From Flipping Dirt to Building Neighborhoods — Brian Wied’s Lean Path to Land Development | EP#10 - 🎙️ Local Real Estate Developers

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is the local real estate developer podcast where we share
the stories of locals across thecountry who took that empty lot
or that old building and turned it into something awesome that
their community needs. I'm Kristy Candle and I've been
a real estate developer my entire career.
My Co host Raphael is a commercial broker and together
we're sharing the stories of locals making a huge impact on

(00:22):
their communities. And what we've learned is you
don't need millions in the bank or decades of experience to get
started. You just need the confidence
tools and the right people around you.
This podcast is your chance to gain the confidence to get in
the game. Because real estate development
isn't just for the insiders anymore.
It's for people like you too. Welcome to the local Real Estate

(00:42):
Developers podcast where we get to interview people from all
across the country. They're doing really cool
projects. I'm your Co host, Rafael Koyaso.
I am a commercial broker and investor located here in
Louisville, KY, but we operate regionally which incorporates
Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee. And I'm here with my Co host
Christy. Always great to see you.
Yeah, great to see you. I'm Christy Kendall.

(01:04):
I'm a developer consultant and Ialso am a mentor and teach
locals how to become developers in their own community.
And today we have a guest that Imet from a different real estate
group that I'm in. And when I reached out and it
was like, hey, do we have any developers in this group?
And was able to to see Brian andhis experience.

(01:24):
And he has quite the quite the array from environmental
consulting, which he'll be able to drop some great Nuggets, but
then also his own land development and subdivisions and
some new projects he's working on.
So, Brian, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Glad to be here. Can you maybe give a little bit
of background on where in the world you're at and just how you

(01:47):
initially got into the industry in the first place?
Yeah, so I'm sitting right now in Dallas, TX, Been here since
2008. Lived all over the place, but my
background is in geology. So I got a geology degree
because I like dinosaurs and being outside when I was a kid
and didn't want to be in an office.
So I got that degree and ended up in environmental consulting

(02:08):
like a lot of geologists do and ended up in an office anyway.
But I also got to do a lot of outside stuff.
So I satisfied that that part ofit.
I spent 25 years in that business working with the EPA,
the US military and developers, private developers that would
take on these, what what we would see in the consulting
world is these extremely risky endeavors of taking contaminated

(02:31):
land, doing something with it. I can explain, you know, how
that happens and then developingit.
And so I was on the side early on kind of on the on the field
work side and eventually more onthe, the regulator side, the
expert side, sitting between thedeveloper and the regulator and
trying to figure out how to navigate all the complex laws
and remediation standards and things like that so they can get

(02:53):
something built. Kind of Fast forward to 2019, I
got into land investing, which for me was easy because you
just, you know, buy land throughdirect mail marketing and then
turn around and sell it. And I was like, wow, this is a
way easier way to make money than environmental consulting
with all its regulations and people and stuff.
And so, you know, as I got through land it, it just was

(03:14):
apparently more and more obviouslike, well, Gee whiz, you can do
something with it, right? So might as well subdivide it,
reentitle it, build something onit, whatever the case may be.
And so it just sort of grew fromthere.
So now I do land full time, I dodevelopment full time.
I've since left environmental consulting and the W2 side and
now I have my own company where where I'm a real estate investor

(03:37):
and I do environmental consulting for real estate
investors. And so that's my my specialty
now. That's awesome.
So you could you operate around the country because I know I
mean there are obviously there'sstate specific programs, but
there's also, you know, a lot ofus governed by, you know, the
federal government. Is that correct?
Yeah, all over the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and then

(03:58):
even spread out into Brazil, Australia and Saudi Arabia,
parts of Europe. So that's my little, I can't see
it right there, my little Saudi Arabia plaque for my last job
there. So yeah, I've worked all over
the world. In Brazil, we we took a former
explosives factory, we turned itinto a National Park.
And just recently in Saudi Arabia, we were doing the Gulf

(04:18):
War remediation program. So from the 1991 Gulf War, we're
remediating the coastline from oil contamination that washed up
on the Saudi Arabian shore. And then part of that too was
building research centers and national parks.
So, so big billion dollar developments out there.
That's awesome. So you know, and you know, I'm
somewhat familiar on the on the environmental side, more so on

(04:40):
the acquisition and disposition on the real estate side.
I'm I'm the commercial real estate brokerage space here.
So often times you get the phaseone right as you acquire
property. And if there's additional layers
of complexity, that's where we start involving different
companies to help potentially remediate or we have brownfield
program here in in Kentucky. I'm sure it's their programs
around the country to help mitigate some future risk for

(05:03):
owners as well. So those types of programs, it
would be super helpful because to your point, it allows you to
mitigate some of the potential risk for owners and it makes
things fundable. Because I know a lot of banks
are kind of hesitant about moving forward with the side if
they're that they deem any type of contamination on site, let
alone one that's, you know, potentially even more.
I mean, I'm sure an explosive factory.

(05:25):
Pretty hard to find I'd imagine.You'd be surprised, yeah, but
that's that's very common. And there's a lot of
environmental rules and regs andeven local regulators that are
that are really helpful. Like like they want you to
develop this property and there's a lot of property where
not to get in all technical, butlike they're not responsible for
the contamination. The contamination migrated onto

(05:47):
their property. And so there's different names
for these things. You might call it a municipal
settings designation or a classification exception area.
It basically means you didn't doit.
And so you kind of get those buyinsurance in that, you know,
from the regulator. Basically the the devil's in the
details. So there's lots of nuance to
like how much contamination is there and then let's talk about
it. But you can get those buy

(06:08):
insurance from the regulators like, Oh yeah, if you do this,
this and this, you can build on it.
And by the way, that's that's a great opportunity because you
can probably get that really cheap by virtue of the fact that
it's emanated land and most people will run from that.
So, yeah, so. Really in my career, we were
doing all the CVS's in Florida and where did they go?
They went on hard corners, what used to be on hard corners, gas

(06:29):
stations. And I remember one of the first
projects I did, I want to say they were four to six years into
remediation and millions and millions of dollars, but CVS was
bound and determined to get a location there.
And so we went through all of that.
And then out in California, we're building the hydrogen
fueling station. So first of all, we're adding
hydrogen to existing gas station, but then we also build

(06:50):
out the hubs and the structures.So one of our projects we did
was at the East Bay mud site up in Oakland, which was an old
Army base. So we had an old contaminated
army building. The dirt was completely
contaminated. And so we had to work with all
the different regulators and, and updating and figuring out a
way to get there. So yeah, the added levels of
complexity are are there for sure.

(07:10):
So, so Brian, when you're when you're going in just to kind of
talk about this side, because asdevelopers go in and they, they
might go, OK, I got a Phase 1, the lender said I needed this
phase one. Maybe explain what that is and
then we can go into, OK, well, when a faison recommends
something, should they freak out?
Should they just walk away and go, ah this is this is too
scary, but maybe talk on those two things.

(07:33):
Yeah, yeah. So I would parse it into two
different categories. So there's like #1 you know, you
got contaminated land and that'sthe play, right?
And so that's like a separate category.
So I'll, I'll focus it on like you're just a real estate
investor, you want to develop this property and oh, by the
way, like I got to do this phaseone side assessment.
So that's like the other category, right?
And so in that light, it's more like you're just focusing on

(07:56):
like all the billion things thatyou have to do to make a
profitable deal and get through all of your construction stuff,
development stuff and what have you.
The phase one is kind of sometimes an afterthought like,
oh, this is a box of check. My lender absolutely requires it
because they don't want the property to be contaminated.
I back out and they're stuck holding the bag, you know, after
all that. And so you do the phase one side

(08:17):
assessment and it should be. And This is why I think the
services that Ioffer are uniquely tailored for real
estate investors because I understand that process and I
understand like you don't want to go, you don't want this to be
the front and center thing of what you're doing.
You want it to be done quick andeasy giving my recommendations
or not and get out of the way soI can do my deal and so that's

(08:38):
how the phase one should take place so that I can go into the
details of a phase one if you like just kind of the high level
but let's. Do a high level just so that way
people are aware and can can recognize when it comes up.
Oh, I've heard of that before. Yeah, Yeah.
It's, it's basically a very simple process and it doesn't
usually cost very much, but there's, there's three things
that generally can comprise a Phase 1 and so and I typically

(09:01):
do them in in this order. So once I get the order from
somebody, I do a desktop research of the property.
And so you pull all the federal,state and local records on the
property. And what those records have is
if there was contamination reported on that property or on
adjacent property, it'll be in those records.
So before I even see it or set foot on it, I've got all these

(09:22):
records that show you know what what is there and what is around
there in terms of environmental liability.
And so the second thing is to actually go physically go to the
property and walk around it. And, and then you're just
looking for signs of contamination.
So maybe on the aerial photos before I get out there, I
noticed there were some old 55 gallon drones in the corner.
You know, I want to see, are they empty or full?

(09:44):
Is there a dead grass around it denoting that something leaked
and is killing the grass, thingslike that.
So I'm looking for signs of, of some sort of contamination or
maybe a vent pipe for an underground storage tank, some
stuff like that. And so the third part of it
would be interviewing people that are knowledgeable about the
property. So I, I've done the record

(10:04):
search, I've walked the property, I've looked around.
Now I actually know something about the property.
Now I can talk to somebody and say, hey, Christy, you've been
at this property as the site manager for 10 years.
Have you ever seen anybody dump anything here?
Have you ever seen, you know, weird things, you know,
contamination wise? And so I, I take all that
information from the interviews,the site walk and the record

(10:25):
search and I put that into a report.
And then just to boil it down, the crux of the report is this
thing called a wreck, a recognized environmental
condition. And so you got different types
of wrecks, but basically it means like, hey, I saw something
or I saw something that could lead to something that could be
an environmental liability on this property.
And so that that's the observation is the recognized

(10:47):
environmental condition. And then I would develop a
recommendation about that. And so typically what what my
clients would ask of me is to put that recommendation in a
separate memo, like after the phase one report, just so it
doesn't get circulated around and people are like, well, it
says do this. Why didn't you do this, you
know? And OR asked for a draft copy of
the report first before it's fully published.

(11:09):
That way you can talk about it and you can understand what's
happening with the property. Yeah, yeah.
But but just like the investing world, if I don't understand
that report, like, you know, if your kid has a lemonade stand,
if you don't understand it on the lemonade stand level, then
you need to ask questions and you need to make sure that you
understand it at that level, just like anything else, right.
And so again, not to pitch my services, but like that's how I

(11:33):
write my report. So like when you get it into
your point about the draft report, if there are any
questions, it's very clearly stated in there.
One of the environmental consultants, and I've been
guilty of this past, are notorious for putting out there
like these waffle worded statements because they think it
protects them or gets them out of some liability.
And you're like, what in the heck am I even reading?

(11:54):
What does this mean? You know, so I know what those
statements are. I've seen them, I've written
them and I avoid them at all costs.
So if you see those in your phase one reports, ask questions
to get to the bottom of. Definitely, yeah, I know.
And I think that having a a reputable environmental
professional that you work with is huge because you know, I've,

(12:15):
I've been involved on both the acquisition side on my personal
investments and the the disposition with, with with
clients. And there are times, I mean,
I've traded many properties thathad potential concerns for
environmental, you know, issues.And often times until the the
environmental engineer comes in and helps facilitate the

(12:37):
understanding of for the from the lending side about what the
remedies are like, how we can mitigate some of these potential
concerns. Because most banks
understandably are risk averse. And if an underwriter sees that
there's a, you know, potential red flag when it comes to an
environmental, that's just, it could be a huge deal and could
kill otherwise salvageable opportunity if all parties

(12:59):
involved in the deal don't understand the implications of,
of what's taking place on site. Because just because there's a,
you know, 55 gallon drum on site, you have to clearly
understand what the scope of thepotential contamination is so
that you can determine, OK, what's the best remedy?
And is, is that going to kill the deal?
You know, or it may be it, it's,it's not going to kill the deal.

(13:20):
Yeah, and it comes into risk tolerance too for the developer.
So the whole time you're going through the development process,
you're mitigating risk. And I might be an incredibly
risk averse developer, Brian might be like good with risk.
I'm a gambler, I'm good with this.
And So what is not good for me might be OK for him.
Just as you're getting the reports and as you're
understanding, OK, here's what'shappening.

(13:42):
And and like you said, ask questions.
And we say that all the time. If you don't understand
something, go back to the engineer, go back to the
architect, go back back to your environmental consultant and
just have them explain it to youuntil you do understand.
What would you add to that, Brian?
No, I can't agree more. I would say to Raphael's point
there, that when you do find stuff and the banks get all

(14:03):
nervous about it, if you have somebody that understands the
language and can talk to the regulators, you can.
You can negotiate with a regulator or again, the devil's
in the details, but you can maybe even get a letter from the
regulator saying this is the exact problem.
And if you do these things, you're good and give that to the
bank, you know, or show that to them and demonstrate, have the

(14:24):
mitigation strategy that's goingto work for that given property.
That can go a long way. But but a lot of Phase 1
providers out there are really low cost, really quick in and
out and they don't, you know, even call regulators or have
that experience. So just finding someone that has
that experience. And then for that process from a
timing standpoint, should they expect, is that a, is that a two
to four week thing or what's your typical timing because that

(14:46):
doesn't involve physically goingto a site?
Yeah. For me, a Phase 1, you know,
like 5 acres or less, I think 2 weeks you can turn around a
Phase 1A draft report for somebody.
I think that's very reasonable. If you start to find stuff,
that's where the phone call happens.
It's like, well, I need to call this person, call that person,

(15:07):
and that's where you would work lockstep with the developer
because they might want to just bug out or they might want to
like dig deeper and see what what to do.
So, but for a site with no issues, two weeks to a draft
report and then another week or two to get it finalized and
done, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
That's kind of how I work. It's awesome.
No, it's it's great to provide that context.
So I guess one of the questions that I have is, you know,

(15:28):
there's a lot of people that arelikely to listen to this podcast
that have been in a position similar to what you were in,
where you were actively working in maybe an industry adjacent to
development. We're not so adjacent, but, but
you're advising developers, you're, you're in, you're
dealing with people in private industry and they see, hey, you
know, this is some potential, this is possible for me because

(15:49):
I'm seeing these people do it. And, you know, I'm, I feel like
I'm just a smarter, I feel like I should have just the same
amount of credentials as these people that are doing this.
And maybe I can maybe takes on something similar myself.
And so I'm kind of curious aboutyour, the life cycle of your,
your progression to that point, because obviously you've been
working in the environmental space for a long period of time.

(16:10):
I'm assuming during that time you were also probably either
investing in real estate or doing something similar on the
side to kind of help you get in a position to where you can make
that jump. So I'm kind of curious
progression there. And then what made you decide to
take on your first, you know, project?
So in this case, let's talk about the land like development
play. Yeah, sure, sure.

(16:31):
I was always doing something with real estate, but not not
much, not nothing of substance until about 2019 is when I got
serious. Yeah, to your point, and either
guys I used to work with, we used to go out to lunch and talk
about that all the time. Like what we do for a living is
so damn complicated, you know, because there's a, there's a
guy, not to digress, but there'sa guy here in Dallas that
basically goes around and collects old pallets from people

(16:53):
and then refurbishes them and sells it to somebody else.
And he's got people that does itfor him.
He just sits back, you know, at home all day.
And he's got guys that drive around with trailers, picking up
old pallets, dropping a few morenails in it and selling it.
And we're like, why are we so educated?
You go to get all these degrees in college and all this
experience and we just bust our butts working so hard.
And these guys are out here doing this.

(17:15):
And so that's always been like in the back of my mind.
And then the the developers, just from the consulting company
standpoint, like the management at the consulting firm was
really leery. They saw those developers as
like swinging from the vines, taking crazy risks.
And some developers want, you know, you to have a little
equitable stake if it's a, if it's a remediation job and they

(17:36):
want you to remediate the property, they want you to kind
of get by in on some of that equity.
And so that was always a kind ofa tough negotiation point.
That's why we did so few of thembecause we would never do that.
But that's that's another story.So yeah, the progression was,
yes, I'm seeing like probably the hardest, most complicated
stuff that you can do with real estate.
And I'm also on the other side seeing other people that are

(17:57):
doing the most simplest, easiestthings with real estate.
And so you start to like kind ofmeet in the middle.
And what for me, what put it alltogether was I met somebody that
was buying and selling land and we had a nice long conversation
about it. And like everybody else, I was
like, no, this is this is bullet.
Like you can't be doing this. And I looked into it and looked
into some courses and apparentlyit's a thing and it's a niche

(18:19):
investing thing. And so I took a course and the
course was kind of insidious andthat you go through the steps
throughout the process and like by the end of the course, you're
already in escrow to buy your first property.
It was kind of sneaky how it snuck up on you like that.
And I was like, OK, so I went ahead and I bought that first
property in Oklahoma for like 10,000 bucks and sold it for

(18:40):
20,000 bucks, Long story short. And so I was hooked at that
point, going from complicated tosimple.
And so that's how it took off in2019.
That's awesome. And so you know, you go so we
walk through this just kind of Iwould like to hear the the
stories of how you progress to certain places.
So you put that property under contract.
I'm sure it's somewhat luckily at the price point, obviously

(19:03):
it's 10,000 is not an insignificant amount of money,
but it's also not something thatif something were to go wrong,
it's going to be catastrophic. So but you, you one of this
contract, you sold it for 20. You saw, you saw an opportunity
there for you to be able to build a business around it.
And at that point, I'm assuming you started getting into the
mailing of different owners to try to acquire properties where

(19:25):
you focused. Go ahead.
Yeah, it was actually kind of funny, you know, in that to be
perfectly honest, I wasn't looking to start a business.
I was actually looking to like augment investments, like find
another alternative investment than just buying index funds or
some of the other, you know, usual stuff that people do.
And it turned into a business like once I did the first, once
I bought and sold the first two properties, I took a step back

(19:49):
and I realized I started the business.
I didn't even, you know, want itor need it.
And but it just kind of took off.
It's I've always had that entrepreneurial mindset, I
think. And so it just, I glommed onto
it and didn't look back. So, yeah, when I bought the
first property, I was pretty nervous about it and was
actually, I didn't do this, but I was thinking like, man, how
can I get out of this deal before I buy it because I'm

(20:09):
afraid I'm going to lose money. And I went ahead and I talked to
some people and I read some, some books and blogs and things
like that. I really, you know, went deep
into this. Hey, can we chat for a second?
Since you're listening to this podcast, you're already thinking
like a developer. You see the potential in your
community, and you're ready to do more than just watch from the
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(20:30):
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(20:51):
The link in the show notes to unlock the vault and join our
movement. And I stuck with it and I ended
up selling it. I'm glad I didn't back out of
the deal, but like, I was that nervous for the first deal.
Like I had no confidence. I didn't really have a lot of
people mentoring me or telling me what to do.
So I ended up sticking with it and making money on that one
again. The second one was similar kind
of profitability. And from there I started the LLC

(21:14):
and you know, started putting the pieces of the business
together and the systems together that like you
mentioned, direct mail marketing, it's a really
data-driven business. So, So what we do is we pull 10s
of thousands of records from data tree from, you know, one of
the main data providers out there.
And we have programs, I'm actually now we're writing

(21:34):
software for our pricing to price the the Mailer and we send
out blind offers, open offers. It just kind of depends on the
geography and the and the personthat we're sending mail to.
And we're using AIA lot to basically try to figure out how
to send mail or, or, or what price to send mail at and who to
send mail to try to mail is a very high expense cost of the

(21:59):
business. So we try to, you know, reduce
down the amount of mail that we send.
So I kind of blabbed on about that a little bit, but that's
that's how it that's how it progressed into a business.
It was sort of insidious. I was looking for it like a
secondary investment, like an alternative investment scheme,
and then it became a business. So then once you did that and
you, you started that, did you, did you get into development
before leaving your W2 or did you start to get into

(22:23):
development of the land you had?Like how did you, how did you go
from flipping land to, hey, maybe let's take it a step
further. Yeah.
So that was a natural progression because the land
business has also changed. There's a lot more people doing
it. So it's a lot more competitive
out there. And So what we, what, what I saw
with, with my team was that if you can buy larger parcels of

(22:45):
land for XX dollars per acre, there's a lot of places where
you can sell it a lot cheaper. The sum of the parts is worth
way more than the whole. So it became an obvious solution
of like, OK, we need to buy bigger tracts of land, subdivide
it and sell off the pieces. Pretty simple.
And so the first project we did was just a simple little 14 acre
project in Louisiana. And we, we found the minimum

(23:07):
setbacks and the, the road frontage and all that, that
information you need and the minimum development we needed
without having to put in sewer lines.
And so for this case, it was 8 lots.
So we divided this 14 acre into 8, you know, 3 1/2 to one acre
lots through different sizes andjust flew off the chip like like
we just sold really, really, really quick.
And so from there, like, OK, I can see the potential now of

(23:31):
subdividing and that turned intodoing some land clearing,
putting in and then more development.
So, so you're in Texas. You said something about
flipping in Oklahoma. Now you're, you found 14 acres.
That sounds like you were doing a housing track in Louisiana.
How did you pick your market andhow did you decide?
OK, because I know sometimes youcan take a track of land and you

(23:53):
can subdivide it and you can have commercial residential and
just like you can have a bunch of different uses.
So how did you pick Louisiana and how did you I would pick
that that product too? Yeah, so, so just for the rent
like I I do Oklahoma, Louisiana,North Carolina, Idaho, like a
lot of Kansas, a lot of different states I work in and I
used to pick late and I still dothis to some degree.

(24:14):
I picked land that I think I would buy for recreational use
for hunting land or or riding a dirt bike on going fishing on,
you know, putting up an RV, something like that.
So for example, like I don't buythe we call them the desert
squares. You know, if you go out to
Arizona, they take these large tracts of land and it just looks
like a bunch of desert squares that carve them up into little,

(24:35):
you know, 5 acre plots. I don't know what that is like.
I don't know what to do with A5 acre piece of sand.
So I don't buy that stuff, you know, because I can't see the
value in it. But I can see the value in 40
acres in Oklahoma or, you know, 20 acres in Texas or something
like that. Like I can see, look at a piece
of land and see if I would do this with I would do this with
this piece of land and that helps me to sell it.

(24:57):
So that's kind of how it startedand where it's kind of still
going. But where I've changed is if you
look at where I buy land now, the common denominator in each
geography is that it's within a county that has a very
progressive forward-looking comprehensive plan.
And that's my biggest advice to developers is that if you have a

(25:17):
county that has their act together and you and you look up
like, I don't know, whatever county comprehensive plan on
Google, if it's up to date and if you call them and you talk to
them, I'm a developer, I want tobuy land in your area.
How hard is it to subdivide thatkind of thing?
If they're easy to get along with, really really good good
area to start with right there. And they will tell you if you

(25:38):
pick up the phone and reach out,they will tell you if we are
anti growth, anti development orno.
We're trying to get business, we're trying to get people.
Yeah, because because like rightnow I'm hearing a lot of land
folks because it like for example, if you look at a major
city, Dallas, St. Louis, wherever, think of it
like a big doughnut, like the middle of the doughnut hole,

(25:59):
that's your dense urban area andthe meat of the doughnut is like
an hour to two hour drive outside the city.
Well, that's been typically where we buy our land.
And in that area, the sales of that has slowed down.
And what people do have been doing is just like randomly
picking, you know, 2040 acre lots in that doughnut,
subdividing it. And it's like, well, I built it.
Why won't they come, you know? And so it's, there's not a lot

(26:20):
of thought that, that went into some of these projects from what
I, what I understand. And so if you look at that
comprehensive plan, it gives youa recipe, it gives you a step by
step guide into what they want you to do.
And so like, for example, the first thing I'll look at in a
comprehensive plan is their zoning map.
So they'll have their today's zoning map and their vision for
2040 or something 2030. And if you look at those side by

(26:42):
side, you'll see the green space, you'll see all the AG
land. And then the future though, that
will start to turn into residential lots, commercial
land, industrial. And they're telling you where
they want you to develop and what they want you to develop.
Like we want you to rezone this as commercial because it's on
this corridor and we see growth here because we're building a
factory down here, you know? And so if you get into those

(27:05):
comprehensive plans and if you want just put them in AI or
something, I can tell it to tellyou what's in there.
It's so easy. It gives you the recipe for
attacking that county. That's your acquisition thing
right there. So that's what we're doing.
Yeah, that's brilliant because II, I constantly talk to people
about reviewing zoning laws, zoning codes, comprehensive

(27:27):
plans, and then even going deeper because there's in our
county, for example, we're in Jefferson County, Kentucky.
We have even sub cities within our overall county, they're at
their own independent city and they themselves have their own
plan for how that little city will will operate.
Often times to the way that our zoning laws work is that metro

(27:48):
Louisville will provide a determination, but the final
approval goes to the city that it belongs to.
So if you're an example and you're in Saint Matthews, which
is a city within the the the broader Louisville market, metro
Louisville could say, yeah, we want to you can rezone that to
commercial. But if the Saint Matthews
committee decides, you know what, we don't really want that

(28:09):
use over there, they can vote you down and it overrules what
Metro did. So I've seen situations where
one famous case happened just down the street from over here.
They had this smoke shop tried to buy this building and based
on the zoning, right, it's a, it's a commercial zoning.
They were able to do it, but there was an overlay that was
put over by the city Jeffersontown, which is another

(28:31):
sub city in this particular market.
And they specifically outlawed that use.
And so this guy been to buying abuilding for like 1.2 million.
It was it was a restaurant. He ripped out all the restaurant
equipment, spent like a fortune ripping it out.
He had like 250 to 300,000 in infrastructure they ripped out
and then he got a stop work order on the building and now

(28:52):
he's screwed. Like he's literally just sitting
on his hands because he can't doanything about it.
But that's because of there, there are layers to this that
you have to really understand. And to your point with land,
it's even more important becausethere's really no improvements.
You're, you're making a play on what the potential of a space or
the potential future of, of the area will be.
So. Yeah, just think in the future

(29:15):
with the end of mind, like if you walk into that county office
and say I bought land here in accordance with your
comprehensive plan, I want to dothis, this and this, you look
like the savior of the day, sureas you look like a total dope.
If you walk in there and say I'mgoing to subdivide this and
they're like, what do you move? Like we have that set aside for?
That's not even close to what wewant to do, you know?
And yeah, yeah, you're spot on. Yeah.

(29:37):
So, so one of the things we liketo ask is with with one of the
early projects, like what are some of the challenges you faced
kind of implementing your plan? Yeah.
So we kind of the, the first oneis always a little sloppy out of
the gate. Of course, we, we bought the
land and while we had an escrow to buy, then we checked the
subdivide rules And so that thatdictated like we, we did a bunch

(29:58):
of, Are you sure kind of calls to the county to make sure that
they would allow us to do that. And so, you know, there was a
little bit of, of that going on.The business that I run in land,
like the way we started was a cash business.
So I use my own money to buy land.
I buy it, I don't wholesale it. I buy it and then turn around
and sell it. And so that's kind of not the
opposite, but it's, it's not thetypical thing that a lot of real

(30:20):
estate investors do. It's always other people's
money. And so for me, one of the bigger
challenges was to wrap my mind around that.
I, I personally don't like debt for flipping.
I like debt for appreciating cash flowing assets.
And so for me, that was the toughest part is, is funding.
Definitely, yeah, I can definitely see that.
So yeah, just in case you were to buy something that now is not

(30:43):
performing for whatever reason. If you if you don't have, if you
have no debt on it, you can sit on it.
Obviously you have to pay the taxes or whatever, but that's a
minimal expense compared to taking out a loan and then
having, you know, especially private money.
I mean that that'll hurt you pretty.
Bad. So exactly, yeah.
So for that that first. That you did regarding that.
How much, how much did you buy that one for and what was that

(31:04):
subdivision process like to go through?
It did. And you used other people's
money for that fortune. No, so we, we ended up, I had AI
had a partner that backed out ofthat deal because he wasn't so
sure about it. I ended up buying it myself for
about 179,000. And so that was a cash just out
of pocket expense right up front.
We paid maybe 2500 bucks for thesurveyor to survey up the

(31:28):
property and flat it out. And then we paid maybe 500 bucks
in fees to the county for them to process it.
And that was it pretty much. We had new Apns and we had eight
lots where we once had one. I'm laughing because I'm so used
to California and that process would never happen for like,

(31:49):
that's insane. So that's awesome.
Oh, I've, yeah, I've got a California story, but yeah, this
was Louisiana's. It was a Paris county in
Louisiana. So it was very simple.
But yeah, then this is before wewere really using AI.
We went on fiber or or up work. I think it was fiber.
And we hired an artist make our plaque and actually like draw

(32:11):
renderings of the different plats with horses and and like
house on there and everything looked really good.
And we use that for our marketing and we, we got a real
estate agent and she just sold them all, knocked them all out.
So not, not a lot to say on thatone.
It was a very quick process. But but what, what ended up
happening too? We had like 2-3 and a half

(32:32):
acres, acre and a half acre and a half and an acre, you know,
different size. Someone bought our 3 1/2 acre.
And even though the rule said that we could take this 114 acre
and make it 8 properties withouthaving to put a sewer line, they
bought our subdivided lot and then subdivided it.
And so they, they subdivided oursubdivide in the sixth slot.
They put mobile homes on there. So it was kind of A and.

(32:54):
That didn't. Trigger.
They knew, yeah. That didn't trigger sewers
because you weren't the one subdividing.
Well, I don't know if they put in a sewer.
I don't think they put in a sewer.
They might have, but I didn't catch it.
But yeah, they, they, they were able to subdivide it, make money
off our property. So.
That's awesome. Yeah, maybe because mobile home,
I don't know if the mobile home was a permanent structure or not
or something. Maybe that's the how they were
able to get. Around, yeah, I didn't, I didn't

(33:16):
look and see if they put in a sewer line, but they could have,
yeah. No, it's, it's fascinating
because you know, obviously I've, I've, we've had some
clients in the past that owns large tracts of land and, you
know, in theory you could sell all the land at once.
But if you are deliberate about how you approach the process and
you subdivide, and maybe that means you got to coordinate with
the city to, to maybe add a private road to access.

(33:36):
And maybe that means you got to do some sewers.
If, if that's something that you're interested in.
But over time that if you do themath and you figure it out and
you say, oh, wow, you can actually add significant value
to this land. And now, you know, you can sell
it as a retail track to a, a national tenant or, you know,
whatever else. So it's, you know, all that
analysis definitely is worthwhile in doing.
But so you know, regarding your,your strategy thus far.

(33:59):
So you've obviously done this, replicated this process over
time. And I'm sure now you're starting
to get into larger subdivisions and considering doing other
developments. What type of partners are you
typically teaming up with? I mean, I what, how does your
team, what's, what's your team structure look like?
And maybe if you can touch on each of the members, that'd be
great. Yeah, yeah.
So, so my first hire on my team was someone that I just hired to

(34:23):
sign documents because I was actually living outside the US
and I was doing this while I wasin Saudi Arabia in the Middle
East. And so I needed somebody that
that could run things for me back here.
And so I was like, all you need to do is sign the closing for
me. I'll give you power attorney.
And and she turned out to be like the star employee, like
everything I gave her, she just did that and more that and more
that more. So I just keep feeding her.
She keeps doing more. So I got really lucky.

(34:45):
I hired a great person and and she runs a lot of the operation
right now. So that's the key hireright
there. And then in every geography that
we go to, we build like an external, I call it an external
team. So like, I want a title company,
a realtor, a surveyor, a civil contractor, like all these
people, you know, I want to get them on board.

(35:06):
I want to take good care of as long as they take good care of
me, pay them quickly, make a good relationship with those
people and, and, and keep work in those areas.
Keep giving them work. Eventually they might give you
some leads here and there which,you know, every now and then
happens. And so I build those external
teams. I just keep using the same
people and treating them, you know, again, well, as long as

(35:27):
they treat me well, I treat themwell and keep them on my team.
I do use V as offshore for some data work.
So there's like the brute, I call it like the brute force
data work. So we do pay Filipino VA S to to
do some of our data scrubbing for us, things like that.
And so that's, that's the shape of the team.

(35:47):
And then as far as like partnering early on, I would
take on an Equity Partners from time to time for funding.
So that would be like you fund the deal and I'll do all the
work. And then at the end, we'll split
profit and some, you know, profit sharing plan, if you
will. And so that's very expensive,
you know, if it's not obvious, like you're going to give
somebody a substantial equitablestake in the deal like that.

(36:08):
And so it's over time looking for ways to find cheaper money
basically. And so, yeah, using banks, lines
of credit, things like that whenI need to is what I do now.
I was talking to Christy before the call, a little bit about a
future development I'm thinking of.
And so, yeah, right now I'm looking for a partner for land
that I already owned and I want to build multifamily actually.

(36:29):
We're kicking around some other ideas too, but yeah, I want to
build something on there as well.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
And and to your point, I mean you're operating in these states
that you're looking at at a relatively high level.
So you need to have those professionals on site that can
execute when when an opportunitypresents itself.
And it seems like you've kind ofhighlighted some of the, you

(36:50):
know, the mainstays that you really need to think about,
especially if you're if you're operating out of out of market.
I mean that's you need to have people that are reliable to lean
on. Yeah, but take taking a page
from the corporate world, you know, like having external teams
is to me like the way that if I like to run a lean, mean
machine, like I have my employee, I take great care of
her. She takes great care of me.

(37:10):
You know, we watch each other's backs, but you know, all the big
corporations, whether it's Caterpillar or John Deere or
Boeing, where they where they can, they have the golden
handcuffs on their key employeesthat work for them.
And then they have teams of contractors that do a lot of
work externally. And so that kind of model, even
though I do it on a micro scale,if compared to them, that's

(37:31):
always appealed to me because if, if you're in a period like
right now, sales are slowed down, like I don't want to lay
anybody off, but I can just not give my contractors work because
I don't have any work. And so I can shed my cost very
quickly that way without having to lay people off or ruin
relationships, things like that.So that's the kind of model, the
business model that I like to follow.
And I scoff at anybody that thinks you need to build these

(37:52):
big complex teams, but that's just me.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and, and I'm sure
there's some industries where that's required.
But to your point, if you can outsource a lot of the, you
know, certain functions within your business and you have that
ability to toggle that gives youa lot more like you're, you're
much more nimble as a business, so.

(38:13):
I completely agree on that approach.
And that's how to where you can scale up, scale down.
And that's how you know, we, we tell people it's like you're
being hired on a project by project basis.
And then there, there isn't the pressure to get in on a bad deal
just to do a deal to cover overhead.
And because that can get super heavy and pretty dangerous.
So as you're, as you're going through these projects, some of

(38:35):
these can take longer, some of these maybe at times could get
monotonous. How do you how do you stay
motivated and what what gets youand keeps you excited about real
estate these days? Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, for me, like as time goes by, I think I've become
less hirable back in the W2, so I burned the ships as far as
going back to work. So I'm motivated to make
whatever work at this point. I laugh at that.

(38:56):
But but basically I like, I always like to learn new things.
So like the minute I stop learning something, I want to
move on to something else. That's just my tendency.
And so, like we were talking about before the call, the Adu
thing just got me all, you know,excited like, oh, OK, the AD us
are now making it so like where once it was hard to, to do real
estate in, in blue cities, it's urban areas where it's very

(39:19):
expensive and very competitive. Well, now you get this force
multiplier that allows you to buy a single family and turn it
into, you know, a duplex, a quadPlex, you know, 10, whatever.
And so like, that's got me excited.
Like, like the fact that there'sso much real estate out there
and so many different plays and ways to go about it.
One of the things about land is land is so simple.

(39:41):
It's just dirt. Like if you, you can't mess this
up, right? So like you can only grow from
there and learning about all thedifferent ways in which you can
grow, you can mess it up. By the way, I'm not going to see
it, but learning all the ways you can grow from there is
exciting to me. That gets me out of bed.
Yeah, no, to your point, land, although simple, can be
complicated, especially as you start getting into, you know,

(40:01):
the environmental concerns. There's wetlands, there's, you
know, blue line streams maybe that you got to factor in like
all these the ways you can lay adevelopment.
So a lot of times I have some clients, sometimes it'll be
like, I'm thinking about doing like a land development.
I'm like, that's fine. But you got on, you got to
understand some of this terminology before you go down
that road because. You know, if you have a lot
that's already, you know, prepped and ready, like a like a

(40:23):
like a ready to build lot, then great.
You just start your, you know, fire permits and start
construction. But a lot of the times you have
to prep the land to get to that point before you can even do
anything. And that's a whole different
process in and of itself. So that's that's awesome though,
that you shared that. You know, one of the things that
I'm kind of curious about is, you know, obviously a lot of
people that listen to this podcast are aspiring developers,

(40:43):
so people who are in a similar position to what you were
several years ago and they're looking to take on their first
project. And, you know, obviously they're
listening to this podcast as a way to gather knowledge and
insights for people like you whohave taken the step into
investing and developing. So I'm kind of curious if you

(41:04):
have any particular advice you'dbe willing to share with the
audience regarding especially related to either land
acquisition in your case or maybe even development as a
whole? Yeah, sure.
I mean, and I've run into a lot of folks too that are looking to
do their first deal. It's very admirable.
And I was in that same boat for for a while as well.

(41:26):
Education obviously is king. The more you more you can listen
and learn the education resources out there, it's it's
hard to get through all of there's so many of them out
there. Some of them can be very
expensive, Some of them can be kind of hollow if you will, but
but looking for the ones that have money back guarantees or
mentorships where you can kind of ride hurt and learn those,

(41:47):
those are good. That's kind of what I did.
The other thing is, is to, when I started the whole real estate
thing, when it, when I was in consulting, I would say no to
just about everything. Like I, I'm in my career, man.
Like I'm, I'm going up the corporate ladder.
I don't want your newsletter. I don't want your damn e-mail
stay out of my inbox. Like no, no, no, no, no.
And I said, I, I turned a cornerin 2019.

(42:08):
I said yes to just about everything.
I was like, OK, newsletter, newsletter, newsletter, e-mail,
e-mail, e-mail. I was getting all that stuff in
my inbox. Most of it was absolute garbage.
And I just went through and juststarted getting rid of the, the
garbage until I found stuff thatactually worked or appealed to
me. And I dug a little bit deeper.
And so that's how I did my educational process.
And I just went through, said yes to everything, started to

(42:28):
filter through what I thought was, was not good.
And that's how I found land thatway.
So if I didn't start that, it's kind of like going through the
forest. You're going to go through the
zigzag up and down in the mud, but you're going to spit out the
other end where you need to be, but you can't see it.
That's that's what it was like. And so you got to get your hands
dirty. You got to get in there.
The other thing too is there's alot of conferences out there.

(42:50):
And when you're at those conferences, there's Limitless,
there's Brandon Turner's group, there's just all kinds of
different real estate conferences that are out there.
And when you're in the room in the crowd with other people that
are doing it, the excitement andthe knowledge drops that you get
out of those conferences are just unquantifiable.
Like, there's so much there, so get out there and meet people

(43:11):
and do those meetups and start talking to folks.
Couldn't agree more. I mean, the fact that you're
able to interact with people whoare already doing it, I think
that's often times it helps solidify the idea that's already
kind of from ferment or creatingin your mind is that, Hey, I get
to meet someone who maybe is on just on the first deal of their
journey. Or maybe I talked to someone

(43:31):
who's done it a few times times and they kind of share how they
were able to do it. And now you have these contacts
with people that you could then touch base with and, you know,
overtime potentially take on your first your first deal.
And I mean, that's kind of how Igot into brokerage and investing
was through just to going to meet ups and meeting other
people in the industry. And, you know, just kind of
letting people know about my interest level in this in the

(43:52):
space. And ultimately I was able to
find an opportunity. But that's all because of the
willingness to get out there andhave those conversations.
And, you know, our hope with this, you know, podcasts in this
medium, is that over time, we'reable to build something where we
can have people meet and congregate in the future as
well. So hopefully becomes a resource
for people in the future. Yeah, get more rooms of like

(44:13):
minded people doing development.Yeah, yeah.
And it's probably going to startwith a small room, but
everything has to start somewhere.
And it's just, I know I love allof the developers we're meeting
so far in your stories. I'll just, I'll just say this,
this is an example and, and maybe I'm dense, but like I did
a phase one for somebody in California, OK, for a single

(44:33):
family house. Had no idea like how this guy
was going to make money on this house.
He's paying like 650 for it and it was a just a dump of a house.
And I said, OK, I'll do the Phase 1.
So I did it later on on social media, he says, oh, I'm taking
the single family house in Orange County.
I'm take turning it into 10 units.
I'm like, OK, that that's how he's doing it.
And, and I didn't even know whatan Adu was.

(44:55):
This is this is not that long ago, I'm embarrassed to admit.
And then I'm at a conference andagain, somebody's bringing up
this thing called Adus and there's kind of like a carousel
of people smacking in the face. Hey, this is the thing that you
need to learn right here. And so if I didn't go to the
conference, I would not have learned any use.
I wouldn't be in that that spaceright now.
So case in point. Well, yeah.
So to that with future projects you're excited about which we

(45:17):
were talking about before, how, what, what part of 80 years is
intriguing to you and and what are you thinking about doing
from that aspect? Yeah.
So there's a couple of differentways like #1 though in this,
this has always been in the works, but like re entitlement.
So where you have a housing shortage, which there's, I've
heard estimates of like 4 to 5 million houses short across the
United States. And I know those are big broad

(45:39):
averages and whatnot, but there's a housing shortage,
believe it or not. So developers are needed.
So find out where there's that need and find out where there's
property, you know, that's already like single family or
maybe it's a duplex and maybe you can turn it into something
bigger or more stories or whatever it is.
So looking for those kinds of plays where you can re entitle

(46:00):
property. And like we're saying earlier
with the comprehensive plan, be able to go into that office of
that county or that city and sayyou have a problem and I have a
solution. I know what your problem is.
Here's what I can do. Help me rezone this property and
I'm going to give you some more units that kind of a thing.
So that's in a nutshell what I'mlooking to do.

(46:20):
Yeah, yeah. And you'll be surprised.
A lot of these municipalities around the country already have,
you know, things that are available to people who are
looking to bring additional units on site.
Here in Louisville, we have a, our mayor issued a declaration
that he was trying to get 15,000new units within the next
several years. And obviously that comes with
city incentives that comes with they, we created a, you know,

(46:42):
approved plans from the city so you, you can literally select
these templates that have already been approved by the
city. So that saves you maybe 10 grand
by having engaged with an architect or an engineer or
whatever else. You can literally take these
plans, submit it to the permit office, they approve everything
and you can start construction the next day.
If if in fact you tell them you know what the property and make
sure that falls within the set back requirements and all that

(47:03):
stuff, right? But as long as it checks those
boxes, you can go and start construction tomorrow.
So that's the that's a great wayto, you know, save some money
and also shrink the timeline to deliver those units that
ultimately are needed within thecommunity.
And there's a lot of programs inin these different cities that
incentivize development of residential units.
So you can obviously have it that way as well.

(47:24):
So. Yeah, yeah.
Lots of opportunity. It's great.
Definitely. So, you know, obviously, Brian,
we, we, we do appreciate your time.
I mean, we're very thankful to have learned a little bit more
about the things that you're gotgoing on in your space.
And I'm excited to hear some of the insights that people get
gather from this this discussion.

(47:45):
One of the things we like to do near the end of of our podcast
is we like to ask our our gueststo contribute something to what
we call the developer Vault. It's just a resource repository
for our listeners that are interested in learning about
real estate development as a whole.
I know we talked a little bit offline about what you're
working on, but I thought I'd give you an opportunity to kind

(48:06):
of share just just a high level,you know, the idea of what
you're going to be sharing. So I'm a pragmatist.
So like, like I'm more of a like, let's get into the details
kind of guy. So I developed a just a simple
due diligence checklist, the high level checklist that I look
for when I buy land from both anenvironmental and an investor
standpoint. So I kind of combine both worlds

(48:28):
into one. And I know everybody's got their
checklist or everything, but this, this checklist is designed
to kind of make you think about what you're getting into and
what you're buying so that you can kind of stepwise through it
and check off the boxes. And if you can't check a box,
then you go, you know, ask the if it's something you can fix,
you see if you can fix it, basically.
So that's awesome. That's what I had to offer.

(48:48):
Yeah, and that, that'll be great.
And I'm sure you know, if you guys are listening to this,
we'll make sure to give you an access link to the ball so you
guys can access that that freebie.
So thank you so much for that contribution, Brian.
Yeah. Yeah, perfect.
So as people are listening and they're like, wait, he, he has a
company where he helps first time developers and then you've
obviously got your other stuff going on.
Where could people connect with you to either hire you or to

(49:11):
follow your journey and what you're doing with flipping and
development and things like that?
Yeah. So for environmental consulting,
my company is Origen Environmental Consulting.
So for you geologists out there,Origenic is like a mountain
building event. So Origen is my company, right?
OK, so Origin Environmental Consulting, originec.com is my

(49:31):
website, andbrian@originec.com is my e-mail there.
So you can reach out, ask me environmental questions.
I can do Phase 1 space twos withregulators.
I can do your English to Englishtranslations and what the heck
they're trying to say to you, you know, and help you through
that process. Got a lot of experience there
and then on the land side, you can reach out to land on the

(49:53):
horizon.com. So that's my my domain is land
on the horizon. But we're on Instagram and
actively posting, actively selling property and you can get
an idea that the kind of property that we deal with there
and the subdivides and neighborhoods and things so.
Yeah. Well, Brian, we really
appreciate your time. We're looking forward to staying
in touch. But I guess in the meantime,

(50:13):
again, thank you for your time. But those you guys are listening
to this podcast, please like andsubscribe.
It makes a huge impact on ultra broader audience.
If you guys are watching this onYouTube, please leave, please
leave a subscription and leave afive star review.
It really does make an impact and we really do appreciate the
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tuning in and we'll see you next.

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From Flipping Dirt to Building Neighborhoods — Brian Wied’s Lean Path to Land Development | EP#10

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Flipping Dirt to Building Neighborhoods — Brian Wied’s Lean Path to Land Development | EP#10