If We Could Go Back to 1998 (LA 856)

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 DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about what would you do if could go back to 1998?

Jill DeWit: This is gonna be good.

Steven Butala: So I'm sitting here thinking, there's a professional piece to this and a personal piece.

Jill DeWit: I didn't-

Steven Butala: So I'm gonna ask some tough questions.

Jill DeWit: Okay. I didn't really think about the personal one, I only thought about the professional one.

Steven Butala: Me too.

Jill DeWit: I'll be on the-

Steven Butala: That's what's nice.

Jill DeWit: Totally on the fly here. So, cool?

Steven Butala: Personal stuff's more interesting though.

Jill DeWit: 'Kay.

Steven Butala: Before I get into it, let's take a question, posted by one of our members, on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and as you're listening, please drop your question into the comment section below.

Jill DeWit: Jeremy asks, "I'm having trouble figuring out what criteria to use in a county selection. In going though the modules a few times, a lot of what Steven says is somewhat nonspecific. I'm using countywise.com for my initial data. County density seems pretty straight forward. How many back tax properties is a good minimum? How many personals is a good minimum? Anyone want to share some of the criteria you used when you got started? If anyone know a member [inaudible 00:01:24] discussed in more depth, pointers would be appreciated."

Steven Butala: This is a really good question.

Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Steven Butala: Very, very good question, and I've said this before. Whoever you are, welcome to the membership group. I can tell just by the questions that you're asking right in the beginning how successful you're gonna be. This is a spot, it's one of the first bottlenecks. If you do experience bottlenecks, this is one of the first ones.

Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala: I wish there was some type of checklist that you could go through and check, check, check, check, check, yup meets all the criteria I'm set in mail there, and there's just not. So I'd devise a three point plan. This is for rural vacant land only now, this is not for 2 point 0 info lots at all. 2 point 0 info lots there is pretty much a checklist, because they're urban areas, and you're looking for consistency, but for rural vacant land you want to find property, there's three point concept.

Steven Butala: Rural property, where the population density according to the census maps is dark green, that's the most rural, does that in and of itself mean you're going to do well if you send mail there? No. Number two: You want to make sure that there is some type, in general, this is not a hard and fast rule, in general you want to make sure that there's some type of back tax scenario happening there whether it's tax leans or back tax property, so you want to find out , as a gage, how many properties are in a back tax status situation. I'll tell you, for example, if you just looked at that in a of itself it wouldn't work because Los Angeles County has the most highest number of, and it doesn't work from a density map standpoint 'cause it's very, very urban obviously.

Steven Butala: So time of tax presence, this is just if you're starting out. And then the third test is a test of reason where you want to go out on the internet and see how many other properties are for sale. You want to do it on Land and Farm, Land Watch, Craigslist, all kinds of places. If you're shooting for 100, 200, 300 dollars an acre, real low end stuff,