Jack Thursday - Life Math (LA 1562)

Transcript:

Steven J Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hi.

Steven J Butala:

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

Jill DeWit:

And I am Jill DeWit, broadcasting from amazing Phoenix Arizona.

Steven J Butala:

Today is Jack Thursday. And I'm going to talk about life math, which completely confuses Jill.

Jill DeWit:

Yes. Hold on a moment.

Steven J Butala:

Not life math the topic, just what the hell is he going to talk about now?

Jill DeWit:

Oh, that does. Yeah. I don't know where you're going with that, but I was going to pause and say, I'm actually good at math.

Steven J Butala:

Oh, I know.

Jill DeWit:

I did really well in school at math.

Steven J Butala:

And physics.

Jill DeWit:

And physics, that was one of my favorite subjects. I liked physics. That was really fun for me. So flying and old school when you're learning to fly and you have to map out where you're going and how many minutes to get somewhere and degrees and that kind of thing, oh, I love that stuff. I kill it on all that. So don't think I can't do math. But that's not what this is about today.

Steven J Butala:

Right. Before we get into it though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. If you're already a member of Land Academy.

Jill DeWit:

Of Land Academy.

Steven J Butala:

Join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Thanks. Leah wrote, "Hello. I have a property under contract and the owner's relative has a neighboring parcel. The relative has agreed to give the owner an easement so her property can be accessed by the road. This is in" should I say the state or no?

Steven J Butala:

Sure.

Jill DeWit:

Okay, "This is in California. Where do I find the paperwork to get this done? What is the process?"

Steven J Butala:

This is not something you can do yourself. It's not something I could do myself after how many years of doing this. You need to call a lawyer, preferably a real estate lawyer that understands easements and preferably in that county, potentially even in that city. And that's really the only way that it's going to get done. Here's the great news, this almost never happens. The fact that these people are related and that they're cooperating and that-.

Jill DeWit:

That's true.

Steven J Butala:

What's you're now doing is every land person's dream. You're taking a property that until you do this, its use is very limited. If anything, it's only limited to the people that actually have access around it.

Jill DeWit:

Right.

Steven J Butala:

And fortunately, one of this is a relative. And you're creating equity. And that's what this is all about. We create equity here. We buy property cheap and we sell it for more, and create some equity for ourselves and the persons we sell it to. And so this is good. I put this in here for a reason. This is a dream situation. So anybody who's looking at property that doesn't have physical or legal access, and that's a lot of us all the time. The remedy is to talk to the neighbors and see, "Hey, can I get some access to this property over here? It's on the edge of your property. It doesn't look like you live there anyway. It looks like you live in Nevada, the properties in Texas. What do you say, I blade a road in, get some physical and legal access. I'll pay for it all, I just need you to sign some stuff." It doesn't happen enough.

Jill DeWit:

Beautiful. Thank you.

Steven J Butala:

Today's topic, its Jack Thursday. This is why you're listening.

Jill DeWit:

Life math.

Steven J Butala:

It's Jack Thursday about life math.

Jill DeWit:

What is life math?

Steven J Butala:

When I was a kid, I was confused like every kid.

Jill DeWit:

And now you've got it all down. Especially, understanding women.

Steven J Butala:

Like everything, not only was I confused, I wanted to grow up really fast. I was tired of being a kid. I was tired of being a kid.

How Career Path Members are Aligning themselves with Each Other (LA 1561)

Transcript:

Steven J Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hello.

Steven J 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 amazing Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven J Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how Career Path members are aligning themselves with each other.

Steven J Butala:

This is a fascinating for me.

Jill DeWit:

I love this. This makes me so happy. This is why we're here. I'm not here to have a million members and just sit back and roll out a program and just go up and say, "Here you go. Have a nice day."

Steven J Butala:

"Figure it out."

Jill DeWit:

Could you imagine, it's like I'm at a cash register dishing out ice cream cones. That's not what I'm doing. We're here creating businesses and helping putting people together, not just with us, but with themselves. I really mean it when we say there's nothing better than hearing that you're making more money than me this month. It's really cool because all I think of is, "Hey, please remember me someday when you need cash. I'll fund your deal." It's awesome. It's great. We're doing just fine and I'm happy you're doing better.

Jill DeWit:

So, how does this happen? People in our group find each other and we'll talk more about that.

Steven J Butala:

Why wouldn't you?

Jill DeWit:

Right?

Steven J Butala:

That's one of the huge benefits of being a serious Land Academy member. You're doing deals with other people in the group.

Jill DeWit:

I remember our first, very first live event. People were like, "I was just so happy to be in a room. I thought I was on an island somewhere because you guys are here. I'm six states over. So, I was so happy to be able to get with like-minded people." And now with all of the ways that we have to communicate, our weekly calls, the accountability groups and Career Path and other meetings and venues and Discord and everything. The community can really communicate. You really find that you're not alone and that is huge.

Steven J Butala:

Yeah. When a group of like-minded people... Well, let's get into the show.

Jill DeWit:

Okay, cool.

Steven J 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 and if you're already a member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

A Land Academy member, that is. James wrote, "I'm buying from a seller who bought the property in 1985 and they want to close quickly and get cash with a local attorney and via warranty deed." Perfect. "I think I should close with title and pay the additional $700 plus two weeks, so I don't have any issues on the sales end. Do you normally take title on the buy and sales and pay twice? Thank you." Close quickly, local attorney. There's no difference here.

Steven J Butala:

Let me clarify something and this is a very, very good question. And I think a lot of people can benefit from it. When you buy a property through a title company, a title escrow company just like when you buy a house, you get a title policy and everything's good and it's recorded correctly. You dot your I's and cross your T's and it's done. It is the exact same thing with the lawyer. Exactly. There's no difference at all. In fact, they usually do it faster and I would argue cheaper and I would argue more accurately because they usually have more experience.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven J Butala:

So, please, the take away from this is there's no difference between closing a deal through a lawyer and through a title escrow company except speed, money and quality.

Jill DeWit:

And James, you just spelled it out perfectly. If I go with the attorney, I save two weeks and $700. So, my argument is that's the right thing to do, James.

Steven J Butala:

So, I think, James, you're assuming and it's totally okay. I'm not knocking you here at all.

Jill's Confused about Our Accountants Email (LA 1560)

Transcript:

Steven J Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hi.

Steven J Butala:

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

Jill DeWit:

I'm the patient one sitting next to the impatient one. My name is Jill Dewit and we're broadcasting from awesome Arizona.

Steven J Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about why is Jill confused about our accountant's email?

Jill DeWit:

Good. Don't say anything. I'm going to read you what we wrote in a few minutes, and then I'm going to read you what his response was. I went, "What the heck is this all about? It's interesting. We'll talk all about it.

Steven J 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. If you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

John wrote, I'm curious how others may approach pricing this situation, small county with only two zip codes. Good, not great market. Has a lake, but the lake doesn't appear to influence home values. Only doing less than one acre lots. Here's what I'm trying to square up. Medium home values are between 200,000 and 250,000 and Zillow searches reinforced that pricing.

Jill DeWit:

The Kelly treats most of the lots, like they're worth a couple of beers and not much more, except for a handful of properties that they think are worth between 60 and $70,000. Nothing vacant is currently for sale. Taxes seemed to have no relation to valuation of properties. One lot sold in the past year for $10,000. Would you price off of the homes and risk over pricing? Price off of the county and offer people wide range of prices and negotiate your way to deals or price off that one sold comp and then negotiate each deal?

Steven J Butala:

This is a brilliant question. How should I price something when I have no real data? How can I make a business decision without any real data? Not just for land, but anything, because all decisions should be made on ...

Jill DeWit:

Real information.

Steven J Butala:

Empirical data and not emotion. That's exactly what John is doing here. By the way, there's lots of Johns in our group. This one really knows what he's doing. You know who you are. I love testing new markets like this. If nothing's been purchased or sold or recorded, nobody's there doing anything.

Steven J Butala:

This is what I want you to do, I want you to go in there and just crush the price so low it's silly. There's going to be a bunch of low hanging fruit. Just get it all on that first run. There's a chance that you price it way too low and it'll bust. I haven't experienced that, neither has Jill, and most people ... I'd bet John, you haven't either. I don't think anyone has had it just completely failed.

Jill DeWit:

I argue.

Steven J Butala:

Mailer.

Jill DeWit:

I'm going to argue off failed mailers. It's usually not the mailer, it's something wrong with an area or something.

Steven J Butala:

You got $200,000 houses on smaller lots, less than an acre. I would go in and just start offering five to $8,000 just across the board for both zip codes and see what happens. It probably bites. This is what usually happens when I do this, we buy two or three, four properties, maybe. Hopefully the data set's big. If it's a thousand unit dataset, now, that's a little scary. But, if you've got eight or 8,000, let's say, vacant properties, I'd go in across the board. Forget about the lake. Go in across the board, in at $10,000, maybe 8,000, maybe seven or whatever pricing scheme you come up with. You're going to buy a few most likely, hopefully a few more. Then, you're going to find out where that magic ... by the way, you're operating all by yourself here. Nobody's doing anything else.

Steven J Butala:

You're going to find out where that threshold is. There's a threshold in every single market. I think it'd make a lot of sense, then,

Truth About Taxes as a Real Estate Investor (LA 1559)

Transcript:

Steven J Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hello.

Steven J Butala:

Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven J Butala.

Jill DeWit:

And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from pretty Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven J Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about the truth about taxes as a real estate investor.

Jill DeWit:

This is a hot topic often, not just tax time, but that's when it really hurts, but this is a big deal. People come into this, and it's kind of funny, I never thought about this going into this business. I never thought about if I make a lot of money, how am I going to do my taxes? I always let those things work themselves out at the end, but it turns out we have a lot of people, probably smarter than me, that are thinking about this now, so we wanted to talk about it to put everybody at ease and give you some insight and some ways to tackle taxes.

Steven J Butala:

If you love paying taxes-

Jill DeWit:

This is not the show for you.

Steven J Butala:

No, if you love paying taxes, then after these next three or four sentences, you can just turn the episode off, because the rest is for people who don't want to pay taxes or like to legally minimize tax. That's what this is about. If you love to pay taxes, this is what you do. You form an LLC.

Jill DeWit:

We'll save it for the show.

Steven J Butala:

No, this is just for people who love to pay taxes.

Jill DeWit:

So they can get it out of the way now.

Steven J Butala:

Form an LLC, set your W2 paycheck, you and your partner, pay the highest salary as you can, and then you pay a withholding, and then there's nothing left over, because pay yourself so much in all those taxes, so you're all set there.

Jill DeWit:

Oh, thanks.

Steven J 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. If you're already a member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

All right. Hello. I know these two. Erica and Abby wrote, "Hi, Jack and Jill. Just want to give you guys a quick update. My wife and I joined Land Academy a year or so ago, and we just completed 100 deals, 74 cash, 26 on terms." They were at our last live event. I remember. "We feel grateful and want to thank you so much for sharing this business with us. Please keep up the good work. Best Erica and Abby. That's so great. I also see them on social media traveling the world.

Steven J Butala:

Really?

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven J Butala:

That's great.

Jill DeWit:

So, it's obviously working out just wonderful for them. That's so good. Congratulations. Thanks for sharing that.

Steven J Butala:

Today's topic, the truth about taxes as a real estate investor. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. I wanted to bring this topic up because it's important, number one, and it's often on people's minds, as it should be. We're making all this money. Where's it going to go? How do I account for it? Do I file taxes in every state? Do I get an LLC for every property? Do I get an LLC for every state? Oh my goodness. There's so many ways to do this. Here's my answer. Yes, there are so many ways to do this. This is the point for me, if you don't mind.

Steven J Butala:

Of course.

Jill DeWit:

Then I'm going to let the person with the accounting background give you their professional advice. But my advice is mainly this. People always ask us exactly how we do it, who's our accountant, can we call our guy? Can we copy you? You know what? We've been doing it for so long, and we have certain tax, you'll talk about this too, designations that may not apply to everybody. We're all different ages. We're all in different states. We've been doing things differently. Guess what? It's okay. My main point here today is there are different ways to do this. There's no perfect cookie cutter Land Academy approved roadmap to taxes that says,

Jill Friday - How to be an Effective Entrepreneur (LA 1558)

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 pretty Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today is Jill Friday. How to be an effective Entrepreneur. I was going to say infectious, because you're like an infectious entrepreneur. And that's a compliment. Huge compliment.

Jill DeWit:

That's Great. But do you know with COVID [inaudible 00:00:26], you can't throw infectious around.

Steven Butala:

Yeah, that's probably not [inaudible 00:00:31].

Jill DeWit:

Exactly. Two years ago. We all get it. Now, not so much.

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. If you're already a member, please join us on discord.

Jill DeWit:

All right. So Laurie wrote, "Success stories." I like this, I saw this the other day. Okay. Laurie wrote, "Success stories are too few and I'm posting this one on request. Bought 20 acres with a falling down house and a ton of trash for $70,000, sold in less than a week for $165,000 to the neighbor. I funded this for a partner who's negotiating and set a selling wizard and made it possible. We had to work through an attorney for several months to finalize probate and to get the property redated. Seller knew nothing about probate. Didn't even know she had to go through probate or to facilitate with two attorneys involved.

Jill DeWit:

Was a headache of a deal. But at the end, the seller was so incredibly grateful to have the money and the neighbors were thrilled to get the property cheap. My deal partner, and I were both delighted to make that much and sell so fast. And he wasn't even a bit upset to get a wire for $53,000. And the attorney was happy with the flowers we sent her and she sent a picture of them in her conference room. And a love you guys email. That's five people that were very happy from one deal made possible by Land Academy."

Steven Butala:

So I put this in the script on this episode because Jill's going to ... This is happy Jill. And because yesterday ...

Jill DeWit:

It was crappy Jack. Happy Jill, crappy Jack.

Steven Butala:

This experience, I believe represents the vast majority of what goes on Land Academy.

Jill DeWit:

Today's topic Jill Friday. How to be an effective entrepreneur. This is the meat of the show. For helping each other out this week. Sometimes we fall a little behind. Sometimes we lose our train of thought. Sometimes we're just, who knows what is going on.

Steven Butala:

Broadcasting to you from our personal job site.

Jill DeWit:

Here we go.

Steven Butala:

Construction site.

Jill DeWit:

There is that too. Yes, we are recording around different projects. So it's okay. So here's the deal. I find there's a lot of people that hit a certain level in their company, and it's usually deal flow and money combined. And they're like, "I know how to make 50, 75, a hundred thousand dollars a month seriously, but I can't get past that level of right now. I'm doing bigger deals. I'm answering the phone as best I can. I love my job. I'm not sleeping. I don't know what to do now. I'm trying to get past this hump. And so I want to help you be an effective entrepreneur. Guess what the problem is. It's you.

Steven Butala:

Maybe this is a rant today. Jill's rant. [crosstalk 00:03:42] maybe it's narcissistic view.

Jill DeWit:

You saw that coming right?

Steven Butala:

No.

Jill DeWit:

[inaudible 00:03:54]. I thought you would agree with me, but that's really it. It's you, okay. You've got-

Steven Butala:

I want to get in on this now.

Jill DeWit:

Why is it you? Because you are holding yourself back. You need to step aside. You need to hire, you need to let some self ... You need to let some things go. You've got to force the growth and I get it.

Jack Thursday - Land Academy Members with Personality Disorders (LA 1557)

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 pretty Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today's Jack Thursday. And I'm going to talk about Land Academy members with personality disorders.

Jill DeWit:

Put your helmet on.

Steven Butala:

Why would you ever talk about Land Academy members with disorders when 99.8% of all Land Academy members past and present are awesome. Because it's Jack Thursday, that's why.

Jill DeWit:

Because he wants to.

Steven Butala:

And some people need to be discussed and disgusted.

Jill DeWit:

Oh no.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members on a landinvestors.com online community, it's free. And if you're already a member and you don't have a personality disorder, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Here we go. It's already starting.

Jill DeWit:

All right, Kevin wrote, this might be a rant on open contracts.

Steven Butala:

Options.

Jill DeWit:

Ops. Excuse me. Let me start over. "This might be a rant on option contracts. I talked to a man about five acres in a county in the Midwest. My offer was $10,681. And he said he received a higher offer from someone who wanted a 90 day close. I told him that the person making an offer sounds like they want to do an option contract. He said that sounds about right. He did not want to deal with this person and is willing to take my offer that is $3,000 less. This option contract person is pushing deals our way. I just talked to the seller yesterday and he had another deal with the same scenario." His offer was, a member, excuse me.

Jill DeWit:

"He talked to a member yesterday and he had to deal with the same scenario. His offer was less, but the seller did not understand the need for 90 day close and was put off. The seller would rather deal with the member, this other member, even though his offer is lower, same situation again. There's a time and a place for an option contract."

Steven Butala:

Is there?

Jill DeWit:

"But it's probably a poor choice for the initial offer, whoever's doing this is pushing deals my way, so thank you." That's totally true. So can I say real quick, here's an option. We would use to suggest this in the past and use this in the past when I was flat out out of money, when all these great deals are coming my way, I spent all my acquisition funds, I didn't have more money to take it down another deal. And I'd say, "Look, here's the story, I can't afford to buy it right now, but can I have 90 days?" And I'll kind of pull it together and what I might do and I would be honest with this too, is just go out and try to market it and sell it on my own, or sell it on your behalf kind of thing. And I'll give you the money that we agree upon. And they're like, "Sure, that's fine. As long as I get my eight grand, I don't really care how you do it. And 90 days is fine for you to try to go get me my eight grand."

Jill DeWit:

Okay. So I'd have them sign this option contract, which gives me a skin in the game, equitable title so I can go out and kind of market it as my own. And here it is, this is my new property on Land Stay and try to sell it. And if I, maybe I sold it for 12, maybe I sold it for 14, whatever it was, I could then go afford to buy it from him for eight and do it all really fast. That's the thing.

Jill DeWit:

Some people, and this is before, this is what I really would run out of money. And, or I would also suggest is like, maybe it was a really good deal, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure on the price. So I'd say, "Maybe I'll do an option. See if I can get what I think I'm going to get, then I'll pull the trigger and make it happen kind of thing."

Jill DeWit:

So what it has sadly turned into,

Number 1 Reason You May Not Be Doing as Many Deals as Possible (LA 1556)

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.

Steven Butala:

[inaudible 00:00:10]

Jill DeWit:

Full fit. Broadcasting from perfect Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about the number one reason you may not be doing as many deals as possible.

Jill DeWit:

And no, it's not answering the phone. That starts it, but that's not the only reason.

Steven Butala:

And no, it's not because your pricing sucks.

Jill DeWit:

That's right.

Steven Butala:

It's not those two.

Jill DeWit:

And no, it's because your pricing was just too good and they don't realize it. It's so perfect. These guys are idiots. That's not it.

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. If you're already a member, you can use Land Investors if you want, but join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Use both. Use both. Okay. Because there's good information in both. I have to say, if you're a brand new member, if you're not using the search function and utilizing landinvestors.com you're missing it because there's so much information. There's-

Steven Butala:

There's 3,000-

Jill DeWit:

Six and a half years of information ... Of comments, and people, and-

Steven Butala:

3,000-

Jill DeWit:

Situations.

Steven Butala:

Pages of questions.

Jill DeWit:

That.

Steven Butala:

To answer.

Jill DeWit:

There's a lot of things that have already been addressed that can really help you that are in landinvestors.com and it's a great resource. And it's free to the planet so go get an account. Shannon and James wrote, "I spoke with a lady today who has two and a half acres on a road with access and another pair of 1.25 acres behind it with no road access. She responded to my mailer from the 1.25-acre offer. She'd liked to sell all five acres." So two and half acre the payer and then the parent the 1.25, we got it, at one time. "And she's made it known that she just doesn't want to sell the two and a half acres with the access." Totally agree. "Should I make an offer on all five acres?" Yes. "However, break up the pricing for the non-access pair on the 1.25 acre lots."

Steven Butala:

Nope.

Jill DeWit:

I see where they're going that whole place.

Steven Butala:

So do I.

Jill DeWit:

Or should I move on because she doesn't want to sell me the two and a half acres that has the access, which is what I'd really like to purchase? Thank you, Shannon and James."

Steven Butala:

Sell it yourself.

Jill DeWit:

You want the five acres? So if you need to say ... If you need to ... I don't really need you to be this guy or this couple. Look. Or, I can't ... I'm not paying as much for the back acres as I am for the front acres because the access is here. So here's my offer. You could do that but I don't condone that. Just give her an offer for the all five acres. Love it. This is great. And down the road, if somebody else wants to do something with them, that's on them. They want to create access to the back half that's great they can do that too. I would just buy all five.

Steven Butala:

Or nothing. You'll see if they're a seller pretty quickly. You need access ... Property needs to have access this day and age. There's a ... If you go back to last week, there's a question in the topic about access that explains it. Why it's so important? So there was a time in my career when I bought a lot accessless property very inexpensively and resold it, disclosing that it has no access. So there's a whole business model there. But the time in our career right now is to buy property with access.

Jill DeWit:

Right. I look at it this way. She happens to have five acres on a road with three APNs.

Steven Butala:

That's exactly how I would look at this deal,

Real Math Behind the Number of Needed Offers Sent to Succeed (LA 1555)

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 pretty Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I explore the real math behind the number of offers needed to be sent out to succeed. Should I send 100? Should I send 1000? I'm brand new, I don't know what to do. What's the real math behind it? I really want to buy a few properties. 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. If you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Austin wrote, "Hey, y'all, I'm doing research in an area that is heavy on lakes. The comp data is all over the place, likely due to the variants in attributes. Do you guys sort out and price specifically for waterfront property or mix them up and use one pricing methodology?" Good question.

Steven Butala:

Well, you have two choices here, and you kind of identified both of them. Depending on who you talk to in the Land Academy group or really anyone, they're going to give you a different answer. But you're saying, hey, what do I do? What do I do? I look at the data. I look at the mailer I'm about to send out. California's like this. There's a lot of waterfront property that's incredibly expensive. And then if you go one block back, it's a different price. Two blocks back, it's a different price. And then three blocks back all the way to Michigan, it's the same price.

Steven Butala:

So if you're super concerned about pricing and accuracy, which you shouldn't be, and I'll explain why in a second, you're going to take a microscopic or what I call a rifle approach versus a shotgun approach to pricing all this data. So, dream with me for a second. If you had the time and the patience to look up every property, and we have people in our group who do this-

Jill DeWit:

That's the problem, yeah.

Steven Butala:

... and price it, every single property, you will fail.

Jill DeWit:

It's just too much. It's too much.

Steven Butala:

It's too time consuming, and you're removing the possibility of hitting a home run.

Jill DeWit:

It's personal preference, I think, was really what it is. You can't line by line this stuff. We're going to talk here in a minute about the number of mail you should be sending out. You don't have time to sit and go through 15,000 of them line by line. You'll be here until December.

Steven Butala:

And it's not that important anyway. Jill's going to talk about that in a second. Pricing is not why people sign an offer, and she'll explain that in a second. So what do you do? You got all this, let's say Florida canal property, and then inland property. The Florida canal property is twice as expensive as the inland property on the MLS. You follow the methodology of zip code pricing, and you come to an average or a mean of all the data in that data set, and you send everybody an offer at a price that you think is appropriate below retail. So maybe it's 20% or 30% or 40% or some number like that.

Steven Butala:

What's going to happen is that the people who own the waterfront property and the people who own the inland property are going to get an offer roughly the same, and they're going to sign it. Some of them are going to sign it and some of them aren't. The ones who sign it on the waterfront, you're going to make a ton of money. The ones who sign it on inland, you're going to make-

Jill DeWit:

Still good money.

Steven Butala:

... not quite a ton of money, but very good money on the deal as an investment. So pricing is not why people sign offers. People sign offers because you just hit them at the right time and they were having a life event and they want to sell it.

Jill DeWit:

You could also have this.

How We Test for Reason 3 Times During the Acquisition Process (LA 1554)

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 DeWitt broadcasting from awesome Phoenix, Arizona. I'll get my new little spiel down.

Steven Butala:

If I were you, I would've fast-forwarded through that too. Today, Jill and I talk about-

Jill DeWit:

What?

Steven Butala:

... how we test for reason three times during the acquisition process.

Jill DeWit:

How much do you fast-forward in life?

Steven Butala:

I fast-forward everything.

Jill DeWit:

I know.

Steven Butala:

I mean, it's just the way the world is. Like the greatest thing in the world is that 10-second button on Netflix and Amazon.

Jill DeWit:

I don't use that unless I miss some dialogue because somebody else is talking.

Steven Butala:

Or like [crosstalk 00:00:37]-

Jill DeWit:

I go backwards.

Steven Butala:

Really? You wait [crosstalk 00:00:41] for all the stuff in the beginning, like which production company did what and who did the-

Jill DeWit:

No, I don't do that but-

Steven Butala:

So that's what that 10-second button's for.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. I thought you meant just my comments.

Steven Butala:

That's why half the people that are listening or watching this, they already know what the intro is. They're [crosstalk 00:00:53] going to fast forward to it.

Jill DeWit:

They didn't hear any of this anyway.

Steven Butala:

This is where they probably started.

Jill DeWit:

Yep.

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, and if you're already a land academy member, please join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Hello. Eve wrote, "Hello all, I'm working on my first mailer and came across the data that I did not have a situs address or zip code. Do you all have any advice on how I can price these properties, since I did zip code pricing?" Thank you in advance."

Steven Butala:

Go ahead, Jill.

Jill DeWit:

Why? This is kind of your area.

Steven Butala:

The vast majority of real estate in the country doesn't have a post office address, therefore, does not have a ready-made zip code. You only get an address for a property, or the person who built your house got an address for the property by contacting the post office.

Jill DeWit:

And saying we want to get mail there.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. We want to get mail.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Butala:

It's not that hard to work backwards. If you have a small data set, you can just go on a map and look. It's not hard, or if mailing one small little area, that's pretty easy. But that's not how we roll here. We we send 10, 20, 30,000 mailers out at a time and all different zip codes. So DataTree was nice enough to populate the GPS coordinates columns really effectively. So it's not hard. In fact, it's incredibly simple to copy and paste the GPS coordinates out of the mailer that you're building, whether it's a 100 unit mailer or a 100,000 unit mailer. Drop them into an application that we use called geocod.io into a spreadsheet, pay them a couple of bucks and then dump it back out, back into your spreadsheet, into your mailer that you're building, and now you have a situs address. It's as simple as that, and then you can move through the zip code pricing like we teach in the education.

Jill DeWit:

Exactly.

Steven Butala:

Today's topic, how do we test for reason three, no less than three, sometimes more, during the acquisition process. This is the meat of the show.

Steven Butala:

What is test for reason? Test for reason is an old, I think it's an accounting concept, it might be, I mean, it's just pure logic to me. But I'm not sure where I first heard about it, but it's just applying logic. You go through all this brainy stuff in the world, especially at Land Academy,

Jill Friday - Sellers Need to Like You and Your Dynamic Personality (LA 1553)

Transcript:

Steven J Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Happy Friday.

Steven J 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 perfect Phoenix, Arizona.

Steven J Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about, well, it's Jill Friday, and how sellers need to like you and your dynamic personality.

Jill DeWit:

It kind of sounds funny when you say it like that.

Steven J Butala:

I never would have thought that this was important to get anything done. And now more than ever, I don't know if it's my age or sort of experience.

Jill DeWit:

Maybe it's me.

Steven J Butala:

It is you. It's the Jill effect. And being an experienced parent, I just know that you need to have a dynamic personality and present stuff to sellers to get a deal.

Jill DeWit:

It makes a difference.

Steven J Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

Well, and sellers and buyers, all of it, all of the above. And I can't wait to talk more about this. I was thinking about career path this week, actually the last week, and we were just talking... It comes up often, and I have to remind everyone, get the mail out. There's a lot of problems you can solve on the phone. And that ties into this.

Steven J 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, and if you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. I'm going to set this up.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

Steven J Butala:

This is Sam and Malita, Land Academy members, responding to a question that somebody else asked about should I send a mail to a low activity area? Meaning wow, there's just not a lot of comparison value. It's both sales and actively sold property. This is what they say.

Jill DeWit:

This is cool. Their take on it. So Sam and Malita wrote, for areas where I just don't see any activity or very little in the way of sold and for sale, I'm contacting agents that sell there and just getting them to give me the lowdown on the area. What's going on in this area conversation? I'm a broker and have listed a lot of land in an area where we have tons on the market and very little movement. I would always be upfront with my clients on what to expect when listing land in that area. I knew exactly why it was slow over there, and I knew what would sell and what would sit. So maybe find out what sells in that area and what sits. Love it.

Steven J Butala:

Well, let me tell you a story. A true story, and it's one that's recent. We sent a mailer out in a centrally located state and did very, very well. And Jill found the right real estate agent to deal with. And he sold the property quickly. And to which she said, "Well, should I buy more?" I'll tell you what she said in less than 30 seconds, "Boy, if I had properties anything in these three zip codes, I can sell it for $20,000 an acre."

Jill DeWit:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It was like, "This area, yes. This area, no. This area, maybe. This area..." That's the conversation you want to have.

Steven J Butala:

Is there data involved in that? No. And the reason I put that, I'm a data person. The reason I put this question in this episode is because we're going to talk about this is not all about data. It's hugely about... And so think about now, if you call six or seven good local land real estate agents, what kind of conversations you're going to have and how you can tailor a mailer around what they say without ever running any real data.

Jill DeWit:

Exactly.

Steven J Butala:

Today's topic is Jill Friday. And she talks about how sellers need to like you and your dynamic personality. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:

So I was thinking about this because I was watching Shark Tank the other day. I know I talk about that a lot. It's one of my favorite shows. When I'm on Hulu, it always just pops up,