Failing Repeatedly is First Requirement to Stay on Course (LA 1413)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hi.

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 failing repeatedly and how it's the first requirement to staying on course.

Jill DeWit:

This is clearly a Jack topic.

Steven Butala:

In hindsight, it could have been a different title, but what it really means is this. You got to be comfortable with the fact that some stuff's going to go wrong and sideways. It does with everything in life. And if you just get through the parts where it's not working, it's not working, eventually it's going to work. If you try hard enough at it, or either decide that it was not for you. I talk about this really early on in the Land Academy years about I will never play the guitar. I just won't. And it's not because I can't learn how to do it. It's just that I don't enjoy the process. The end, it doesn't justify the means and all kinds of stuff. It's not that I'm not smart enough. I just don't, for whatever reason, make it a priority.

Jill DeWit:

On that note, if you look on OfferUp right now, you'll see four left-handed guitars for sale.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. It's true. Yeah, just because I bought a cool guitar doesn't mean I really know how to play it at all.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah. I know where you can get a great price on a guitar right now.

Steven Butala:

And I tried and failed and tried and failed and decided nope.

Jill DeWit:

Not for me.

Steven Butala:

You know what? I tried and failed in my land career, too. Tried and failed, tried and failed.

Jill DeWit:

Well, that sung to you.

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

That made sense.

Steven Butala:

But I decided I was still going to try because I want to do it.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. Let's talk about this more than the show because this will be a fun thing to talk about, things that we thought about and then we didn't pursue. Okay.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

Jessica F... Hello, Jessica, wrote, "Hello all. I'm wondering what kind of due diligence you do related to the neighborhood the property is in? Do you analyze, if at all, if the property is in a nice neighborhood versus a not so nice one? How do you know where the desirable areas of town are outside the prices of houses sold? Are there specific indicators you look for, either good or bad, that can tell you more about a neighborhood beyond just the numbers of properties listed and sold?" Thanks.

Steven Butala:

I can tell you that with extreme confidence, I don't look at this at all, not a single bit. And here's why, because if I look at days on market, if I look at date DOM, days on market, in a place, let's say, the Rust Belt is famous for having... I'm from Detroit. So there's terrible neighborhoods in Detroit. There has been since the 60s. But if the days on market in those markets was within a range where we actively invest, I would be buying there. I don't care why people buy property or don't buy property or what they're looking for. But if 50 properties sold in the days on market in any market, there were 50 properties... You have to take all the three statistics from the red, green, yellow test, and look at them together because... But I'll tell you what, if you don't have time to do that, or you don't have the interest or whatever, days on market is going to smoke it all out for you.

Jill DeWit:

So what I think you're saying is the numbers speak for themselves, which is I like this.

Steven Butala:

This is for land only. For houses it's a little different,

Jill DeWit:

Well, I was actually going to put it on houses a little bit too, because follow me on this here.