The Full Breakdown: What We Actually Paid for Our 90 Acre Property

Nobody really talks about the behind the scenes of buying land. Like the real numbers.

You’ve probably heard a few people say “oh, you can buy land for cheap…”

…and yeah, you can, I’ve seen people do it for $500 down. Seriously.

But nobody actually sits you down and shows it to you.

And I get why it’s probably frustrating.

You've pictured your life on it. Kids running around. Hubby with a work shed. Wifey with a garden.

But then the questions start. Like, can we even afford this? How much is too much? All the land I see is a bajillion dollars. And nobody gives you a straight answer. Or you just can’t find it. So the dream just kind hangs around, in no-mans-land.

So I’m just gonna walk you through the exact numbers on one of our properties. Like, down to the dollar. What we spent, what we earn from it, all of that.

But before I get into it, let me tell you how I got here.

My very first property was a multifamily with rats crawling through the walls.

And I lived in one of the units.

Yea, I must have really lost the plot.

Another story for another time, but before I bought my first property…

I thought real estate was boring. I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the power of it, the leverage, any of that.

That was a long time ago. And now my husband and I buy about 100 acres of land every year.

Crazy how a little faith in God’s provision & favor led to all of this. I still can’t believe it.

Before that, over a decade ago, I started my career as a travel entrepreneur.

And back then, everybody believed you had to spend, like, $15k to travel well. That was the story we were all told. We had to spend celebrity money to have a good time.

Not true. I was helping people get flights for $150 round trip to Cape Town, to Dubai, to Italy.

My husband and I got married in France, and we were getting people flights for a few hundred bucks each.

My whole thing was basically debunking this myth that travel had to be expensive.

And land is the exact same story. You don’t have to be rich. You really don’t. You just have to know what you’re looking for and how to make your money work for you.

We’ve made a lot of offers. We’ve done a lot of closings. And honestly, at this point, there’s very little about land that surprises us anymore.

One of the top questions that I get is how we afford to keep buying land.

How? HOW? hoooooooowwww….

Believe it or not, land can earn an income. It can pay for itself. It can be an asset and not a liability.

Imagine buying a property to build your dream home on, and a portion of it THAT YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE is making enough to cover your entire mortgage each month.

I shared in an earlier post that owning traditional real estate felt like an anchor around my ankles. Something old people did with their money (and their time).

My aunt (who owns dozens of rental properties at this point) still takes plumbing calls at the wee hours of the morning.

Not for me. No ma’am.

Listen, my actual first taste of real estate didn’t help the case, either. It wasn’t a trap house, it was the rat house, lol.

While I wasn’t exactly looking for a new way to do real estate, God just kept putting me in front of a people who were doing it differently.

And they weren’t stuck. They weren’t sad and trapped, mowing grass. They were way more free.

They had this thing that just worked in the background while they went and lived their lives.

So I wanted to figure out how they did it. And if we were ever gonna do this, we wanted to do it the simple way.

Owning land does not have to tie you down. If you buy it right, it does the exact opposite. It can become the thing that funds your life instead of the thing that traps you in it. It works while you sleep. It works while you’re gone.

One of the most underrated strategies (which I’ll go over a little later), if done right can make you enough to fund your build process.

There are so many different levels to this real estate game and when you’ve been around long enough, you learn things.

Lots of conversations behind closed doors, over coffee, in hotel lobbies, even at church and in fellowship with other believers.

So. If you want to own land but think the numbers just don’t add up, you’re in the right place. You probably just need to see a deal to know it’s real.

That rhymed, lol.

And the receipts don't look like traditional real estate either:

• A property we purchased for $4,000 down that pays for itself — never mowed it, never fenced it, never once answered a 2am plumbing call about it. (Sorry, auntie)

• The previous owner poured money into this property — and I can depreciate it. I didn't lift a finger, and it lowers my tax bill anyway.

• It’s worth waaaay more today than the day we bought it. We didn’t do much. And it’s increasing in value while I’m off raising these kidssss.

All while remaining an asset that never ties me down.

So let’s get into the numbers, shall we?

And just so you know what we’ll be talking about today, behind the paywall I’m handing you all the details on this property:

• What we paid, and how many acres

• The loan, the rate, and the term (and no, it wasn’t the best rate, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it)

• The $299,000 property we put 1.5% down on (no, that’s not a typo) & how we afforded it

• What the taxes actually run per year

• What it brings in every single month in recurring income

• How any piece of land can go from a bill you pay to a thing that pays you WELL (receipts included, of course).

You ready? I’m ready. Here’s what basically nobody shows you: