Minor Subdivisions, Survey Hacking & Modular on Acreage (with Casey Cavell)

Casey Cavell (00:00)

you know, three houses on an acre and put in 200 homes, right? That takes a lot longer process. There’s a lot more work right on the survey side and you know, some of that stuff that needs to happen. So we’re focusing on these smaller properties and really our business model is simple Dylan. It’s, we’re trying to find areas that two acre, five acre, 10 acre lots are selling for 10,000 an acre. And we’re trying to buy 50 acres that could be subdivided into these properties for 5,000 an acre. And the owner

could do that themselves, but a lot of times they don’t want to have to go through the hassle of hiring a surveyor and cleaning off the land and selling five different properties over a six month or year long period to five different people and deal with all of that.

Dylan Silver (00:31)

That’s cool.

Yeah.

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a land investor, also consultant in the greater Atlanta area. Please welcome Casey Cavell. Casey, welcome to the show.

Casey Cavell (02:27)

Good to be here, Dylan.

Dylan Silver (02:29)

It’s great to meet you and I always like to start off at the top of the show by asking guests how they got into real estate.

Casey Cavell (02:37)

Yeah, so I originally got my real estate license in college and I quickly realized that selling single family homes in the nights and the weekends wasn’t really for me. I wasn’t against working hard, but I figured there could potentially be a better way. And then I started saying, Hey, all right, maybe I buy some property and rent it out and make a few dollars doing that. So I started researching single family homes and Dylan, I was about to buy three single family homes. And I asked the lady I was going to buy them from. said, why are you selling? She goes, well, I’m getting into commercial.

So I’m like, well, what’s commercial? I’m 20 years old at the time. So she kind of told me what she was doing. I’m like, all right, well, why don’t I just do that? So I started in commercial real estate. I started finding underperforming self-storage facilities, apartment buildings, started sharing other people that ⁓ were a little bit farther along in life and business than I was. My business plan and what I was wanting to do and how I was going to do it, because I had to raise a few dollars. And I did that. And I went out and started marketing and finding and talking to owners of these properties.

Dylan Silver (03:26)

Yeah.

Casey Cavell (03:37)

I kind of have an eye, Dylan, for pieces of real estate that are one thing that can be made so much better. And for the, gosh, better part of five to six years, I bought four different storage facilities, some apartment complexes, and did really well in that in my mid-20s, and just started cutting my teeth in the real estate space.

Dylan Silver (03:55)

I want to ask you about the first 18 months. If you remember your first 18 months in real estate, year and a half, a lot of folks who are listening may be thinking about getting into real estate. That’s a big avatar of people that are in our audience, but also, you know, they may be newer realtors, investors, and they may be either facing growing pains or they may be doing really well. But I’m curious, what was that first year, year and a half like for you?

Casey Cavell (04:22)

Yeah, I started reading books, right? I started reading as much as I possibly could at the time. Podcasts were kind of up and coming at that period. So I would listen to some podcasts and I’m like, okay, who else has already done or is doing what I want to do? And then I hired a coach. His name was Mike. He was out of Indianapolis, drove down there, spent a half a day with him. And he kind of helped me understand like

what I really wanted, where I wanted to go. And he helped me develop a plan and connect me to resources and started teaching me how to market, to find deals and stuff like that. So I really just started surrounding myself with other people that had already had some level of success. And I think the more people I talked to, the more clear I got of what I wanted to do.

Dylan Silver (05:49)

Were you immediately drawn into that storage facility space? Were you looking at other deals as well? Or where was your attention set at, at that

Casey Cavell (05:58)

Yeah, I went to a kind of a three day Academy ⁓ at the time. And it was like, you you lock yourself into a room for three days and you learn it. And really for me, it’s all about focus. So it’s like, you gotta find one thing and just focus on it. If you’re a hustler, if you’re smart, if you surround yourself with the right people, you can make money in any sort of real estate, no matter the market. You just got to stay focused. And I think a lot of people Dylan, they’re doing a bunch of things, but it’s like, what’s the one thing you want to do? So I really stayed.

Dylan Silver (06:21)

Yeah.

Casey Cavell (06:24)

focus on self storage until I fully kind of reached my potential I felt at that time and then exited and then started looking for new things.

Dylan Silver (06:32)

I want to ask you about self storage getting a little bit granular on this ⁓ It does seem to be and correct me if I’m totally misguided in this but it does seem to be one of these few areas of real estate that is almost Recession proof in a way not completely but recession proof to some regard. I do know that people do ⁓ not take out new storage Facilities or they don’t plan on necessarily moving when things are not going well, but at the same point in time

people are always going to be relocating and they’re always gonna, unfortunately with the housing crisis where it’s at, need extra space. Is there any element of that or is it very much significantly affected by the market?

Casey Cavell (07:15)

Well, I think it’s supply and demand as is any business, right? So I think storage, when I got into it, it was good because it was kind of the redheaded stepchild, right? Nobody really looked at it and said, hey, wow, this is amazing, right? And sorry if you’re a redhead and or a stepchild, I love you all. But you know I’m saying? Like it wasn’t something that everybody was super excited about. The professional investors didn’t like go to that asset yet. So I got in early. Now the challenge with storage and the challenge today is

You know, the professional investors have came, they’ve overbuilt, and I think there’s a lot of markets that aren’t nearly as good now because there seems to be a storage facility on every corner. And that’s when I was looking to get back into real estate about a year ago after selling some other businesses. I said, all right, what type of real estate do I want to get into? I reached back out and looked at self storage. I looked at some other things and then I stumbled across land because I felt there was a lot of opportunity there. It was an underserved market and there was a lot of potential.

Dylan Silver (07:48)

Right.

everywhere.

When we talk about land deals, I do think that there’s a tremendous amount of synergy between land in general, I would say, and storage. ⁓ I know a lot of investors in Texas who are looking at all different types of deals now because the market has shifted specifically away from fix and flip. So you’ve got more people looking at storage. You’ve got more people looking at ground up construction, people looking at, how do I partner with builders? And so in the land space, there’s a lot of different

exit strategies. I mentioned a couple of them. Is there one that you focus on in particular?

Casey Cavell (08:48)

Yeah, a lot of mine are finding rural pieces of land an hour or so away from a big city like an Atlanta or a Nashville or a Charlotte that people want to might build on five acres, create a homestead, know, have 10, 15 acres of recreational property and barn and mini and they can go and visit on the weekend. So my niche is finding these counties that are in the path of growth that people want to own five, 10, 20 acre parcels. And I go basically in work and network with other people that own

50 acres and above, talk to them, get to know them, figure out what they’re looking to do, if they’re looking to sell it. I buy it at one price and my goal is I subdivide it and then sell it off for a little bit more than what I bought the entire property for. So that’s my kind of thing is subdivides. Finding a big piece of land, hiring a surveyor, cutting up into smaller parcels and charging typically about double the price per acre that I bought it for.

because those prices, or not those prices, but those properties are more in demand. It’s a lot more people that want five or 10 acres than want 50 acres and can afford it. So that’s kind of it for me. And the other niche, there’s a lot of people out there that own homes on 30 plus, 50 plus acres. And eventually they need to downsize, they eventually need to sell.

Dylan Silver (09:49)

you

Right.

Casey Cavell (09:56)

So I’ve done a lot of deals this year where I work with homeowners and I help them strategically sell off some of their land. Maybe they keep some of their house, they sell some of their land. And it’s a strategy called survey hacking. So we’ve done a lot of those type of deals this year. So I see a lot of opportunities there. And the last one Dylan is just affordable housing. We’re doing some properties right now where we got some two acre lots and we’re putting ⁓ modular homes, mobile homes on there brand new and giving people that are first time homebuyer or

Dylan Silver (10:13)

Yeah, big.

Casey Cavell (10:25)

VA an opportunity to own these homes with pretty favorable financing. So those are the three niches that I’ve gone after and done really well on.

Dylan Silver (11:08)

There’s a couple questions and a couple ways that I could follow up with that. I’m a big, big fan. I feel like I was an early fan of Modular Homes. I’ve now had many guests on this podcast. There’s niches within Modular. You’ve got Disaster Resilient, which is becoming more and more, I would say, popular. used to be Fringe, but then you had so many unfortunate things happen. know, California fires. Years ago, you had Maui fires. In Texas, unfortunately, recently we had

Casey Cavell (11:17)

Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (11:37)

the floods that were in Kerrville that were disastrous and tragic in so many ways. And I think when people think about modular, oftentimes there’s that connotation of mobile, but modular in many ways is stronger than stick built and is also ⁓ customizable. People think it’s like one size fits all, but there’s so many different ways you can go with it.

Casey Cavell (12:01)

Yeah, I mean, we’re putting a house on two acres right now in South Carolina and it’s kind of a build the suit or order to suit. They’re telling me the kind of deck they want. They’re telling me the colors they want. They’re telling me the appliances they want. So you’re right. And if you walked into this home, you would know the difference. The first home my wife and I bought, we had no idea, but it was a modular home. We had no idea until we realized, ⁓ okay, this is house was moved here 30 years ago. So these things are strong. They’re nice.

and they’re affordable. And right now, I it costs a lot of money to build. And when companies and these manufacturers can do these things at scale, you can probably get a pretty good deal on these things. And the people that living in them are really happy.

Dylan Silver (12:44)

want to pivot and ask you about the subdivision of the parcels of land, right? So these are rural areas. I’m imagining that you have to focus not just on acquiring the land, but also on having a buyer’s list. Once probably you get to a certain point, you kind of know, okay, well, this is the buy box of these buyers. I can go back to these people. I know that they’re looking for deals. It’s not like you can find subdivisions all over the place. Is there… ⁓

a different attitude for each buyer generally. Are some of them saying, hey, I need plumbing that’s already on site, or I need nearby, I don’t want to have to trench super far. I don’t know, but I think you generally get the gist of the question here.

Casey Cavell (13:26)

I

do, yeah, I mean, it really depends on who’s the buyer that’s gonna buy the land you’re buying and what are they gonna use it for. If they’re gonna build their own homestead, they might want public water, but as long as the soil is good and you can put a well on there and wells are typical in that area, you can do that. You can put sewer as long as it has power. So it really depends on what is somebody gonna need if they wanna build a really nice barnamium and use the land for recreational purchases.

purposes, but maybe stay there overnight. If they want to live there, what are they going to need? They’re going to need power, sewer, water, and you can have access to that stuff. yeah. ⁓

Dylan Silver (14:03)

You know, when we talk about land deals, ⁓ storage, ⁓ subdividing the land, but then also modular, these are three separate strategies, right? Is there, I would say, a different way that you’re going into each acquisition, looking at it through one lens in particular, and is it a different formula? You don’t have to necessarily give this goal away, but maybe some of it.

Casey Cavell (14:28)

Yeah.

Dylan Silver (14:29)

⁓ Or is it hey, I have to find the buyer I have to understand Hey, what’s the exit strategy look like and then I’m gonna reverse engineer what to offer for the the land

Casey Cavell (14:40)

Yeah, we’re really not getting into the self-storage stuff anymore. We’re not really looking for land to put self-storage on. mean, our niche is really creating pieces of land that people either want to build on and or we put a modular home on and we sell the land with a home. So a land home package or just a piece of land that somebody could build on. So that’s really it for us. So when we’re looking at potential properties, there’s a couple of strategies. It’s okay. Number one, can we subdivide it? Number two, into how many parcels?

Number three, okay, if we’re gonna sell those parcels, are we selling them just as land to somebody that’s gonna wanna build their dream house? Or lastly, are we going to put a modular home on there and sell the land with the home? So that’s really it.

Dylan Silver (16:05)

When we talk about land acquisition, I come from a background of distressed wholesale before I was a licensed realtor. There’s serious emotional attachment tied to ⁓ physical property where people are living. I’ve noticed when I’ve done land deals that there is less, but it’s also an entirely different space, right? One of the things that I’ve noticed is I don’t necessarily have to go and myself put boots on the ground and inspect the land.

But I’m curious what your process is like. Are you active outside of the Atlanta area? Is the process the same wherever you go?

Casey Cavell (16:40)

Yeah, I we just bought 65 acres yesterday in Arkansas outside of Fayetteville. So, 65 acres, we can divide that property eight different ways and have eight, you know, anywhere between five to 15 acre kind of home sites, homesteads. And, you know, I didn’t go to that property before I bought it, but, you know, I had three experts in the area, one tested the soil. I got made, I made sure I could get water. I had a couple of real estate agents give me their opinions, walk the land. had a land improvement specialist kind of figure out, okay.

Could we build, if so where? So yeah, I mean, every property is different. Every area is different. We’re doing a lot in the Southeast because it feels like a lot of people are moving this way. But really, I mean, you can do this wherever people want to move, wherever people want to go, you can find land, subdivide it and sell it off. You just gotta make sure that there’s people that are buying these types of properties in the area. So we have a way to really search out and find what the areas people are buying in based on, you know.

Dylan Silver (17:35)

Yeah.

Casey Cavell (17:37)

previous sales and current listed or sold and all that kind of stuff. that’s really kind of where we’re looking.

Dylan Silver (17:44)

I want to ask you another granular question and again maybe don’t give away all of the gold because this is I think a question that a lot of folks who are looking at land probably have for themselves. Are builders, know building out subdivisions, are they looking for on-market land deals, ⁓ whatever that may be listed, or are they looking for know pocket listings off-market, something where they’re the first person to offer on, or is it a mix of everything?

Casey Cavell (18:13)

So there’s a difference between major subdivisions and minor subdivisions. And we probably don’t have enough time to cover that, but we do a lot of minor subdivisions where we’re not having to go in there and go through a year long process with the county or the city and get approved for all kinds of different things. And ultimately we’re trying to put maybe five houses on 50 acres, maybe 10 houses on 50 acres. Then you got the major subdivisions, which is somebody might want to put.

Dylan Silver (18:34)

Got it.

Casey Cavell (18:38)

you know, three houses on an acre and put in 200 homes, right? That takes a lot longer process. There’s a lot more work right on the survey side and you know, some of that stuff that needs to happen. So we’re focusing on these smaller properties and really our business model is simple Dylan. It’s, we’re trying to find areas that two acre, five acre, 10 acre lots are selling for 10,000 an acre. And we’re trying to buy 50 acres that could be subdivided into these properties for 5,000 an acre. And the owner

could do that themselves, but a lot of times they don’t want to have to go through the hassle of hiring a surveyor and cleaning off the land and selling five different properties over a six month or year long period to five different people and deal with all of that.

Dylan Silver (19:10)

That’s cool.

Yeah.

Casey Cavell (19:19)

So we’re kind of the simple solution for owners that either want a quick close, all cash, and or just want somebody to kind of take their land because we’re taking care of their land and we’re actually creating really nice properties for other people to own and use and enjoy. And a lot of these owners kind of are good with that.

Dylan Silver (19:36)

I’ve got so many questions. We’ll have to talk after the podcast about land acquisition. But Casey, where can folks go if maybe they’re in the greater Atlanta area or maybe they’re there anywhere and they’d like your feedback on either a deal that they have or they’d like to reach out to you.

Casey Cavell (19:50)

Sure, yeah, just go to thesubdivideguys.com, thesubdivideguys.com. You can go on there. And I’ve done, I think, let’s see, we’re on deal number nine this year, and six of them have been deals that partners have brought us. And I kind of work with people to really show them what type of deals we look for, what are the key things that we need to have in order for us to consider whether it’s.

partnering or funding or you rolling up our sleeves and getting into it because there’s a lot so if you haven’t done a subdo ideal Reach out to us happy to get to know you and share any resources and tools we have so just go to thesubdivideguys.com

Dylan Silver (20:26)

Casey, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Casey Cavell (20:29)

Thanks, Dylan.