Improve Your Land Before Selling (LA 781)

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 gorgeous, sunny southern California.

Steven Butala:                   Today Jill and I talk about improving your land before selling it. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? We definitely have different ideas about this, but our goals are the same, I think.

Jill DeWit:                            Exactly.

Steven Butala:                   Get in that piece of property, get out of there, convert it to cash.

Jill DeWit:                            I agree. That's what we all want.

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:                            Travis asks, "In one of the Land Academy Podcasts, I recall Jack saying that vacant land, that for vacant land not houses, perhaps we should ignore the days on market on Zillow and similar sites, as it's not revalent/accurate. At the same time, however, when researching a new county to mail to, we are instructed to find a county road property seems to be selling rather quickly, to identify a hot market."

Steven Butala:                   That's it.

Jill DeWit:                            Right? "But if LandWatch and similar sites don't provide this data, the limited real quest pro sales data only gives a date sold, not the date the property is listed for sale. We are to look past days on market on Zillow and Trulia and data for the region is not provided on Redfin and how are we to know how long property is sitting on the market? How do we identify a region where property sells quickly? I perused the forums on this topic, but I have yet met with a satisfactory answer."

Steven Butala:                   We're gonna give you a satisfying answer.

Jill DeWit:                            Have I overlooked something? I'm able to identify counties that I qualify for based on price, but how determine how long properties take to sell. Should I just pull data and find a place for a lot of properties close in the last few months or leave it at that. Or is there a technique with more finesse? Always appreciate your help as always everyone. Cheers." That was a good long question. Well thought out.

Steven Butala:                   Travis is a long time member. Very successful. He's like third or fourth generation land subdivider in Texas, so he really knows. He came to us with a tremendous amount of knowledge, plus he's really one of the funniest people I've ever talked to. So here's the deal. What you're describing is the whole concept that caused us to launch Land Academy 2.0. Land Academy 2.0 is all about buying urban land, not rural land. Because of this fact. I have in all of my experience, not been able to locate a good place to find completed sales or true old school comparison values for rural vacant land. And here's why. It's not because the data is looked at differently or handled differently by assessors. None of that. It's all handled the same way. The further out you go, there's just no comps. There's not 25 sales in a rural county in Texas every day, like there is in an urban county.

Jill DeWit:                            I wonder too, how many transactions are off market of this property type?

Steven Butala:                   Yeah.

Jill DeWit:                            Does that make a difference to you?