The Land Investor's Treasure Map: Uncover Hidden Markets in Just Minutes

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0:00 - Why Are We Doing This?
1:38 - The Quick and Dirty Method
2:42 - Which States Are Growing?
5:17 - Looking Closer at the Numbers
6:06 - Sold to For Sale Ratio
10:42 - Specifying sizes and values
14:34 - Examining the Finer Details
17:05 - Finding Sustainable Markets
19:27 - Finding Clusters Throughout a State
20:39 - Opportunities Everywhere
21:14 - Stop Researching and Take Action!

Method 1: If you don't want to overthink it, you can use a quick and dirty method to find ideal markets. Start by finding a few counties 1-2 hours from a major metro area in a state where people are moving to (see the link to the US migration map, above).

Method 2: Look at the Sold to For Sale Ratio on a few websites.

- Open up Zillow
- Select County
- Select Lots/Land from Property Type
- Select Only “For Sale” Properties
- Under More, Select Acreage Range (10-20 Acres or whatever property size you’re targeting - if you filter it from 5 acres and up, you can usually avoid the ultra-cheap properties in most markets).
- Under ‘More,’ Select ANY Days on Zillow (any # of days is a valid number of days)
- Zillow will show you the number of results in the right sidebar

- Now, repeat the same steps, but change “For Sale’ to “Sold,” and under ‘More’ only select the past 12 months (instead of ANY time range).

- Once you have the total number of properties Sold in this time range and the total number of properties For Sale, divide the sold number by the for sale number to get your final number. You want to see a ratio of between 0.75 to 1.50. Greater than 1 indicates more demand than supply. A lower than 1 indicates more supply than demand. Either can work, but if it’s below 1, you should expect sales to be on the slower side, and as such, you should be offering on the lower end of the spectrum (no higher than 40% for big properties over 1 acre, or 35% for smaller properties below 1 acre)

- Remember, you don’t want the area too hot either. For example, if you see 8.00 (or 800%), this is too hot, and buying properties here will be much harder.

There isn’t a magic ratio. Higher than 1.50 can work, and lower than 0.75 can work too, but know that the lower the ratio is below 1.00, the slower you should expect your properties to sell on average.

It also helps to do this same exercise on more than one website. I like to use Zillow and Redfin. Sometimes, you’ll find that Redfin doesn’t have the data in some markets because the numbers will be much smaller. In those cases, use Zillow. We’re using both to make sure the ratios are similar.

This approach isn’t perfect because it tells us nothing about the properties listed as FSBO. If someone sold their property on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, those numbers probably won’t make it into this. This is one way the data isn’t perfect, but it’s still good enough to give you a better idea of what’s happening.

Go through this exercise for 5 - 10 markets and compare the numbers. Based on what the ratios say, some of them will make a lot more sense than others.

Remember, ratios are important, but don't tell the whole story. Consider sales volume and county size for a full picture.

Also, remember that you need to consider how big the county is. A huge county like San Bernardino will naturally have many more transactions because it covers such a large area. It's not a fair comparison to stack this county up next to a county in the eastern half of the US, which will be much smaller with fewer land parcels.

Note: Several states are non-disclosure states, meaning they don’t report sales prices. You can still see where sales were made, but you can see the sale prices.

On Zillow, view the entire state, focusing on sold properties from the last 12 months.
Look for counties with many sales and avoid sparse ones.

Qualitative Analysis: Check individual listings for desirability, days on the market, views, and saves. Over 100 views per month and frequent saves are good signs.

This method isn’t perfect as it doesn’t account for properties sold privately (like on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist), but it gives a good overall view of the market.

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