Crossing the Ethical Line (LA 831)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:                   Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:                            Hello.

Steven Butala:                   Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk, I'm Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:                            And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:                   Today, Jill and I talk about crossing the ethical line.

Jill DeWit:                            Ho, ho, ho. This is a good one, I've been looking forward to this, 'cause this has happened to us.

Steven Butala:                   Yeah.

Jill DeWit:                            And it's important to talk about so you are aware of it and you see it and you watch it and you know what to be looking for. Then also little things to make sure you don't accidentally cross that line 'cause you don't want to ever be in that position.

Steven Butala:                   Exactly. Before we get into it though, let's take a question, posted by one of our members on a landinvestors.com online community. It's free and as you're listening or watching us on YouTube, please drop your questions into the comments section below.

Jill DeWit:                            Landrov, that's his [inaudible 00:00:51] I know, his company Landrov asks, "Hi all, new guy here. I have a list of 5 acre vacant properties in a county in California. I removed duplicates, land owned by the the US government and the state of California, city owned properties, as well as land conservatory groups, there were a lot. The list went down from 1200 lines to about 800. I now have the ability to cut and paste the raw APNs into the county web GIS map. They show up as little squares all over the county. That gives an idea where the properties are and the concentration. Now I know the approximate location, does it make sense to send out a mailer with customized pricing based on an area / city or just do it by the whole county? Am I creating too much work for myself?"

Steven Butala:                   Oh this ...

Jill DeWit:                            This ...

Steven Butala:                   Jill and I say this all the time, it's real obvious who's going to do really well at this or not so well. Really, in the beginning, and [inaudible 00:01:54] are great, I think he said he was new right?

Jill DeWit:                            Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:                   No, this is not a waste of time.

Jill DeWit:                            New, but smart.

Steven Butala:                   This is not a waste of time at all and Jill and I are constantly saying this is a waste of time over here, this thing over here is a waste of time, maybe not have to worry about this. This is exactly what you're supposed to spend time on. Scrubbing data and getting the right offers to owners in the mail and a document presented correctly, 'cause it's going to yield transactions. If you see data by plotting it all out around one county and you see that the northeast corner is priced differently than the southeast corner, you're going to dramatically increase your success yield on that mailer. Congratulations you are on the absolute right path to being successful at this.

Jill DeWit:                            You're not creating too much work. This is the stuff that you ... this is what we talk about, this is what you should be spending time on. Sitting there and figuring out though, like he just said, you'll start to see a pattern and you can get into census tracks like when do it with houses, you'll see subdivisions priced differently, so that's what you're already starting to see, LandRov,