a tired investment. Like it almost sounds like you could be talking about single family rentals. That’s cool.
Quynh & Tri Vu: The same thing. So we were doing like cold when doing residential, and it’s literally the.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then, um, on the tail end, which is kind of new, is like we unintentionally became private lenders when we sell or finance these lots. Um, you could buy lots just like your mortgage gets transferred or sold to another service provider, right? We just found that out recently in the last like six months, a year, that you could buy and sell these notes.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So as we build our portfolio of notes, so we sell our [00:26:00] financed. Buy or sell these things as well. So it’s a new niche that we,
Nate Hedrick: Yeah, that’s interesting. So, so just like, again, like people are buying and selling notes on, on other properties, it’s kind of the same sort of strategy,
Quynh & Tri Vu: yeah, they don’t have to wait as long to recoup.
Nate Hedrick: I. Tell me about, um, due diligence. Like, I’m trying to think of a difference now, right? Like you’re, you’re, you’re teaching me how, how similar it actually is, but like, what about due diligence? Like, you’re not sending out an inspector to see if the roof is collapsing, right? ’cause it’s just trees and bushes and like, so what is that process like for you guys?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah, I mean we have like a team that does like due diligence for us, and what they do is they fill out a report and it has things on there, very basic. Like, Hey, what, how big is the property? What is the parcel number? Um, what is the zoning, what’s the legal description? Is there back taxes owed on it? Um, are there any easements on the property?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Um, you know, [00:27:00] does it have like legal access? Does it have direct road access? So the, the questions that we’re kind of looking at are a little bit, they’re similar to residential real estate, but it’s actually a little simpler because we’re like not worried if the the roof is old. We’re not worried if Central or not No.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Of that stuff. Easier. Yeah. We’re selling one of our rentals and they’re like, Hey, how this list right now? And they’re asking, how old’s the roof again? What about the hvac? What year? I’m like, man, I haven’t heard about that in a while. Have to worry about that. You know? Is there power? No isity, no water. No.
Quynh & Tri Vu: You know, so.
Nate Hedrick: The, the one thing I’ll, I’ll ask then, what about like mineral rights? Does that come up or does it vary based on the property? Like if you know that it doesn’t matter for this property, you just kind of ignore that, or like how does that work for you guys?
Quynh & Tri Vu: That’s, that’s actually a really good question and that’s a common question that we actually get from clients that are, and many [00:28:00] times, like when you buy property, it’ll say something very vague, like if there’s.
Quynh & Tri Vu: It doesn’t say whether or not they actually have mineral rights and most of.
Nate Hedrick: Right.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And if you actually want to have mineral rights, you may have to go through a, like a separate search. Like there’s a specialized company who will kind of trace back through and similar to like title being transferred, mineral rights being transferred, and um, there’s like an hourly rate that they charge just to check.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And even if nothing comes up, you still have to pay that. So we haven’t really. Um, trying to get mineral rights in any area. We just tell people like, we, we don’t know if we have anything, and we just kind of leave it at that. But the other question people do ask though is, do you have water rights? And most of the properties that we do buy.
Quynh & Tri Vu: You know, they’re asking for water rights because they wanna have a well, and many times you can have a well without having any special water [00:29:00] rights. So it may not even be necessary, but they think it’s necessary to ask. So it’s just a good question that comes up pretty often.
Nate Hedrick: Yeah. Cool.
David Bright: I would imagine a lot of these are are like state dependent or area dependent, where there’s probably nuanced questions that exist in certain areas and not in others. Then as well.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah, so we’re in, I think 11, 11 different states now for our land, and every county has different rules and regulations. Every state has regulations too. So depending upon the zoning where the property’s located, we have kind of like a little quick. Tip sheet sheet on each of the properties when people call, ask about it.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Um, our sales team, it.
David Bright: Okay. Um, we’re making so many comparisons to the single family space, one of the other things that I think about is, is the value add. Like, I think we’ve all done the, the thing where you buy an ugly house and you make it pretty and suddenly it’s worth more. Is there a lot [00:30:00] of value add potential with raw land, or is it even easier than that where you’re simply buying and selling without making any improvements or doing any direct added addition to value?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah, there’s opportunities for sure. You get entitled. Subdivided, you could put in easements when they don’t have an easement, you talk to the neighbors to negotiate that kind of stuff. So there’s definitely opportunities to do all that stuff, just like residential, where you could just buy and just sell it to another wholesaler, to another flipper, and then just make the, you know, the margin and the sale or the assignment.
Quynh & Tri Vu: You could do literally the. And, um, because we are buying property from people who don’t want it anymore in, we’re buying it below market value substantially. So the value is.
Nate Hedrick: Hmm. And you mentioned earlier too, about owner financing. Are you, are you doing a lot of the, uh, those properties in that way where your, your finance. It through the owner because they’re [00:31:00] just, they’re looking to do anything with it, or are a lot of those being bought outright and then you’re financing them yourselves, or how does that work?
Quynh & Tri Vu: We started out by, um, when we wanted out a new market, we would get properties.
Nate Hedrick: Mm-hmm.
Quynh & Tri Vu: we weren’t like a lot money in a new area that we, uh, experienced in. And then after we started doing well. Those areas, then we would start buying and mailing out. That’s how we kind of break in by, um, buying owner finance properties.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then, uh, we, when we acquired the properties, we would own it outright and sell it. A majority of ’em we would own outright and sell it, uh, on terms or sell our finance. That’s probably like 90% of, uh, the business initially. And, uh.
Nate Hedrick: Wow.
David Bright: Wow.
Nate Hedrick: That’s awesome.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah, a lot of sales through, uh, owner finance. I think we sold like 30 last year, and I like, oh, we went crazy. That that was a little too much. Like [00:32:00] we didn’t mean to sell. We were like, man, that’s a lot of money. We just, you know, a little pocket of change right there. So we kind of got gungho selling notes.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then, uh, we recently started buying notes as well. Um, this year we picked up, I don’t even know, 20.
Nate Hedrick: that’s great.
Quynh & Tri Vu: But yeah, the notes, um, we haven’t played too much in it. Like we’re just kind of winging it, literally. Like it works, let’s just do more of it. And, uh, yeah, so we like notes, but, um, it’s great for cash flow. You’re just getting passive, kind of like passive money, right? You just, you know, they’re just making payments on it.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Um, but the big liquidity events of, uh, if you do a flip or a cash, uh, those are nice too. So I think we’re, our new focus is to balance that out more with more cash flips and, uh, where, um, cash retail prices as well. Yeah. Um, I kind of wanted to mention that because of the space that we’re in, [00:33:00] most people, they cannot go to a bank.
Quynh & Tri Vu: To get a loan. So we’re, we’re lending to them and you know, we’re not doing very many checks on like their credit and their how worthy they are to be a buyer. However, we’re holding onto the deed, we’re selling to them on contract. So if they stop paying us, we still hold the deed and we have the ability to remarket that property.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And it’s now at a lower cost base. There’s no process because. Never had title.
Nate Hedrick: Yeah.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So it’s a nice, it’s a weird way. There’s a, there’s a few nuances that you’re gonna have to undo. Uh, think about residential, like re residential. Like you have when you buy the house, you get a loan, you have the title to the house, right?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Like it’s in your name. And then if you stop paying the bank with foreclosed to get it back, not like that land in our situation. And, uh, there’s a few other like weird things, [00:34:00] residential.
Nate Hedrick: I think it, it’s funny you mentioned that because like one of the things I think about with residential especially is like if you buy a house and like even if it. It goes really sideways, right? Things, things are way more expensive than you thought. Like at least you still have a property that you can sell.
Nate Hedrick: Like in my head, my first thought is like, I bought this raw farmland from this guy and now nobody wants to live here, and I’m stuck with this big parcel of land. Like, what do I do? Like, do you guys go through that? Is that ever, like, is that a problem? Or are you just like, no, we find perfect land every time.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So what do you usually do, right? You find markets that, uh, do well? How do you do that? You run comped. What has sold in last six months, 12 months compared to what has listed days on market? You literally do the same thing. Uh, the only caveat is if I own finance it. It’s not recorded. The title doesn’t change, so you don’t know I sewed it at all.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So when you run comps, you may have to run comps on what’s listed versus what’s been sewed because it hasn’t been like recorded yet. So it’s a little bit of a [00:35:00] twist. Like you, you know, I don’t know how long it’s been listed. It’s still listed like, you know, as it been sewed. So you’re gonna have to kind of play with other investors in that market to figure out if they’re really selling it, if they’re not selling it or financing it, or, you know, they just, they don’t sell.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So that’s the tricky part.
David Bright: I, I feel like another thing I would have to undo. From the, the residential side is, I feel like from everything I’ve done on the residential side, the purpose of land is to put a residential structure on it. You know? So, and it sounds like not everything would, even in this world, would even, like, the purpose would be to build anything on it, residential, commercial, anything. It sounds like some of the, the land uses. Outside of that, can you help people kind of get outta this box of residential and think about what other land uses may be where someone would want to rent or buy land for, for different purposes?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah. No, that’s, that’s such a good point because when I first thought about land too, I was thinking like [00:36:00] beautiful farmland. Right, like really green rolling hills, we don’t have that. We have mostly a, a lot of land that’s like in the desert and people who want land. Um, in some of those areas it’s like high desert, like higher elevation.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So they may want the land to go camping. They may bring out their RV there for, you know, a weekend, a long, like a week trip or something like that. But they just want land for that purpose. Or maybe they have dirt bikes or atv. And they want a place to kind of like romp around without being bothered by people.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Um, other people want land as like for off-grid living. They may be planning to build like a tiny home. They do not want to be on any type of public utilities. Like they want to be on septics solar. They don’t want to be, um, subject increases in. Like increases in rates, like, you know, your water bill, your [00:37:00] electricity bill, like as those rates increase, like they don’t wanna be to deal with that kind of thing.
Quynh & Tri Vu: They wanna live off grid. Um, the other type of person that might wanna buy land is someone who is thinking about doing homesteading. They’re really worried about where their food comes from and what’s going into that food. So they may want to, you know, just have land just to know where their food is coming from.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And then other people want land for legacy. We have a lot of grandparents that are getting land just to pass on to their kids, and they don’t really care what you can do with the land. They just wanna say like, Hey, I’m giving this to you when I pass away. And the costs, you know, it, it would be hard for a grandparent to give like.
Quynh & Tri Vu: 20 pieces, 20 properties, 20 houses away. But because like some of the properties that we do have in the vacant land space, I mean, we have properties that are two, [00:38:00] 2000 as low as 2000. And some of them, you know, like around 20,000. So there’s a huge range in terms of the cost of like the land. So it’s, for a lot of families it may be more like, like reachable for them.
Nate Hedrick: So if you’re out there, and I guarantee there’s somebody listening right now that’s like, okay, this sounds like my thing. I don’t want to deal with leaky roofs and tenants and stuff. Like I’m in, like I, you guys have sold me. Like how do you get. on this. How do you get started? Is like, like you said earlier, like is it all just education or do we like where, where, where’s the first step?
Quynh & Tri Vu: I mean to school for it. Like I signed up for like a.
Nate Hedrick: Mm-hmm.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Program. We went through flight school and then we did, that was like a 12 week program where we learned like kind of the basics about land investing. And then after that we signed up for a one year coaching [00:39:00] program where we had like a land investment expert kind of walk us through as we grew our inventory and portfolio.
Quynh & Tri Vu: We just wanted like a double check and guidance as to like where we should buy.
Nate Hedrick: I love that. I think that’s so relevant to so many people. Listening is like, you don’t, it doesn’t just magically show up in your head like, you have to go out and, and learn this stuff. Like, I think that’s super important. Yeah, I love that. it. Alright, well we wanna take you guys. This has been great.
Nate Hedrick: I wanna take you to our, our final infusion questions, three questions we ask all of our guests that come on the show. So a bit, bit of rapid fire here. Um, but if you, uh, could each, each respond we’ll have, we’ll have Quinn go first on each one of these. Just kinda give you your response. Um, so the first one is, what’s one tangible strategy that you used to make sure that your investing was working hand in hand with your career?
Quynh & Tri Vu: I. It [00:40:00] should match your lifestyle, right? So if you are at the point where you’re so busy, right, like you’re driving kids around and you’re working a ton of hours, evenings, weekends, holidays, it might not be a good idea to start flipping houses, right? Because, you know, like you have to, there’s a lot of like management.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And you, it’s hard for you to physically be there if you’re like at your other job, or even if you decide you wanna take on property management and you’re working like at the hospital or at a community pharmacy, that’s probably not a good idea either, because you’re gonna keep getting interrupted. So I would say whatever you’re deciding to invest in, I would say to see if it aligns with your lifestyle.
Nate Hedrick: I like that.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Yeah, I, I would build on that and say, you gotta know yourself too. So if you’re anxious and you’re, uh, you get nervous, like, and you’re indecisive, right? And then you need like [00:41:00] the black or white answer, maybe not entrepreneurship right? Is a thing for you. Maybe give the money to do it passively. So know your, uh, know your personality.
Quynh & Tri Vu: And, uh, the second part is like, do it with, do it with the community or tribe, whatever that looks like to you. Right? So if you have a friend that’s doing it, or you could join a, a mastermind group, like do it, like, don’t, you don’t, you don’t have to suffer alone. Uh, if you’re still gonna make the plunge and decide to go that route anyhow, and, you know, start investing actively, like do it with some, some friends or NA community to, to help guide you along that journey.
Nate Hedrick: I like
David Bright: Yeah, I love the team sport mentality ’cause there’s so much of that in healthcare that we’re all used to and uh, as you mentioned on your IT team, like how much fun that can be to do this, to do whatever you do with a team. So finding that same in real estate, I think that’s powerful. second question is, what’s one resource that’s been most helpful to you in your [00:42:00] real estate journey, whether that’s a book, podcast person, author, website, whatever that would be?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Um, I would say for me. I think it was bigger pockets when I first, um, when TRI started listening to it, and then I started listening to it. I think the stories that really resonated the most with me were when someone was still working their regular job and they could still do something on the sides.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Like there were stories about bakers that were, you know, doing like rehabs and. I don’t know. The more similar that person was to me, like if they had a family, if they had kids and they were working and they could still invest in real estate, I felt like that really made me feel like it’s possible for a regular person to learn this, uh, for me and my latest craze is, um, podcast this guy.
Quynh & Tri Vu: He reads these fat [00:43:00] biographies of these greats, these legends, right? It could be, uh, new people like Elon and, and Bezos, but it could be like OGs, like old presidents and stuff. So he reads like a ton of these books and dissects it for you. So you’re getting like free mentorship cliff note version with a guy that knows a bunch of adjectives.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So it’s super like, you know, just fun and like, man, that, that wow me. So I.
Quynh & Tri Vu: All the little thing nuances. You know, in the classroom someone raises their hand, they have a question. Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s what’s doing.
David Bright: Yeah.
Nate Hedrick: That’s a great tip. We’ve not had that on the show, so that’s awesome. Alright, and then you guys have already dropped a bunch of this, but I’ll ask it anyway. What if you had to give one piece of advice to somebody just starting out in real estate investing, what would be that one piece of advice?
Quynh & Tri Vu: For me, it would be just learning. Like, don’t [00:44:00] feel like it’s too much to take on. Um, you know, it’s okay to be a beginner and just like, enjoy being a beginner part of, um, part of it’s just learning and making mistakes. Making mistakes, and I feel like, um. Being an expert is someone who has made the most mistakes in an area.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So learning about other people’s mistakes and you know, just learning, always keep learning. I feel like that’s the best way for you to feel better about what type of investment makes sense for you. Yeah, for me, um, you are the average of the five closest people you time with. Man, when you’re flipping the switch and you’re investing and you’re pulling out money outta your heat, like you’re taking a second loan and all that stuff, you’re gonna have family and friends that are like, you’re nuts.
Quynh & Tri Vu: So you gotta protect yourself and surround yourself with people that, you know what? I’ve done it and yeah, let me double check you. It looks good. So I wouldn’t say I had a lot of that in my [00:45:00] life. I was like, don’t. Um. Your target shouldn’t be, your goal shouldn’t be to avoid people like that. Your goal should be going towards people or doing what you wanna do, right?
Quynh & Tri Vu: So, um, you know, we were just looking forward towards like, man, this guy did like all these guests that you guys have on your show. Like, lemme talk to them and then next thing you know, you have a little local chapter meetup or something, or remote chapter meetup. And you get that inspiration, passion up early
Quynh & Tri Vu: versus avoiding, you know what away.
David Bright: I love it. I love it. If people wanna reach out, learn more about y’all, find you, where can they find you?
Quynh & Tri Vu: Okay, so they can, you guys can find us on Instagram. We’re secure Landco, we we’re also on YouTube at Secure Landco. Um, we’re also on Facebook, uh, or you can find [00:46:00] [email protected]. So we’re, if you start us, I think you’ll find us.
Nate Hedrick: Perfect. Well guys, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing all your knowledge. I, uh, as usual when we have a really good guest, my head is spinning with new ideas and now I’m gonna like go out and send mailers to go buy raw land. Like I just, this has been great. So thank you guys so much for coming on and sharing all this with us.
Nate Hedrick: I.
Quynh & Tri Vu: Oh.
David Bright: Thanks so much.
[END]
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