Is land flipping still profitable in a slow market?
Yes, but only for investors running a specific kind of deal. On The REtipster Podcast, host Seth Williams talks with Drew Haney and Mike Balcom, who have funded roughly 850 land deals, and their data points to one clear winner: small, boring flips with a modest spread. The people still making money in a slow market aren't chasing bigger projects. They're doing the same simple deal over and over and answering the phone faster than everyone else.
From the episode
The Business Model That Survives Every Recession w/ Drew Haney and Mike Balcom
Aug 18, 2026 · 1h 16m
The deal size that keeps working when everything else stalls
Drew has watched six years of funded deals, and the pattern is hard to argue with. The flips that perform best are the unglamorous ones: purchase prices from zero up to around $70,000, with a market value up to about $140,000. That's a double, not a moonshot.
He explains that the complex value-add plays, the big subdivides and the entitlement projects, look great on a spreadsheet but carry longer timelines and more ways to go wrong. When the market slows, those extra variables turn into extra risk. The small flip, by contrast, has a short cycle and a buyer pool that never really disappears.
The investors who've stayed profitable didn't invent anything new. As Drew puts it, they built a boring machine and kept tweaking it.
"The secret sauce is they've built a very boring machine and they're slowly tweaking it."
Watch transaction volume, not price direction
One of the more surprising points in the episode is that Drew and Mike don't care whether land prices go up or down. What they watch is transaction volume, meaning how many sellers want out and how many buyers are active.
The host and guests explain that a slow market compresses your spread for a while. Spreads that compress eventually expand again. What kills investors isn't a thinner margin, it's stopping the machine altogether while waiting for the market to "come back."
This reframes the question. A slow market isn't a signal to stop flipping land. It's a signal to accept smaller margins for a season and keep your deal flow alive so you're positioned when spreads widen.
Answer the phone in five minutes, and stop switching strategies
Mike's advice on operations is about as concrete as it gets. Get on the phone with leads within five minutes. And don't change your strategy every three months.
He explains that most investors who struggle aren't picking the wrong marketing channel. They're slow to respond and quick to abandon what they're doing the moment a new tactic gets hyped online. Direct mail, texting, Google Ads, all of them work if you're consistent and fast.
Seth adds a cost lens to this. When the market was easy, you could let calls go to voicemail and still hit your numbers. When it gets harder, every inbound call represents real marketing dollars. If you do the math on what a lead actually costs, answering live starts looking a lot more justified.
Seth also points out that two of the operators doing the most deals in their data do about 80 percent of their business in Arizona. Getting deeply good at one state beat chasing new markets every quarter.
What a slowdown is actually good for
Mike frames a slow market as a building season. This is when you refine your systems, clean up your follow-up process, and fix the leaks you ignored when deals were easy. His point is that the same operational improvements made now will pay two to four times more for the same effort once volume picks back up.
Drew describes who leaves the business during these stretches. In his experience it's usually a mindset issue rather than a strategy issue. The people who quit didn't have the entrepreneurial stubbornness to keep dialing when returns thinned out. The people who stay are the ones doing boring flips consistently, ignoring the noise, and treating a down cycle as a normal part of the job.
So if you're asking whether land flipping is still profitable, the honest answer is that the model is fine. The question is whether you'll run it the boring way for long enough.
What to remember
- Small flips, roughly $0 to $70K purchase price with a market value up to $140K, have outperformed complex value-add deals across about 850 funded deals.
- Transaction volume matters more than price direction. Compressed spreads in a slow market eventually expand again.
- Call leads back within five minutes and stick with one strategy instead of switching every quarter.
- Going deep in one state beats chasing new markets. Two top operators do 80 percent of their deals in Arizona.
- Use a slowdown to refine systems. Improvements made now return two to four times more when volume returns.
People also ask
How much money do you need to start flipping land?
The deals that perform best in Drew and Mike's data have purchase prices from zero to about $70,000. Many investors use funding partners like Drew and Mike's company rather than their own cash, so the real requirement is a good deal, not a large bank account.
Should I pause land flipping until the market improves?
The guests argue no. Pausing kills your deal flow and your systems, and the investors who stay active through compressed margins are the ones positioned to profit when spreads widen again.
Which marketing channel works best for land deals in a slow market?
Mike's view is that channel choice matters less than response time and consistency. Answering leads within five minutes and running the same strategy for years beats hopping between mail, texting, and ads.
Based on The REtipster Podcast episode 281, "The Business Model That Survives Every Recession w/ Drew Haney and Mike Balcom," released August 18, 2026, hosted by Seth Williams.
