Mike Browning

Understand What to Expect With Your Land

Before you decide what to do.

You don’t have to be ready to sell.

But it helps to understand where things stand.

Get your MBR Land Reality Check.

A professional Broker Opinion of Value based on real market activity

Or, if you’d rather see how I think first, scroll below. The Reality Check is linked at the end of most articles.

  • Sign Your Own Checks

    Sign Your Own Checks

    We all need advice, but don’t turn over control.

    I saw an article about Kathy Ireland last week, which said she was suing her longtime business managers. The suit alleges they used a power of attorney she’d granted them to take out loans and open credit cards in her name, and quietly ran up something like $100 million in the process. Ireland says she only found out about this when she and her husband were trying to help one of their kids buy a house, and the mortgage application was denied.

    Probably not much fun to wake up thinking you have a 9-figure net worth, only to find out you can’t cosign on a smaller mortgage.

    I also saw a press release where the managers’ attorney called the suit frivolous. So who really knows? I don’t pay a ton of attention to the news, but maybe one day we will see how it shakes out.

    You see it all the time with athletes on a smaller scale. They sign on with a management firm, give them too much authority and trust, and find out one day that all their money is gone.

    It’s a good reminder that handing someone the pen isn’t the same as getting good advice.

    We all need advice in some areas. So get advice. Get a lot of it. But if the person advising you tells you it’s easier if you just let them handle it, that you don’t need to be bothered with the details, it’s time to find a new advisor.

    Anyone who is my client knows the deal. I will put in the work. And I’ll get you the info you need (good and bad). I’ll explain to you the pros and cons of whatever decision is on the table. And try to help you get where you want to be.

    But you’re going to be the one who makes the decision. And the one who signs your name on anything.

    You don’t need to know everything about your land or your business. You just need to be the one who’s still deciding.

    P.S. Most landowners who request an MBR Land Reality Check aren’t planning to sell. They simply want to know where they stand before they ever need the answer. It’s recent comparable sales, current market activity, and my opinion of what a reasonable buyer might pay today. No obligation to sell. Is it a bad idea to know?

    [Request Your MBR Land Reality Check]

    P.P.S. If you want more like this, I write regularly about land, markets, and what’s happening with growth here in North Texas.

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  • You’d Think I’d Know Better By Now

    You’d Think I’d Know Better By Now

    And I do, except when it comes to the action part.

    You’ve probably read this in a hundred places: It’s good to learn from your own mistakes. It’s better to learn from somebody else’s, because theirs are cheaper.

    Fine advice. Works pretty good on the small stuff. Watch someone touch something hot, and it’s a pretty safe bet you won’t do it yourself.

    Unless you’re me, then you’re going to touch it immediately to see if it really was as hot as the other guy acted like it was.

    Kidding. Sort of. Either way, when it comes to important things the “other guy’s experience” thing doesn’t seem to transfer at all.

    Think about the last time you got a new vehicle. Or moved into a new place. Or had a commission come in bigger than you’d figured on.

    It feels good. For a few days it feels like more than good, like things have finally settled into their right spots, and you catch yourself thinking some version of okay, now we’re fine.

    Then it wears off. Nothing dramatic about it. It just quietly stops being new, and you’re the same man you were before it showed up, sitting in a better truck.

    I’ve run that cycle more times than I care to write down.

    I have gotten better at one part of it. Now I generally know going in that it isn’t going to work. I can see the whole thing coming, before I ever start.

    And I do it anyway.

    Because maybe this time is going to be the one where it all works.

    But if you’re going to borrow a man’s experience on this particular question, you may as well borrow from the one with the best data in history.

    Solomon had more money than anybody. Scripture says he made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones. Wisest man alive on top of it, people traveled in from other countries just to hear him talk. Built the temple. Built himself a house that took thirteen years. Planted vineyards, made gardens and pools, bought herds and servants, hired people to sing to him. Says plainly that he refused himself nothing his eyes wanted.

    Never been a better example to study, and never will be.

    His answer was vapor. Chasing after the wind.

    He wasn’t guessing and he wasn’t broke when he said it. A man who never had “eff you money” saying money won’t satisfy is easy enough to wave off. Solomon had every bit of it and filed the same report.

    And here’s the part that makes it worse. Solomon didn’t have any better luck acting on what he knew than the rest of us do.

    He walked away from God anyway. Wisest man who ever lived, God appeared to him in person twice, and he still finished up with his heart somewhere else.

    Knowing better wasn’t his problem either. Doing better was.

    That’s worth thinking about when we tell ourselves we’ll make the right decision later.

    Wednesday night the Powerball ran up over a billion dollars.

    A billion. With every bit of what I’ve just written sitting right there in my head, did I buy a ticket?

    You bet I did.

    Somebody won it. Wasn’t me. Which is probably a mercy, though I’d have liked the chance to confirm it for myself.

    It was never a shortage of evidence.

    Solomon had the evidence too.

    P.S.

    If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.

    No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

    Just steady time in the Word.

    Check it out here.

    PPS.

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  • Deport Yourself

    Deport Yourself

    (Let me explain.)

    Deport is a town.

    It’s in Lamar County, southeast of Paris, a couple of hours northeast of Dallas if the traffic cooperates… which, headed that direction, it usually does. Farm ground every way you look, a highway through the middle, a few streets on either side of it. I’ve never been. Yet.

    There’s a tract out there that came through my screen, the one I run looking for land priced under its area.

    Around 35 acres with good road frontage, in the $200K range. It’s been sitting a while, and reduced this week. So maybe there’s some motivation.

    There’s a difference between land that’s cheap and land that’s priced wrong. Most cheap land is cheap for a reason. Too much flood, no frontage, an easement straight through the middle, and finding the reason is a lot of what I do in a given week. On this one I haven’t found it yet.

    But it’s also about two hours from most of you.

    I’m not going to dress it up as something it isn’t. It’s not a development deal. Given the size and the frontage, it’d split into three. Above 10 acres you don’t have to plat, and it’s large enough to qualify for an ag exemption. Smaller acreage sells for more per acre than larger, so there’s a faster way out of it if you want one.

    But it’s probably just a quiet buy and hold. Somewhere you park some money with low holding costs.

    I think it’s a good deal, just not an exciting one.

    If you want more specifics email me at mike@browningre.com and we can make that happen.

    It’s been sitting a while. It’ll probably sit a while longer.

    That’s usually how these go, right up until they don’t.

    P.S. I run these screens several times a week and almost nothing survives them. Too much flood, no frontage, an easement through the middle, a solar farm going in next door. When something does make it through, I send a short email to a small list of people who asked to see them.

    No spam, no newsletter, nothing on a schedule. Just a note when there’s actually something worth looking at.

    Check it out here

  • Nobody Ever Wins an Argument

    Nobody Ever Wins an Argument

    (They just get tired of having it.)

    A few years ago I decided to quit discussing politics and current events with other people. For the most part. I still fall into it from time to time, but usually just end up realizing I wasted my time.

    Not because I ran out of things to say. I just noticed something.

    It doesn’t matter how good my facts are, how airtight the logic, or how many times I’ve clearly won the exchange in my own head on the drive home. The other person never once said, “Huh, good point. I’ve changed my mind.”

    They found a different fact. Or decided mine didn’t count. Or got quiet and waited for their turn to talk again.

    It happens with sports too, although the stakes are usually lower. Somebody’s convinced the game is rigged against their team, their quarterback is elite (or he sucks), or the coach should’ve been fired two years ago.

    You can show them the stats. Use logic. Doesn’t matter. They’ve already got their own stats, and if they don’t, they’ll find some. Or make them up.

    I used to think this meant people were just bad at arguing, or too stubborn to admit when they were wrong.

    Then I read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

    Voss spent years as an FBI hostage negotiator, and one of the things he learned was that moving a conversation forward often had less to do with presenting the better argument than making the other person feel understood.

    He’d say things like, “It sounds like you’re feeling backed into a corner,” and then wait. He wasn’t agreeing with them. He wasn’t trying to solve anything yet. He was naming what he thought the other person was feeling and giving them a chance to correct him if he had it wrong.

    And being wrong wasn’t necessarily a problem. When someone corrected him, they were explaining themselves. Now they weren’t defending themselves against his argument. They were helping him understand their position.

    There’s a difference between winning a conversation and actually moving one forward.

    Most every argument I’ve ever “won” ended with the other person more locked in, not less. But when I name what I think someone is thinking or feeling, without immediately trying to fix or correct it, the conversation usually goes somewhere.

    That’s a strange thing to learn from a guy who negotiated with people holding hostages. Stranger still is how often it applies to conversations that have nothing to do with a crisis at all.

    After Jim Camp’s Start With No, Never Split the Difference has probably helped me more with negotiation than any other book. They aren’t the same system, but they’re similar enough that a lot of Voss’s ideas fit naturally with Camp’s.

    Like I’ve said several times, basically everything involves negotiation. So if you get better at it, you improve your life across the board.

    If you’ve read Start With No, I’d recommend Never Split the Difference next.

    Is it crazy to think it’s worth improving a skill that touches almost every area of your life?

    Get It Here

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  • Sticktoitiveness

    Sticktoitiveness

    Didn’t happen fast. But we stayed with it.

    Finally!

    Last Friday we closed on a lot.

    If you’ve been reading here awhile, you know why that feels like a bigger deal than it would have a few years ago. The lot market has been slow the last 2-3 years. Mainly interest rates. Someone building a custom home is usually taking out a sizeable loan, and the rate makes a real difference in the monthly payment.

    So fewer people are building. And if you’re not ready to build, you’re not ready to buy a lot.

    Lots are more extreme than houses that way. Everyone needs somewhere to live, so there’s always some demand for existing homes. The price might have to come down a little to get it moving, but it moves. Nobody needs a new custom home, no matter how much they want one. If a buyer isn’t ready to build, knocking $10K off the lot price doesn’t change that.

    So you wait. And keep doing what’s worked before, because it works again. Just a question of when.

    This one had its fits and starts. Fell off the market twice, came back a month later as a new listing both times. A couple of price reductions. A builder who wanted to put a model home on it, until the HOA told him no. Another builder who made an offer, then decided he couldn’t stick his neck out right now.

    We kept going anyway. Congratulations to the McWhorters, who’ll be building on the lot, their agent Ron King, and Chicago Title in Dallas for handling the details.

    And thanks to my clients, for their patience.

    Selling lots was more fun 4-5 years ago, when everything just came easy. Anyone could do it. Getting one done today means more.

    If you own lots or land, you’re probably not looking to sell right now. That’s probably the right call. But things change fast, and it’s better to know where you stand before you need to than after.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. A clear eyed view of what your property might sell for today, what the market in your area is doing, and what you need to be paying attention to.

    It’s free for the asking, with no obligation or pressure to list. Just accurate information from someone who focuses on non-residential property, not a home seller masquerading as a landman.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand? Give yourself permission to look!

    Get yours here.

    P.S. If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but like reading about land, lots, and the North Texas market, you can get these posts by email instead.

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  • Not a Warning

    Not a Warning

    At least not the way I always heard it explained.

    Last week I wrote about resentment toward latecomers. How we might get a little jealous of people who lived however they wanted for years longer than we did, and still walked away with the exact same deal we got.

    But think about it. Why would we actually feel jealousy?

    If the life we were living beforehand was so great, why did it ever occur to us that something needed to change? And why, once we figured that out, could we not manage the change ourselves? Lucky for us, somebody else could.

    There’s a passage where Jesus talks about counting the cost before you follow Him. Every explanation I ever got made it sound like a warning label. You’re going to give up a lot, so you’d better be sure before you sign on.

    But like usual, the surface reading and the real one aren’t pointed the same direction.

    Living a worldly life means chasing what the world values. Money, status, whatever version of “made it” you’ve picked out for yourself. Sometimes you actually get some of it. And the second you do, you want more. What you did manage to grab tends to slip through your fingers anyway, one way or another, eventually.

    Once you’ve accepted Jesus, some people respect you for it. Plenty more will look down on you, or at least think you’re a little weird. You’ll probably lose some of your appetite for piling up wealth too, because you know good and well there’s something coming after this where none of it will matter.

    Trade a life that doesn’t satisfy you, and that you can’t hold onto anyway, for one that does and that you can’t lose.

    Sounds like a pretty good deal. Not much of a warning at all.

    So maybe we shouldn’t be jealous of the people who show up later. If anything, we should be kicking ourselves for not showing up sooner.

    P.S.-If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.

    No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

    Just steady time in the Word.

    Check it out here.

  • The Ones You Never Heard About

    The Ones You Never Heard About

    Not every deal I lose track of was a bad one.

    A while back I flagged a property that looked promising. Priced well below recent comps, no obvious defects, decent location. The kind of thing I’d usually already have a home for before I even finished looking at the listing.

    This one, I didn’t.

    I made a couple calls. Nobody was in a spot for it right then. One guy just closed something else. Another was focused on a different area. By the time I got to the third call, somebody else had already put it under contract.

    I never even found out who bought it.

    That’s the part that sticks with me. Not that I lost the deal. I didn’t have a deal to lose. I just didn’t have the right person on the other end of the phone in time.

    It happens more than you’d think.

    Most of what I see isn’t worth a second look. Access, utilities, topography, floodplain, buyer demand, surrounding uses, and a dozen other factors kill most of it before it goes anywhere. But every so often something survives all that, and when it does, it doesn’t wait around.

    The properties that are actually underpriced don’t sit on the market long enough for you to find them on your own. Somebody has to already be looking, already know what you want, and already have your number.

    I think there’s a difference between wanting to hear about a good deal and actually being set up to hear about one.

    If you’re not on my list, you’re not missing out on deals I send. You’re missing out on deals I never get the chance to send, because I didn’t know to call you.

    I’m trying to fix that, one name at a time.

    If you’re an investor and want to be one of the calls I make when something survives the filtering, click below and tell me what you’re looking for.

    No obligation. No pressure. Just a way to make sure you’re one of the calls I get to make instead of one of the ones I don’t.

    Is it a bad idea to be on that list?

    Learn About The MBR Buyers Short List

  • Shouldn’t This Be Kept Secret?

    Shouldn’t This Be Kept Secret?

    The answer may surprise you.

    I’ve been writing the last few weeks about Jim Camp’s negotiation masterpiece, Start With No. Along with occasionally trying to talk you into buying a copy and reading it yourself.

    Thanks to those who bought through my link. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. If anything, you’ll probably be surprised how quickly you start seeing opportunities to apply the basics.

    One question comes up pretty often when people hear about systems like this.

    If it’s really that effective, why would you tell anyone about it?

    Wouldn’t you be better off keeping it to yourself?

    It’s a fair question.

    Camp actually addresses it in the book. He said he wished more of his counterparts used the same system he did. Negotiations would be smoother, less emotional, and far more productive.

    Instead of spending days playing games, the cards would get on the table faster. You’d either make the right deal sooner or discover there was never a deal to be made in the first place.

    Both outcomes are wins.

    Obviously getting an agreement is great. But finding out in a day that there’s no deal instead of spending a week chasing one isn’t exactly a loss. It frees both sides to move on to something more productive.

    The difference comes down to principles versus tactics.

    If a finance manager at a car dealership has figured out a handful of tricks that pressure people into buying an overpriced warranty, he doesn’t want those tricks publicized. Once the person across the table understands the game, the game stops working.

    Tactics depend on the other side not knowing what’s happening.

    Principles don’t.

    If you’re asking honest questions, trying to understand what’s really going on, and looking for a deal that makes sense for everyone involved, it doesn’t hurt when the other side understands what you’re doing. In some cases it actually helps.

    Beyond that, I don’t spend much time worrying about other people learning what I know.

    Most people won’t put it into practice anyway.

    And the few who do often become easier to work with, not harder.

    One of the things I like most about Camp’s approach is that it removes much of the tension people normally associate with negotiation. Less pressure. Less posturing. Less pretending.

    Just figuring out whether there’s a deal to be had and, if so, what it looks like.

    Once you learn it, it really does feel like you’re playing a different game than before.

    In a good way.

    And since almost every situation you encounter involves negotiation, getting better at it is one of the highest-leverage investments you can make in yourself.

    It won’t happen overnight.

    But you’ll probably see results faster than you expect.

    Get It Here

    P.S. That link goes through Amazon and I’m an affiliate. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but if you buy the book—or anything else while you’re there—I get a small commission.

  • Everyone But Me

    Everyone But Me

    As it turns out, not everyone.

    I never got into gaming.

    But it felt like everybody else had a console, a headset, and a whole second life happening on a screen I wasn’t looking at. My kids, their friends, plenty of adults…even some older than me. So I made an assumption and never questioned it.

    If everybody’s playing, somebody must be making a fortune.

    Then I read something about Microsoft and the Xbox recently.

    They have spent billions building games, buying studios, and chasing market share, only to discover that popularity and profitability aren’t the same thing. From the outside it looked like an easy business. From the inside it was far more complicated.

    It’s a good reminder that what “everybody knows” is often just the part everyone can see.

    Land works the same way.

    If you own property anywhere near the DFW growth path, you’ve probably heard the stories.

    A neighbor sold for three times what he paid. Somebody got bought out for a data center. A family down the road suddenly became millionaires.

    Those stories spread fast. Before long, they become what “everyone knows.”

    Sometimes they’re even true.

    The problem is that they usually don’t tell you much about your property.

    Land values can change from one road to the next. Sometimes from one side of the fence to the other. Access, utilities, topography, floodplain, buyer demand, surrounding uses, and dozens of other factors can push one tract well above or well below the one everyone keeps talking about.

    That’s why I think there’s a difference between hearing what land is worth and knowing what your land is worth.

    Most people don’t need that answer today. You’re probably not considering selling. You may even plan to never sell.

    But when life changes, a health issue, an estate, a buyer calling unexpectedly, or a family decision, that’s a terrible time to discover you’ve been relying on local folklore instead of current market information.

    P.S.– Most landowners who request an MBR Land Reality Check aren’t planning to sell.

    They simply want to know where they stand before they ever need the answer.

    The report includes recent comparable sales, current market activity, and my opinion of what a reasonable buyer might pay today, without any obligation to sell.

    Is it a bad idea to know?

    Get It Here

    P.P.S.– If you’re not interested in a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and North Texas growth, you can subscribe to my occasional emails below.

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  • Same (Unfair) Deal

    Same (Unfair) Deal

    It was unfair when we were on the receiving end too.

    Last week I wrote about how we tend to read ourselves into Bible stories as the good guy. Job, not the friends. The son who stayed, not the one who left. It’s a habit, and mostly it’s a wrong one. We’re usually standing closer to the other side than we’d like to admit.

    There’s a parable that puts this on full display, and it’s an uncomfortable one if you think about it.

    A landowner goes out at dawn and hires workers for his vineyard, agreeing on a day’s wage. He goes back out at nine, noon, three, even five, an hour before quitting time, and hires more, telling them he’ll pay what’s right. End of the day, he pays the five o’clock crew a full day’s wage. Then the nine o’clock crew. Then the ones who’d been out there since sunrise, sweating through the whole thing. Same amount. Every one of them.

    The all-day workers are furious. Not because they got paid less than promised, they got exactly what they agreed to. They’re furious because somebody else got the same deal for less work. The landowner’s answer is basically, it’s my money, I can be generous with it if I want, and what’s that to you?

    If you’ve already accepted Christ’s offer of forgiveness, it’s easy to look at someone who hasn’t yet and feel a little something when they finally do. Some version of, must be nice, they get everything after they were out there living however they wanted until an hour ago.

    But not too long ago, that was you. Doesn’t feel that way now, but it was.

    It’s not wrong to notice they didn’t earn what they got. Because they didn’t.

    But neither did you. You still don’t deserve it.

    That was the whole point of the deal in the first place. Christ is free to hand out grace to whoever He wants, on whatever timeline He wants, and none of us are in a position to file a complaint about the terms.

    If you’ve already accepted, congratulations. Now maybe quit keeping score on who got a better deal than you, and spend the energy instead trying, and mostly failing, to live like someone who’s actually been given what you now have.

    And if you haven’t accepted yet? It’s free for the asking. You don’t have to clean anything up first. Nothing you’ve done disqualifies you. And once you have it, nobody can take it back.

    And if you get the side eye treatment from some of us, don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be doing the same soon.

    It’s never too late.

    Until it is.

    P.S.- If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.

    No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

    Just steady time in the Word.

    Check it out here.