Who Should I Hire First in 2021? (LA 1516)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Howdy.

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 Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about who should you hire first in 2021. This is a very popular question in our customer service Land Academy environment. How do I get that first employee?

Jill DeWit:

I'm excited. I have some ideas.

Steven Butala:

Me too.

Jill DeWit:

First, before we get into it. Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Investors online community. It is free, so I'm getting an account there. And then by the way, if you are a member, I know that we're beating a dead horse here, but I want you guys to get in Discord. It rocks.

Steven Butala:

John asks, "Can anyone elaborate and help me understand the paragraph from V26 May investors newsletter?"

Steven Butala:

We have a newsletter, Land Academy does. I don't know if it goes to everybody or if it goes just to our members. And so I write stuff in there, I'm a writer for the newsletter. And, this whole thing, I'm going to read this because this person was asking for clarification about what I said. A lot of years ago, I was with us listening to Larry King on this long drive. And he was interviewing William Shatner and of course, Star Trek came up and Larry King said, "Do you have these people that ever come up to you and ask you about Star Trek?" And he said, "Oh yeah, I have people on a daily basis." And, so they'd take a question from a caller on that switchboard. And the caller says, "What did you mean by... When you said XYZ in episode 14 in the third season of star Trek?" And, William Shatner blew his top.

Jill DeWit:

That's funny.

Steven Butala:

He said, "I don't remember."

Jill DeWit:

Why would they not have a better relationship with the Klingon community based on X?" Yeah.

Steven Butala:

He said, "Listen, asshole" I can't say that. I'm going to ask our guys to... He just blew his top. He said, "Listen, I can't remember even actually doing that show at all. Ever."

Steven Butala:

Are you writing down the time?

Jill DeWit:

Yes I am.

Steven Butala:

"I don't remember showing up for work for that entire part of my life, let alone episodes and what I said and the dialogue and all of that. And by the way, it wasn't me who said that it was my character." And, so he just went off and I don't know, I stopped the car. I was laughing so hard.

Jill DeWit:

That's good.

Steven Butala:

So, here I am saying and writing some stuff, then I'm going to try to translate that I don't remember saying it, right?

Jill DeWit:

Go for it.

Steven Butala:

He asks,, "Can you elaborate or help me understand what you meant?" And, what I wrote is this, "Here is what it can do for property investors like us after reviewing the entire 150 million unit data set, there's 150 million unit properties in this country, I would like to see properties with no improvement value, just land in zip codes, where the spread between the average completed sale value and the foresale values are the largest."

Steven Butala:

So, you've got really large for sale values and really low completed sale values. "This tells me where to send out blind offers. Then I would like to see within those geographic parameters, what acreage range is the widest. This tells me which owners or to whom to send blind offers after scrubbing down to this dataset, I'd like to know what the actual spread prices are. This tells me for how much to send each offer out how to price the offers."

Steven Butala:

That makes complete sense to me. Does it make sense to you? What he didn't include, and it's fine, is the context of what this was and what I said. And, this is my advice to everyone. Take four steps back and don't get all in the deluge of the data. Take a look,

The Employees We Can Live Without (Rants) (LA 1515)

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 pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about the employees we can live without.

Jill DeWit:

Oh, I've got one.

Steven Butala:

This is our rant.

Jill DeWit:

Oh.

Steven Butala:

It's hiring week all week today, all this week.

Jill DeWit:

This is going to be good. I'll tell you one employee I could do without, the kind that wants to replace me.

Steven Butala:

Who would ever replace you?

Jill DeWit:

Oh, wait, I'll fill you in.

Steven Butala:

Let's take a question before Jill's rant. It was 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:

Martin wrote, "A potential buyer reached out to me following my first mailer interested in selling their 0.5 acre vacant lot for $14,682. They informed me that they were selling not only the lot from my mailer offer, but the neighboring 0.5 acre lot. This is cool. I was informed that the additional lot has their deceased mother's hundred year old home on it and it was quoted as being uninhabitable. This is my first mailer and I'm diving into some unknown territory with potentially buying a lot with a home on it and I'd like to get some perspective from the group. The sellers informed me that both lots are off of primary roads and a three minute walk to a lake and both lots are in the seller's name."

Jill DeWit:

This is all good information.

Steven Butala:

This is really good.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah. So here are the questions.

Steven Butala:

This is a beautiful story.

Jill DeWit:

"Number one, pending I can get the home for a low price, is it worth it? I don't want to do a home flip as one of my first buys and would plan to list as is. Two, can I take the home straight title myself or do I need to hire a realtor once I get the purchase agreement back? Thank you to match your health, Martin."

Jill DeWit:

This is great. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?

Steven Butala:

Yeah. 99% of all cases with vacant land, if there's something on it, it's more valuable, not less value. I don't care if it's a blown out mobile home, it's better. The 1% where you don't want this to be the case is where there's something that would fall under EPA guidelines as toxic and it would require a cleanup. So if there's an old house that's fallen down on a piece of property that's a few blocks from a lake, you can tell that's a beautiful, beautiful story. It's a fantastic. With a vacant lot next to it?

Jill DeWit:

Yeah. Now you have an acre.

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

By the way, now you have a full acre. One of them has a house on it. So whoever buys it can keep one, sell the other, keep them both, whatever.

Steven Butala:

Can you imagine a situation where a vacant piece of property would be more value than one with an old house on it?

Jill DeWit:

Nope.

Steven Butala:

Neither can I.

Jill DeWit:

Nope.

Steven Butala:

All the utilities are hooked up. There's probably a slab there.

Jill DeWit:

That's great.

Steven Butala:

There's all kinds of positive things that go with that. And people know that. This world, people who go on Craigslist or anywhere are DIY type people. They would love to get a really inexpensive old house and spent five years fixing it up.

Jill DeWit:

Someone's going to want that. The hundred year old home that's been there and the loving story that goes with it. That mom lived there for how many years. Maybe dad built it. Maybe grandpa built it. That would be so cool and someone will love that.

Jill DeWit:

Another thing is, too, by the way, you can do this whole transaction yourself. Just because there's a house on it does not mean you need an agent.

Our Favorite Types of Employees (Raves) (LA 1514)

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 sweet paradise valley, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today. Jill and I talk about our favorite types of employees. These are raves and it's a-

Jill DeWit:

Positive.

Steven Butala:

...hiring week, all week.

Jill DeWit:

Yep. Employee, employer, I love that. This is going to be good. Things that we've learned that we can help you with.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. You know enough.

Jill DeWit:

Because we've done it wrong and we've done it right.

Steven Butala:

We're getting a lot of questions from our members about how to scale their businesses up. They're buying and selling land pretty successfully, and now they want to make it a career.

Jill DeWit:

They need to expand their team and hire people.

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 member, please join us on discord.

Jill DeWit:

Cool. Amir wrote, hi guys, thanks for the endless valuable information you give. I learn something new every podcast you post. As a beginner that aims to make relatively big deals, I want to buy between 30 and 70,000 and sell between 90 to $200,000. That's my favorite too.

Steven Butala:

That's what I want.

Jill DeWit:

I'm wondering, should I start with 10 to 20 small deals, buy in $3,000 in sell in the $10,000 range and then scale to the bigger ones or should I get familiar with the big ones right on my first mailer. Thanks at advance, Amir. You want to go first?

Steven Butala:

Yeah. A lot of people had a lot to say starting with our moderator, Kevin. Kevin, I can't thank you enough, by the way. And they all said go small first and I agree. I don't necessarily think you need to... And it's not because, here's why, there's two reasons. Number one, you're going to make some mistakes, everybody does. And the earlier you make the mistakes, the faster you're going to be successful. So you want to do that on smaller deals. You don't want to lose a lot of money.

Jill DeWit:

I'm not going to sweat about it.

Steven Butala:

I'm not necessarily saying you're going to lose money, but you might not do a deed right or you might not respond to a seller the right way, or there's just little things that happen.

Jill DeWit:

Really, that's stuff you can solve regardless of the deal. But what if you bought one wrong, I don't know, you overpaid for one big deal. So, that's my usual thing at the 10 out of the way. If they're 10 smaller ones and nine of them are great, and one you're like, oh, I totally screwed up and shoot. Technically I lost money on that one or I broke even on that one, but that's okay because the other nine make up for that one and now you got it.

Steven Butala:

And then my second and final point, which is I think incredibly important is you need to find out if this is for you.

Jill DeWit:

True.

Steven Butala:

So there's a lot of their sips. This isn't for everybody. It's a lot of work, it's extremely rewarding. I think it's a lot of fun. You might find out this is just no fun.

Jill DeWit:

We are weird.

Steven Butala:

I know. Yes. Land Academy is a group full of weird people that enjoy buying real estate and selling it for more. You get high off of it actually, just do so.

Jill DeWit:

Totally.

Steven Butala:

Here's another question here later in the week where we talk about the deal high.

Jill DeWit:

Can I pause for just a second here BEcause this is so good? Because we sometimes talk about this differently. We really have told people, Hey, go for it, whatever you want to do, you can just go for it. So there's no real wrong answer here. If you want to just dive in, go for the bigger deals, you feel real comfortable with them and do deal fundi...

Jill Friday - We Have Hot Water! Starting my House Renovation (LA 1513)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill, here.

Jill K DeWit:

Hello.

Steven Butala:

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

Jill K DeWit:

And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from happening Paradise Valley, Arizona. It's happening because we are here now. Everyone-

Steven Butala:

It's-

Jill K DeWit:

Excuse me. Hold, please. I'm not done. All of you 80 year-olds that are listening that are my neighbors ... Just kidding. Watch out. There's new kids in town. There's a reason we're here. We have no HOA so we're going to have some rocking parties.

Steven Butala:

We're the young whippersnappers.

Jill K DeWit:

Yes, we are.

Steven Butala:

We're the ones who are going to create the noise in the state.

Jill K DeWit:

Oh, it's going to be good.

Steven Butala:

We're the Gatsbys.

Jill K DeWit:

Our neighbors are going to wish we had an HOA. Just kidding. "Paradise Valley Police Department. Yeah, yeah, we know. Jack and Jill? Uh-huh, we're on it." Just kidding.

Steven Butala:

Today's Jill Friday and she's going to talk about how we actually have hot water in this monstrosity of a mess of a house that we just bought and how we're starting-

Jill K DeWit:

How we're starting some renovations.

Steven Butala:

Jill's renovation, I call it.

Jill K DeWit:

I'd like to add, too ... Here's what realistically happened because this is what happened at the beach. When you call the police department you might get a voicemail because they're at our party.

Steven Butala:

That's true.

Jill K DeWit:

That really did happen at the beach.

Steven Butala:

That's true. Those guys are great.

Jill K DeWit:

So, just be prepared.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on LandInvestors.com online community. It's free and if you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord.

Jill K DeWit:

Andrew W. wrote, "Hi, everyone. Question for you. We have a buyer who's interested in one of our properties and he wants to purchase but he stated they want to meet us, the owners, in person at the property to confirm before purchasing. Has anyone experienced this and know what to say or do? The property's out of state and if anything we could make the trip but wanted to see what others have done in the past. Thanks."

Jill K DeWit:

Well, one easy way to get out of it right now is play the COVID card like, "Oh, I can't. My wife won't go." Play the double whammy. "My wife is not into it and ..." What were you going to say? You're so serious right now.

Steven Butala:

I've done this ...

Jill K DeWit:

Have fun.

Steven Butala:

Here's why I'm serious, because this is a serious question.

Jill K DeWit:

Okay. I know that. You want me to answer? Because that's ... I believe it. I'm having fun but I wanted to lighten it up a little bit and [inaudible 00:02:30][crosstalk 00:02:30]-

Steven Butala:

I'm racking Jill's time.

Jill K DeWit:

And then I can reel it ... give a real.

Steven Butala:

This is not the first time.

Jill K DeWit:

You know what, Andrew. I accurately tell people I'm not there. I've had people say, "Are you going to show me around?" And I made a joke and I said, "Yeah, I'll leave a key under the mat," and then they didn't quite get it and I had to ... It's okay. The right people get it. But there's nothing wrong with that. You don't need to be there. You don't need to show the property. I'm just ... You have a lot to say. I can tell you're holding back.

Steven Butala:

I don't have a lot to say.

Jill K DeWit:

I'm honest about it.

Steven Butala:

I've three or four sentences. I've done this a handful of times and every single time it's a mess.

Jill K DeWit:

You show up there?

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:

Oh, I've never done that.

Steven Butala:

And here's what I've ... This is way early in my career because we were dying for sales and it was never ...

Jack Thursday - DataTree vs RealQuest vs TitlePRO (LA 1512)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:

Hello.

Steven Butala:

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

Jill K DeWit:

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

Steven Butala:

Today's Jack Thursday. I'm going to talk about DataTree versus RealQuest versus TitlePro. These are the three largest mainstream data aggregators. I'll really deconstruct them and tell you which ones are which and why.

Jill K DeWit:

This sounds so exciting.

Steven Butala:

What color is your nail polish today that you're going to put on your nails while I talk about this?

Jill K DeWit:

I don't have any. I'm going to run and get some here. I will have plenty of time to choose and paint.

Jill K DeWit:

Just kidding.

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, join us on Discord.

Jill K DeWit:

Sean wrote, "Which is more accurate for getting situs zip, geocode.io or DataTree?

Jill K DeWit:

There's other places to do those, too, by the way.

Jill K DeWit:

I ran the long [lap 00:01:09] from DataTree through geocode.io to get situs zip codes. Then I noticed DataTree already had the situs zip codes listed to download. I can put the two columns side-by-side and notice some discrepancies. Anyone have any experience on which one is more accurate?

Jill K DeWit:

Where to go?

Steven Butala:

Sean, this is the right way to do this, but as I'm going to explain here in a few minutes about sources of data, generally, the more urban the data, the more populated all the columns are because the assessor has a vested interest in getting to know properties more in urban areas versus rural areas. Why? So that they can charge accurate and, in a lot of cases, higher-

Jill K DeWit:

More.

Steven Butala:

... property taxes.

Steven Butala:

This is a universal rule about data. This is a good question for today. The more urban it is, the more populated or accurate it probably is. When you look at data for LA County, specifically City of Los Angeles, I fall out of my chair at how amazing the data quality is, regardless of the source. If you go to rural, I'm not picking on any state in general, Indiana or anywhere, some rural counties in Texas, it's incredibly incomplete to the point where you fall out of the other side of your chair. You can't use it. I'll talk all about that.

Steven Butala:

The reason that you're getting discrepancies in geo zip codes is because you took a county or a city or zip code, whatever, that was really populated with zip codes, situs zip codes in DataTree. Then when you try to convert it over, there are discrepancies because geocoding is not perfect. It's just like everything. Does the discrepancies matter? No, it's all a numbers game. If 90% of it's probably accurate or higher, you're going to buy some real estate. That's the whole point here.

Jill K DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Butala:

And I'll just say, the people that join Land Academy are incredibly intelligent. We don't have any control over who joins or who doesn't.

Jill K DeWit:

Well, we do.

Steven Butala:

We have control over who stays in the group.

Jill K DeWit:

There we go. Like, hold on a moment.

Steven Butala:

This is a crazy intelligent question, but I think that there are certain types of people that join Land Academy and just make it an academic exercise for them. Instead of, let's say, quilting, data analysis becomes their hobby.

Jill K DeWit:

It's good.

Steven Butala:

This is how people get divorced, by the way.

Jill K DeWit:

I thought you were going to say how people get rich.

Steven Butala:

No, just [follow 00:03:44] me on this.

Steven Butala:

Instead of keeping your eye on the prize, which is buying a piece of land and reselling it for more infamy-

Jill K DeWit:

How to Find Real Estate Deals 2021 | Direct Mail (LA 1511)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:

Howdy.

Steven Butala:

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

Jill K DeWit:

And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how to find real estate deals in 2021. So is it any different than 2020? Is it any different than 1960?

Jill K DeWit:

No. Well, probably. 1960 was probably a lot of knocking on doors back then, but it could have been done the same way.

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 member, please join us on Discord.

Jill K DeWit:

I'd like to talk about that here in a minute.

Steven Butala:

I will. I'll ask you questions.

Jill K DeWit:

All right. Jordan wrote, "When you guys are looking at Land Watch and Land and Farm, do you pay attention to the listings from other sources? It seems like a lot of the properties on listings from other sources are always a lot cheaper and more reasonably priced." Is that like on Zillow, where it's like FSBO versus agent listings? I'm not even sure what that is.

Steven Butala:

Jordan, this is a brilliant question. There are alternative sources, which I love, alternative sources to look at real estate that's for sale that's posted because people like us and people like Land Academy members understand it. You don't have to necessarily go through the MLS. So on Zillow, there's a category called other, and you should study that. On Land Watch and Land and Farm, those two sites specifically encourage independent postings for property.

Jill K DeWit:

I thought the whole thing is that way.

Steven Butala:

The whole thing is not that way anymore. They have what's called an IDX feed for each area, so-

Jill K DeWit:

They're pulling it in from MLS. That's taking away what it used to be.

Steven Butala:

Exactly. Exactly. It's just those sites, not so much Zillow, although it's true are all run by tech people in San Francisco and so they don't really, truly understand-

Jill K DeWit:

They're not investors. We happened to know that. We had a run in with them several years ago and they're like, "We don't really care who you are, what you do, or how much money you pay us every month. This is just the way it is." I was like, "Okay, noted," and then we've made our own site called LandPin.

Steven Butala:

Exactly.

Jill K DeWit:

So we don't need you guys then fine.

Steven Butala:

But Jordan's question is, is it pertinent to running data from a red, green, yellow test than from a.. Yeah. It's pertinent. I would absolutely look at it. Would I throw it into your pool of data and then take averages out and price it that way? No, not at all, but I really would use it to see what kind of activities there are and all that. This is a very good question. Today's topic, how to find deals in 2021. This is the meat of the show.

Jill K DeWit:

So I would like to talk about... I'm trying to think. So in 1960, I bet that was like the height in up and coming thing, was probably very classy and maybe they had the gold jackets back then. I don't know. Was it century 21 when they had the gold jackets I think?

Steven Butala:

I can tell you from experience. I bought a house in the late eighties personally, or maybe it was very early nineties and when I sat down with a real estate agent and I...

Jill K DeWit:

There's a book.

Steven Butala:

I put a yellow piece of paper, shoved a yellow pad and I said, "I drove the whole area where I want to buy a house, and these are all the addresses that have listings and here's the listing." I was creating my own MLS. I didn't know anything about this stuff. I was a kid. And she looked at me and said, "Whatever you choose to do, be for your living for the rest of your life,

Is it Too Late to Get Started in Real Estate? (LA 1510)

Transcript:

Jill K DeWit:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:

Hello.

Steven Butala:

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

Jill K DeWit:

And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. That's a mouthful. How am I going to get that? I'm have to come up with some cute little saying with that.

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 member, please join us on Discord.

Jill K DeWit:

Cool. Nolan wrote, "Hello, all. Curious to know how you include a second parcel in the original purchase agreement, if possible, meaning the seller wants to sell the property you sent the PA for, purchase agreement, but he also wants to sell another one that they own in this transaction. Do you typically just mail another PA for the second property, or can something be written on the original PA to include the second one. The seller is older and not very tech savvy for DocuSign. Thanks." You can, a hundred percent, just write it on the bottom. I just tell them, "Hey, if we change the price or something, cross out that price, put in the new price on there and initial it." Good enough for me.

Steven Butala:

And take a picture of it and send it with your phone, or have his grandchildren do that, or whatever.

Jill K DeWit:

I've done them all.

Steven Butala:

However, it works.

Jill K DeWit:

I have called on Saturday and taught them how to take a picture with their phone. I have waited for the grandkids to get home. Sometimes they have an old fashioned fax machine kind of thing. So there's lots of ways to get it back to you. You can just write it on there. It doesn't have to be... And even for escrow. I have two things I want to say on this. One is, if you're going to self close a deal, it's just, if you want to have it, it's only personal preference, you don't need to have this piece of paper. It's like your accountant's going to need to see it or anything like that at the end of the year, if you want it. But for escrow, most of the time, they're going to want you to have something opening up the transaction, showing that, "Hey, here's what I'm buying. I have a signed purchase agreement. This is the price. And moving forward." Thank you for letting me finish my sentence today.

Steven Butala:

The National Association of Realtors and lawyers in general, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fake you out, into believing that you have to sign your name 50 times to buy a piece of real estate and that you need them. Here's the facts. This came up in Career Path and we talked about it for a long time. And somebody in Career Path... These are extremely advanced, intelligent people in some cases, said, "What do you need from a legal documentation standpoint to close a deal?" To which I said, "A deed. You need to have the seller sign the deed over to you."

Jill K DeWit:

That's it.

Steven Butala:

That's all. Then the deal is done and it's legal.

Jill K DeWit:

It makes me nuts. I can't believe I've had to sign like COVID things and all that stuff for a piece of land, four states over that I'm never going to see, and I'm never going to even talk to that person.

Steven Butala:

That's right.

Jill K DeWit:

Why do I have to sign this?

Steven Butala:

So as far as the purchase agreement is concerned, it's only a guide for pricing. It's an agreement between the buyer and seller. You can do it on the back of a cocktail napkin. I've done many deals on the back of a cocktail napkin where two people have initialed it. You put the APN on there and the price and the time. Do you even need that? No, but it's just like an agreement. It's an agreement between two people. So as far as that purchasing agreement goes, if you have somebody who's not super elderly and understands how to use their phone,

Investing in Other Business vs Real Estate (LA 1509)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:

Hello.

Steven Butala:

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

Jill K DeWit:

And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

I don't think it's Scottsdale, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:

Oh, I'm sorry. Well, let's just say-

Steven Butala:

This is new for us.

Jill K DeWit:

Well, I'm near Scottsdale, Arizona, we'll just say that. I'm sitting in front of what appears like, you know what it looks like? It looks like we're at a resort. Coming to you from the Camelback Inn Resort and Villas. Coming to you from Ballroom A. We should do that.

Steven Butala:

Jill and I are recording this week from a property that we purchased in Paradise Valley.

Jill K DeWit:

Thank you very 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. And if you're already a member, please use Discord, but don't overuse it.

Jill K DeWit:

Noted.

Steven Butala:

I'll leave it at that.

Jill K DeWit:

Noted.

Steven Butala:

This is a long story that's worth reading. I'd happily read it, if you'd like.

Jill K DeWit:

I like reading it. I will settle in. And you too should settle in, as I look how long this is. Tony wrote, "Hi everyone." Wait, wait. Was this in Land Investors or was this in Discord?

Steven Butala:

Land investors.

Jill K DeWit:

Okay. "Hi everyone. I just wanted to chime in, introduce myself. My name is Tony and I've owned and operated an insurance agency for the past 11 years with great success. Finally I got tired of the company that I was selling for and sold my agency about six months ago. Was in the process of trying to figure out what to do next when I came across a YouTube video ad for land flipping. I thought to myself, is this for real? Well as most of you know, research leads you down some pretty deep rabbit holes, and I finally came across Land Academy with Steve and Jill. Those guys really struck a chord in me, as I found them to be probably the most sincere and entertaining educators on the subject out there." Entertaining.

Steven Butala:

I'll take it.

Jill K DeWit:

I'm sincere, you're entertaining. We're going to change our ending.

Steven Butala:

I think it's the other way. Insincere? This is Steve and Jill. Insincere.

Jill K DeWit:

And entertaining. Insincere and boring. No, I'm just kidding. That's so cool. Thank you, Tony. All right. Back to the comments here. "As much as I've researched and tried to learn, and trust me, there's plenty more out there to learn, I was and still am a bit skeptical. One night I was talking about possibly doing land flipping at the dinner table with my family and my 15-year-old daughter got intrigued as much as I did. Afterwards, little did I know she started to watch Land Academy episodes on YouTube." You've got to be kidding me.

Steven Butala:

Entertaining teenagers.

Jill K DeWit:

Wow.

Steven Butala:

It's something that Jill and I haven't been able to accomplish in our own family.

Jill K DeWit:

Wow. This is the only one.

Steven Butala:

Congratulations, pal. You have the unicorn.

Jill K DeWit:

Okay. "YouTube and started to learn on her own the basics of land flipping. She came to me a little over a week ago and said, 'Dad, we could totally do this.' She then went on to tell me why and she went into steps of one" ... I'm still flipping proud of her.

Steven Butala:

Me too.

Jill K DeWit:

I want to give this little girl a hug.

Steven Butala:

We should have her on the show.

Jill K DeWit:

She's so good. "One, researching counties. Two, pick a county. Three, get the data. Four, scrub the data. Five, send out mailers. Six, buy the land. Seven, sell the land. Eight, rinse and repeat. Now I'm sure to all the experienced land folks out there, this is way over simplified,

Jill Friday - Sometimes it Takes the Owner to Get a Deal Done (LA 1508)

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 sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

It's getting that way.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Butala:

Today is Jill Friday. She says, "Sometimes it takes the owner to get a deal done." Boy, that's the truth.

Jill DeWit:

Yep.

Steven Butala:

Sometimes the owner's got to get involved.

Jill DeWit:

Yep.

Steven Butala:

Sometimes dad's got to get involved.

Jill DeWit:

Yep. That's what this is all about.

Steven Butala:

Is that what this is?

Jill DeWit:

That's exactly what this is about. You don't want to do it. I'm here to save you. If you think your staff's all idiots and no one can do anything, that's not true. Sometimes it just takes that extra whatever to get it, to get it done.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into this, let's take a question posed by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and if you're already a member, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Andrew W. wrote, "Hey, everyone. I'm very interested in doing Land Academy. However, I'm not a citizen of the United States and was wondering if it would still be possible to purchase and sell land in America?"

Steven Butala:

Yes.

Jill DeWit:

"If anyone can answer the question for me, that would be great. Also, if possible, are there any particular issues that came along with not being a citizen? Thanks a lot, Andrew." I thought this was important because it hasn't come up in a while.

Steven Butala:

It's a great question.

Jill DeWit:

People don't realize that you don't have to live here and you don't have to be a citizen. You don't have to have a visa. You don't have to be a resident. You can be happily in, say, Ireland and do this.

Steven Butala:

This comes up probably once a week now, maybe once a month. But probably every couple of weeks somebody ask this question, whether they're in Discord or wherever, and we point them to the other people that are successfully doing this from other countries, specifically Canada and Ireland. We've got military people that are stationed all over the country that are doing it. I mean, all over the world.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Butala:

All of our VAs are in the Philippines, so it's truly a worldwide situation.

Jill DeWit:

Isn't that great? And it's funny, remember a long time ago we talked? One of the reasons we do what we do in the United States is the ease of it, but it's the ease of the data. And we were looking at doing this maybe internationally in Australia, because I think still right now it's the only other place that we can really get quality data and it's legal. Because we were talking about this with somebody in England one time, that version of the assessor and the owner data is not public information.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. We're very, very fortunate in this country.

Jill DeWit:

It's public information.

Steven Butala:

When the property got all subdivided or sanctioned, or whatever the verb is, by the federal and then eventually homesteaded out, I don't know why, but they just became a transparent ownership scenario. In most places in the world, it's the exact opposite. Nobody wants anyone else to know that they own anything.

Jill DeWit:

Or what they paid, or any of that.

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

It's so funny that it's your home, but not your car.

Steven Butala:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jill DeWit:

There's so many other things that it's not.

Steven Butala:

Right.

Jill DeWit:

It's real interesting. But luckily for us, it is.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be possible.

Jill DeWit:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:

I've spent a substantial amount of time trying to duplicate this in Canada and it's just not going to happen.

Jack Thursday - State of the Union - Do We Care About Lumber Prices? (LA 1507)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hey, hey, hey.

Steven Butala:

Welcome to the Land Academy Show. What the heck?

Jill DeWit:

I don't know.

Steven Butala:

Entertaining Land Investment Talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:

And I'm Jill DeWit, and I apparently had too much caffeine.

Steven Butala:

Yes, you have.

Jill DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Butala:

Today is Jack Thursday. I'm going to do what our customer service people have requested. A State of the Union, real estate in 2021. For example, do we care about lumber prices?

Jill DeWit:

I have a lot of questions, don't worry.

Steven Butala:

Okay. Before we get into it, then, 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:

Corey wrote, "Good evening."

Steven Butala:

Sorry.

Jill DeWit:

When posting a deal on Land Tank or sending a deal to someone for funding, what info about the property is good to include, so that no time is wasted, to get a quick "yes" or "no" answer for funding? Of course, I know that the [inaudible 00:01:06] are important, but what else should I include? I love this question, by the way. I am new and I haven't bought any land yet, but I'm sending offers to ten to a hundred acre properties, because I know that there are plenty of people here that will fund a deal if it's right. P.S. Jill, I had to leave this in here. I absolutely love listening on Clubhouse.

Steven Butala:

You snuck this in here.

Jill DeWit:

I totally.

Steven Butala:

Jill has a love affair with Clubhouse.

Jill DeWit:

This is not me making it up. Corey really put this in here and I'm like, oh I am putting the whole thing.

Jill DeWit:

He said Jill, I absolutely love listening on Clubhouse for someone that isn't a member yet. I feel like I'm breaking the law getting all the info for free that you guys talk about on there. Of course, the podcasts on this site are great too. Thanks, Corey. [inaudible 00:01:54] this is awesome. Okay. I need to know how the property is going, how the property will be sold, how fast it will be sold and what the game plan is. So let me give you an example. So Corey, you come up with a beautiful twenty-acre property and whatever county and whatever price let's just say. Say it's twenty-acre property for $20,000. So not only do you give me the property details. If there's anything pertinent, I want that I found that there is a well, they used to have a mobile on there.

Jill DeWit:

I've found out that it just got rezoned to this. Something unique or cooler, something that's making you want, why we're doing this deal about the actual property. Then the other thing I want you to do is tell me about you. You're selling me not only on the property, but you're selling me on you because you're coming to me to money and you should be saying, here's how great the property is and here's how great I am. And here's what I'm going to do with this. So I need information that says, I've been studying this for six months. I've got three brokers lined up champing at the bit. They think it's going to sell within 30 days at three times our money and how fast can I do it? And I can, and I've got the title agent ready to go. I can do this in two weeks. That's the information I need.

Steven Butala:

Let me state the obvious.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

Steven Butala:

And put this sentence in there. I don't need anything from you guys except the money.

Jill DeWit:

Yep. Perfect.

Steven Butala:

[inaudible 00:03:36] We have not so much now anymore. We've had a lot big problems with that when we start started Land Tank and deal funding. Basically new people were just throwing a property in there. It's a great deal. I know it's a great deal and just handing it to us and expecting us to do work.

Steven Butala: