Land Auction Strategies and Success Stories | Guest Andrew Zellmer, ALC

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Justin Osborn: Welcome to the Realtors Land Institute podcast, The Voice of Land, the industry's leading land and real estate organization. This is Justin Osborne, ALC with the Wells Group in Durango, Colorado. On today's episode of the Voices of Land podcast, we're talking to RLI member and Accredited Land Consultant (ALC), Andrew Zellmer.

JO: He's a land agent with People's Company in Clive, IOWA. He has been in the land real estate industry since he graduated from the University of Northern IOWA in May of 2012. He's an agent and shareholder on the auction team for People's Company. He was the former president of IOWA RLI and has been an Apex Award winner every year it was offered through RLI. Welcome to the podcast, Andrew.

Andrew Zellmer: Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you guys and catch up.

JO: Well, that's cool hearing that you've qualified for the APEX Award every year it's been out. I mean, just from my recollection, that's what, maybe six or seven years now? 

AZ: Yeah, I was trying to think what year it started. I know Eric O'Keefe is a good friend of mine and with the land report, and I know being involved in RLI and working with Eric, kinda the first year they offered it, I remember applying and continue to apply every year. And that's always a fun dinner and it's fun to recognize and be around a lot of high performers and hear about a lot of cool transactions that happened at the national conference and really, really enjoy that competitive side. But, you know, yet still just meeting like a bunch of great people through that event. And yeah, so it's been a great thing to be a part of.

JO: Yeah, I hear you. And I strongly second that, man. It's always one of my probably most fun events at the National Land Conference is the APEX Dinner. That's always a top shelf event.

AZ: Yeah, I keep on hearing about these deals of the year. And I hope I run into one of those one year 'cause these 50, $100 million deals sound pretty cool. I've worked on some cool projects, but not quite that big. So, but yeah, no, it's an awesome event. And one I always try to look forward to and one of the, like you said, best parts of the national conference.

JO: Well, let's talk about how you kinda fell into the auction career. I mean, I understand getting your real estate license right out of college. You know, I did the same thing, but you don't find too many people that kinda get led down that auction path. So tell me a little bit how that happened.

AZ: Yeah, you know, actually I went to University of Northern IOWA and I actually thought I wanted to be a teacher. So my brother was a teacher, was a business teacher. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna go be a teacher 'cause it looks like he's having fun. And I went and did, I guess, a job shadow at one of the schools that was close to there in Waterloo. And after I got done with that job shadow, I decided I'm not gonna be a teacher. So I got into real estate and finance. And through that, I was in a club there. It's called Row Epsilon. And Steve Brewer, who's the president of People's Company, actually would come and present at that.

AZ: And I thought I was gonna go into commercial real estate. Even though I came from a small town, I always thought maybe the luxurious life of a commercial real estate agent, you know, selling big buildings and going from city to city kinda sounded cool or something I was somewhat interested in. And then I met Steve and he's like, Aren't you from a small town of about, you know, 1200 people? And I said, yeah. He said, Didn't your grandpa and uncle farm and your dad used to farm a little bit? And I said, Yeah. He's like, you don't wanna be a commercial real estate agent. You need to come check out this land business. And he started talking about the demographics and the turnover, you know, that was gonna come. I think there's an IOWA State study that he would always point to that 65% of the land is owned by someone 70 or older. It's a statistic similar like that that IOWA State came out with. And just talking about that transition of wealth that's gonna happen and how all that land is gonna either need to be appraised, managed or sold.

AZ: And I thought that was pretty intriguing. And so it just so happened, May of 2012, you know, I was trying to kinda looking for a couple of different jobs. And Steve said, you know, Hey, if you wanna do this, this is great. We're not gonna pay as much. You're gonna do a year apprenticeship. But I think in the long run, it'll be worth it. And so that's how I joined People's Company. I worked under another guy named Matt Adams, who Matt is a well-known broker in IOWA here. In fact, I think in the apex this year, he was the top auction sales and kinda for the whole awards.

AZ: And he's a really talented broker. So I was lucky enough to work under him and another guy in our office named Ron Beach. And so that first year I did an apprenticeship under those two or we call it we call it the starvation plan. But basically, you work under those people for a year and the company helps pay part of your salary and the agents help pay part of your salary. And it's just a way to learn, you know, you see a lot of the, you know, you get the listing and the auction and you get the closing, the big commission check, but you don't realize all the work that goes into it and how hard that is to build. So the starvation plan is good for two reasons.

AZ: One, it kinda trains you to not live off much money, but you have enough to kinda kinda survive just a little bit. But then also you get to work under some talented agents. And I was luckily lucky enough to work with Matt and Ron and kinda learn how they look at the business and what their strengths were and try to apply to my own. And I've been lucky enough now that I've had three agents underneath me who went through the same program and went out on their own. And I think it's a really cool thing. And land business is hard, but and it takes a little time, but I guess there's no better time than when you're young to figure that out.

JO: Yeah, I totally agree with that, man there's there's a whole lot more fun, I think, in the land business than the commercial business. I mean, in southwest Colorado, where I'm at, you know, I do quite a bit of commercial, but we don't have like full blown just commercial real estate brokers like they have in the big cities but man, it's a pretty cutthroat world when you get into that commercial real estate business. And I definitely have more fun selling land, you know, riding around looking at ranches than you do looking at looking at a big, empty office building.

AZ: Yeah, no. And I've kinda gotten to a few specialty, I would say, like ag commercial, like right now I'm selling a beef processing plant and like just random things like that. So I still get a little taste of the commercial. But yeah, I just think and you know this being in it, but the people that are in the land business are just better to deal with on the most part. A lot of that commercial business, I don't know, it's way more cutthroat, like you said. And from what I've talked to, it's tougher people to deal with and not that there's not some stubborn people that we deal with every now and then. But most people in the land business are pretty good to deal with. So that that makes it a whole lot better, I think.

JO: Yeah, I totally agree. Now, when it comes to the actual auctions, are you selling 90% of your properties via auction? Are you still selling some traditional bid ask or tell me a little bit about kinda what that ratio looks like? 

AZ: Yeah, so I would say 22 and 23, I would say 80 to 90% of our business was auction. It feels like kinda moving into 2024. That's kinda came back a little bit. The market's probably backed off, I don't know, 5-10% from where it was. And so I would say now we're probably closer to 60-65% auction. The rest would be more of traditional listing. And it honestly, it just depends on the market. As you know, if there's an area where maybe there hasn't been quite as many sales, the market's been really hot here in '22 and '23 as far as not only sale prices, but number of tracks that were sold. So we had a lot of buyers that bought things over the last few years.

AZ: You gotta be really careful on what you're taking to auction. Now, in the Midwest, and especially in IOWA and in Illinois, where we do a lot of business, Southwest Wisconsin, I would say auction is the preferred method that people are used to. So having an auction is just kinda common place in a lot of these areas. So that's how a lot of people sell stuff. But we kinda judge each property on its merits and how competitive we think it is. And that's kinda how we sit down and try to decide, you know, hey, is it better as a traditional listing? Is there one person that's gonna be interested or a few parties, or is there gonna be multiple where a competitive bidding environment such as an auction kinda makes some sense? 

JO: Now, how much of that depends on the property itself? Let's call it the product versus the price. And the reason I ask is, I mean, pardon my ignorance, but we just don't have a lot of auctions where we're at unless we intentionally try to cause a bidding war.

JO: So I'll go into my sellers and I'll always give them two prices. You know, it's all right, price A is where I know I can price the property, and we'll get multiple offers, likely somewhere between, you know, three and six, and buyers will bid the price up, and it'll land somewhere in this range. Or we can go to price B and be prepared to negotiate, and we're probably gonna land in that same range, but that's me intentionally trying to cause a bidding war. So what's your method? 

AZ: Yeah, it just depends on product type. Like I would say, you know, there's more tillable ground, I guess, here than probably what you deal with to a certain degree. And that's kinda the high quality tillable ground is very competitive. So in those areas, there's multiple buyers, not only local farmers and neighbors, but also investor buyers that are interested in buying those class A and class B plus farms. So those are usually the ones we try to get an auction and create a competitive bidding environment. And that seems to create the best price.

AZ: It's probably similar to you pricing yours at a level where you think you're gonna get competitive offers. The reason we like offers is for our seller, it sets the terms, they know when the close date is, and it puts people's feet to the fire. And a lot of times that creates some urgency to go out and do something, and it creates a competitive bidding environment. Where like on a recreational property, we're probably, you know, people are a little more, one person might come in and love how it's set up for recreation wise, but another person may not. So it's a little more what's your taste. So on that, a lot of times will be more of a traditional listing.

AZ: The other thing would be if we're maybe it's a sub quality farm where maybe there's not some good, not so good drainage, or maybe there's some sandy soils in it or some CRP that's mixed. There's just not gonna be as many bidders or as many aggressive bidders. A lot of times we'll choose a listing. So that's kinda the first thing, you know, when we're going to look at a property and after we go buy the property, it's like, what's the best fit for this? You know, is it an auction or is it a listing? And I think we'll get into this a little bit later, but then the next, if it is an auction, what type of auction and how does that look versus a listing? 

AZ: So a lot of that, you know, is just doing your due diligence upfront and kinda knowing the market, what's sold around there and what your buyer pool is. Every county and every township in the county might be slightly different, you know, as far as the number of aggressive bidders. And, you know, the thing to make an auction successful is you need at least two people that are gonna be aggressive, where sometimes if you have a listing, right, you only need the right person to come and make the bid that kinda makes the ground sell. So that's kinda what we look at it on a day to day basis.

JO: And would you say the majority of your auctions are absolute? 

AZ: So typically, typically they're reserved. So most of them are reserved. Now, we're very upfront with people, right? We don't wanna take, we don't wanna take an auction on to have a no sale. It's not good for the seller. It's not good for the people that are there that are showing their hand and putting the time in to try to buy a farm. So I think the main thing is just education upfront, you know, showing comparable sales, showing what we think the market is, and then putting a reasonable reserve on the property prior to taking it to auction. And honestly, a lot of times there's been a couple of times where people have higher expectations than where we think we can probably get it unless it's a really, really good sale. And we say, Hey, we're probably not a good fit for you 'cause that we're gonna do nothing but hurt you by take this to auction if your expectation is 15,000 an acre and we can only get to 13,000, it's not gonna help anybody. So in that situation, maybe we say, Hey, we might be able to list it for you there and see what happens. And, you know, kinda like you talked about, you know, have the higher price and then expect negotiating down.

AZ: But in the auction scenario, we just wanna make sure that everyone's on the same page because despite us having a reserve, the last thing we wanna do is have a no sale. But we also, you know, things happen. COVID, grain prices could fall a dollar, two days before the sale. Something could happen with interest rates and they rise up. And for whatever reason, we don't want that seller to sell it on a short term. You know, if we think the farm's worth more than it is. So at the end of the day, we wanna be on the same page on what the reserve is. But we also wanna just make sure that we're doing what's best for our sellers. And so that's why a lot of times we worked off a reserve basis instead of an absolute.

AZ: There is situations, though, where the absolute auction, you know, we've had some properties that have been out there for a long time being listed. And, you know, they really need to sell. So to show people that we're serious about selling, you know, we'll put it absolute. But every scenario is a little bit different. Normally, we have them reserved.

JO: Now, you mentioned investors a little while back. And, you know, that's something that I deal with a lot of investors, obviously not for auctions and tillable ground like you do. But are they saying the same thing to you? Like, all right, it's farm ground. We know we're not gonna get a 6% return, but we're willing to bid up as high as we can get a 2.5% or 3% return. Or are they bidding and speculating? They're buying that property based on future appreciation.

AZ: Yeah, I mean, it just depends on the investor. But a lot of our investors, you know, especially if they're participating in the auction market, they just want class A farms. And unfortunately, the only place to get class A farms is to go and compete. So it might, you know, the one thing about class A farms are just, you know, really good farms in the Midwest is they appreciate the fastest when the market goes up. And when the market starts to come down, they don't depreciate. You know, they're slower to follow than maybe a mid quality farm.

AZ: So if you look at that and you think about that, that's why some people just see them as a store of value. And so when we see when we see investors, maybe they put 5% of their portfolio of their land or 10% of their portfolio in their land holdings. They might take just a super high quality farm and they know that it's not gonna have a great return, but they also know they're not gonna see the up and down that you might see in a middle quality farm or a farm if something happens in the economy. So what we find a lot of times is those investors aren't so much worried about cap rates. They're just more worried about quality and holding their money together. So I always say it's kinda like some of these ultra wealthy guys that are out buying Class A farmlands. They kinda see it as like their bond portfolio, right? It's their safe money. They know they're gonna get a little bit of return, but they're not gonna they're not worried about pulling back in price and long term they still think they're gonna be some appreciation. So a lot of times it's an appreciation or holding value. And, you know, it's no different than owning Class A commercial real estate.

AZ: You wanna own the best of the best and with the best location and the best soil. So that's what we see a lot on the investor side, especially if they're gonna participate in auctions, 'cause the problem with gonna an auction for an investor that is looking mostly at return is you don't know where the price is gonna end up. So you probably could go to 15 auctions and strike out at every single one. Right. So there's gotta be, you know, you can put a price on every auction. It just takes a lot of time. So it seems like those investors enjoy the private listings, more off market deals that we put together and we work a lot with those as well. But the investors we see participating in auctions are more looking for grade A farms.

JO: Okay...

AZ: And grade A areas.

JO: Yeah, that makes sense. So all right. So let's walk through the process. You know, we've got these listeners all over the country right now. There's obviously been more more agents get their license than ever. And so let's say there's a newer agent, maybe less than five years out there, who's got a client, a seller in their pocket that they're thinking, Ok, maybe we're gonna bring this farm to market. But hey, I'm listening to this podcast. Maybe an auction is a good opportunity. Is there an opportunity for that agent that's worth a totally different company to come in and hire you and collaborate and y'all work together to get that sold? Or do you say, No, we've gotta take the listing. You can give us a referral fee, get out of our way and we'll sell it.

AZ: We we've done a little bit of both, to be honest with you. And but yeah, there is an opportunity to work alongside us. There's there's multiple agents that we work with that don't have an auction team that really fits them. And a lot of times we'll we'll team up. And I'm just thinking up in North Dakota, we have an agent named Lindsey Brown. And Lindsey has a really good relationship with a guy out of North Dakota who works for a REMAX agent, a REMAX agency up there that doesn't have an auction team. But they seem to they're kinda up by the Fargo area and they seem to run into quite a bit of farm ground. So a lot of times we'll partner with them and we'll, you know, co-brand it People's Company and, you know, REMAX or whoever the other company is. And we'll work it together and we'll market it together and put it both of our websites. But then, you know, we have the auction team with the experience that can come in and execute the day of the auction and the sale. And it's not just them. There's multiple people that we've kinda partnered with before on those type of auctions.

AZ: And I was trying to think I was I was asking. I didn't get a for sure answer. But we're licensed in 30 states, people's companies across the country. I think we did auctions in 16 or 17 of those states over the last few years. So we've, you know, we've done auctions from, you know, the Delta to the Pacific Northwest of the Midwest to Kansas, kinda kinda all over the place to be honest, Michigan and on all types of different properties. So if it's a good fit, one thing we'll tell you, if we think it's a good fit for an auction, the next thing would be we're happy to either partner or some people just say, Hey, why don't you take that and go run with that, and then we'll, you know, we'll take a referral. So either way, we're very open and flexible. It just depends on the situation and how much someone wants to be involved.

JO: Well, that makes sense. And I think that's a perfect opportunity to do a little plug for the rliland.com website. Find a land consultant tool is on there. And our listeners can go there. They can find an agent who understands the geography, specializes in auctions, and get hooked up with somebody like you or like me that's in a different part of the country. But they need to go to find a land consultant tool on the RLI website in order to do that.

AZ: Yeah, and I think that's great. I've used that personally when I have things for sale or clients that come to me had a deal in New Mexico the other day. And it's like, who does deals in New Mexico? So just trying to find. And I think it's such a great tool. And you want to be a good resource to your clients. You might as well use the professionals that know what they're doing. And that's the group at RLI. And that's the ALCs and the people working for their ALCs there at RLI.

JO: Absolutely. Well, give me some good stories, man. I don't get to go to these auctions living out here. So I'd love to hear some actual stories about craziness that goes down at some of these auctions.

AZ: Yeah, first, I'll just run into. So there's a lot of different types of auctions. So I'll give a quick overview on that quick. And then I'll go into a few of the stories that we've had over the years. So a lot of people think of an auction. It's a live auction. You show up. There's an auctioneer, a few ring-men. Anymore, it's just as important to have the live and online component just because through COVID, online bidding became so popular. And so a lot of times, people will do just an online auction or they'll have the live component with an online component in the room. And that's nice because the one thing that it does is it allows people to, however they're comfortable bidding. A lot of people are comfortable now with COVID, sitting at home and bidding that way. After COVID, it seemed like that was more comfortable than it was prior. But they're still, I would say, like I said earlier, if 65% of the land's owned by someone 70 or older, a lot of those guys still like to come and drink a cup of coffee and sit in the room and bid that way. And so you want to be able to accommodate as many different people as possible. And so I think that's something to think about, I guess.

AZ: The other thing is one thing we do is we work on multi-partial auctions. And multi-partial auctions work well when there's a large property. And you can split it into multiple tracks. And it gives the small buyers a chance to compete on the pieces that they want, but also the person that wants to come in and buy the whole thing to come in and bid on the whole thing. And it creates a competitive environment. So we have a software we use and a team of, depending on how many tracks we have, 10 to 15 people that are working those. And those auctions take a little bit longer. And they're a little more involved, but they're always interesting. So we do quite a few of those in Kansas. So if you followed some of our larger auctions we've had or been, go to our website, you can see in Kansas, we've probably done five or six of those. And that's a pretty common thing there. And some of them we've had 20 tracks. We've had 11 different buyers and then other ones we've had one big buyer that compete with the 11 buyers. So it's nice to give everybody that opportunity to buy and do what they want to with that.

JO: Let me interrupt you real quick, if you don't mind. Cause we did have one of those in Dolores, like 12 years back. And if it's the same thing that I think you're talking about, it was, all the small guys, there was 10, 12 parcels, they each thought they were getting them. But then at the end, the big guy had the opportunity to basically outbid them all. Even after they thought they got kind of had it locked up, the big guy came in and bought the whole thing and outbid all of them. Is that kind of like what you're talking about? 

AZ: So the thing with that is yeah, communication. So you go through the first round of bidding and you set a price on each individual track, right? So if there's 10 tracks, you have a price on each track and you kind of get it set. And then you go in and do any combinations you want. So if someone wants to put a few of them together or bid on the whole thing, but then it keeps going until bidding stops. And then you set a timer and kind of, and you'll kind of know in the room when bidding starting to slow down, but it's crazy. Some of those auctions can last eight, nine, 10 hours and can kind of wear people out to be honest with you. So it's very important to have a team that knows what they're doing because if you don't get a good starting opening bids on a lot of those tracks, it can be a long, long day.

AZ: In fact, you asked for kind of a funny story. So we did a sale in Southeast South Dakota. So Clay County, South Dakota, by kind of in between Sioux City, Iowa and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, right off Interstate 29. And we were working for a bank and selling 5300 acres in 33 different parcels. And there was a mix between high quality stuff and some recreational stuff and some bottom stuff. So it was just a weird mix of parcels. And we, it was a kind of between a guy in Texas who had come up and was working with a large dairy that was trying to potentially put in a new dairy. And he was bidding against, I think we had 13 individuals that were bidding kind of back and forth. And the auction took 10 and a half hours to get done. It was just one of those that took forever. And there was just a ton of tracks. And our auctioneer, Jared Chambers at the time, he didn't go to the restroom once. He didn't take one break. So we always, we gave him at Christmas, the Ironman Award at our company party because I was working that day and I got some food, I got a drink, I went to the restroom. He was 10 and a half hours on that mic and never left. So it was kind of a funny story to see how that went about it.

AZ: And so that was, that's one of our, that's one of the stories I think about those multi-par auctions. And that's the longest one we've ever had, but that's also a lot of tracks, 32 tracks in one day and then paperwork afterwards. That was, that night I slept about as good as I think I ever have, so.

JO: Man, that's impressive that he was able to pull that off. That's crazy.

AZ: Yeah, and you asked for some other good stories. One that's kind of funny and Matt might get mad at me for telling it, but this was before I started People's Company about two years before. Matt was a few years in the business and he had booked an auction and for whatever reason, him and the auctioneer got their dates mixed up on what day the auction was. So Matt showed up at the auction, two hours early getting set up. And Jim, who was our auctioneer at the time, Jim Kern wasn't there. And he's kind of like, well, maybe Jim just run a little bit late, no big deal. So finally after like another half an hour, Matt calls him and Jim didn't answer. And he's like, okay, well, he might be on the way. 20 minutes later, Matt called him back and Jim answers. And Jim said, no, I have it down for next week. And so didn't have an auctioneer. So Matt got to cry his own auction, be his own auctioneer. So he's been a Ringman plenty of times, but that was good practice.

AZ: But that was way back in the day. And now we have checks and balances, right? As a company, as you grow, you kind of learn, you learn things that you got to do. One is to double check your health, a couple of days before the auction to make sure they're going to be there. In fact, now we even have backup plans in place. And we have about five auctioneers on staff and a lot of them are working, multiple of them are working the same auctions just in case we have something like that come up.

JO: Yeah, those are the types of things that'll lead you to put a system in place real quick something like that happens.

AZ: Yeah, so now I wish I would have been there that day to be honest with you. But now that one is one that always gets brought up at the company meetings, so.

JO: That's great. And you recently got your ALC, right? 

AZ: I did, yeah. I had my classes done in plenty of time. I just needed to turn around and take the test. We're really lucky here in Iowa. We have a great chapter and they offer a lot of classes that are close. So I was lucky enough to get to take all my classes through the Iowa chapter to get mine and was able to do that over a three and a half year period. I think I took all my classes. So really excited to finally get that done and get that finished up. And honestly, I tell anybody who's working toward it, it's not as bad as it seems, right? The classes are great. You meet a lot of great people. In fact, I had you for recreational land class. You were in the basement. We were in the basement in Nevada at Hertz's office I think is where you taught me that I'm pretty sure because that's where I took a fair amount of our classes. And that was a really good class. And I've got to meet a lot of great people that I stay in contact with.

AZ: And honestly, I was kind of dreading putting together the booklet or the kind of showing transaction history and stuff, but it was kind of fun to go back and visit some of the old transaction I've done and think through them. And the test wasn't near as bad as I thought it was gonna be. So I was really happy to get that done. And I know a lot of people are pushing because I know kind of the requirements are changing for that. So if you're thinking about it, push through, get it done. It's not near as bad as you think. And honestly, it's great. All the people I've met and all the things I learned, you think you know a lot being in the business for 12 years, but man, there wasn't one class I didn't pick up a thing or two or meet somebody that was worth my time. And I tell you what, the continuing education hours, I'd way rather take them in that setting with those people than take them online and click through some boring house or law deal that you need to do. So I would say to anybody thinking or about trying to do it, just dig in and do it. The classes are great.

AZ: In fact, I'm gonna start taking the classes again because they're great to get continuing ed hours too. And you always meet somebody and it's always just fun to do, so.

JO: Well, yeah, that's a great plug, man. And you are fortunate to be in an area where you can take them all in person. I know that's not an opportunity for everybody. But yeah, when you guys flew me up there and I was teaching, I love seeing that part of the country. And there was a lot of stuff I remember walking away from, just learning from you guys in the class because that's a part of the country that I don't sell real estate in. So it's nice being in person. You just get a lot more camaraderie happening and you get a lot more people willing to kind of open up and share stories than when they're sitting behind a screen sometimes.

AZ: Yeah, no, I agree with that. And same thing I'd say, we learned a lot from you and how you look at things differently. And that's good to see something different or how someone, sometimes when you get in an area, you can kind of get stuck in your ways with how things are done or how they've been doing. But it's always good to get new perspective and new ideas. And yeah, so I took a lot away from a lot of those classes that I was in.

JO: Well, you just keep setting me up for these little plugs I wanna give, man. So that's another good one where I wanna tell our listeners that, folks, if you wanna become an expert in the land business and just be the best there is out there, consider earning your ALC like Andrew just recently did. There's the land courses that will build your competency and confidence when conducting land transactions. And they'll earn you credit towards the education requirements for the ALC designation. If you wanna see upcoming courses, please go to the Learn tab on the RLI website, rliland.com. Well, Andrew, as we're wrapping up, man, anything else you wanna make sure our listeners know about? 

AZ: Yeah, no, I just think I really appreciate being on here. You guys choose me. I know Tracy, who's our administrator with Iowa Chapter, she's the best and she kinda got me in touch, but it's really good to catch up with you. And yeah, land market's still strong in the Midwest and we're still staying plenty busy and look forward to a few more RLI classes coming up here and seeing you maybe next year at the National Land Conference again.

JO: Oh yeah, it's definitely something that goes on my calendar. If I can, my wife and I try to make it a priority to be at every single one of them. Well, Andrew, thanks for joining us today. And if a listener wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that? 

AZ: Yeah, you can either get ahold of me in my email, which is andrewz@peoplescompany.com or my cell phone number, 712-898-5913. Again, appreciate the time and look forward to seeing you down the road here.

JO: All right, you as well. 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.