Dirt Debacles #2 | Guests Geoff Hurdle, ALC and Dan Murphy, ALC

         

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Intro: Welcome to the Realtors Land Institute podcast, The Voice of Land, the industry's leading land real estate organization.

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Justin Osborn: Hello, this is Justin Osborn, Accredited Land Consultant with the Wells Group in Durango, Colorado. Welcome to the second episode of Dirt Debacle, a new series on the Voices of Land Podcast. Today we're going to get into the dirt with two RLI members who are Accredited Land Consultants, and both currently serve on RLI's executive leadership team. And that's not all they have in common. Their kids recently married, and they now share a beautiful granddaughter. That's right, folks. Today we're going to hear wild stories of selling land from Geoff Hurdle and Dan Murphy. Geoff Hurdle joins us from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Geoff has been an active broker since 1992 in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. He maintains brokerage and development firms in Monroe, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Dan Murphy is founder of M4 Ranch Group, past president of the Colorado chapter of RLI, and numerous other boards and organizations in the industry. He and his team serve the Mountain West, selling and listing some of the most spectacular ranches. Dan and his family have been a successful part of RLI and the ranch brokerage. Dan has been fortunate to not only sell great ranches, but to live the ranch life in the Mountain West. Welcome to the podcast, Geoff and Dan.

Geoff Hurdle: Thank you for having me on here.

Dan Murphy: We sure appreciate an opportunity to get a chance to visit with you and work with RLI.

JO: Yeah, man, this will be fun. Knowing you two guys personally, I know you're movers and shakers. And so I appreciate you taking time to record this today. I'm looking forward to kind of see where this goes. Between the two of you, Geoff, how long have you been in the business? 

GH: This would be my 32nd year.

JO: Wow. Okay. And Dan? 

DM: You know, it's honestly, to get where we are right now, it's my entire life. So from start to finish, the fact of having a license and being in the business is very different than growing up and learning the business. So it's been... It's more years than I'd like to admit out loud.

JO: So we've got numerous decades here of experience. And I know you guys have some good stories. Man, this is not the fun, easy industry that sometimes social media and HGTV makes it look like, that we get to deal with all these smooth transaction without any hurdles. And so today, I want to spend a little bit of time just talking about the hurdles that you guys have seen in the industry. And so, Dan, let's start with you. What's the most recent, crazy story that you've had to deal with on getting buyers and sellers to the finish line? 

DM: There's a lot of those, and you know as well as I do, Justin, you're in this. We're definitely not box-on-box brokers. And you think about what we deal with on a daily basis, and it's absolutely kind of staggering. The one that was really cool that we recently did was a transaction on a large remote ranch that had a... It had a 3300 square foot lodge built on a mountaintop sitting at about 11,000 feet that we had the Catholic diocese come in and buy. And in that process, it was kind of interesting working with a Catholic diocese and having 40 monks show up in robes and Birkenstocks, touring the ranch in snowstorms and climbing over peaks and going around. And those guys never missed a beat. And that was probably one of the coolest ones I've had in a long time. Tremendous group of young men, all the monks getting to that process on a remote property with guys that are not businessman in an industry that is all based on faith for them and all based on logistics for us. One of our hardest obstacles that we faced on that particular closing was ensuring that remote cabin. You're talking about seasonal access, snowcat only in the winter months, four-wheel drive in the summer months, no fire protection, middle of a Alpine forest, an hour away from the nearest fire truck, kind of thing.

DM: And so at the end of the day, we ended up really fighting through several insurance companies trying to make that work. And at the end of the day, we ended up insuring it through Lloyd's of London, and then my gut is they'll pull the insurance off of it from the Catholic diocese. Once they get all the monastery built how they want it up there and the individual little cabins, they'll pull the insurance completely. But that's something we face on a daily basis, not selling to the Catholic diocese, but we do face very unique things in this industry, things like that where we're trying to find coverage for these remote properties on the top of the world that are seasonal access. And there's not very many of those companies left in the world when it comes to insuring places like that with the recent forest fires that we've had throughout the Mountain West. So there's a lot more to that story, but that was kind of a neat one.

JO: Yeah. And I don't know what you're seeing out there, Dan, but... Excuse me, Geoff, but yeah, where Dan and I are, it's just crazy the amount of policies that are not getting renewed, entities that are totally pulling out of our state out here in Colorado. Are you having anything similar happening out there where you're at, Geoff, in Tennessee? 

GH: I couldn't answer that fully for the market. I don't. I'm a transitional land guy. So little bit of building work that I've done. I've never had a problem with insurance. We've had the Gatlinburg fires ran through out here in East Tennessee. That came through a few years ago. And they might have some issues in that particular area. But we haven't experienced anything like Dan's talking about. We also don't have anything located like Dan's talking about either.

JO: Yeah, yeah, that's true, man. I know you definitely sell some wooded properties out there. But we've got, golly, such just extremely remote properties that you can't get to four months out of the year, maybe five months out of the year in a heavy snowstorm.

GH: Yeah. That's not the issue here. Not the weather anyway.

JO: Well, what are some of the issues you have out there? I heard there was a rezoning issue that you kind of dealt with, wasn't there? 

GH: Oh, that's my life. Rezoning is a transitional land guy's life. That's all we do. That's kind of the definition. If a land is transitioning, it means it's being rezoned. And I've gone through many. I got one in particular. I was thinking about, it took three years to get the rezoning approved... For the closing. Well, the rezoning and the approval. It happened right at COVID. So that was, they were cancelling meetings left and right before they learned how to do Zoom calls like we're on today. It had a special overlay that the city had put on it... Or the county had put on it, that we had to pull out of, then had to be annexed into the city. The course then had to be rezoned to a city zoning. Half of it was in wetlands. It only had 48 foot of frontage, and they wanted to be a townhome development. So that was... That was quite a chore. It also needed an easement from the Board of Education to get in, and so that took three years. It was meetings, it was going to city council members one by one; of course city council meetings, planning and zoning members, the mayor's office. Transitioning on a reason like that could take, well, never has it taken that long in my 32 years. But that was a record, and I hope I never break it.

JO: Man. Yeah, that's... Three years, that's a long time. It's not unheard of in some parts of the West to go through that long, but where you're at, that's normally what, a six-month process at the most? 

GH: At the most. In the busier areas like Nashville proper, Atlanta proper, even not quite Chattanooga, it could take 18 months. But that's if you're dragging your feet. Now that's, now when I say "18 months," that's the rezoning and getting plan approval for your development. Around here, the developers, they don't want to close the deal until they have the rezoning and their plan approved. And that means going to an engineer having a full set of drawings, road profiles, waterline profiles, sewer profiles, all completed and approved by the municipality. And then we go to closing. And it's also that line you got to sell that to your sellers too because they're waiting to close the day they get the contract, and you have to educate them, that knows it's gonna take you a minute. But I would have never dreamed three years.

JO: Man. Yeah, a lot of those sellers start losing patience after 90 days, so trying to keep them on that long, man, I can imagine. Dan, what other crazy stories do you have for us, man, selling the rural big acreages, big ranches that you deal with out here in the West? 

DM: We have a tendency of changing the way we do business when we learn hard lessons. One of the hardest lessons that I got early in the business was one of the funnest. We had a group of guys call us about buying a private ski area in Saratoga, Wyoming. And so they brought the jet in, and we had gotten a suburban. We drove up to this couple $100,000 snowcat that we leased for the day and plan this whole thing out to be at this, at the summit, at the peaks at 11,000, 10,600 feet whatever it was, right at sunset. So off we went, and these guys got out of a jet, got into a suburban, got into a heated snowcat, all dressed in city clothes. And up we went to the top of the mountain. And so beautiful day with eight feet of fresh snow on the ground. It was just the epitome of what you'd dream of for a skier. And went up to the top of the mountain and sat up there and watch the sunset, and we turned and stuck at pine tree straight to the bottom of that snowcat and blew all the hydraulic lines. So here we are on the top of this mountain, we're five miles maybe up from the bottom and eight feet of snow, two-foot-deep snow tracks, and looks like somebody had a killing field with red hydraulic fluid all over everything. And those guys are dressed in city clothes, the sun's setting, and it's probably 20 degrees.

DM: And I'm like, "This is not good." No sat phone, no backup riders, no snowmobiles, no safety net, no sat phone. And so off I went postholing five miles out of the mountains to get back to get help, to get these guys off the mountain. And as I got to the trailhead, 100 yards from the trailhead, here come the search and rescue, his wife had called, and here come the snowmobiles. And the lesson in that was, don't ever go when it's not treated like scuba diving, or you've got partners that are out there with capabilities. And don't ever go when you don't have the capability to reach someone by sat phone, or now you've got several different tools to use as in spot. But being that remote and that high country, keep in mind that those machines are awesome; they're a great way to get the farthest distance from your truck. And so this is pretty much, I learned the hard way that those things are absolutely staggering, and getting you to see great things and be on top of the mountain. But boy, if one breaks down and you're not prepared, you put not only yourself but everybody with you in danger. And so we do things a little differently now when we... Helicopters to airplanes to boats to snowcats to snowmobiles to rangers, we do a lot of things in teams.

JO: Yeah, that's a great lesson, man. I tell you, it's kind of learning the hard way, but we got stuck on a ranch. This was, I don't know, probably 12-14 years ago. And it was September, and it was leased to an outfitter. And so you guys know where this story is going, I'm sure. But it was one of those... It was my listing, so I called the outfitter, left him a voicemail. I said, hey, we're gonna be showing the property, gonna make sure I show up between the hours of 12:00 and 2:00 so that we're not disturbing anything. I'm an outdoorsman. I know what it's like. You don't want to be out there sunup, sundown, and somebody be looking at a 300+ bull and then have some idiot truck ruin the showing for you.

JO: So we go out there, and it was right during those hours. And I'm showing the ranch, we're coming out like wrapping up the showing 2 o'clock. I get to the gate. He had changed the lock and locked us in on the ranch. Just like you're saying: Out in the middle of nowhere, no service. This was an inholding, forest service inholding. So we're up gravel forest service road about 30 miles middle of nowhere. But thankfully, I've got the huge giant bolt cutters in the back of the truck, Dan. Right? So that was well prepared. So you guys that are listening, man, you city slicker realtors that are turning ranch brokers, make sure you get the Redneck lock breakers there in your pickup truck so you can get out of a ranch if you get stuck.

GH: [chuckle] I wasn't in a ranch, but I do have my master key in the back of my truck. I've been in places where I've had to do that myself. But I was in the city.

JO: In the city? 

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DM: Yeah, make sure you carry an extra lock too. So then you can put the excuse that, "Oh, I was just putting my lock on it." After you cut your way and you go, "Yeah, no, I was just making sure that we didn't have any confusion down the road. I just want to make sure we had a brokerage lock on there." And so anyway, it's always a great way to eat crow and maybe not be embarrassed by it.

JO: I love it. Yeah, maybe that's something we should do on another episode, is go through the inventory of items we carry in our pickup trucks when we're going through, going on a showing or going on a listing appointment, 'cause that'd be another 30-minute podcast in itself, I think.

DM: Oh, that is the amazing thing and the difference of what this industry is faced with right now, where... I mean, I don't know about you, but the other day I showed one of our clients wanted to buy a house, a family member wanted to buy a house, one of the local towns we work in. And I think we showed seven or nine different houses, and I've never met a broker. There was a lockbox with a super key. And you went in and showed it. And I'm thinking to myself, as our policy as a company, we are on property, period. And I'm thinking to myself, none of these guys are here to represent their listing. And we wonder why we're facing what we're facing in this industry when it comes to box-on-box, and it doesn't take much to realize that not very many people really do their job anymore.

JO: Yeah, and I think it's so easy now to separate yourself from the competition because of that very thing, Dan. I mean, whether it's being present for a showing or whether it goes into marketing, I can't tell you how many sellers I talked to that, we go in after the previous agent was there, and usually we're the second or third realtor that's kind of having that come-to-Jesus meeting with the seller on what the property is really worth and what it takes to sell it. They say, "Well, yeah, the other realtor, they put it in the MLS, and they put a sign on the gate. And I think that's all they did." [chuckle] Yeah, and that's why we didn't sell. We're gonna come in here with drones and interactive maps and make videos and be present for showings, and property is not on the market 90 days, and then it sells.

DM: You know, Justin, that's the single biggest positive to me with RLI. And I think that... Recently we were in one of these executive meetings, Geoff and I were in Chicago, and one of the comments from the past president of NAR was RLI. And RLI's thought process might be the only thing that saves the industry. And I thought to myself, that's a remarkable statement but there's so much to that. And what he based that on was that the commitment of an RLI broker compared to the commitment of an average broker, and I mean that by education and commitment, and the commitment to have better knowledge about their property to be actively involved, to be at a different level than what you see somebody that just gets their license and goes out and works on averages. And if you look at that in a big scale, that's one of the things that just truly separates RLI. We talk about these funny stories, and we talk about all these adventures that we get to have in the industry which are literally unbelievable. That being said, when it comes down to it, we're fully committed in what we're doing, and that commitment means being there for both the buyer and the seller at a different level.

JO: Yeah, 100%. Geoff, you got anything else here? Other stories you've got from Tennessee, Georgia you can share with the listeners? 

GH: We had a catastrophe not quite like Dan's. I didn't strand anybody on the mountaintop for hours, [chuckle] but I did in their cars. It was a rezone. I guess it was zoned AG. It's had been number years ago, but we rezoned it a office and built an office for someone. And during the grading, you're supposed to call for utility locating and we did. And they snapped the gas line. And it was a pretty good gas line, and so it shut down the state highway for five hours while they had to get 'em out there and get it repaired, and only to have while they were fixing the gas line, they'd yanked out and ripped out of the ground one of Southern Belle's telephone trunk lines that led down to the county below us. And so they had phones shut off for quite a while on there while they repaired that. So what happened was, utility company had mis-marked the line, so that's why it got hit. It wasn't our fault. But nonetheless we're the guys standing there with the equipment on the side of the road waving to people going, "Sorry."

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JO: Wow! 

GH: Yeah. And they not only did they shut it down, but they had to evacuate homes all around the area. It was quite an ordeal to, say the least.

JO: Man. Now, tell me you didn't have like a Geoff Hurdle Land Brokerage sticker on the equipment or on the sidebar.

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GH: Oh, no. No, no, no. No, I was just... I was there, but I did not have it advertised quite that way. No.

JO: So you were there present, actually, when it happened? 

GH: I was present when it happened. I was onsite for my buyers. Just happened to be. You know, grading's fun, the fun part in transitional land where you're putting a road in or just clearing out a building lot. I love the part of moving the dirt.

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JO: So you had a captivated audience with all those people stopped on the highway? I mean, did you take advantage of that in some way, Geoff? Were you handing out business cards or something? 

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GH: I didn't want to speak to anybody, and I didn't want them speaking to me. As far as they were concerned, it was my fault. And at that point, as far as I'm concerned, it was probably partly my fault. But it wasn't. They were about eight feet off on the locate, and I don't know how I managed to do that. But they're given, I don't know, I think it's like two-third of either direction, and they were way off. So we weren't unscathed from a liability report, but the utility company wasn't. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm sure they caught wind from the county from Southern Bell.

JO: Man. Yeah, eight feet, that's a huge discrepancy.

GH: Mm-hmm, it sure was.

JO: Man. Well, either one of you guys have anything else here you want to share with the listeners as we're kind of wrapping up getting towards the tail end of the podcast? 

DM: No, Justin, just thanks. Thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to do these for the industry. And it's a huge help. And it's an honor to be a part.

GH: I agree. I'm saying thank you both. Thanks, RLI. Thank you, Dan, for joining in. And it's always good to see my fellow family members on the screen and hearing their voice. So y'all have a great day.

JO: Listeners, I hope Dirt Debacles continues to dig up issues and solutions that help you avoid some of the same wild things happening to your land deals. If you're a current RLI member, and you have some crazy stories you'd like to share with us, get in touch and we'll consider having you on the podcast. You just need to go to rliland.com and contact the marketing manager on the staff contact page. And for more expertise on land real estate topics, be sure to check out the RLI blog, follow us on social media, and of course tune in for upcoming episodes of The Voices of Land podcast.

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