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There's many reasons to but there's also note of caution here. It's easy to lose a lot of money. There's a bit of a joke in the industry, when Silicon Valley, New York or one of these big wealthy communities, zip codes, the area code calls a rural agent, even psycho Yes, you know, here's another burnout tech work or wall street worker who wants to buy some land, you know, let's sell them the dream. But it's very easy to be taken advantage of. And if you don't know what you're doing, and you can lose a lot of money. I know some people who, who have invested in land, and it was an emotional decision, and they lost a lot of money and didn't appreciate it. So can you tell us a bit about some of the cautionary, not cautionary tales, but some of the some act active advice for someone that wants to go and buy some land what to watch out for? And the best way to do it?
Absolutely. So there is more asymmetric information right? When it comes to market. Because what happens is mostly these tech workers, Wall Street workers are essentially a way they're going to Montana, they don't know the localization. So very much disadvantage when they're, you know, working with a direct seller agent. So part of the reason we're our scope, and adding all this information is to enable the buyers to be more savvy and to make better decisions. People rely on their real estate agent as the single gender can give all this really authority information about law and graphic relative pricing of homes around people are renting Hmong people are owning. So that is one process. You can you can you can make better decisions by collecting information cautionary tale happening a lot that I know, people are land stocks, talk to a land broker, and interesting viewing 200,000 in northern Ontario, to meet me there, right? So we can look what look at the boundaries, look at the vegetation. He's like, Oh, no, no, I never meet people. You know, I Oh, in Russia, in China, they just take a look at the picture. I think because land is in no way a standardized or asset class like stock you just sold.
If there will ever be a institutionalization or other an automation and trading of real estate land will be the last thing to be a tradable commodity. Dude, you agree with that?
Oh, absolutely. It's basically what we call the exotic class, right. Exotic is that exotic class that's very bespoke. That requires a lot to deal with. But it blew my mind. People were trading land like stocks. And you know what? There's someone who plugged in acres for $40,000 last year and this sort of this right there. So 50%. But because we're in upmarket, we're in the market supply of image, oh, it's easy at the same time. Where
are you saying that there are flippers coming into the market people trying to get rich quick, it's causing unnecessary inflation in prices. And the core value that land provides is not being bought. It's more the greater fool theory. And this is happening in all asset classes, Bitcoins, an example NF, T's, stocks, real estate, you name it, right? But in land specifically, is that what you're saying?
So it is a so the reason I said is Northern Ontario is because it's not really inhabitable is extremely cold, and the land is not good for vegetation. So when you buy that's one, tip number one, when you're searching regions that are traditionally used for residential or more frontier, be careful because those land are mostly there are a lot of people trying to flip it. They're cheap, they're very easy to buy. And mostly because low valuation, there's more of a margin for huge growth when someone who don't really know what they're doing. Buy, right. So that's the first thing if you want to try to buy land that can appreciate real estate is all about location. Even when it comes to rural. We're not close to anything. Location is still very, very important. So definitely buy something that's close to some basic infrastructure and The reason I wanted to buy a farm is because farms are amazing because they are proven to be fertile. They have the necessary infrastructure to sustain vegetation. And also like, you know, the the neighborhood is set up in that way, right. So it's set up for people to live in for people to cultivate. You definitely one, if you're new to real estate, you don't want to buy a barren plot of land out of nowhere for $100,000, even though it might sound like a good deal.
You know, I almost bought a plot of land myself with my co founder, Jack, right. And I think that land caught on fire when there were these great wildfires in California. And luckily, we didn't buy the land, we didn't put it on a contract, but was negotiating there all these fires, you just don't think of these things, there's a lot to think about when you buy land, you talked about one of the first things you do which is survey the land, you see the boundaries, you've got, this is land, ultimately, you've got to understand every every part of the land, you've got to you've got to know what you can do with the land to you know, you're buying this land, is it flat? Is it is it steep and rolling on the zoning restrictions on the things you can do. Another thing I found quite irritating with lanolin appreciate is that often the rights of way easements, so you know, access you have to provide and paths you have to maintain. And you think yourself, Oh, this is my land, but you have to allow access, either to the public or to government inspections, or whatever. And then, and this really this, this is a really big one that people don't think about right? Was the land formerly used to store old vehicles or farm chemicals or industrial chemicals or the toxins? In the real estate world, for example, in strip malls, or retail? If there was previously a laundromat on site, you're often dealing with some crazy amounts of cleanup that you're legally liable to do. So you buy this, you buy the strip mall, you think you're gonna make money that used to be a laundromat, there, you don't really look into due diligence, and then you realize, well, now that damage has been caused and regulations are changing, I'm on the hook to pay for that. And it could cost more than the building, you could go bankrupt if you're not very careful. And I'm only here talking about basic things. We're not even talking about construction and design, right? Like the types of soil can you give access to construction equipment and other you know, how does rain going to affect your construction and development to this plot of land that I wanted to buy? They stopped halfway through because it was a lot of rain for a while. And it just meant that, you know, you would have had to redo a lot of construction. And then all these roads needed to be paved. And there was just two clusters. So that killed the project. And then there was this period of extreme drought, which you know, coolest fire eventually. Just there's a lot to think about. How does one go in with their guard up here? Should they didn't need a buyer's agent? Is there any is there any, any way that people can? You know, avoid mistakes? Because a lot you don't know and and you're chasing the dream and we're emotional. You know, think about all these things you really don't especially if it's your first time you're doing it as an emotional decision.
Yeah. So the first thing is that people need to like you said be more rational a lot of times when they see Oh $300,000 For a large farm Yeah, that's
a topic this is exactly how it starts right this is not how it starts. Wow it's so expensive price per square feet in the neighborhood that we're in today. And you know, we're using our life savings here to barely make rent or pay mortgages and we live in a tiny two bedroom 800 square foot apartment. Wow, we can buy acres and acres for the same price and we can build a 5000 square foot dream home I mean this is how it starts right to dream vision.
Exactly. So you know I would say the information that is very important. So like like I said, you are basically in terms of information at a disadvantage. And the important thing to overcome that disadvantage first of all, is to have a framework of things you should think about right the local regulation how far or power the houses should be the easement that goes across your your property and even local localized climate change impacts in California is more dry in Florida you're going to need to think about water. So there first of all, have a more cinematic way to think about these issues. And like you said check the previous owner you can check that very easily with land registry. You can all the informations out there and you can do it but the important thing is to have first off slow down right don't don't don't be too Tom by the by the price tag yet. Don't Don't lose your rational mind and then going to the going to, you know, authoritative data sources to check all these all of these things. And I think that that's the benefit of having a specific searchable for rural properties is because urban proper property searches cannot give you all this information. That's not what they're focused on. Right. So that's why rural property needs to be handled very differently. So a lot of people say, okay, telescopes in real estate and go to urban, I said, Yeah, we can go to urban, but it's very difficult for urban searchers to to the rural space, because variables that get involved, right, is basically rural buyers, on average, into consider three times more variables than the buyer. So it's much more complex.
Yeah, I'm glad to hear you say that. And then also, it's your responsibility as a buyer to, to verify everything and you can't trust, if you can't trust what the agents say, especially if as the seller's agent. And one way to get around it is to make your offer contingent, if there's something you want to do with the land, make your offer contingent on being allowed to do that. And if the seller isn't willing to agree, that's usually a red flag. I think this, this asset class is getting hyped up a lot. There was a time people were buying land on eBay. And now it seems like people are buying land abroad without even visiting. People are just trading it as a commodity, when really I don't think it's an appropriate commodity to trade. There's too many variables involved. It's difficult. So you've got to be careful. And also, when you're dealing with any size transaction, something like this is difficult to litigate, and very expensive to litigate. So you're left holding the bag? And do you agree with this? If something's too good to be true, it usually is and that if it's too cheap, there must be a reason there must be something wrong with it. Is that is that? Is that a fair way of looking at it? Would you think there are bargains to be had and there is a price arbitrage? Or do you feel like if something is very cheap, be very careful. Because finally, just also, and this is exactly what you guys do. Problem solving, you go online, and you you you so bye bye. I'm so cheap. I'm an Indian, in terms of, you know, my 23andme DNA is 100% Indian, we're cheap people. We like bargains, okay. I always sought everything by cheapest first. And, you know, I always get obsessed with metrics like price per square feet, or per acre. And I look and I'm like, wow, this is so cheap. This is great. Is it worth paying more sometimes? And, you know, should you focus on price per acreage? And go back to my earlier question, too, if it's too if it's too, if it's very cheap, is something wrong with it?
Yeah, I definitely think you know, there, this is a spectrum, right? For rural property you can buy, if you really want, you know, potential upside you may be and you can do a lot of your homework, buy a vacant land and build your own home, you potentially can save a lot of money, right? But But I want to first address that there are homes that are very cheap, and previously owned by people who live there who made a happy life, and they're selling for one reason or another. So those are often a good a good signal, right? So you can definitely, first of all, Google properties are really much cheaper on average. So you can still get really good value in the rural space. But what you need to be Akash careful with is venturing into areas you really don't know anything about, right? If you've never built a home before, if you always live in apartment before, and it's probably too much of a first step to buy a vacant land and build everything that does have utility does have a water access, maybe not even internet and to start everything from ground up. So that is not something we suggest for first time buyers. But that being said, there are plenty of good properties that are residential that have been in the family, you know, in families in residential space for decades, that offer great value to
fantastic. Can any how can people reach you if they want to work with you, or contact you as we round up here?
Sure. So you can use our product, our product currently live in California and Montana. And soon that very much. Next week, we're going to be going to Texas and a couple other states very quickly, we're going to cover all 50 states, you can use our product at Tara scope.io. You can also you know contact us anytime at Hello at telescope dial. And what's really exciting is that we're also starting a tip top channel, teaching people all the things we talked about today about the tips of buying land things you need to watch out for how to check the water quality, how to think about septic system, right people don't think about that often enough. So we're going to lunch that very quickly. And once we do is going to be posted the link will be posted on our website. So definitely stay tuned and yeah, thank you very much for having me here today.
