194 Homestead Hunters - Property Tips with Kevin Price

Tonight, we’re joined by our guest, Kevin Price from Schumacher Homes. Kevin will help us get started in a series of episodes about acquiring the one thing that ALL Prepper Survivalist dream about… A place to call home. Also known as… your Bug-Out Location, your Homestead.

The path to making this particular dream a reality is fraught with pitfalls and red tape and hidden dangers and scams, the likes, you’ve never seen before.

You’ll need planning. Lots of it, and you’ll need to think and discuss and run the numbers, before pulling the trigger. We’re no experts on this topic, but we’ll try to get you on the right path, and keep you there.

So…

Let’s Get To It.

KEVIN PRICE: SCHUMACHER HOMES - Greensboro NC

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Music: The Talbott Brothers "The Comng Days"

Transcript

see i'm You see what I'm saying? Yeah, we that's all the confusion was. No big deal. This is actually better for me. Rhonda's going out of town for a week tomorrow, going to Texas, and we're trying to bust stuff out right now. She's out in the garden. She said to let you know that there's a dirty garden hoe working out in the garden.

00:00:44.43
Jeremy
Nice.

00:00:47.01
Jeremy
So, so Kev, Kev, if you've, if you've never, and don't know if you got to listen to any of the podcasts before we, um, before you got on with us, um,

00:00:47.31
Keith
Yeah, so, yeah.

00:00:56.81
Jeremy
My wife and Keith's wife and a few other ladies here and there, they do their own podcast and they call it the Dirty Garden Hose.

00:01:06.37
Kevin
Nice. That's awesome.

00:01:07.32
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. And they talk about a lot of like lady things, but they talk about garden and stuff and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

00:01:14.60
Kevin
Okay.

00:01:17.51
Jeremy
So, yeah.

00:01:18.79
Keith
Yeah. If you have anybody who's, uh, is interested in being on the episode, let us know if there's any girls that you know, that are into, into gardening.

00:01:19.14
Kevin
Yeah.

00:01:23.18
Kevin
Okay. Yeah.

00:01:26.41
Kevin
okay

00:01:27.27
Jeremy
Yeah, gardening and kind of like the stuff that we do on contract. So, yeah.

00:01:31.87
Kevin
yeah

00:01:34.74
Jeremy
So what are we doing tonight?

00:01:35.11
Keith
All right. Well, you tell me you got, you brought Kevin aboard, Kevin, ah can you tell us something about yourself?

00:01:39.60
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

00:01:42.52
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I work for a custom home builder, Schumacher homes, uh, and we build custom homes on people's land when they don't have land. We usually link them up with a real estate agent that helps them find land to build on.

00:01:57.99
Kevin
Um, and we, our office, we have like a preferred group of realtors that we, uh, link our clients up with that specialize in helping people find land. Um,

00:02:09.49
Kevin
And sometimes people come in and they have their own real estate agent. And so that makes it tricky on me because my position, what I do for ah the company is I estimate, design and price up and sell the custom homes.

00:02:24.89
Kevin
it's not just the custom home, but it's also the lot prep too, the stuff that goes in into getting the land ready for us to build a house on. um So I have to intimately be involved with the land and what's going on with the land just to make sure i'm getting my estimates right.

00:02:38.84
Kevin
on everything. Um, but yeah, we're, uh, our company, we rely heavily on our agents on, on helping our clients find land. And, uh, right now we're one of the nation's largest on your site, custom home builders. Um, we have offices all up and down the East coast and, uh, and every office, um, about 50% of our clients that come through the doors, they don't have land.

00:03:04.04
Kevin
Uh, so that's, that's, um, why I'm excited. We're talking about, you know, finding land today, what to look for in land and, and, uh, things like that. So, ah Hey, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be part of your podcast and, uh, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking to you guys.

00:03:20.72
Keith
Great.

00:03:21.15
Jeremy
Right.

00:03:21.72
Keith
Yeah. ah All of our listeners are very, this is what they would be very interested in is the, the land part. It um confuses a lot of people and i'm and I'm speaking for myself up until recently and still, cause I just purchased land and I'm still confused about stuff, but it confuses a lot of us. um It scares the hell out of a lot of us. We get really as prepper survivors and homesteaders where we get really excited about the end product.

00:03:47.72
Keith
We get excited about, You know, what what the house is going to look like and the shop and the garden and where the, you know, where the animal is going to go. Where am i I going to keep my bees and where am I going to entertain people when they come over?

00:03:56.40
Jeremy
Oh,

00:03:58.84
Keith
They're thinking about all this stuff, but they are way ahead of themselves.

00:04:02.50
Jeremy
oh yes

00:04:02.73
Kevin
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:04:02.88
Keith
And man, that the looking for the land part is so hard, in my opinion, is so hard. You really do need an agent or somebody who knows what they're talking about.

00:04:12.20
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely. And um lucky enough for me, my wife is actually a real estate agent and she finds the majority of my clients land. She's so good. I married her. So she's really good at it.

00:04:24.53
Kevin
And when when she takes on a client, she has like an hour long conversation with them about land

00:04:24.72
Keith
Nice.

00:04:31.65
Kevin
about what they're looking for in land before she even sends them any listings at all. And it's things to consider, like, do you want to be in a neighborhood with an HOA?

00:04:36.71
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:04:43.27
Kevin
Are there any restrictions that you do not want on your land? Also appraised value. If you're going to build a house, you don't want to build like a four or $500,000 house $200,000 neighborhood because then you're have an upside down appraisal.

00:04:57.98
Kevin
if you're financing and then you got things to look for like wetlands and um there's just so much that goes into it.

00:05:06.58
Keith
Does it need septic? Is there a runoff? I mean, there you know, all kinds of, and like Jeremy had some problems recently with wetland issues.

00:05:14.62
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I've been in this process now going on, me and Missy have been looking for land for like two and a half years, I want to say. um and at first it was a idea from some of our adult kids. And then the reality of really wanting to make it happen, uh, started, especially when they broke ground on that stupid clinic next door to me. And then all of a sudden, all of the ah the woods and everything in front of our house is now gone and I can openly see the highway.

00:05:50.20
Jeremy
And as much as I, you know, love our home, we used to be country and now we are no longer country. And um I'll apologize apologize up front because I have grandchild crud going on.

00:06:03.91
Jeremy
My grandkids had something.

00:06:04.74
Keith
I can hear that.

00:06:06.60
Jeremy
It's like, ed it's like a combination of cement and cat shit of my nose right now. It's pretty,

00:06:12.55
Keith
There you go.

00:06:13.10
Jeremy
it's it's It's insane.

00:06:13.57
Keith
You had to go there.

00:06:14.62
Jeremy
I had to go there. um So like today, for instance, um we actually just got back from a property a little while ago. 28 acres, it has a home existing on it, and it is pretty much, I would say, a 95% solution.

00:06:34.41
Jeremy
um

00:06:35.29
Kevin
Nice.

00:06:35.88
Jeremy
And i don't like the price, but we actually ran into the seller on the way out the off the property.

00:06:43.81
Keith
Well, that's interesting. that did That doesn't usually happen.

00:06:45.24
Jeremy
Uh-huh.

00:06:46.86
Keith
How'd that happen?

00:06:48.02
Jeremy
Well, she still lives there.

00:06:49.68
Keith
Oh.

00:06:49.86
Jeremy
um I think that we ran a little long on the showing and she was just kind of like, cause she pulled in when we were there and she's like, Oh my gosh. And then she turned around and, probably went and got her kids something to eat and then was coming back and we stopped.

00:07:03.86
Jeremy
And she's like, what'd you guys think? was like, I think it's wonderful. And I said, why are you selling?

00:07:07.69
Kevin
you

00:07:09.01
Jeremy
And she gave me some information that might help us in the, in the, in the pricing of it. um And then she the, the, the big trade off is the road that is leading to the house is a private road, but it's a dirt road.

00:07:26.89
Jeremy
And it's maintained by somebody in the neighborhood who does it just on his own accord.

00:07:32.18
Keith
Are you saying that the land you're looking at is landlocked?

00:07:35.50
Jeremy
No, it's not landlocked. It's just the road that goes to it is a dirt road.

00:07:40.39
Keith
That you wouldn't own.

00:07:40.71
Kevin
So the dirt road, is it maintained by the everyone that lives on that road?

00:07:45.55
Jeremy
Yeah, so, and it's interesting that it's that way because there's power lines running down the road. which makes that main entrance a county easement. But there's there's no real maintenance on it. And I guess they don't really care about you know pavement and stuff like that.

00:08:05.66
Jeremy
And I might be wrong on this. And Kevin, i don't know if you can tell me since we're both here in North Carolina, but doesn't it have some kind of effect on taxes if the road in front of your parcel is not maintained by the county?

00:08:20.37
Kevin
So that i do not know. wife might actually know the answer to that question, but I don't know.

00:08:26.04
Jeremy
Okay.

00:08:26.96
Kevin
Yeah, so I'm unsure about that.

00:08:29.74
Jeremy
Yeah, so this place, um it it's got woods to hunt. It's got clearance to garden. it's got It's on city, but it was on well, and the well still functions. And the guy that was living there prior to has like eight water spigots all around the whole area. Yeah.

00:08:52.90
Kevin
Nice.

00:08:53.00
Jeremy
ah They were using them to garden or to water the garden. It looks like they may have had an um RV, kind of like ours, hooked up at one point. um it The only thing that we found that we didn't really care for was there's some modernization inside of the house, ah stuff like that, you know, topical stuff, really.

00:09:13.45
Jeremy
and Other than that, the house is actually, like, ready to move into. It's just... There was some personal touches that we were thinking about, you know, different color cabinets, carpet, you know, structure of the house.

00:09:27.25
Jeremy
But mean, for the price that they're asking, it's sitting on 28 acres with an existing house ready to go. We'll just have to figure out the price point that we want to come in with.

00:09:38.35
Jeremy
But this could be the one. i don't know.

00:09:40.91
Kevin
That's exciting.

00:09:42.23
Jeremy
It is. But and here's the thing. I've only been emotionally attached to one piece of property during this whole this whole event like thing that we've been doing. And it was a 75-acre parcel, little bit further out in the country. And and it was...

00:09:59.66
Jeremy
I mean, it was, it was jamming dude. It was ready to build a house on. It had two 20 acre tracks that were already tilled from ah a guy who had a farming lease.

00:10:11.63
Jeremy
The neighbors were beekeepers. Like it was pristine man. And so we started putting in offers and the only thing that we got back was just no. Well, there was a selling agent who wasn't honest with us and she didn't tell us that somebody else was bidding on the property.

00:10:29.47
Jeremy
So essentially we're bidding against ourselves because we had no idea that somebody was bidding.

00:10:29.75
Kevin
Yeah.

00:10:35.86
Jeremy
So it was, it just turned into a fiasco and you know, they just, we were like, can we get some back and forth here? Like, can we get a, you know, an exchange of numbers? And then all of a sudden she's like, oh, the property's sold.

00:10:49.66
Jeremy
but What are you talking about? who who Who else is out there? Who did it sell to? And then we found out that she did not tell us that there was another couple out there putting bids on the property.

00:11:01.13
Keith
There's always somebody looking.

00:11:01.72
Jeremy
So there's a, it was, and you know, I do know that there's the possibility that there's ah another gentleman that I think went and saw it yesterday as well.

00:11:03.58
Keith
Always.

00:11:11.62
Jeremy
And that's good and fine. You know, one door opens and other closes, yada, yada. But um this could be the one man. It's got, I found some, like a tiny portion of wetland.

00:11:23.63
Jeremy
I found a little bit of running water and I'm sitting there and I'm examining it and I'm like, you know what? I could trowel this down. i could build up the edges and I can dig me a pond. And I, they had a shooting range, you know, plenty of deer, plenty of Turkey.

00:11:33.34
Kevin
There you Nice.

00:11:38.86
Jeremy
um You know, it was, it's, it's got a, a,

00:11:42.98
Keith
What about neighbors?

00:11:44.63
Jeremy
On one side is a horse farm and on the other side is another. Everybody that surrounds the the entire neighborhood except for the one lady with the horses, they're all military veterans.

00:11:55.55
Jeremy
So, and um we found that I think that they probably had a few horses at one point in time or some kind of

00:11:55.77
Kevin
i

00:12:04.12
Jeremy
but you know, farm animal, because there is a very, very nice enclosed electrified enclosure, um which would be absolutely perfect for our dogs. We would just have to complete it.

00:12:17.51
Jeremy
um But it's really big. It's actually like, I don't know, maybe half an acre, just fenced in portion. All we'd have to do is get in there, brush hog it and let the dogs go crazy in there.

00:12:31.61
Jeremy
So Um, I mean, it's got fruit trees. It's got, I mean, probably a quarter million blackberry and blueberry bushes that I found out there.

00:12:43.08
Jeremy
Um, and we can, we can build trails to run the dirt bikes and the quads. And it's just, it's like, it's, it's, it's again, it's like a 95% solution.

00:12:55.28
Jeremy
Just needs some, some touches, you know, here and there.

00:12:57.49
Keith
So Kevin, do you hear what he's doing? What I said

00:13:01.69
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely.

00:13:01.68
Keith
but what i but i said earlier ah

00:13:02.53
Kevin
So it sounds amazing. I mean, it sounds like you're it sounds like everything someone would want with a property. ah

00:13:10.89
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:13:12.25
Kevin
And you know what you know what's good is you're you're probably geared up and you're ready to make an offer on this property, whether it be a pre-qualification ladder in hand or or whatever you need to make an offer as well, right?

00:13:27.50
Jeremy
Yeah. so um we've been pre-approved before when we, when we had a, um we were under contract on a different parcel on point, but we found undisclosed wetland.

00:13:39.75
Jeremy
that cut off ah the potential home site and the amount of money that it would have taken to get the permitting and, you know, moving one portion of wetland to another portion, jurisdictional water runoff, all this mess, it just, it it turned out to be not worth it.

00:13:57.22
Jeremy
And um so, but the big thing is for people who live the preparedness lifestyle, Um, I think a lot of people have this, like, you know, this, this dream of I'm going to find this, this amazing piece of property and I'm going to get out there going to build my dream cabin and it's going to be, you know, fricking amazing.

00:14:20.30
Jeremy
But for us here in North Carolina, though, i mean, Kevin, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the number one problem that I've been running into these past two, you know, and a half, whatever years is groundwater.

00:14:34.23
Jeremy
You know, because we have a ton of water here in North Carolina, especially down here where I live in Harnett County, because we're close to the Cape Fear River. And the Cape Fear runs all the way out to the the coast.

00:14:46.43
Kevin
Yeah. And it's, it's flatter in that area as well.

00:14:49.93
Jeremy
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, we have some hills, you know, because we're the Sand Hill region, but...

00:14:50.16
Kevin
Sandy, your land, right? Yeah.

00:14:56.93
Jeremy
I mean, the the groundwater issue out here is so like so prevalent. And then you know i learned about you know GIS along the way. Now I know how to look for 100-year and 500-year floodplains and water bodies and streams. But ah Kevin, you have a what's the name of the program that you guys use? I think that thing is super cool.

00:15:20.43
Kevin
Yeah, so it's a software that my company picked up at a builder show over in Las Vegas. um the It's called Can I Build? um And I'm looking at the ah URL now. It's app.canibuild.com.

00:15:36.33
Kevin
I do not know how much it costs to have access to this software, but it is absolutely incredible because I can pull up any piece of that And we have all of our homes, the footprints of our homes programmed in this software.

00:15:53.16
Kevin
So I can drop any house any of my clients want to build that we offer on their land and show them a 3D of that house sitting on their land. And it's pretty incredible.

00:16:02.83
Jeremy
i

00:16:04.63
Kevin
um Now for people that don't have access to a software like this, um like you mentioned, Jeremy, the GIS is also an incredible tool that anyone can access. All you have to do Just go to Google, whatever county you're looking um for property in, just type in that county and then GIS stands for a geographical information system.

00:16:30.35
Kevin
Almost every county has that. And there's amazing tools on the GIS as well. Some counties are better than others, um but you can see like contour lines, how much slope the land has, flood plains.

00:16:45.79
Keith
Did you say that was a website?

00:16:45.86
Kevin
You can pull up Yeah, so any county, so whatever county, well, and I don't, I can't, so I know it's like that here in North Carolina.

00:16:47.50
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:16:53.47
Kevin
I can't speak for every state, um but I know any county here in North Carolina, there they have a GIS site.

00:17:03.07
Keith
GIS. Okay. I'll remember that.

00:17:05.51
Kevin
Yeah, yeah, check it out and see and see if it's your way as well. That's something I'm not sure of, but I know here in North Carolina, every every county does have their own GIS site.

00:17:17.53
Kevin
And it makes looking for property or land a lot easier as far as saving you legwork, running out to different properties, because you can tell if it's a cliff or ah pull it up and see if it's in a floodplain. or um you can see You can even see what the tax value of the property is, how much people paid for the property.

00:17:39.55
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:17:39.60
Kevin
There's a lot of information you can dig up on that property.

00:17:43.07
Jeremy
Yep. Yeah. And um I just, you know, like for instance, I just plugged in Bexar County, which is in San Antonio, Bexar County GIS. And know pretty much I'd have to guess that every county in the States does have their own GIS system.

00:17:59.18
Jeremy
um But like for, for ours here in my county, our ah county GIS looks just slightly different than another county's. So I live in Harnett County, North Carolina, and then literally just a mile and a half to two miles down from me is Cumberland County.

00:18:20.51
Jeremy
So Cumberland County uses what's called ArcGIS. It's ARC GIS, and it's just a different mapping system. um Shows you the same data that you can get off of, you know, any other GIS, like flood, ah wetland streams, contours, and all the things that Kevin mentioned. But just You just have to learn how to play with each one. It's a little bit different.

00:18:45.26
Jeremy
um And that's where once I learned about or you know the GIS system, um like my kids would send me this. They're like, hey, look at this property. I'm like, dude, it's landlocked.

00:18:57.47
Jeremy
Or, hey, by the way, that's cool that it has a house on it, um but the entire region is a flood zone. And it's not the 500-year flood zone. It's the 100-year flood zone.

00:19:08.63
Jeremy
um And like we were looking at one few weeks back, nice piece of land, really nice house, decent price. So I called my insurance company and I said, hey, if I was going to put a bid in on the house, can you go ahead and just run me a quote for flood insurance?

00:19:27.29
Jeremy
And they said, yeah, cool. And they came back and they were like,

00:19:28.84
Kevin
Thank you.

00:19:30.87
Jeremy
it's going to be over $6,000 a year for flood insurance. And I'm like, awesome. Thank you for making the decision for me. And she's like, well, here's, you know, there's so many opportunities to bring the Christ town. And she's like, well, does the guy have flood insurance now? i said, no, no, he hasn't had flood insurance since he paid off his house.

00:19:50.03
Jeremy
So there's this, there's a push pull when it comes to that kind of, you know, work that kind of information. yeah,

00:19:57.57
Keith
So Kevin played, uh, if you could play devil's advocate for us and maybe talk with Jeremy about, we'll use this as an example about the land he just looked at.

00:20:07.60
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely. So um I can pull it up on, you want to pull it up on the Hardant County GIS?

00:20:15.72
Keith
but Whatever you think you, whatever information you need to get to like, you know, if you're, if you're his buddy and you want to ask him, Hey, did you check this? Did you check that? You know, that sort of thing.

00:20:25.39
Kevin
Got you. Yeah. So first off, I would want to know How long has this property been on the market for? um Why they're wanting to sell it these are These are questions that your real estate agent can ask as a selling agent um and and get your information on.

00:20:42.90
Kevin
um Because sometimes when a property is for sale for a very long time, that brings up red flags. um And then you know it'll make you want

00:20:51.67
Keith
and And now most people can think that when you ask questions like that, that they have to disclose anything. Is that true? Or you know what do you think? Is there a gray area there?

00:21:02.66
Kevin
So

00:21:05.18
Jeremy
Doesn't a lot of that come into when you're doing your your time of this discovery or your due di your due diligence?

00:21:11.39
Kevin
yes, anything that your agent finds out, they have to they have to disclose that to you. And that's why i always recommend working with a real estate agent because Um, it's their legal obligation to help you and disclose everything that they can find out about that property to you.

00:21:32.52
Kevin
Now, if anything's withheld, that's on the selling agent. Um, if they withhold anything, um, and that can be grounds for a lawsuit as well.

00:21:43.58
Keith
Right, right. Okay, that makes sense.

00:21:45.98
Kevin
Yeah. So, um, Yeah. So if I, if I was looking at a property, I would want to know, you know, how long is it put on the market for? um I would want to, um, do exactly what you did as far as look to see if there's any wetlands on the property.

00:22:06.56
Kevin
Um, and you, so And this is an existing residence on this land. So a lot of times when when I look at a piece of land, there's no house on the land. So then gotta look at it and see, all right, is there a buildable spot on this land?

00:22:20.94
Kevin
We need to find the flattest spot possible. Unless you want a basement, you want a basement, then there needs to be slope. How long of a driveway are you gonna have to have? How many trees are we gonna have to clear?

00:22:31.93
Kevin
Now, one thing to kind of consider with looking at this land is how much management or how much time are you going to have to spend managing your land, all of this acreage? And is this something that you're willing to take on?

00:22:48.37
Kevin
That's one thing I would consider. Cause my wife and I, we bought some acreage out Millenew where used to be an old cow farm. And it's,

00:22:59.85
Kevin
it's, it's all filled. And, um, what we do is I kind of mow a portion of the land around the house, keep it mowed down the rest of it. I'll let it grow up and I sell it for, I'll sell the hay off the land. Uh, so I don't have to, I don't really have to manage it because I got somebody that comes in and cuts the hay, pays us for the hay.

00:23:21.73
Kevin
Um, but that's something that a lot of people

00:23:24.22
Keith
I always wondered how they do that. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. ah I always wondered how they do that. Cause you, you got people that like myself who have, don't have the equipment, but might have a field of, you know, of grass or hay or whatever it is. And so there are people out there that will just, that will pay you to come and take it off.

00:23:40.96
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:23:41.05
Kevin
Absolutely.

00:23:41.16
Jeremy
it's a

00:23:41.93
Kevin
Yeah. So I got a guy, he pays me a $5 a bell and all gotta do is just watch the grass grow.

00:23:42.07
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:23:47.68
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:23:47.83
Keith
Wow.

00:23:48.06
Kevin
He comes out, he cuts the hay and takes it with him, pays me, ah pays me $5 per bell.

00:23:48.16
Jeremy
it

00:23:48.24
Keith
Wow.

00:23:54.28
Keith
You don't have to fertilize it or anything?

00:23:54.59
Jeremy
yeah

00:23:56.39
Kevin
I don't do nothing. just watch it grow.

00:23:58.16
Keith
Wow.

00:23:59.16
Jeremy
Yeah, it's ah it's ah it's a way that a lot of people, and not, Kevin knows this doesn't apply to you, but a lot of ah older older folks who used to be active farmers, but they still have the pastures and they just can't they can't do the thing anymore. They will actually lease those those those parcels and allow ah farmers come in and grow, especially hey It creates a really nice passive income you know income flow for for some people.

00:24:29.67
Kevin
Yeah. And the farming equipment and equipment's expensive. Like if you're having to keep it mowed down, that means more than likely if you got acreage, you're going to have to have a bush hog and then you're to have have a tractor to pull that bush hog.

00:24:45.84
Kevin
And it kind of creates a domino effect. Yeah.

00:24:48.75
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:24:48.99
Kevin
when you start getting into farming an acreage. And it's a it's a big consideration that people just think, oh, it'd be so awesome to have all this acreage and all this land. But what they're not considering is how much upkeep is actually gonna be taking place. unless this And if you don't do it, it's just gonna become overgrown.

00:25:09.07
Kevin
Like if they didn't cut the fields around here for the hay, blackberry briars would just grow up everywhere. And it would just be, it would be torture trying to get through it

00:25:20.17
Keith
Right, right. Yeah. And around where I'm at, I'm in the Ozarks and where I'm at, ah it's like usually oak trees. I mean, they'll find their way in. I've got about a three on my property is pretty big. And when on it, I've got a three and a half acre clearing, which I use for my bee yard.

00:25:36.87
Keith
And I just let it grow up. And then i'll you know I'll cut it down around the outsides and sort of make it look nice. But ah I can tell you in the areas I don't cut, we've got I've got oak trees trying to grow.

00:25:47.54
Keith
you know they're They're one, two feet tall, you know already all over the place. And I cut it last year. So it's crazy how fast it just overgrows.

00:25:55.73
Kevin
Oh yeah, you definitely got to stay on it. That's for sure. um And a challenge, especially here in North Carolina, it seems like everyone's moving here. I went from meeting with one client a week that was relocating here in North Carolina to now it's almost every day.

00:26:12.65
Kevin
think it was, yeah, it was Tuesday. I had five appointments and three out of five of those appointments were families that were coming here in North Carolina, whether they've sold their residence in California or Florida or New Jersey, cashed out there and are coming here and scooping up all the land, the inventory is becoming less and less, which is also making it more challenging to find the right piece of land.

00:26:40.69
Kevin
And I'm sure that's that's impacted you, Jeremy. It sounds like, you know, if you've been looking for land for over two years, I mean,

00:26:44.32
Jeremy
Oh my gosh.

00:26:47.50
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

00:26:48.48
Kevin
I get it, man. i So I hear these stories all the time.

00:26:53.62
Jeremy
And there's, I mean, don't get me wrong. There's tons of land out there. um But finding the right piece of land for what you and your family want to do and what your end state really is.

00:27:06.38
Jeremy
um Like Keith, you are you you you keep bees and all that. I've also seen where people generate passive income, by allowing beekeepers to basically like rent or you know lease a plot so they can set up their arbory for their bees and um you know have whole areas that are just leased.

00:27:28.33
Jeremy
And what they do is they end up putting wildflowers out there, and then that's where they keep all their bees. And it creates passive income for the for the landowner. so But yeah.

00:27:39.02
Keith
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that.

00:27:40.31
Jeremy
yeah you

00:27:40.77
Keith
I've seen it on, uh, I've seen some videos on that and I have questions about something like that. Like, do you know, what I, i don't mind it. I don't like a lot of people on my property, you know, but, and it would be very easy to get to this BR that I've got.

00:27:51.17
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:27:54.63
Keith
But the thing is, do I have to have like extra insurance? What if somebody gets injured? or You know, am i responsible for them? There's all these types of things that go through my head. Like, oh man, that's, that's, you know, then I'm talking of lawyers and everything else.

00:28:06.15
Jeremy
Yeah. and And, you know, going back to the GIS, excuse me.

00:28:10.65
Keith
I just looked that up, by the way, that we have one for our county that what he said, the the Hickory County.

00:28:14.16
Kevin
Nice. Yeah.

00:28:14.89
Keith
And it man, it's awesome. That's pretty good site.

00:28:16.61
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:28:18.02
Kevin
yeah

00:28:18.20
Jeremy
Yeah, you just have to learn how to create the the layers that you're looking for. um And so earlier before um ah ah we all got on, I actually sent Kevin the address for this particular property and he sent me a screenshot of um the property that it shows the ah different well, it shows the same wetland area as the GIS.

00:28:44.79
Jeremy
But it also includes that stream that is not on the GIS. GIS is not like the be all know all 1000%, right? um Some of it's aged.

00:28:56.22
Jeremy
um So that's something else to keep, you know, and keep in mind.

00:29:01.63
Kevin
Yeah. And to also piggyback off the GIS, like when you pull a property up on a GIS, usually there is information about the deed book and, or the deed book um and plat book.

00:29:18.10
Kevin
and and And what you can do is you can take that information. Like if you find a piece of property and it says that it's plat book five, page 74, You can also go back to Google, whatever county this property is in, put in that county and then register of deeds.

00:29:37.28
Kevin
Every county also has their own register of deeds where you can go into a database, pull up the plat map of that property, and it will show you the legal easements that have been recorded by the county for that property along with the deed.

00:29:51.18
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:29:53.83
Jeremy
Yeah. And easements are a big, big deal that I didn't realize were such a big deal.

00:30:00.04
Kevin
Yeah.

00:30:00.17
Jeremy
Because i have found property, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, oh, man, this is like this is sweet. You know, 25, 30 acres, nice trees, you know, a nice cleared area. And then all of a sudden I look, and there's this tiny, tiny little square that was separated from the rest of it. i'm like, what in the hell is that?

00:30:20.00
Jeremy
So I'm looking down into it and I even go on to like Google maps and some other stuff. And I'm like, what the heck is that? So I click on it. And when you're in GIS, it gives you the owners, the previous owners, the tax records and all that.

00:30:33.17
Jeremy
And i realized that that tiny little square was a cemetery. So there there was a family cemetery. i mean, no bigger than like probably our kitchen.

00:30:43.99
Jeremy
um that sits on this property. And if we had purchased that property, that family in perpetuity would have access to the back of the property to get to the, to get to that cemetery.

00:30:59.56
Kevin
That's weird, man.

00:31:00.48
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

00:31:01.42
Keith
That is weird.

00:31:02.47
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:31:02.60
Keith
That is weird.

00:31:04.04
Jeremy
and you And once ah once the cemetery is established on private property, You could do get a tax benefit from it, but it can it is forever a cemetery unless you choose to go through the process of removing human remains.

00:31:19.08
Jeremy
So, and nobody...

00:31:20.43
Kevin
Hmm. Speaking of tax benefits.

00:31:21.84
Jeremy
but

00:31:23.24
Kevin
So there's a few programs I know for state in North Carolina, if you have acres, for instance, if you have minimum of 10 acres of farmland, you can, you can have like an 11 acre property, but one acre needs to be dedicated for your house.

00:31:40.11
Kevin
And then you can dedicate 10 acres for your farm. As long as you can produce or figure out a way to produce, ten thousand dollars of income a year it doesn't have to be net it can be gross and and show the tax department that you've produced that income they will give you a significant tax break um on the taxes for the land um so there's the farm program there's also the forestry program as well um

00:32:10.82
Kevin
I had one of my clients, he actually was a forestry consultant and he would create forestry plans for people that have acreage or, or, um, people that are looking to sell their timber. What he would do is he would, uh, go out to, um,

00:32:27.33
Kevin
appraise their timber. And when timber companies come in and make an an offer on your timber, a lot of times they don't want to give you what your timber is actually worth. So what he does is he goes and he appraises the timber and then he creates competition between 30 different buyers of that timber to get his clients the most money that they can get for selling their timber.

00:32:50.38
Jeremy
Nice.

00:32:50.64
Kevin
um And if you sell timber, you also got to be careful because a lot of times the timber companies, what they'll do is they'll come in and they will just cut the trees and leave the stumps in the ground, which is going to increase your grading costs if you're looking to build, you know, a house or a barn or or some type of facility.

00:32:50.69
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:33:00.82
Jeremy
yep

00:33:08.35
Jeremy
yeah

00:33:08.40
Keith
Yeah, not only that, but they also leave the tops of the trees, the parts they can't use in a lot of cases.

00:33:12.38
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:13.52
Keith
so

00:33:13.65
Jeremy
it I have a buddy of mine. We hunt his 25 acres. It's out here and were in the county I live in. And um it's um it's it's a nice piece of property to hunt, and it used to be completely treed, and then he sold the timber.

00:33:31.05
Jeremy
and What they were supposed to do... is clear the land and purposefully plant rows of new new trees. And it was supposed to be a pine and hardwood mix.

00:33:45.55
Jeremy
What was reality is they left this gigantic crappy mess. There's just tree felling and just crap everywhere, but they did not replant.

00:33:58.46
Jeremy
So when you don't replant pine here, with purpose and actually put it in rows, you just got random pine like everywhere. Um, in where the long leaf state, so it's the pine land state. It is, there's pines everywhere.

00:34:15.98
Keith
So I guess he didn't read the fine print on that contract.

00:34:16.09
Jeremy
Um, well, so no, he, they actually, and cause he, and it's weird cause I asked him, I'm like, how did this end up happening?

00:34:18.17
Kevin
you

00:34:25.98
Jeremy
And they gave him a quoted price of what they were willing to give him for the timber. And they agreed. um And then there's this other portion in there in their contract where they were supposed to you know replant, um which they didn't they said they did. you know Trees don't grow up overnight.

00:34:46.49
Jeremy
um So and you come back and you're like you know about a year later and you're like, hey, man, um you've got some regrowth, but it's like super random. There's trees just growing up randomly all over the place.

00:35:00.29
Jeremy
And we still hunt his land. it's it's It's a good property to hunt. um But now, if he really wanted to do something with that land, he'd have to have it recleared. Because they just took bulldozers and they push all the excess crap that they don't take with them. They just push it up into big piles and leave it.

00:35:17.32
Jeremy
So, yeah. that's yeah

00:35:21.04
Kevin
Yeah, it's pretty nasty.

00:35:21.19
Keith
So Kevin, what else what else might Jeremy?

00:35:22.40
Kevin
I've seen.

00:35:23.42
Keith
what else might you ask jeremy

00:35:26.52
Kevin
So, um, looking at the property, um

00:35:31.05
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:35:32.17
Kevin
I would want to know how long these people have lived in this house, owned this property. See if you can get any insights. Since there is a structure there, you want to know how how old is the roof? How old is the HVAC system?

00:35:45.85
Kevin
You said it was water and with a well and property. What about septic? howl you know When was the house built? When was the last time the septic tank was pumped?

00:35:58.66
Kevin
Things like that maintenance that could, get that could bite you in the long run.

00:35:58.88
Jeremy
yeah

00:36:03.19
Kevin
I would, I would want to know, you know, what that is. And that would also create negotiating power as well. Like if it has an older roof and they're asking a little bit higher price than what you're wanting to pay.

00:36:15.37
Kevin
Well, that's one way you can beat them down on a price while your roof is, you know, 25 years old and looks like it might need to be replaced soon. You know, can you knock some money off of that or make them an offer because of that?

00:36:28.80
Kevin
um Those are things that I would try to pick that property apart and try to get negotiating power. Anything that you can find that might be ah problematic, I would bring that up.

00:36:42.36
Jeremy
Yeah, that's actually one of the things that our real estate lady is doing right now

00:36:47.12
Kevin
Nice.

00:36:47.27
Jeremy
Um, cause we, as you're coming up, there's, and I measured it out as 190 yards of, um, of driveway. um and then when you got up to the house, we, we got out and started of looking around and there is a downslope from the front of the house. And then we found the two, septic yards.

00:37:12.14
Jeremy
and you can see the pathway of the leech lines. So that's on the downslope going away. we saw the caps sticking up, and one of them we noticed what was high enough to actually put an ah RV tap into, so we're wondering if you know maybe that's what they were using it for.

00:37:26.66
Jeremy
um and then one of the first things I did is I walked all the way down the hill, and I was looking at the front of the house and plumbed it kind of just visually, holding from the very center of the house down to the ground, and did it look...

00:37:41.91
Jeremy
like it was generally straight um because we we do have a lot of sand here and um a lot of the houses here in our area are our crawl space i'm not a huge fan of it because i didn't grow up with it and i think i you know i do understand the premise behind it because we do have so much sand but um it's uh

00:38:01.92
Keith
So is it kind of up peer, peer and beam kind of a situation?

00:38:05.40
Jeremy
um Well, it's a lot of blocking um and a lot of like the houses, a lot of the houses, not every one of them. A lot of them are part slab, part crawl space, or, you know, some of them are all crawl space.

00:38:17.31
Keith
Hmm.

00:38:19.11
Jeremy
And even though it's a stick build, And you know it's it it's a true-to-form stick-build home. um They're actually slightly off of the ground, but you can't you know you can't see it, of course.

00:38:31.98
Jeremy
So you see the bottom of the house, it's ground level, but when you go into the crawl space between the actual you know living space itself, is there is a gap.

00:38:37.72
Keith
Right, right. right

00:38:42.49
Jeremy
um I'm not a huge fan of it. we Our house that we live in right now has a crawl space. I don't like it. It's always suscepted susceptible to flooding, um which is what happened back in 17 and 18 when we we got hit by the hurricanes then.

00:38:57.91
Jeremy
um But, Kevin, you were talking about the roof. That was one of the first things I looked at. um There was a little bit of streaking. um I mean... having tile here, ah it's kind of common.

00:39:12.09
Jeremy
So it didn't like really strike me as anything out of the ordinary, you know, just a little bit of streaking here and there.

00:39:15.21
Kevin
you

00:39:20.04
Jeremy
Um, you know, and I was looking at the, um, I was looking at the gutters and I was looking at the flow and how the grass looked based off of the flow. I mean, all in all, you know, the house is sound.

00:39:34.97
Jeremy
Um, I got into their attic, a large attic, could probably stand to be foamed. um But checked the roof and the roof is within current code of three quarter ply.

00:39:49.13
Jeremy
um So, I mean,

00:39:51.95
Keith
You need, you know, you're, you're intelligent guy and and you're analytical and all this. And I get that, but you need a professional inspector because I've been in but in the building industry for many, many years.

00:39:59.55
Jeremy
oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:40:02.84
Keith
And I missed a lot of stuff on the property I bought and the the inspector that came out. I didn't even think that they were that great. He found stuff that I'd missed completely.

00:40:11.30
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. And if we if we were to move forward with this, um so like my VA certificate that I used to buy my house and in El Paso is tied into a refi right now. I'll be selling that house this year.

00:40:25.52
Jeremy
um this Missy's never used her VA certificate, so she has access to her full ah VA a certificate. And for those of you who are not meant military before, The VA certificate is an opportunity for veterans with an honorable discharge to um buy a house with very little or no money down.

00:40:48.67
Jeremy
And it what it does, it is it's not a loan. It is not a loan. It is a guarantee of purchase power up to a dollar amount. So the rules on the VA certificate changed, I think it was was the last year or this year.

00:41:05.14
Jeremy
It was somewhat recent and um um they increased the amount um of purchase power using the VA certificate. And I want to say it's in like the high 700s, low 800s, something like that. Kev, I'm not sure if you can chime in on that one.

00:41:24.54
Kevin
Yeah, so we we have our own in-house financing.

00:41:26.01
Jeremy
yeah

00:41:28.40
Kevin
It's a company called Schumacher Mortgage, and they specialize in doing construction home loans. And I rely heavily on the loan officers, which we do have a VA construction home loan program.

00:41:39.57
Kevin
um I do know the limits of FHA and VA were increased this year. The exact dollar amount I'm unsure of. I always look to the loan officers to give me a prequalification letter and it'll say VA or jumbo loan or FHA on it.

00:41:57.52
Kevin
um But yeah, I'm sure here i can try to Google it right now. Let's see what that amount is.

00:42:05.47
Jeremy
Yeah. And just for, uh, for all of our listeners as a, another little neat nitinoid thing about Kevin, uh, Kevin and I work on contract together. um so he, uh, he is one of my, one of my favorite guerrilla fighters, uh, in our, in our camp.

00:42:22.97
Jeremy
Uh, so we get to go out there and have fun with students. And, um, he's, uh,

00:42:26.38
Kevin
Yeah, that's a good time.

00:42:28.24
Jeremy
He's one of my ah my most trusted agents, especially this last time, because i had some ah roles and responsibilities that got put on me that I was not supposed to have put on me. But ah we had to we have to keep up the camp and the flow of the exercise for our students. And I i leaned on Kevin pretty heavily.

00:42:49.89
Kevin
Yeah, it was, it was fun, man. It was a good time. I, I appreciated that. And, um, it kept me busy, made the time go by faster. That's for sure.

00:42:58.24
Jeremy
Yeah. Sorry I had to put you on crappy guard shifts, but you know.

00:42:59.61
Kevin
no

00:43:02.15
Kevin
Well, no, it's all good. It's part of the, part of the job. So there, so right now I'm on the veterans united.com website and it says the standard VA loan limit, eight Oh six, 500. Um,

00:43:16.81
Jeremy
Wow.

00:43:17.05
Kevin
um which yeah, it's definitely increased.

00:43:21.26
Jeremy
Nice. Nice.

00:43:22.59
Keith
That's a nice chunk of change.

00:43:23.90
Kevin
Yes, it is. Yeah. And, um, and then anything after that, past that would have to be a jumbo loan. Um, V so V there with the VA construction home loan and the VA,

00:43:38.39
Kevin
home loan, those are two different types of loans. So with the construction home loan, there's kind of two different parts. So there's the loan that you have during construction.

00:43:49.68
Kevin
So if you were to do a conventional construction home loan, Usually it's 95% financing and that means you only have to put 5% down. But during the construction process, like our company, we get paid six different times.

00:44:03.95
Kevin
The monthly payment would only be on the interest of the money that's been paid to us for for by the lender. So the monthly payment would start out at like $100 and then gradually work its way up to the full mortgage.

00:44:16.86
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:44:17.34
Kevin
And then once our clients get their keys to move in their house, everything then converts over to to the 30 year permanent loan. Now with a VA construction home loan, the one that we offer, it's 100% financing.

00:44:32.02
Kevin
So you don't have to put no money down. And during the construction period, you don't have any monthly payments whatsoever. You don't start making your first monthly payment and until you get your keys to move in your house. However, the kicker is, and where they kind of get you,

00:44:46.73
Kevin
is the money you would have paid during, during the construction period, you kind of pay that upfront. Your closing costs are a heck of a lot higher of v a VA construction home loan.

00:44:56.13
Jeremy
oh

00:44:58.04
Kevin
So it kind of evens out in a way.

00:45:00.07
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. And that's something else that I learned along this process is financing. um And a lot of people think that they can go to a mortgage lender and say, hey, I want to buy 30 acres.

00:45:11.70
Jeremy
And they're gonna the first thing they're going ask you is is, okay, is there a house? And you're like, no, I intend on building one. The majority of lenders out there, would they're like, no, dude, we don't we don't do that.

00:45:23.96
Jeremy
We do not finance land. Well, here in North Carolina, we have a couple of companies that actually specialize in financing land specifically for farm use. And kind like I was telling you before, Keith, Missy and I, according to North Carolina, were considered part-time farmers. Sorry, had to cough. Yeah.

00:45:45.58
Jeremy
so

00:45:47.64
Keith
Why is that?

00:45:48.83
Jeremy
sorry had cough um

00:45:55.24
Jeremy
Oh man, these grandkids, they got me. um

00:45:58.22
Kevin
Thank you.

00:45:58.83
Jeremy
It's based off of the amount of food that we produce and we're regenerative farming.

00:46:07.81
Keith
Huh? So I got look into that because we do the same.

00:46:12.60
Jeremy
Yeah, you can actually...

00:46:13.18
Keith
So what what what what benefits is that for you?

00:46:15.90
Jeremy
Excuse me. um So we qualify for farming, farm lending, farm lending for land for tractor, you know, like tractors or farming equipment and that kind of stuff. They have those programs out there.

00:46:31.26
Jeremy
I don't know about other states, but I do know that they have that here.

00:46:33.09
Keith
Yeah.

00:46:35.52
Jeremy
um And also um with your your tax benefit that you get as a farmer that can produce, you know and I think, Kevin, you said it was like $10,000.

00:46:48.50
Kevin
Yeah, 10,000 annually.

00:46:49.81
Jeremy
Yeah. There are other programs that are not advertised and that will give you a benefit for being regenerative farmers. So kind of like how me, you and buddy, we've been talking about, you know, permaculture and regenerative farming and all those things. There's a lot of programs out there that you can benefit from, especially if you are get certified as or organic or you get certified as, you know, I grow this crop and all of my crop came from,

00:47:18.28
Jeremy
came from heirloom you know seeds. So there's there's a bunch of different programs out there that people people can benefit from.

00:47:26.12
Keith
Interesting.

00:47:27.24
Kevin
Yeah. And back to the lenders that only do land loans. So there is like I know of one here in North Carolina, they're called South and they will finance just land. i think the down payment, you you have to have 15 percent put down.

00:47:43.52
Kevin
um And I think that's great that there's companies like that out.

00:47:46.15
Keith
We had to do 25 here in Missouri. I'm not sure if it's a county thing or if it's a state thing, but for the just land alone, was 25, believe, 25% down.

00:47:57.10
Keith
set down

00:47:58.09
Jeremy
Yeah, I think that's that's based off of each company because we were going to go through Ag Carolina ah on that other parcel that we ended up backing out of. And I want to say when we negotiated the price, we settled at $180,000 and they wanted, can't remember how much they wanted from us. I want to say it was like $40,000 or $45,000 up front. I can't remember.

00:48:21.78
Jeremy
i can't remember

00:48:22.47
Keith
Yeah, it's a lot of money. So Kevin, that is that is that normal? for Because I've heard of this before.

00:48:28.23
Kevin
So, so AgSouth, I'm pretty sure they are 15 to 20%.

00:48:34.42
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:48:34.66
Kevin
So whatever, whatever the land cost is, you got to have that put down.

00:48:38.66
Keith
That's a big chunk of change.

00:48:40.18
Kevin
Yes, it is. it Yeah, it can be. That's for sure.

00:48:44.94
Kevin
Now, let's see. i'm what um I got their website pulled up now. See I can find some rates here.

00:48:52.93
Jeremy
And i and i I always say this to people in regards to um finding land. If you put yourself or you think you're going to put yourself in a major financial bind, don't do it.

00:49:07.00
Jeremy
Wait until your finances are straight. wait I mean, we're lucky in our life situation right now that we can do what were we what we want to do.

00:49:18.27
Jeremy
But not everybody is in that boat, you know? and Sometimes it's just not in the cards yet. you know Keep doing the research. Keep working forward. you know Keep you know reducing your debt.

00:49:31.51
Jeremy
But if you put yourself out you know to go and buy what you consider to be your perfect bug-out property, I mean, you got to make sure that the the juice is worth that squeeze because that's a lot of money like going into something. We're talking you know people will mortgage money.

00:49:48.89
Jeremy
just land and then they go out there and build, you know, a five by five shed and think I'm good for the apocalypse. Let's do this. you know

00:49:56.21
Kevin
Yeah, yeah. People get themselves in a lot of trouble and lenders, they will lend you whatever amount. So this is always step number one that I tell all of my clients is talk to a lender about financing.

00:50:05.64
Keith
Bye.

00:50:10.16
Kevin
And then not only that, but talk to them about interest rates. Talk to them about monthly fit payments. Find out what dollar amount is associated with the monthly payment that you want to keep everything under.

00:50:20.76
Kevin
And that's how you establish your goal budget. And then you know how much you need to keep everything under to get the monthly payment that you would feel comfortable with. um I'm looking here on the AgSouth website and yeah, so they offer up to 85% financing for a lot loans.

00:50:37.95
Jeremy
Okay. Yeah.

00:50:40.69
Kevin
So it's 15% down.

00:50:40.91
Keith
That's great. Yeah. I mean, it's still, that's, that's, if you got the money, it is, it's definitely a way to go.

00:50:42.17
Kevin
That's pretty good.

00:50:45.93
Keith
But, you know, I also can tell you that, you know, getting it, I had the same thought, you know, just get a big old piece of and then you can build on it. That that's, you know what, that's not really the reality of it though, because the building on it, very expensive.

00:50:59.90
Jeremy
Hmm.

00:51:00.36
Keith
It's very expensive to build.

00:51:00.81
Kevin
Yeah, that's a whole different animal. So now if you're going to be building a house on it, yeah you're going to need a construction home loan.

00:51:03.70
Keith
Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:08.91
Kevin
Now with a construction home loan, you can combine your land and house together under the same financing, or even if the land was financed, currently being financed ah with another company, whoever the lender is, is going to give you the construction home loan, we'll buy out that other company and combine everything together for you for the financing.

00:51:28.37
Kevin
But they are also going to want to do an appraisal and you would definitely need to make sure that you're not out building the area that you're in. Like you don't want to build four or $500,000 house in a $200,000 neighborhood, because then you're going to have an upside down appraisal.

00:51:45.89
Kevin
oh So yeah, it's, there's a lot of, a lot of things that go into, to building now cash.

00:51:45.95
Keith
That's right.

00:51:54.10
Kevin
If you're paying cash for land, paying cash for a house, Another thing that you could do how you can find some land is you can also look at the foreclosures.

00:52:06.02
Kevin
So any county, I know here in North Carolina, like I live in Randolph County. And so like, if I was go to Google and I do Randolph County foreclosed properties, Google that, it would pull up the, I think the sheriff's department or the courthouse, and it will give you a listing of all of the properties that are in foreclosure.

00:52:27.00
Kevin
And it also goes over to steps that you would need to take. If you're interested in one of these properties, you want to put a bid on it or how to upset someone else's bid on those properties as well.

00:52:38.42
Kevin
That's another tool. If you got the funds and you got the cash.

00:52:43.53
Jeremy
Yeah. yeah

00:52:44.39
Keith
So you would have to have the whole cash up front, though. That's one of the, you know, they're if they're asking 50 grand, you got to have 50 grand cash when this when the when the deal goes through.

00:52:52.89
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:52:53.17
Kevin
Yeah, I think that's how it works. Yeah.

00:52:55.99
Jeremy
Yeah. And you can also look for, um, for auctions and I have some friends of ours and, uh, that have gone to land auctions with just, uh, more of a curiosity to see what they, you know, could get.

00:53:13.00
Jeremy
And I've walked away with amazing parcels for what would be, you know, pennies on the dollar essentially. And, Unfortunately, though, there are some ah very ah dishonest and not nice people that are out there that will intentionally run up prices or run up auction numbers to try to prevent other individuals from you know either being in that area or buying the land. Because you know and unfortunately,

00:53:45.10
Jeremy
there's a lot of people around here or lot of developers that are buying land, you know good, pristine land, and then they're developing it. And while that is what we are dealing with right now in our our current living situation, a lot of people ah don't don't want ah that to happen in their area.

00:54:05.47
Jeremy
And I get it. I really I do. um But what ends up happening is there are, you have like, an and Kev, you can you can attest to this. So depending on where you're at in North Carolina, you're driving along and you see just, I mean, incredible, amazing, huge sprawling houses and long driveways and great big fields and all this great stuff.

00:54:30.59
Jeremy
And then you're in a trailer park. And then about a mile down the road from there, there's these moderately nice houses and and these little crop up, you know, neighborhoods and then massive, beautiful houses.

00:54:42.53
Jeremy
And then nothing but trailer parks for miles. It's that's the dynamic that we have here in those areas that have been occupied ah ah for like trailer parks and all these different things. A lot of them are like, you know what, our, our.

00:54:59.39
Jeremy
The money situation is going to change in North Carolina here very, very soon. So they're like, hey, we'll just sell this whole thing and get out. So land developers are buying up parcels wherever they can, and they're building up neighborhoods that are almost all on septic.

00:55:12.88
Kevin
yeah

00:55:20.09
Jeremy
So, yeah, that's what's happening out here.

00:55:23.50
Keith
So Kevin, does your company buy whole entire areas and build, build a whole entire communities or just one lot at a time?

00:55:23.72
Kevin
yeah

00:55:30.39
Kevin
So we build on people's land and we only do one, you know, one piece of land at a time, one house at a time.

00:55:38.28
Keith
Gotcha.

00:55:39.75
Kevin
Yeah. And, and,

00:55:40.21
Keith
I looked at the website. The product is nice. I I saw some really nice stuff on there.

00:55:44.67
Kevin
Yeah. Yeah. And the cool thing is, so we got over 80 different floor plans to choose from and we're completely custom. I have a guy that is going to be putting an airplane hanger underneath his house. He's building in a neighborhood where every house in that neighborhood has an airplane hanger attached to it or underneath your house. And there's an airstrip that runs through that neighborhood.

00:56:05.86
Kevin
So crazy.

00:56:06.07
Jeremy
Nice.

00:56:07.36
Keith
You can put an airplane under the house.

00:56:09.49
Kevin
Yes. Yep. Absolutely.

00:56:10.75
Keith
Wow.

00:56:11.67
Kevin
Yes. One of the projects I'm working on right now.

00:56:12.11
Keith
That's cool.

00:56:14.87
Jeremy
Wow.

00:56:15.52
Keith
That's cool.

00:56:16.36
Jeremy
and And Kev, for the listeners, who because we do have listeners here in North Carolina, what's the what's your name of your company again?

00:56:23.87
Kevin
Schumacher Homes.

00:56:25.26
Jeremy
Okay, nice. All right.

00:56:29.04
Kevin
Yeah, and I work out of the Greensboro office. We usually build about a little over 100 homes a year. Right now, we currently have about 30-something homes under construction with at least another 40 coming up.

00:56:41.25
Kevin
And our whole process from start to finish, when someone signs to move forward with us until the day they get their keys to move in their house is about an eight month process. It does not take that long to build a house.

00:56:52.65
Kevin
Our average construction time right now is about six months. But there's some meetings that our clients have to go through before we start construction or before they get to the closing table.

00:57:03.13
Kevin
And that's why it's an eight month process, but we're geared up and we're geared up to take on a lot of houses at a time.

00:57:06.26
Keith
Like talking about like a pre-construction.

00:57:11.57
Keith
Yeah. We, uh, years ago I built a house. Um, ah it was a custom home. Actually they were semi custom. Like you said, fully custom. Um, but I took it, I took it to heart. So I went to pre the pre I'm sorry, the pre-construction meeting and I just started, i want this. I want that. We don't do that. We'll get on the phone, call somebody and find out what that, what, how we get that.

00:57:32.62
Keith
Okay. You can have that, sir. And then we go over here. Now I want the gourmet kitchen. It's going to have the stainless steel. while It's to have the stone backed ah ah backsplash, all that. Well, we really don't do that. like, okay, call you call who you need to call. And I literally sat there at the table making them call people.

00:57:47.02
Kevin
That's awesome.

00:57:47.10
Keith
And they get they come back, okay, we they said we can do that. Yeah, and I figured they would.

00:57:51.80
Kevin
Yeah.

00:57:51.86
Keith
was like.

00:57:53.67
Kevin
That's cool. Yeah. We do everything from gun rooms, safe rooms, airplane hangers, shops, garages, bonus rooms, lofts.

00:57:59.73
Keith
That's cool.

00:58:02.22
Kevin
I mean, just all sorts of stuff. Yeah.

00:58:05.06
Jeremy
Yeah, and since we are you know looking for property that is big enough to support not just us, but also some of our adult kids and grandkids, Kev, I might be calling on you.

00:58:05.31
Kevin
Okay.

00:58:17.62
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:58:18.53
Kevin
okay

00:58:19.11
Jeremy
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:58:20.23
Kevin
Yeah. So I will say that your region is a little different for the land aspect that, you know, how North Carolina is broken up into three different regions.

00:58:26.09
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:58:28.92
Kevin
You got the mountain region, the foothills, and then the coastal region.

00:58:30.63
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:58:33.41
Kevin
So it sounds like the area that you're in is more of the coastal region. um And the area that I work in is more in like the foothill. So we deal with a lot of slope, a lot of hills,

00:58:45.47
Kevin
Um, and an interesting thing about North Carolina is our soil, uh, especially in the region that I'm in is more clay-like, so it does not absorb water as well.

00:58:56.82
Kevin
Um, so anytime someone wants a basement, uh, we always recommend them to have some slope on their land and kind of do a walkout basement, uh, for drainage purposes.

00:58:56.83
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:59:07.09
Kevin
And that's something to consider when you're looking, looking, uh, for land.

00:59:07.36
Keith
Right.

00:59:11.21
Kevin
And then if, Like when I look at a piece of land for a client and I see like I drop a house on that piece of land and I might see that it might have, we'll we'll say three feet of slope from one end of the house to the other.

00:59:24.77
Kevin
I'm going to assume that that slope can't be graded out. And I'm going to assume that we're going to have to raise up the foundation height. which would give a larger crawl space underneath the house, but also more steps going into the house. So that's why if someone does not want a basement, always recommend try to find the flattest spot possible for you know picking house site to picking a house site the bill

00:59:50.21
Keith
Good advice.

00:59:51.17
Jeremy
Yeah, and in soils soils here in North Carolina and you know most places um are a huge determining factor and when it comes to your um your septic if if you're not able to tap into city or county water.

01:00:05.49
Jeremy
Because the most of the stuff, like, because we're right by Fort Bragg. And most of the stuff that we have here, it's very sandy. um Once you get down below the the the first line of strata, you run into...

01:00:21.36
Jeremy
loam and there's a lot of clay up underneath the sandy surface here. um So like that one parcel that we backed out, the home site was absolutely perfect ah for septic because as soon as he put in the probe, it just went right in Not a lot of give, but just ah enough give. And when he pulled it up, it wasn't super wet, but it wasn't super dry.

01:00:43.49
Jeremy
um So the house itself could have been, it was absolutely perfect for septic. um but like not all areas based off of the newer septic tanks that a lot of people are putting in, um they'll just...

01:00:57.78
Kevin
Thank you.

01:01:01.10
Jeremy
they'll just slap in whatever. And a lot of places don't do enough testing on the soil to, you know, actually determine whether or not um it will, it will perk because some people they'll go out and hire a soil scientist and they say, well, this guy said it's going to perk and they'll go ahead and start building.

01:01:19.74
Jeremy
And then they go to get their permits and the County comes out and they're like, Hey dude, no, um your septic tank is not going to work right here. As a matter of fact, you can't even have a septic tank.

01:01:30.89
Jeremy
And now they're stuck with what they've already gotten done. And they're out that money because the counties, and at least Carnet County, does not accept soil scientist findings ah for permitting.

01:01:44.63
Kevin
Really? That's interesting.

01:01:45.40
Jeremy
Really? Yep. Now, I did take the information that the soil scientist I hired to the county and I said, hey, by the way, GIS is super duper wrong about this particular property.

01:02:00.77
Jeremy
um I showed him what we had found. I showed him the so soil scientist report. And um when I talked to the Corps of Engineers, the lady that I spoke to actually provided me a sloping imagery.

01:02:16.29
Jeremy
And it had all of the areas that were being affected by this jurisdictional water, this runoff. And I gave that to the county and I was like, you guys have to update yeah GIS because this doesn't show flood and it doesn't show wetland, but this place definitely has both.

01:02:34.78
Jeremy
So yeah.

01:02:35.07
Kevin
Yeah.

01:02:37.06
Jeremy
And that's why I say, even though GIS is great, it is not the, the be all know all.

01:02:37.67
Kevin
So

01:02:42.57
Kevin
yeah, a lot of times it's off, especially on the lot lines too. Sometimes like people I'll pull up a piece of property property and they're like,

01:02:47.18
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

01:02:51.73
Kevin
the neighbor has a building on her property and I'm like, well, hold on a second. That might not be right. Cause this is GIS.

01:02:58.43
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:02:58.89
Kevin
Um, with regarding the souls though, I, so, um, usually when someone's wanting to buy a piece of land and if they want to build on that piece of land, there has to be, or they need to get a perk test done and they would go through whatever county environmental health department, um, to get that perk test done. Now I've had a client before where,

01:03:21.67
Kevin
the Guilford County health department went out there to her property and said that her property would not perk. And I said, well, Hey, call this soil scientist right here and see what he says. He went out there and he found two perk spots and saved the deal.

01:03:37.65
Kevin
And that girl ended up building a house because apparently i guess Guilford County must be a little different. They do listen to the soil scientists. um And what, what he said was, was like,

01:03:51.09
Kevin
It was golden and we built our house.

01:03:53.97
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. I know here in Harnett County, um if you start building and you um ah ah have not gotten your permits from the county, and a lot of the places that install you know the septic tanks, they'll do your permitting for you for a fee.

01:04:13.61
Jeremy
um And hopefully they're wise enough to understand that, you know, it has to be the, the, uh, uh, the county that does all of that.

01:04:26.24
Jeremy
They've got to come out and approve it. And, um, they're like the people who do our septic for our house because we we we are on septic um they actually make their own tanks and there's not a lot of companies that still make their own tanks um which is unfortunate because a lot of the newer septic tanks um they're not they're not super as awesome as the one that we have ours is 30 years old and it has absolutely no fissures no problems no cracking no so you know nothing

01:04:58.19
Jeremy
But some of the newer houses in the back have these newer tanks that have already faulted, and it's because of the soil that it's sitting into. So um that's another big thing to think about.

01:05:11.66
Kevin
Yeah, there's so many different types of septic systems out there. So our soil where we built that absolutely sucks. this It's rocky. ah um At first, I didn't think we were going to be able to get this property and build on this property ah because the health department was having a hard time finding a perk spot.

01:05:30.93
Kevin
And they said, if you go out, you get excavator, dig us some holes four feet deep, we'll meet you out there. And then we can you know determine if you can build it or not. So they did say that our land would perk, but we had to get a shallow septic system. So our entire front yard is a septic system. I can't grow any trees in our front yard. Now I can have trees around our house on the sides and on the back, but.

01:05:57.23
Kevin
I cannot have any trees whatsoever in the front yard because the entire yard is a septic system, which is crazy to me.

01:06:03.89
Jeremy
Nice.

01:06:04.05
Kevin
oh And the cost too, man, we had to pay a lot more money for a shallow septic system than your conventional septic system.

01:06:09.84
Jeremy
Yes.

01:06:11.58
Kevin
Cause usually, If a land perks here in North Carolina for a conventional septic system, you can get one done for about $9,000 to $9,500. And ninety five hundred and if you're if it needs a pump, then that would be about more.

01:06:25.04
Kevin
but septic systems can easily go over twenty thousand dollars easy

01:06:29.38
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

01:06:30.75
Kevin
for certain ones

01:06:32.52
Keith
Yeah, I think ours was like 12,000.

01:06:32.59
Jeremy
okay so

01:06:33.62
Keith
Go go ahead

01:06:36.31
Jeremy
Well, Kev, I was going to tell you, man, thanks for coming on, giving us ah all this information. um You know, i um I know that there's a lot of listeners who have, because we've been we've been talking about doing an episode or at least a series on this entire process, and it's it's good to finally get started with it.

01:06:54.63
Kevin
man Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on, man. It's been a pleasure.

01:06:59.59
Keith
Yeah, awesome, Kevin. Thank you so much. And you're welcome back anytime you want.

01:07:03.28
Kevin
Awesome. Thank you, guys. I appreciate that.

01:07:05.69
Jeremy
All right.

01:07:05.96
Keith
And we're...