Brad Haynes In The News

April 8th, 2006
'Dirt Peddler'
Front Royal land broker has mastered the art of the deal

By James Heffernan
Daily Staff Writer
FRONT ROYAL - Before he made millions peddling country properties, B.K. Haynes peddled peanuts on the streets of Washington and organized variety shows for Korean War veterans at military bases and hospitals in and around the city. A struggling entertainer, he forced himself to go to business school, financing his education through the G.I. bill and by street vending and mucking out horse stalls.

In 1963, determined to escape the nation's capital and get a piece of the recreational land boom taking place west of the Blue Ridge, Haynes shelled out 50 bucks on a riverfront property along the Shenandoah with the dream of starting a boy's camp. A few months later, he traded the lot for a shell cabin on five acres and opened a riding stable, and a career of hustling land was born. "They were fencing everything off," Haynes recalls. "I had to get somewhere where I could ride."

For 40 years, Haynes, who grew up in poverty, has made a living - and a lucrative one - by convincing cityslickers to invest in country real estate. With creative ad-writing and inherent rustic charm - in the early years, he liked to close a deal on horseback - he has sold, developed and brokered an estimated 300 square miles of land over a four-state region surrouding the Shenandoah National Park. "He has a knack for identifying what people are looking for, and he's developed a formula that has proved to be fairly accurate over the years," says son Brett Haynes, himself an agent with Coldwell Banker Commercial Properties in Winchester. "He can really paint a picture. His ads say it all."

After launching a successful real estate corporation and becoming a millionaire by 1969, Haynes went into semi-retirement for the next decade, spending most of his time writing, traveling, helping to raise his son and enjoying life, only returning to work when he felt he needed the cash.

"As a parent, he was always very much involved," Brett Haynes remembers. "He went on field trips, and he was always bringing kids out to the farm. He was as big a kid as the rest of us. It's something I'm trying to emulate as a dad myself."

In the 1980s, B.K. Haynes started his own publishing company to support his writing habit, taught a college course on land development, rebuilt his development company, downsized it again after the recession of 1990, and returned to a life of relative leisure.

These days, when he isn't brokering land deals or advising potential investors, he can be found reading, writing, playing the piano, riding horses or flying his Piper Super Cub airplane, which has its own private airstrip on his 250-acre Warren County cattle farm. "I just finished [reading] the book "The Mature Mind," which encourages people in their retirement years to do what they want to do," says Haynes, who at 72, looks like he just stepped out of an epic American novel, his Western hat and bush jacket hugging a lean frame.

Now in the twilight of his real estate career, Haynes is revisiting his first love: music. He is a partner in the live musical show playing in Branson, Mo., entitled "No. 1 Hits of the 60s." A singer-songwriter, he is currently recording a CD entitled "Heartbreak County," which will be released under the name Brad Haynes.

He is the author of six books, mostly how-to guides on investing in country properties and a novel, "The idealEstate Man," about a developer who blows up a Nevada casino just before Elvis is set to perform there and joins "a misguided band of idealists from the West Coast who wage a campaign of violence against the establishment." Three of his books - "Golden Treasury of the 100 Greatest Country Real Estate Ads," "Dirt Peddler: How I Turned $50 into $10 million in Country Property" and "The Habitual Millionaire" - are due to be published this year.

Haynes is the first to admit that the world doesn't need another short-cut book about making money. However, "experience teaches us much too slowly," he is fond of saying, and "knowledge … should be imparted, not hoarded."

That belief has landed him in some uncomfortable situations, most recently as an unknowing participant in the "Ultimate Hippie Vacation" last year with a 24-year-old deadbeat that he won in an auction on eBay. Ever the salesman, Haynes, who at the time claimed he was bidding on the bus, ventured to show the young man "how to take the money he received from the eBay auction and turn it into a new future," but the odd couple's bus trip lasted only a week.

Haynes says his books have helped millions of readers realize financial independence. Smart investing in land, he says, can make just about anyone rich.

"It makes me happy when people make money."

Haynes' books blend his personal testimony with a historian's perspective and lessons in psychology and philosophy.
Asked about the current bubble in the real estate market, Haynes defers to a code he has developed: "DEEP PLACE." The individual letters are a foreshadowing of things to come - the "D," for example, stands for deep trouble for the country at the end of the decade, when access to credit and ready cash will be tight; the "E" signals that the economy will be in turmoil; the second "E" refers to the upcoming presidential election year (2008), when history shows an economic decline and calamity, such as war or a natural disaster; the "P" stands for a precursor to this twin disaster such as a stock market crash or terrorist scare.

Haynes says he is not predicting another Great Depression, only "a serious economic setback" that will send shock waves through the market.

"If the past is any guide, prices will go up and then level off," Haynes says. "Expect it to be highly liquid at the end of the decade. Untested and ill-advised investors could lose their shirts." Smart investors, meanwhile, will be prepared to pluck enormous benefits from a down market, he says.

For his many contributions, Haynes was named in March the Virginia Businessman of the Year by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's fundraising arm. The award recognizes "the top U.S. business leaders who have successfully integrated business and financial success with the support of Republican issues like tax cuts and debt reduction," according to a spokesman.

"I probably was a liberal at one time … but I guess I've given them a lot of donations over the years," Haynes says of the award. "Maybe they saw me at some book signings and so forth. And I've done some deals with politicians looking for land out here. … It's probably a combination of things."


Haynes is the new owner of the 200-acre Buffalo Gap Community Camp in Capon Bridge, W.Va.

"I guess things have come full circle. I came here wanting to start a camp and now I own one."

R Contact James Heffernan at jheffernan@nvdaily.com

Copyright 2006. Shenandoah Publishing House Inc.



March 14 2004

The Washington Post Magazine
Hills of Gold by Bill Thomas;
B.K. Haynes knows two things that have made him rich: Washington's huddled masses yearn to breathe free. And they're willing to pay for it [FINAL Edition]

The Washington Post - Washington, D.C. Author: Bill Thomas Date: Mar 14, 2004 Start Page: W.20 Section: MAGAZINE Text Word Count: 3652

After almost four decades in the business of buying and selling country real estate, B.K. Haynes has seen all kinds of customers. So he wasn't too surprised a few years ago when a stretch limo pulled up outside his stately office building in Front Royal, Va. He wasn't even that surprised when Warren Beatty and his wife, Annette Bening, got out.

"You're a long way from Hollywood," his secretary said when the two movie stars appeared at the front door.

Before Haynes bought the 75-year-old mansion and converted it into his company headquarters, the place belonged to one of Beatty's relatives. Turns out, as kids growing up in Arlington, Beatty and his actress sister Shirley MacLaine used to spend their summer vacations there.

"I guess he just wanted to show his wife around," says Haynes. "They went up in the attic, down in the basement, all over the place."

Actually, it wasn't the first time Beatty had dropped by for a visit. He was in town with his girlfriend, Diane Keaton, when they were a hot item back in the 1980s. "Nice women, both of them, though Bening did seem a little bored," as Haynes recalls.

Maybe that explains why he and Beatty never talked real estate, which, Haynes admits, is rare for him, since real estate is usually all he talks about. But if Beatty had seen the newspaper ad for some mountain property Haynes just put on the market, he'd probably be out there right now doing location scouting. The ad reads like a pitch for an action thriller.

Adventurers Wanted

For hike-in 40-acre wilderness camp at close to 2,500 ft. elev. Poss. 4WD access over hazardous Afghanistan-type road. Mountainous foreclosure. Site of recent drug bust. Ransacked camping trailer. Possible isolation in winter. Bears, Wildcats. Spring. Creek. ATV trails. Views to eternity. For hikers, hunters, loners. $99,500, $500 dn. with good credit, take over pmts. Strasburg, VA area, 90 min. west of D.C. Call or e-mail for directions to hike 1 1/2-mi. trail. B.K. Haynes Land Brokers

Haynes has gotten several nibbles on the campsite without any offers, he tells me when I give him a call about interviewing him for this story. That's normal, he says. For this kind of real estate, a remote parcel of cliffs and boulders high on Great North Mountain near the West Virginia border, he likes dealing only with qualified buyers.

Meaning people with good credit?

"Not exactly," he replies. "If they can hike two miles up the mountain, they're qualified."

In a shrewd piece of salesmanship, Haynes is daring potential clients to inspect on their own an almost vertical section of property that could send them to the hospital before they ever have a chance to sign on the dotted line. He's never believed in a lot of hand-holding, he says. Besides, at age 70, he's got better, and safer, things to do than take people on rock-climbing expeditions.

The see-it-yourself approach is his way of sizing up prospects. In this case, though, he's looking for a special buyer, someone who doesn't mind taking on a certain amount of physical risk with his purchase. The more we talk, or I should say the more Haynes talks, the less I care about bear attacks or even the hundred-grand asking price. This guy has me hooked. Suddenly, I'm telling myself I could live in the high country. True, occasional allergies might be a problem, not to mention a nagging fear of heights. But first things first: Do I have what it takes just to scale a mountain slope so far off the beaten path that it's half-hidden by cloud cover? Am I qualified?

There's only one way to find out.

But what's this about a drug bust? And don't foreclosures make people mad?

Haynes assures me I shouldn't be worried. It seems the Warlocks, a motorcycle gang accused of selling cocaine up and down the Shenandoah Valley, had turned the 40-acre site into their weekend retreat. Until last year, that is, when Haynes foreclosed and the authorities put the offending bikers in jail. At least he thinks they're in jail.

There are two ways to drive from Washington to Front Royal: the fast way on Interstate 66; or the slow way via Route 211, where the scenery, as you get closer to the Blue Ridge Mountains, makes it hard to keep your eyes on the road. I choose the fast way, not because I want to bypass the natural beauty of Northern Virginia. Instead, I want to see how suburban sprawl is fueling a land boom in the western part of the state, and from 66 you get a pretty good idea.

One of the cardinal rules in real estate is that development follows major highways. Soon after 66 appeared, subdivisions, shopping centers and industrial parks began pushing westward from Annandale and Vienna into what used to be rural Virginia. As a result, at almost any time of day the 20 miles of interstate from the Beltway to Manassas is a moving parking lot. It isn't until three lanes of westbound traffic downsize into two and the exit for Nissan Pavilion vanishes in the rearview mirror that actual country- side appears, the thing, presumably, that attracted people out here in the first place, then disappeared as soon as they arrived.

This point also marks the beginning of Virginia hunt country, once an untouchable preserve of wealth and wide-open spaces now feeling the pinch of 10-acre "farmettes." A quick glance at Haynes's Web site before I left home showed that he sells farmettes and "forestettes," too. Personally, I have no problem with either one, but that's not the sentiment in these parts. The area I'm driving through -- Loudoun and Fauquier counties -- has some very tough growth-management laws; even so, there's no telling how long limited- access zoning can hold back the inevitable spread of development.

All of which makes moving farther and farther west an absolute necessity for some people. With certain pieces of rural land going for less than a two-bedroom condo in Centreville, who wouldn't be interested in having a look around? And Front Royal, a town of 14,000 between the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians, is where the looking often starts.

"Make yourself comfortable," says Haynes's secretary, a pleasant- looking woman in bluejeans and a work shirt. "He'll be with you in a minute."

On a table in the conference room next to Haynes's office, I notice the proofs of his latest self-published book, How I Turned $50 Into $5 Million in Country Property -- Part Time -- And How You Can Do the Same. That's the follow-up to How You Can Grow Rich Through Rural Land -- Starting From Scratch, the one I just finished reading.

Haynes has also written a novel called The idealEstate Man, a copy of which is sitting on a nearby shelf. According to the cover, it's the story of a young developer in the late 1970s who blows up a Nevada casino the day before Elvis is scheduled to perform there. The hero, it says, joins a "misguided band of idealists from the West Coast who wage a campaign of violence against the establishment."

But it's the Old Testament quotation on the first page that really gets my attention: "He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the Assembly of the Lord. -- Deuteronomy 23."

Religious matters aside, I get the distinct impression that Haynes holds fairly strong opinions on the subject of manhood.

"B.K. Haynes," says the man I've come to see.

Sporting cowboy boots and a safari jacket in the dead of winter, Haynes looks like he just came in from the Kalahari, raw-boned, ruddy-faced and ready to talk business.

"Have any trouble finding the place?"

Right away, I can tell where this is going. If I say no, then how come I'm 25 minutes late? And if I say yes, I might not

be qualified even to see the high country. It's a good thing I

noticed that passage from Deuteronomy.

"Not too much trouble."

Haynes's conference room is scattered with boxes and stacks of papers and doesn't appear to have hosted a conference in some time. He bought the color wall map of Iraq, he says, to keep up with coverage of the war on television. And now that the war is over, it's not hard to imagine what he's thinking: With some improved roads and sewer hookups, that place would be ripe for development.

"It's all about real estate," Haynes observes, settling into a big swivel chair.

He knows I'm here to write about him; just the same, this seems like a good time to display some sales resistance, so I mention I'm just looking. Haynes nods, then smiles. He must have heard that one 5,000 times.

When he came here from Washington in the early 1960s, he was just looking, too, looking to get as far away as he could from his job of selling hot nuts out of vending machines. His first idea was starting a riding stable. The country around Front Royal in those days was more like the West than the East, and he always liked horses. It wasn't until 1965 that he made his first land sale, a piece of property near Skyline Drive called Valley View Farms, where 10-acre lots went for $9,500.

That started it. Then came Turtle Rock Farm, New Mountain Lake, Black Bear Crossing, Deer Rapids, Cornucopia Farm and hundreds of other ventures. Haynes thought up most of the names himself. What put people in the mood to buy, however, was his genius for ad writing:

City Girl Gives Up Inheritance

Daughter inherits country property, but needs money.

Sacrificing parents' dream homesite.

***

Funny Farm

Laugh all the way to the bank

100 ac. at ski area $59,950

***

Grapes of Worth

Cheap migrant workers' camp for conversion

into a hunting lodge

In the early 1980s, Haynes purchased 500 acres on Flattop Mountain in Greene County, Va. The uniqueness of the place made him think of it "as a gift from God," and "only in Biblical terms," he decided, could he describe its magnificence.

That decision unleashed a torrent of prose. The resulting ad, which he credits with bringing in the bulk of his sales for the property, came as close as anything ever has to his personal mission statement. It also told other land brokers that Haynes was taking the art of separating people from their money to a whole new level.

It is written, you shall not buy the gift of immortality. But you may be among the few to see far and forever, and have visual dominion over the fish and the fowl and over the five millions of people whose lands stretch to the sea.

In this way you shall be privileged on the Mountain, for none will be higher, nor see farther than the prudent few who claim their places on this great height.

Let it be written: Trade your paper money for the richness of these green pastures in the sky. Preserve the miracle of the human body by giving it clean air and clean thought . . .

Thus it is true that Flattop Mountain is counted among the last summits on which land can be taken by the people. Therefore, future generations will be offered none here at the summit, except that you give up your own. From $49 per month . . .

What's interesting, Haynes says, is that his customers today are motivated by the same basic instinct that started Washingtonians moving west 40 years ago.

"Fear," he says, after a slight pause, as if he might be giving away a trade secret. Make that fear coupled with a sense of impending doom.

"Each decade is different, but it's always some sort of calamity that makes people want to move out here. In the 1960s, it was the threat of nuclear war and riots. In the 1990s, it was the stock market collapse. As soon as I identified a new calamity, I geared my advertising to people's motivations."

After September 11, 2001, with the entire nation in a state of panic, Haynes wasn't sure what the effect on his business would be.

"I couldn't really tell at first if people were going to sit still or what . . . Then, as the terrorism threat grew, more and more of them started coming out. They didn't necessarily tell you that's why they were looking for property in the country, but you sensed it."

So the next thing he did was get busy on an ad campaign that connected people's worries about more terrorist attacks to the "last opportunity" to own a farm on the Cacapon River in West Virginia.

Changing World Conditions

Concerns about "urban sprawl" are creating an "affordability moat" around the cities, restricting ownership of large land parcels to the very affluent. Now we are faced with new and more ominous threats to our population centers. See how an affordable nearby farm can actually change your life.

The ad, which filled a quarter-page in the local papers, worked better than he expected. Before the Department of Homeland Security was up and running, every one of his farm sites was under contract. It's that kind of creative thinking that's made B.K. Haynes a multimillionaire and something of a local legend in the Shenandoah Valley.

When he was a kid growing up in Northeast Washington not far from Union Station, Haynes's idea of the great outdoors was playing in the street. After dropping out of high school, he joined the Army, where he spent most of his time organizing variety shows for the troops at military bases. He went to George Washington University on the GI Bill and, for a while, considered pursuing a career in show business, but soon realized the life of a struggling entertainer was not for him.

Two years out of college, with a degree in business administration, Haynes (the B.K. stands for Bradley Kane) was supporting his family by writing radio and television commercials and selling nuts.

"I never lost hope," he writes in his new book. "The perceived misfortune

of failure often comes from the lack of

energy, not from empty pockets or formal education, the latter of which can largely be a waste of time to entrepreneurs. My master's degree came from peddling peanuts . . . my doctorate from writing books and hustling country properties."

By his own estimate, Haynes over the years has sold more than 300 square miles of real estate. That would be an area roughly four times the size of Washington, D.C.

He doesn't consider what he does taking advantage of people in a moment of fear and weakness. Just the opposite. As he sees it, he's giving them the opportunity to start a new life in the country. A couple of years ago, property owners on Flattop Mountain showed their appreciation by giving Haynes an award for helping their dreams of country living come true. The problem is that the country, and the new life that goes with it, is constantly on the move. For today's true wilderness seekers, the latest one is in West Virginia, but even there some property owners are starting to worry about "Corridor H," a massive highway project that promises to bring in more people and more development. "They're closing in on us," complains Lloyd Parriott, a district manager of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, voicing the concerns of many in the area. "This used to be the blue-collar backwoods between horse country and West Virginia, but real estate developers are changing that . . . It's unsettling."

Haynes laughs when he hears that. Owning rural property is every American's democratic right, he declares, and he's got no time for environmentalists, preservationists or anyone else who wants to keep the land-

buying public from buying land. He likes to quote comedian Dennis Miller on the subject: "A developer," according to Miller, "is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already owns a house in the woods."

Haynes grabs his cowboy hat and suggests we take his all-terrain Ford Expedition, since my Honda isn't likely to be much use in the Warlocks' mountain campground. Although he is still the wiry outdoorsman he's always been, a bad hip now requires him to do his mountain-climbing in an SUV.

Ten miles out of town, we stop at the 18th-century farmhouse Haynes shares with his son, Brett, and his family. Brett, who specializes in commercial real estate, just retired after serving eight years on the Warren County Board of Supervisors.

"Everything I know I learned from my dad," he says. "He taught me to look at the big picture, see the development potential of a piece of land. He has a unique talent for that." B.K. Haynes tells me he saw a farm in Africa once and thought about buying it. He never dreamed he'd see anything he liked as much until he found this place in the foothills of the Appalachians. When his wife died in 1987, he scattered her ashes over the property from the plane he keeps at a private airstrip behind his house.

As we head for the mountains, Haynes makes a point of driving by pieces of

real estate he's handled, giving the

prices and resale values of land that has changed hands many times.

"Strasburg is hot," he says. But the real deals, he claims, are in West Virginia, out past Wardensville and Moorefield.

Along one stretch of empty highway, he shows me a building he owns in the middle of nowhere. Correction: There's no middle of nowhere, as far as Haynes is concerned. The field on the other side of the road, the intersection up ahead, this area is ready for growth, he explains, and when it comes, he'll already be there.

"I like to get in and out of things quickly," he says. It's a skill based on years of practicing what he likes to call "sub-

divesting," or as he writes: "Making maximum profits from the development and quick sale of subdivided rural land, which in turn, can be resold for a profit."

Haynes has made a fortune by sub-divesting, buying large tracts of land, then breaking them up and selling them in smaller sections. Getting in first, as he often does, allows him not only to multiply his original investment faster but to establish a market value for other brokers. Ultimately, he says, everyone profits from subdivesting, except, maybe, the buyer who comes in last, when a parcel of property has been reduced to its smallest marketable component.

When Haynes acquired 5,000 acres of land on Great North Mountain in 1986, he wasn't thinking small. This was some of the last available wilderness in the region, certainly the biggest real estate venture he'd ever been involved in. But because the property was so remote and rugged, building even the most basic road was a major undertaking. Haynes would also need buyers, not the ordinary kind, looking for peace and quiet in the rolling hills, but hardy back-to-the-land types, people who weren't afraid of high-altitude living in a place where nature wasn't just something to be enjoyed but respected, and, under certain conditions, feared.

With the Expedition now in four-wheel drive, we start our ascent up the quarter-mile rutted slope a previous road crew started work on, only to abandon. The crew left behind a wrecked dump truck and a grade steep enough to flip the average vehicle. That's why Haynes recommends that interested parties hike in to see the property. Some people, he says, have inspected it by helicopter.

The Warlocks must have really liked their privacy. "There's no way they rode their motorcycles up here," says Haynes.

Accounts in the local papers describe how federal and state authorities moved in on the gang last year, seizing firearms, a pipe bomb and thousands of dollars in cash. In all, 28 arrests were made in several Virginia counties. Haynes had originally sold the 40- acre spread to a nice couple -- or that's what he thought they were when they put down $5,000. Soon the payments stopped, and right about the time he started foreclosure proceedings, the cops stepped in and turned the place upside down.

We round a bend, still climbing, and come up behind a bulldozer. With no room to pass, Haynes brings the Expedition to a stop so the bulldozer operator, working against the forces of gravity, can clear a path to the next ridge. That's when I make the mistake of looking back. All of a sudden I'm staring straight down at nothing but treetops and two vultures circling ominously in the sky beneath us.

I must have been crazy. I don't care if I qualify . . . I just want to live. Meanwhile, Haynes is complaining about how hard it is these days to find good road builders. I see why.

At last, we reach a ledge overlooking the entire valley a couple of thousand feet below. Haynes puts the Expedition in park, and when I get out my knees are shaking. The campsite, scene of the drug bust, is a little higher up the mountainside. But this is the end of the trail for me.

The trip has convinced me I'm a lowlander. Haynes understands. Not everybody is cut out for life at higher elevations.

Of course, that doesn't mean it wouldn't make a good investment. "Road's gonna come right through there," he says. Clean up after the Warlocks. Wait for property values to increase . . . And who knows what this place might be worth?

Bill Thomas is the author of Club Fed: Power, Money, Sex and Violence on Capitol Hill and other books.






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