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Why Land Development Remains a Strong Investment in Northwest Arkansas

June 1, 2026

In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, host Mat Zalk is joined by Brandon Cobb, Owner of HBG Capital and Land Development Accelerator, to discuss how investors can protect and grow their portfolios during uncertain economic periods. The conversation focuses on land development, housing demand, and the importance of maintaining flexibility in investment planning.

The Secrets To Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing With Brandon Cobb

Brandon Cobb is the Founding Partner of HBG Capital and Owner of Land Development Accelerator, where he serves as a real estate investment consultant, fund manager, and land development coach, helping investors and students turn raw land into new housing communities through land entitlements, development, and new construction. Brandon has helped investors identify opportunities in growing markets and navigate the complexities of development projects. His experience includes hundreds of real estate transactions and partnerships with major homebuilders focused on increasing housing supply.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [02:28] How getting fired pushed Brandon Cobb into real estate
  • [05:34] Brandon’s three ways to profit from a single land deal 
  • [08:28] Why national home builders are aggressively buying land right now
  • [13:10] Brandon breaks down the step-by-step land entitlement process
  • [22:38] How to get city officials on your side before approvals 
  • [24:54] Ways to avoid the million-dollar mistakes new land developers often make
  • [30:42] Actionable first steps for breaking into land development today

In this episode…

Many investors assume recession-proof investing means avoiding risk altogether. Brandon argues that the real advantage comes from creating options. Land development allows investors to adjust their strategy based on changing market conditions rather than being locked into a single outcome.

For Northwest Arkansas investors, understanding local demand and focusing on housing shortages can provide significant opportunities. Brandon’s approach emphasizes preparation, flexibility, and careful planning as key ingredients for long-term success.

With Northwest Arkansas experiencing continued population growth and economic expansion, opportunities for residential development remain attractive. Brandon explains that land development offers investors several ways to create value before a project is even completed. By securing entitlements and preparing land for future development, investors can generate returns while reducing exposure to market fluctuations.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “Nobody was going to look out for my financial well-being but me.”
  • “When you have a piece of raw land, you have options; you can just entitle it and sell the paper.”
  • “Different sectors do well at different time periods, and so it does belong in a real estate portfolio.”
  • “This business is a lot less about making more good decisions; it’s much more about making less bad decisions.”
  • “If you go sit down with the people in charge and figure out what the community needs, you’re going to have a lot more success.”

Action Steps

  1. Focus on securing entitlements before purchasing land: This reduces risk by ensuring approvals are in place before committing significant capital.
  2. Build relationships with local officials early: Understanding community needs increases the likelihood of project approval and smoother development processes.
  3. Target markets with strong population growth: Investing where demand is rising improves the chances of long-term profitability and successful exits.
  4. Design projects with the end buyer in mind: Aligning development plans with builder requirements ensures the property is marketable and sellable.
  5. Prioritize flexibility in investment strategy: Having multiple exit options allows you to adapt and stay profitable through changing market conditions.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.

Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.

The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.

That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need. 

To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].

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Episode Transcript

Intro 00:04

Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management, and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.

Mat Zalk 00:20

Mads here. I’m the host of The Same Day Podcast, where I connect with top business experts and real estate leaders. Some past guests include Chip Gaberino talking about Topeka Coffee, the local roastery here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Vondell Burns of Thankless Productions, Aaron Miller of in Tulsa, and Deren Huang, a local expert in buying renovating real estate assets, including industrial properties.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter Property Management, we are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. It doesn’t matter what rental you have. Single family homes, condos. Townhomes. Apartments. We have the management solutions you need. Go to keyrenterpmc.com or email us at [email protected].

Today’s guest is Brandon Cobb. Brandon is a real estate investment consultant, a fund manager, and a land development coach. He’s also the Owner of Land Development Accelerator, a mastermind program that teaches students how to turn raw land into new housing communities by guiding them through land, entitlement development and new construction. A former medical device sales representative, he transitioned into real estate and now leads HBG Capital. He’s also the host of the Recession Resistant Real Estate Radio podcast that’s a mouthful, the Recession Resistant Real Estate Radio podcast. And on that podcast, he shares insights and interviews with top investors, developers and industry leaders on the strategies behind recession resistant real estate and successful land development. Visit www.hbgcapital.net to learn more about what Brandon is working on. Brandon Cobb, welcome to the show. How are you?

Brandon Cobb 02:07

I’m good man. It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mat Zalk 02:10

Great to have you. Pleasure. Pleasure to have you on the show. So just to chat for a second about history. Not that we need to look backwards forever, but you started in medical device sales.

You transitioned into land development. What was the moment you realized that the opportunity was in raw land?

Brandon Cobb 02:28

You know, that’s that’s a loaded question. It kind of makes it seem like I just sort of skipped from medical device sales into you woke up creating these giant new communities. And let me tell you that it was it did not happen like that. There’s a little bit of a journey there, but, you know, like my, my, my story is a little bit different. I never had any kind of aspirations to be an entrepreneur.

I actually loved what I did for a living. Medical device sales took me years to break into. That was my dream job. And my boss, who finally gave me the opportunity, was like a mentor to me. He’s like a second dad, and I loved what I did. 

 So I don’t have some sob story about how I worked in corporate for decades. Got sick of climbing the corporate ladder and just fed up and, you know, lived my dream. I was living my dream. And then one sunny Friday afternoon, I woke up having the best possible day you could possibly have a sales career. And my boss said, hey, meet me over at Starbucks at 4:00. 

 And I was like, ecstatic to tell him the amazing day that I’d had. And you know, I’m rolling up. I can smell the coffee. I got a smile on my face and I sit down and before I could tell him how much money I had made him that day, he fires me.

Mat Zalk 03:37

No way.

Brandon Cobb 03:38

And all I could think about the first, probably three four hours was just what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? Like I, because I was like, I loved what I did. I was like, I got the rookie of the year sales award.

You know, I live, breathe and eat my job. Like what the heck happened? And so after the shock wore off, I learned a very important lesson that day. And that was that nobody was going to look out for my financial well-being but me. Sure, you can be as low as you want to. 

 A company put the decades in the blood, sweat and tears. You’re just one merger and acquisition, one restructuring, one bad economic event, one retirement away from, you know, losing it. So that that lesson nobody was going to look out for my financial well-being stuck with me for the rest of my life. So I didn’t have a job. And as a lot of people do, when they don’t have a job, they’re like, okay, I can either go get another job or I can give this whole entrepreneur thing a shot. 

 And so that’s what I did. You know, at first I made all the mistakes. I said, you know, I’m really good at medical device sales and getting in. I had a lot of people reach out to me about how they can get a job in medical device sales. So naturally, I created a course that failed. 

 I was really into the online motivational stuff. I was like, you know, I’m gonna write my own motivational blog. That failed. And I said, you know what? I really like the Tony Robbins stuff. 

 Let me do the whole life coaching thing. and you’re not going to believe this, Matt. But not a lot of people want to take life advice from a 27 year old. So that business failed. But then I discovered this magical vehicle is, you know, you know, called real estate, and the rest is history. 

 You know, at first I made all the mistakes, I did deals, I lost money on deals, bought stuff I shouldn’t have bought, wasted a bunch of time. But, you know, over the course of several years, I did over 186 transactions. I started flipping houses, grew that into doing about 3540 house flips a year, started building houses, started building about 30 homes a year, and wanted to grow and scale that new construction company. And so how do you do that? Well, we had to stop chasing those vacant individual lots and start going after larger parcels of land to be able to build lots of homes on. 

 And so we started doing that and, and, you know, we started getting bought out about of our, our land positions by these big national home builders. And, you know, it kind of led to the point where we’re like, man, you know, like we can when you have a piece of raw land, you have options. You can just entitle it and sell the paper that’s getting it approved for a new community and just sell the approval. Or you can develop it and actually sell the ready to build lots to a builder. So you’re putting the roads and everything and basically making a neighborhood that’s empty, or you can actually build a home. 

 So you got like three different exit strategies, which is what I really like about it. You’ve got some flexibility and the rest is history. So long winded answer to tell you like, when did I see the opportunity in land development? It never was just blinking at me. It was just kind of over time, we sort of naturally noticed. 

 There’s a lot of opportunity with it.

Mat Zalk 06:38

They say curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat. But why did he end up firing you? Merger. Acquisition?

Like what, what what what was the catalyst for that?

Brandon Cobb 06:46

You know, I think he might have been having some some financial difficulties. And, you know, if I’m being honest with myself, maybe I wasn’t the best sales rep out there. You know, I’m still kind of new and learning, but you know, I had like the rookie of the year sales award. So I was like, I gotta be kind of good for, you know, for, for something like that. But, you know, I know sales was struggling.

You know, the first six months, but for whatever reason, you know, he decided that it was the best thing for his company was, you know, to let me go.

Mat Zalk 07:11

Okay. You said something super interesting. You can sell the paper, you can sell the pads, or you could build it yourself. I mean, I hadn’t thought about it, but it’s a that is a really interesting opportunity that you have multiple bites at the apple because you can, I guess you can’t theoretically sell a paper. And then also, you know, construct on some of the lands, although you could buy them back, I guess it’d be a weird transaction, but you have multiple bites of the apple if you buy a rental home and you’re just doing the renovation, you have one bite at the apple and you can keep it or you can flip it.

I guess maybe that’s two. But realistically, you have fewer bites of the apple, which is an interesting, it’s an interesting situation if you’re going to go develop your own land. Are you at this point, are you doing anything related to, to kind of build, to rent where you’re keeping everything on your on your own balance sheet.

Brandon Cobb 07:55

And oh, man, we like we were all in on build to rent up until 2022. We had so many projects going, we were like gung ho about it. And then interest rates pretty much just wiped that investment strategy clean and threw it in the trash can. I haven’t been able to get anything to pencil since.

Mat Zalk 08:12

Yeah, it’s been hard. I mean, in general though, if we’ll talk a little bit about capital requirements later. But why? Why do you think that that land development’s a better play right now than what most investors chase, which is, you know, houses and apartments?

Brandon Cobb 08:28

Well, you know, diversification is key, right? You’ve been in real estate a long time. Different sectors do well at different time periods. And so it does belong in a real estate portfolio, like a lot of different things. Do you know, I think multifamily is great.

I’ve got my money in several multifamily syndications, some of them not doing so hot. Yeah. You know, you know, house flipping, I think I know people that make a lot of money doing that. It got really saturated when we were doing it. I saw the writing on the wall, which is kind of why I had to sort of pivot into new building. 

 It was a lot more profitable, so you can make money in anything with this particular strategy though, like where we see the opportunity is there’s an affordable housing crisis, right? We create an event, new communities for national home builders. So we get the raw land approved to them. What they want, what consumers need right now is entry level housing. So that’s little affordable, not big affordable, big affordable. 

 Section eight and government housing. We don’t do that. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about that first time home buyer. Right now, you’ve got over 33% of the millennial population chasing less than 10% of homes being built. 

 Huge supply and demand imbalance there. Right. I don’t need to be a genius to tell you, hey, there’s an opportunity when you get 33% of the home buying population, chasing less than 10% of the homes being built. So that’s, that’s the issue. So these big builders we work with, Lennar, Dr. Horton. 

 You know Ryan Homes. They have to make the stock price go up. And there’s only one way to make stock price go up. Buy more land, build more houses. Yeah, that’s plan A. 

 If plan A don’t work out. There’s plan B, which is buy more land, build more houses. And of course, if that didn’t work, you got plan C, which is buy more land and build more houses. Right. They don’t have any other options. 

 They have to acquire more and more land. So for the foreseeable future, we see a huge opportunity to just contract with these big national builders and just feed the machine.

Mat Zalk 10:25

When you do, when you I’m trying to think through the the selling the paper versus actually doing the work, putting in the sewer and infrastructure and the roads. When you get entitlement work, I presume that you’ve got an optional development plan where you’ve put in some sort of retention pond and you’ve kind of highlighted ingress and egress for fire trucks that need to turn around at certain places. There’s a lot. There’s, there’s block length distance from entrance and maximum length. Whatever is there?

Is there a big difference in what you ultimately can profit if you’re working on selling the paper versus selling individual lots?

Brandon Cobb 11:03

Yeah, you’re always going to make more money the further down the pipeline you take the development, right? So you’re going to make great money if you do entitlement. You know, we aim for half a million seven figures plus per deal. If you’re doing the development where you’re developing the land, grading it out, putting the roads in, you know, you’re going to make even more, you’re going to make, you know, multiple seven figures on something like that, depending on the size of the deal. And then of course, if you actually build and construct the homes, you’re going to make even more money.

And that’s where the most value, I argue, is created when you actually build the homes, but you don’t have to do all three and you can profit along the way, which is what we recommend doing. So if we’re going to develop it per se, then the entity that gets the entitlement done is going to sell it to the syndication we create to do the development right? Sure. So the key with development is creating cash flow and profitability and liquidity throughout the life of the project. That’s really key. 

 You can’t just shove all your profit, you know, on the back end three years later and still run a business.

Mat Zalk 12:01

Yeah. But so each at each stage, you’re, you’re pushing liquidity into the entity, into a sales entity. And then at some point you have to there’s a balancing act, I presume, between the holding costs of a, of the raw land, the, the cost of actually putting in the roads and everything else. And how long are you going to hold that before you sell it? So you’re trying to balance those three things or multiple things when you’re deciding what you want to do and what your capital position is, what your ability to raise capital is from, from third party investors into syndication, etc..

Tell me a little bit about what a land deal looks like from start to finish in your world.

Brandon Cobb 12:37

Yeah. So you’ve got to do the first phase first, right? Which is entitlements. And that’s just a fancy word for you got to get all of the government entities to sign off on it. Right.

So we’re blessed in America to have an amazing infrastructure in place where you’ve got, you know, stormwater, public works, zoning that can look at the development and sign off on it, right? That’s what you’re doing during the first phase. You’re just getting all of the government entities that are in charge of making sure new communities are safe to to stamp off on it.

Mat Zalk 13:08

City staff essentially. Right.

Brandon Cobb 13:10

Exactly. Yeah. So what we do is very, very simple. People complicate this whole thing and it’s really not that complicated. A lot of the sophisticated stuff that you were talking about earlier, our civil engineer does that.

I don’t need to understand any of that kind of stuff. Like that’s the civil engineers job. All I do is I get a piece of land under contract because I know where my buyers are. I’m going after areas that national home builders are in. I get a concept plan done, just a sketch of how many homes the engineer thinks can fit on the community. 

 I take that concept plan to the city. If I am in a big metropolis area like downtown Nashville, I’m going to go to the local council person. That’s my liaison. If I’m in a suburb. I’m going to go to the planning director and I’m going to say, hey, are you excited about this? 

 And are they going to say, heck yeah, this is what I want. Or you know what, council’s approving this. Like, we don’t want townhomes. We want, you know, single family, detached residential. Okay. 

 I get something they’re excited about. I then take that concept plan to my list of buyers. In this case, the big national builders. And if they give me a contract with a fat deposit, I’m excited about it. Now I start taking that deal through, and I do all this in the due diligence period where I don’t have a lot of skin in the game. 

 I haven’t spent a whole lot of money on it. Once I get that locked up, now I can start taking the development through that entitlement process. And here takes probably 15-16 months here in Tennessee. If you’re in California, God bless your soul. You know, it could be three, four years.

Mat Zalk 14:39

When, when, when a developer ultimately gives you a deposit on the land, They’re paying you well in advance of you actually taking down the land. Theoretically, and delivering them a product for sure. Are they giving you most of the money that you need to take down the land? Are you syndicating deals at that point to raise the rest of the capital?

Brandon Cobb 15:01

No. So it’s it’s held in escrow during the time we don’t buy. We do not buy rule number one that we teach and follow. And this is like what we tell a lot of students. And I hop on calls all the time and like, I see this mistake being made.

If people buy the land thinking they’re going to get an approval and then they don’t. So that’s why we do some of that preliminary work that I just said, meeting with the city, we put it under contract contingent on the result that we want. So we have an option. So I’m not buying anything until I get all the approvals in place. And that deposit that the builder is putting down, it’s obviously refundable if we don’t deliver. 

 Sure. But it’s going to cover my entitlement costs. If they were to walk away last minute. You know, that’s one of the things that we do to help cover some of the risk. Yeah.

Mat Zalk 15:49

Fascinating. Do you, in general, syndicate deals, if somebody were to say like, I’m listening to this podcast and it sounds great, I want to be involved, but I’m like, have way too much going on in my day job or whatever else. Do you syndicate deals at an early stage where people can get involved?

Yeah. So once we get it to a preliminary plat approval, which is the first stage, that’s where the city has signed off on it and said, we will approve this development contingent on seeing the civil drawings. So it’s like a lot that you can build a home on. It’s zoned to build a home, but the city wants to see the architectural plans first, right? They need to see that the house has windows that are, you know, large enough for like a firefighter get in and stuff like that.

They just want to make sure the home is safe and it’s approved. Same thing here. They want to see the civil drawings, which is the equivalent of the architectural plans of a house. But for the ground, you know. How low are the is the waterline going to go? 

 The sewer. What’s the grade of the lot? Stuff like that. So once we get to that preliminary plat approval. We’ve removed a lot of the risk and we’ll just raise money for the civil drawings.

Mat Zalk 17:04

Got it. You’d raise money for the civil drawings because once the drawings are done, then you get the final approval from the city. And you could actually be at the stage where you sell the paper.

Brandon Cobb 17:15

That’s right.

Mat Zalk 17:15

So then you could theoretically sell the paper to a new entity, return something to investors. And then if you want to, if you want to actually go through with the construction of the, of the, I guess, flat work, earthwork, sewage infrastructure, etc., then you could do that in a different entity.

Brandon Cobb 17:29

Yep, that’s exactly right.

Mat Zalk 17:31

Wow. Fascinating. If somebody were to do this on their own, well, how would you advise them to think about hold periods, durations? I mean, you mentioned 15, 16 months before. Like it?

I guess Capital Land Development’s a capital intensive business. How would you advise them to to finance some of the long hold periods, the capital required for some of the long hold periods?

Brandon Cobb 17:55

Yeah. So let’s say you want to just do some land banking. So we’ll do this strategy where we don’t do any construction to it. We just get it approved. And let’s say it’s an example where we know if we hold out for another year or two, we’re going to get a lot more money for it.

This works for those little pieces of land. They’re like, call them like islands in the middle of a sea of development. Sure. So, you know, if there’s a ton of development going around it and you got this little island right there that if you hold it for a year or two and wait for all that development to be built and stabilized and finished, it’s going to be worth a whole lot more. So in that end, you can do land banking strategy. 

 And a lot of times we like to actually just buy the land outright with 100% investor equity. So we don’t have any debt on the deal. We don’t outright with our investor partners. We hold it for a couple of years and we sell it and everybody profits and makes money on it. So you’re looking at, you know, a year and a and half to get the approvals and then maybe another two year hold if you want to do a strategy like that. 

 Whereas if you do the land development portion where you’re developing, ready to build lots for the builder. So roads, sewer infrastructure, you’re probably two years or less on something like that. And that could be a multiple phase project. If it’s larger, that could continue to go on for, you know, multiple years depending on how large it is.

Mat Zalk 19:09

Is, is that small island land banking strategy not super competitive? I mean, are there not I guess the big developers aren’t going to be worried about a small I don’t know, I don’t I don’t even know what small would be in your world, but 20 acres of, of space in the middle of a bunch of other developments. Do they not want to worry about that? Why are they not going up and down the value chain? In a way that allows you, for example, to grab that opportunity?

Brandon Cobb 19:36

What do you mean, exactly?

Mat Zalk 19:38

Like if there’s multiple developments on 2 or 3 edges of a raw piece of land. You call it an island. Why are those other developers not looking three years down the road and saying, I’m also going to want this piece of land and take it, thus competing with you in your strategy to land bank that little piece. Like, why would they wait until you’ve done it?

Brandon Cobb 20:00

Yeah, they could. And it’s not necessarily parcels of land that are right next to new development. It might be parcels of land that are next to a development that happened 30 years ago. Okay. You know, it’s the path of progress.

Fun little exercise is if you, you know, were to hop in like a helicopter, you can actually see the path of progress in these areas that are getting development. It spreads out. It’s like a bomb, like you drop the bomb and it spreads out as it goes in these in these cities. So you can kind of see the path of progress. And that’s what I’m kind of getting at is these, you know, little islands that are undeveloped. 

 It’s in an area it’s not out in the middle of nowhere, right? We’re not rural. It’s in the city. But the path of progress maybe has gone around it for whatever reason. Sure, families just owned it for a long time and the heirs finally passed. 

 Or the, you know, mom and dad or grandparents finally passed away and the heirs want to sell it. You know, who knows? The city maybe changed the zoning. So, you know, here where I’m at, there’s a municipality that we’re very interested in because they just changed the zoning. They need more income in order to do the things that the city wants to do. 

 And one of the big ways they generate income is impact fees. And what they did was they just changed the zoning to allow twice as many lots on the same parcel of land. So all the land that we’ve been going after that hasn’t penciled because the landowners maybe wanted too much or whatever, or maybe it wasn’t zoned for it. Now it really, really pencils. And so that’d be another reason why, you know, we might see like an island that didn’t work before that does now, but it’s, it’s parcels of land that have development around it that are going to be really, really good.

Mat Zalk 21:45

In this case, when you’re talking about density, you’re saying like lot frontage line. So it was formerly RS3 and now they’re willing to go Rs five or something like that.

Brandon Cobb 21:53

Yeah, exactly. Like it might be 16,000 square foot minimum per lot. And now it’s 8000 square foot minimum per lot. So we’re calling all these people back in this area because we got ahead of this and we’re like, hey, you still want to sell like we can, we can give you the price that you want now. Yeah.

Mat Zalk 22:08

Very interesting. When you’re talking about entitlement and this preliminary plat, for example, which would I presume have lot lines and say, this is an RS3 lot, we’re going to build 150 RS3 or Rs five or whatever. Right. Which are the kind of sizes of the lots and the frontage of the houses, etc., or the, or the lots themselves. What are some strategies that you’d use to mitigate risk with dealing when dealing with city council or other governing bodies, planning commissions, etc.?

Brandon Cobb 22:38

Yeah. One of the best things that you can do before you come and present anything and put it on the agenda is go meet with your liaison. Go meet with the council members who are approving these things. Get to know them and just pull up a chair on the same side of the table and say, hey, what are some thing developers that have done a great win win for you in the community? Hey, Mr. Councilperson, what are people calling you and complaining about the most?

If you can solve that problem right there with whatever it is you’re doing, you’ve got their ear. Things like that. You know what type of products have gone over really well? If you make them feel like you’re a part of the solution. You’re going to get a lot. 

 It’s going to be a lot easier to get your stuff approved where people fall short. One of the biggest mistakes I see new developers make is they just shove as much density as possible on this piece of land. There’s a lot of dollar signs in their eyes. Oh yeah, and as a result, you’re going to have issues. But if you go sit down with the people in charge of getting these things approved, whether that’s the planning director, he can be the liaison to the commission or the council or go meet with the the council members who are over the district and just figure out like, you know, what does the community need? 

 You know, how are developers creating win wins and then come and build whatever that is into your concept plan? You’re going to have a lot more success.

Mat Zalk 24:01

Have you found much opposition from neighborhoods around areas, islands that you’re trying to entitle that come in and say, I don’t want this much density or they they try to fight you at Planning Commission.

Brandon Cobb 24:15

Meetings.

Mat Zalk 24:15

For example.

Brandon Cobb 24:16

Yeah, there’s always somebody. So we nickname them NIMBYs. Not in my backyard. There’s always somebody that shows up. And unfortunately, when you present these new developments, there’s usually a public hearing where the community can come and voice their concerns, right?

You know, the council can get it out there. And unfortunately, the only people that like to show up to Those are the ones that don’t want it. You know, the people who are in support of it, they’re not going to, you know, come out and show their support. They’re just not going to show up. So yeah, you you do have to compete with a lot of the NIMBYs.

Mat Zalk 24:47

Yeah. What’s what’s an example of the worst deal you’ve ever done or that you’ve had to deal with?

Brandon Cobb 24:54

I mean, I’ve lost seven figures on deals when we were first starting out, just figuring it out. And again, by not following the golden rules, right? Buying something, not getting the approvals in place on it, thinking you were going to get it approved in place. I’ve hired bad civil engineers. We have a whole formula for how to pick the right civil engineers.

You know, we were off by six inches once on a development. It was like eight acres, six, seven, eight acres. So you got to think, if you’re off by six inches, that’s six inches of dirt on eight acres. That’s a lot of dirt removal. That’s a lot of trucks. 

 And then it pushed all of our utilities down six inches. Well, then we started hitting rock that we weren’t going to hit before. And rock is expensive to remove. So yeah, we’ve made a lot of mistakes. The two biggest I’ve kind of named them is one is they shove as much density as humanly possible. 

 Don’t do that too is don’t buy it until you have the approvals. And then three, your bonus. One is you have to design it with the end product in mind. So I have people send me deals at least once a month and they’ll send me a deal. And they did the classic thing where they’re just trying to shove as much density as possible on it. 

 I, you know, had a guy who sent me, it’s usually townhomes and they send me these townhomes that are like 11ft wide, 16ft wide. And I’m like, who has an 11 foot wide townhome product? It doesn’t exist. Nobody’s going to build that. You just made it less wide, so you could get more units on there and try to make more money, and they can’t sell it. 

 So you have to bring your builders in earlier on to make sure the design and everything fits properly.

Mat Zalk 26:35

Land Development Accelerator, your mastermind program, you touch on all of these things so that people don’t make the same mistakes that you made, presumably, or that you’ve seen.

Brandon Cobb 26:43

Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, the big stuff. So there’s always, you know, the coursework that you got and go through all that. But the big thing is being able to present your deals because this business is a lot less about making more good decisions. It’s much more about making less bad decisions.

Yeah. You don’t want to make bad decisions because you can get stuck with something that’s very, very expensive. You know, you can make some pretty serious mistakes in this business. You know, these are, you know, these are 50,000, 100,000 plus dollar mistakes. Seven figures. 

 And I’ve lost seven figures on a deal when we were first learning this. So it’s being able to send your deals to the group to us and get feedback before you spend all the time and money to go and get things approved.

Mat Zalk 27:33

There are land shortages. Oh, sorry. There are. I shouldn’t say land shortages. There are housing shortages all over the United States.

Congress is passing legislation to help push, you know, make it easier for for new developments, etc.. Where are you seeing opportunity right now? Where are you personally working on projects? What are you. What would you advise to people that are potentially. 

 If you’re in New York and you want to do this with some of your capital, you’re in the city. I should be specific and you want to do something with your capital and you want to pursue land development. Where is there opportunity?

Brandon Cobb 28:06

Yeah. So anywhere that national home builders are building, I know it’s a very simple logic, but you want multiple there because that’s all we do is we just reverse engineer what they want. Now if you’re in New York, for example, it’s kind of developed, you know what I mean? So there are markets that you can be in that are really, really good. You know, I’m in Nashville, Tennessee.

It’s been one of the top ten fastest growing cities, you know, over the last like 6 or 7 years. It’s probably going to continue to be that way. So going and looking. You know, the top fast, fastest growing cities. That’s going to be a great place to start. 

 Chances are there’s big national homebuilder presence there. It’s not hard to go type in the ChatGPT, do a little bit of research and find out, you know, how many builders are building in that market. But that’s really it. That’s all you need to get started. And this strategy works for any type of real estate. 

 We just happen to work with national home builders. But if you’re doing multifamily or you’re doing self-storage or industrial, whatever it is, it’s the same approval process with the city does not matter what type of real estate that you’re doing. So, you know, we’re in Nashville, Tennessee. I love this market. It’s where the majority of our deals are happening. 

 And I just I just see for the foreseeable future there being a huge pipeline of opportunities. The other thing that I would focus on is how developer friendly is the municipality. So don’t go to California if you’re starting out. I was having conversations with some developers in California, and they told me it was like four years to get approval. I was like, so how do you convince the seller to go under contract with you for that long? 

 Because, you know, I’m thinking everybody does what we do and doesn’t buy it until the approvals are in place. And they’re like, oh, like we don’t. I’m like, what do you mean you don’t.

Mat Zalk 29:49

Just take the upfront.

Brandon Cobb 29:51

We buy it and we take the risk. I was like, what happens if you don’t get the approvals? They’re like, we hope we don’t lose too much money. So I was like, God, dawg. So stay away from that if you can.

If you can identify areas where there’s different developers or it’s more friendly, business friendly states, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, like Covid kind of told you which areas to focus on, right? You know, like the places that didn’t shut everything down so that that’s where I would focus. And you, you, there’s these liaisons or I should call them like entitlement expediters that you can work with. So you don’t have to have all this knowledge. There’s people that used to work for the city or people that used to work for these large engineering firms that understand the entire process, and you can actually pay them to take all of the things through for you if you want. 

 So you don’t have to be in the area that you’re focusing.

Mat Zalk 30:42

So if somebody’s listening to this and they want to take their very first step towards doing what you do, what do you recommend that step be?

Brandon Cobb 30:51

So we’ve got a free course. You know, I’m shameless plug. I’m going to put it in there. But if you go to learn, learnlanddevelopment.com, it’s a free course called Land of Land 101. Go grab it.

It’s how to get started. But the first thing I would do is just go find where the national homebuilders are, where are they building and just reverse engineer. All we do is we go get the land under contract because we know where to look. Surprise. It’s where the nationals are building. 

 So if you go type in Nashville, Tennessee, D.R. Horton neighborhoods or Nashville, Tennessee neighborhoods, go click the website. They have all their communities on a map posted like they’ve showed you where they’re already building. Just go after those areas on the untapped land.

Mat Zalk 31:35

Drive around.

Brandon Cobb 31:35

That’s where I would start.

Mat Zalk 31:36

Try to find details for the owners and start having a conversation.

Brandon Cobb 31:41

Yeah, you don’t even have to drive around. You can go and you can put in to the GIS parcel viewer. Wow. So every county has a GIS parcel viewer and it shows all the different parcels of land. And it looks like a giant puzzle where they all fit together.

All the little land pieces are puzzles. And what we do is once we have identified where national home builders are building, we can go to Google Linaa, Nashville, Tennessee neighborhoods. Where are they now? I’m looking for the communities on the GIS parcel viewer, and you can see them because it’s dense, right? There’s a lot of little tiny dots that are the little bitty lots from the development they created. 

 And I’m just looking for those big parcels of land that are in and around that area. And the reason I’m doing that is there’s one thing in particular that I’m searching for, and that’s sewer access. If you have sewer access, that means you’re going to be able to get more units on your land. Doesn’t mean that septics bad. As long as national home builders are building houses with septic systems, you can still do that. 

 But you’re not going to be able to get quite as many units out of it. So that still works. But sewer access, depending on where the developments are, it tells you whether or not there’s sewer there because they’re getting the density right. They’ve plugged into sewer somehow. So that is like the very first step is just figure out where your end buyer is and go after the areas that they’re already doing construction. 

 That’s it.

Mat Zalk 33:03

Love. Anything I forgot to ask you or you think it’s worth mentioning?

Brandon Cobb 33:07

No, man. I mean, you’ve pretty much covered everything. That’s that’s really it. You did a great job.

Mat Zalk 33:13

Brandon Cobb is a real estate investment consultant, fund manager and land development coach. He’s also the owner of Land Development Accelerator, a mastermind program that teaches students how to turn raw land into new housing communities by guiding them through land entitlements, development and new construction. As you heard, he was a former medical device sales representative, but he wanted to create his own future. And he transitioned into real estate and now leads HBG Capital. He’s also the host of the Recession Resistant Real Estate Radio podcast, which you should check out.

He shares insights and interviews with top investors, developers and industry leaders on the strategies behind recession resistant real estate and successful land developments on that podcast. Visit HBGcapital.net to learn more about Brandon or Connect. How else can people reach you, Brandon, if they want to chat with you directly?

Brandon Cobb 33:59

So learnlanddevelopment.com. There’s a link to book on my calendar. If you’re interested in learning more, you can check us out there and I’m on all the social media channels. It’s Brandon Cobb like corn on the cob.

Mat Zalk 34:09

Love it. Brandon, thank you for being on the show. We appreciate you.

Brandon Cobb 34:12

Thanks, man.

Mat Zalk 34:12

Appreciate you. Take care.

Outro 34:17

Thanks for listening to The Same Day Podcast Tune in to a new show each week and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes.

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