Photo by D.A. Peterson, The Washington Post Magazine

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.

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