Days on Market is the Great Equalizer (LA 843)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:                   ... 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 days on market, DOM, and how it's a great equalizer.

Jill DeWit:                            Days on Market. The great equalizer. That is a new cliché invented by ...

Steven Butala:                   By me.

Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. I-

Steven Butala:                   Because that market's so important.

Jill DeWit:                            Love it.

Steven Butala:                   It's so incredibly important, and we'll talk about ... Man, if there's one thing that you should really understand about infill lots and eventually wholesaling houses, it's looking at days on market, but why stop there? That's what I say.

Jill DeWit:                            Totally agree.

Steven Butala:                   Before we get into it, though, let's first take a question posted by one of our members on the Landinvestor's.com online community. It's free, and as you listen to us, please drop in your questions in the comments section below.

Jill DeWit:                            Walden asks, "Hey, guys, my first year of land investing is coming to a close, and I have no clue about taxes. I have $6,000 in cash and $40,000 in terms so far ..." Not bad.

Steven Butala:                   Yeah.

Jill DeWit:                            "No idea how to calculate profit and loss for land contracts, and I have no idea about the tax advantages I can utilize for real estate. Any suggestions would be great."

Steven Butala:                   Here's my suggestion and for the rest of your life this applies. Don't do your own taxes. Do not take this to someplace like H&R Block. Find yourself a good ... you should only ever go to an accountant in my opinion, and a lawyer, by the way, on the advice of somebody else who's already gone through six or seven or ten lawyers or accountants in the market wherever you are. Understands that this person is ... they get it. This is not child's play from a tax standpoint. You don't want to get behind the eight-ball. You want to make sure you're doing this stuff right. Because if you do it wrong, you're going to pay forever, and if you get an overzealous accountant, they're going to make you overpay. It's impossible, respectfully, for me to answer in giving two sentences of information on the tax implications and what's going on with you.

Jill DeWit:                            This person, I already forgot the first name-

Steven Butala:                   Walden.

Jill DeWit:                            Walden? Thank you. Walden, you did exactly the right thing, by the way. Walden put this in the our online community, and I'm willing to bet that right now there's probably 10 replies in there with 10 people that have good accountants that have already helped them out and already figured all this out, and for the record, that is one of the other real big benefits to being in a community like this. You're not walking around reinventing the wheel every day. This is a big deal. You have a question like this, where else can you go? Imagine normal business world, there's nowhere I can turn and say, "Hey, everybody who owns a restaurant …" I don't think it exists.

Jill DeWit:                            There should be an online restaurant community,