I spent two decades in the collections business. If you want to see the “real” version of people, watch how they handle a debt they can’t pay. It’s raw, it’s messy, and it’s a masterclass in human psychology. You learn very quickly that what someone says they’re going to do and what the math says they can do are two very different things.

When I got into land flipping five years ago, I saw the exact same pattern.

Wholesalers would send me these beautiful “marketing packages.” Drone shots of sunsets over the desert. Photos of lush trees in Upstate New York. They’d tell me, “Steve, this is a gem. It’s worth $50,000 all day long.”

And I’d look at the photos, and I’d think… Who cares?

I don’t buy sunsets. I buy liquidity.

Early on, I did what most “small ball” players do. I fell in love with the property. I looked at one comp from a year ago and thought I was a genius. Then I sat on the property for eight months. The taxes were real. The grass (or the scrub) was real. But the buyer? The buyer was a ghost.

That’s when I developed what I call the “Parking Lot Test.”

I don’t care if the land is beautiful. I care if the market is crowded. If I go to a grocery store parking lot and it’s empty, I don’t care how good the steak is inside—that business is dying.

Now, before we put a single dollar into a Joint Venture, we look at the Volume. I want to see a crowd. I want to see that 10, 15, or 20 parcels in that specific price band have traded hands in the last 90 days. I want to see that the “90-day pace” is faster than last year’s pace.

That’s the Trajectory.

If the market is accelerating, I’m interested. If it’s cooling off, I don’t care if the property is half-off—I’m passing. Why? Because I’m 69 years old and I’m retiring in three years. I don’t have time to wait for a “lucky” buyer. I want the buyer who is already standing there with their checkbook out, frustrated because they keep losing out on other lots.

At Finance Land Sales, we’ve done 290+ deals because we stopped looking at the dirt and started looking at the data. We want win-win-win deals where the money moves fast.

If you’ve got a deal in a “crowded parking lot” and you need the fuel to close it, let’s talk. We don’t just bring the cash; we bring the exit strategy.