Choosing the Good Bad Areas to Buy Land

Jack Butala: Choosing the Good Bad Areas to Buy Land. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening.

Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit.

Jill DeWit: Hello.

Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. In this episode Jill and I talk about choosing the good or the bad areas to buy land. It's a topic that comes up all the time. Where do I start? Which area do I choose? Good show today, Jill. First let's take a question posted by one of our members on landacademy.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit: Cool. Richard asks, "How seriously should I consider total tax delinquencies when selecting a county?" Good question.

Jack Butala: Great question; it's actually right on topic with our topic today. What Richard's probably referring to is a three step process that we go through to choose an area to send offers to. Number one, you pull the population density census maps and you try to find the most rural area that's relatively close to an urban area. In California, like out of Los Angeles it gets very, very rural just to the east of LA county. That's step one.

Step two is take a look at, and this is what his question is, if there's any tax delinquent property in that county, we use [etaxellists.com 00:01:13] and there's lots of places you can go for free to review that information. If there's lots of delinquent tax property that might be an indication that there's a lot of unwanted property there. If you send a bunch of really low dollar amount offers, they're going to be responded to well. Then number three is to check the pricing on Land Watch and Land and Farm and certain areas, just to see how the properties are selling for. You want to come in way lower than what you think you could sell it for wholesale. It's a three step process.

To answer his question directly, it's not that important. In fact, Jill and I right now at this level in our career, we don't check at all. We purchase and sell pretty high dollar properties, large acreage high dollar properties and I stopped checking the county delinquency scenario quite some time ago. If you're starting out and you're doing the low dollar thing, and you should be. This is the right way to start before you get into bigger deals, you really need to check. Is that clear?

Jill DeWit: Thank you.

Jack Butala: Am I talking out of both sides of my mouth?

Jill DeWit: No, it's kind of funny. Thank you, you got an A for share your presentation today. Just kidding. Thank you Mr. Butala you can take a seat now. Next? I'm just kidding.

Jack Butala: Was it that stiff? Oh my gosh

Jill DeWit: No, no. It was a little bit like you got up in front of the classroom and gave a presentation. I didn't know what to say. I just was kind of listening.

Jack Butala: It's a Monday thing, I guess.

Jill DeWit: I know, you're just like focusing.

Jack Butala: Let's try it again.

Jill DeWit: Then you're looking at me like a teacher, like, "Did I miss anything?" No, you did great.

Jack Butala: Let's try it again. I'll answer it Jill's way. Ready?

Jill DeWit: Oh no, ready.

Jack Butala: Hey Richard, check the taxes if you want, but it doesn't matter that much.

Jill DeWit: Yeah. Here's my answer. Richard, why are we focusing on just that? Think about this. Yeah, like you said Jack, you want to look at the area as a whole and consider that/however, send everybody an offer, don't just send those guys an offer.

Jack Butala: That's not what his question is. His question is, there's three steps in the whole thing. His question is, how much do I seriously consider the second step? The answer is not that much.

Jill DeWit: It's not going to be ...

Jack Butala: Here's the thick of it, and this is now we're getting into the topic. This works everywhere. We've tested it. It works on apartment buildings,