Interview with Long Time Member Matt Bailey (LA 1476)

Transcript:

Steve:

Steve Butala here for Land Academy. Jill's not with us today. Lucky for her. She's actually out having some fun. So I wanted to take this opportunity, this kind of vacant opportunity to introduce, I think, a long time member, Matt Bailey, a member of Land Academy. Matt came to us from another member, Lori Phillips, who said, "Look, you got to, I just talked to this guy. He's been a member for a long time, a lot longer than I have. He's really got his stuff together. And he'd be a great guy to have on the show because I think a lot of new people specifically would get a lot out of this." We are Steve and Jill.

Jill:

Together we've been buying and reselling land since the 90s.

Steve:

Our data centric approach leaves our buyers asking, "How can you sell it so cheap?"

Jill:

Here on the Land Academy show-

Steve:

We answer that and more. Welcome, Matt. Thanks so much for being on the show. I'll start off right away and just ask you, how'd you find us? How long have you been with us? What are you working on? If you can just introduce yourself and give us a little flavor, that'd be great.

Matt:

Yeah, sure. So I've been at this for about four years now. I got into it, like I think a lot of people did, listening to BiggerPockets and then Seth had a podcast early on in there and I got started on his course shortly after I jumped in. And did your course. I think that both have a lot to offer. I'm glad that I had done both. And so, yeah, I mean, I've been with you guys for four years, working and lately really this year kind of scaling the company up. So now we have four full-time employees. Lori was the person who introduced us and suggested we jump on the podcast and I'd kind of come to her because I was working on trying to build the processes out, scaling the company, training. And I didn't really have a ton of time to price a mailer. And she had a bunch of mailers priced, but not a lot of bandwidth to do the overhead and the actual execution on it and that's exactly what my business is kind of designed to do.

Matt:

I've kind of built it from the beginning to be designed for scaling, so I focused a lot on business processes and developing a CRM with automations and stuff to kind of like help streamline everything. And that's how I started working with her. And I think we did like five or six deals off of that mailer. And, most of them have kind of come full circle now and yeah, I mean, it's just land's been pretty good. I'm really enjoying it and it's nice to be able to be on the podcast with you.

Steve:

That's great, man. So what's a typical deal look like for you right now with Lori or without Lori or what's a typical deal look like?

Matt:

Yeah. So, I started on some of the smaller deals and as I've done more deals, even though I built this for volume, I think that if you build your business from the beginning to be able to handle volume, you can do fewer deals and not have to work so hard on each one because all of your stuff is streamlined. Right? So, I started doing smaller deals and right now, my minimum threshold is $5,000 profit is what we're looking to do. So I'd say most of them are probably in that five to $20,000 range and we're starting to work on larger ones. So like I mentioned, I've got now four full-time employees that work with me and I know exactly what we're going to convert in the markets that we've done before if we mailed a certain percentage of offer price to these five to $20,000 deals, right?

Matt:

So I'm keeping those as the bread and butter, but I'm looking to scale up to larger deals, but I don't want to jump into those larger deals and find out that, okay, it turns out you convert one in 7,000 if you're trying to get more than a $50,000 profit or something. Right? And I assume that it's going to be closer to one in 1000 or 2000 or whatever it might be. So now that I've got all these people underneath me, it's like,

Pick a County and Price it - the Two Ps - PP - Its a Thing Now (LA 1475)

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 Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how to pick a county and price it. We all call it the two Ps. It's a thing now. It just became a thing because it was born out of a discussion in Discord about-

Jill DeWit:

I thought you were going to say disgust.

Steven Butala:

Well, maybe there is. No. On somebody's part there might have been some disgust. It's just one of those things where it's so simple. We all know we have to do it, like exercising every morning, but it doesn't happen often enough. In my case, anyway.

Jill DeWit:

Would you just pick a damn county?

Steven Butala:

That's it.

Jill DeWit:

That's it.

Steven Butala:

And get it priced.

Jill DeWit:

That's it. People get hung up on that.

Steven Butala:

This'll kick your whole career off.

Jill DeWit:

Totally. And don't pick one that we've all talked about.

Steven Butala:

Well said.

Jill DeWit:

Now I'm done. We don't have to do this episode.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it? 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, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

John wrote, "How soon should I expect to start hearing back from my mailers? The first one, 600-ish mailers, went out on March 18th." So, this is cool. So Leonard, dear Leonard in Ireland ... I'll weigh in on this too.

Steven Butala:

Thank God.

Jill DeWit:

Dear Leonard in Ireland wrote a response that we have shared here. I'll read that and then I'll give you my response.

Jill DeWit:

Leonard wrote, "You should get a response in a mailer, but I typically buy one in 1500 sent. If I get a high response, it can be less than a thousand units per purchase, but you may not get a deal in only 600 units. Depends on how much the area is mailed. Great start and look forward to hearing your first deal. Not to say it doesn't happen, I got my first deal on a 200 unit mailer."

Jill DeWit:

Two things are going on here. I'll let you handle the second part, which is the volume that he sent. I'll handle, the question is, did it hit? Is anybody going to call me? This happens every single time, including to Steven and I. We'll send out these mailers, we're like, "When's it going to hit? When's it going to hit? When's it going to hit? Did we do something wrong? Did we forget our phone number on there? Is our address wrong?" We go through all the possible scenarios. Or, "They all hate them. I did something wrong. Everybody's shredding them right now. I'm not getting a response." And then you watch, you wait two days and here comes a blast of response. It's always our first reaction that we just, we're like, "Oh no." The calm before the storm.

Steven Butala:

I take it even more seriously than Jill. I'm like, "Ugh, I guess my career is over."

Jill DeWit:

Yeah, "My pricing, I'm done."

Steven Butala:

I guess all the land that's ever going to be sold, is sold.

Jill DeWit:

Is done. That's right. We're done. No one's going to do this anymore. What have we done?

Jill DeWit:

Yeah, whatever. No.

Steven Butala:

I'm just joking.

Jill DeWit:

So funny.

Steven Butala:

I used to do that a long, long, long time ago. Way before Jill. I obviously stopped doing that.

Jill DeWit:

Tell me about what you think about the volume he sent though. That's the thing I want you to touch on real quick.

Steven Butala:

I think it's crazy. I think Leonard was very, very nice about it.

Jill DeWit:

He was politically correct.

Steven Butala:

I'm running out of analogies to explain this. Now I'm thinking it's might be biological, that makes somebody want to test this mailer concept.

Why Distressed Property Acquisitions Don't Work (LA 1474)

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 sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about why distressed property acquisitions don't work. It's a big pile of fiction.

Jill DeWit:

What?

Steven Butala:

And you've heard it. Well, we're going to reiterate.

Jill DeWit:

Wait a minute. Do you mean that I'm not the first one to find this boarded up house and this diamond in the rough that's just sitting there waiting for me?

Steven Butala:

Yes. You're not the first one.

Jill DeWit:

Darn it. Oh, come on. It makes me think of those two houses on Jolla Cove that had been there for years. I wonder if they're still there. They may or may not be there, but it was a good 20 years that they were boarded up in like some of the most prime real estate on the planet and I'm sure people went, "What," and tried to track them down.

Steven Butala:

Jill and I are staying in a VRVO for a few months while the house that we bought is getting all cleaned up and we're right next to a vacant piece of property that's fallen down in a really nice area of old town Scottsdale. You can walk to all the fun stuff and it's just dying to be renovated or torn down or whatever. If I had a nickel for every car that stopped there and they got a yellow pad out with some pen and paper-

Jill DeWit:

Write down the address.

Steven Butala:

Like it's 1983, I watched it all day long. I watched people just stop and take down the address and write stuff down on a piece of paper. 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 with us in the Land Academy group, please join us on Discord. I can't stress it enough.

Jill DeWit:

He loves it. Discord's the new Clubhouse, in case you didn't know that. And those of you on the Thursday calls know exactly what I'm talking about. All right. By the way, I have not promoted Clubhouse really once here, so I don't [crosstalk 00:02:07]. I should. John wrote, "Question for all, but hoping to get Steven's input when he has time. For those of you with well-established internet presences that are linked to certain geographic locations, rural vacant land San Diego, LandStay, Phoenix for example. When starting a mail campaign in a distant state, do you start up both a new phone number and a new mailing address? If yes to either, when interested sellers are looking up in the internet, how do they say there's a Tennessee number based with a Phoenix company?" Oh, John, you know us. And that's me. Yeah. I have a lot to say. "And does this even matter? Thank you."

Jill DeWit:

Can I go?

Steven Butala:

Yeah. I think this is for you. And I did answer this in Discord and a bunch of other people did too.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. So here's the deal. I've never had someone that said, and if they do, it's like, "We have a Tennessee office. We're based out of Phoenix, but we have offices around the country." Oh, done. That's all I ever have to say. And it depends on how much mail you're going to send, how long you going to be in that area because once you start a new phone number, a new address, you want to keep it. So I don't think it's wise to have one address and one phone number in 50 states. I don't think you need that nor do you want to pay for that for years and years because the mail and the calls will still keep coming. You want to own these numbers and put them in. So what we do though, is if I know we're going to go on for a while and be there for a while, I'll do it. I'll bite the bullet. No, I'm going to keep it and I'll make it like a regional number kind of thing. So I might send, maybe the Tennessee number gets anything on the East coast, except for upper East,

How to Fund Deals and What You Should Look for if You're the Bank (LA 1473)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hi.

Steven Butala:

Welcome to the Friday Land Academy show. I'm Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:

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

Steven Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about how to fund deals as the funder and what you should look for in the bank roll.

Jill DeWit:

All right.

Steven Butala:

We're reversing the talk this week.

Jill DeWit:

How different deals, what you should look for if you're the bank. Okay, got 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. And if you're already a member, join us on Discord for sure.

Jill DeWit:

Saba wrote, and I've got some comments it looks like too?

Steven Butala:

These are two really nice compliments about how these two new members found us and why they made a decision to join. It's not really a question.

Jill DeWit:

Okay, good. This is cool. Saba wrote, "It's nice to meet you all. I was trying to look up on Google how to use Google Maps and search for properties by APN, and I ended up here. After reading a few posts, I decided to create an account because you guys seem to have pretty interesting discussions here. I'm a real estate development professional with a decade of experience in a corporate setting, I've sourced multiple deals and processed entitlements for many projects. I'm currently helping a few clients with financial modeling, market research, and zoning research on a consulting basis. Some of my clients are not in the area where I'm located, so I think I may be able to find some good, useful info about how doing deals in various municipalities work in this forum. Feel free to ask me any question you might have. Thanks." How sweet is that?

Steven Butala:

You're in the right place.

Jill DeWit:

I'm going to use you guys for information for me, and I'm happy to share what I know. That's our community. That's awesome. RSally wrote, I hope I'm saying your names correctly, thank you. "Hello. So I'm just starting my late in life dream of buying, investing, and owning land. I found Land Academy on Instagram and I've already learned so much. I was about to start my coursework and get my real estate license. I know you don't need to have a license to buy and sell land, but for me, it's about gaining new knowledge. The coursework is a small investment for me to understand best practices, terminology, contracts, et cetera."

Steven Butala:

There's one more paragraph, but I'm going to jump in here and say that Jill and I have both been through the coursework portion of getting a real estate license with no intention of taking the test, just to learn very specific State-specific real estate laws and rules. And I think it's cheap. When I went through it, it was like four or $500 and it's intense. There's a huge legal component to it.

Jill DeWit:

It's like 60 hours for the course here in Arizona.

Steven Butala:

I learned a lot. It's really worth it.

Jill DeWit:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Back to the question. He said, "My dream is to buy small parcels of land that have minimal deed restrictions to build and rent out or sell small custom modern cabins for city dwellers. I live in Philly, Philadelphia, and I'm fortunate to be a short drive to wooded land. Personally, all this started with my desire to have a few acres where I could have a small off-grid cabin and get away and let my dog run around freely. I guess I can have both, huh? Anyway, I'm excited to continue learning and hearing from all of you."

Steven Butala:

All of this started because I had a desire to have a small cabin on a small piece of property, 30 years ago. And here we are. Welcome everybody.

Steven Butala:

Today's topic, how to fund deals and what you should look for if you're the bank. This is the meat of the show.

Steven Butala:

Why Having Someone Else Fund Your Deals is Smart - We Do it Too (LA 1472)

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:

I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

I think it's sunny is the staple.

Jill DeWit:

Just leave it as sunny. [crosstalk 00:00:17].

Steven Butala:

But it is sunny here, more than California.

Jill DeWit:

That's true.

Steven Butala:

Today, jill and I talk about why having someone else's deal, why having someone else fund your deal is actually a good idea. In fact, we do it all the time. We actually seek out partners to fund some of our deals, and the short version is, it depends on the deal. 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, join us on Discord, it's worth it.

Jill DeWit:

All right. So Andy wrote, and there's a note here that he's not a member, "In the process of browsing counties, I often come across areas where sorting low to high brings up similarly priced lots, but the acreage of the lots varies wildly. For example, I'm currently looking at a zip code in X state where half acre lots and 20 acre lots all seem to be in the 10 to $20,000 price range. I tend to avoid areas like this because of the huge discrepancy and it throws off my confidence in pricing. It would feel unwise of me to mail the half acre lots, offering 3 to $4,000, and then go on and mail 20 acre lots and offer the same amount. Any thoughts on how divided areas like this or how to get a better read? Do you ever just blanket mail a county with one offer price and then disregard acreage? Any thoughts? I appreciate it."

Steven Butala:

Always. What's important here is to get the mail out. This discrepancy in data, get used to it. This is one big... If you're a data person in another field or you're a retired pilot, or you got 30 years in public accounting, or you're a mechanical engineer, maybe you're retired. You know what looking at a data set like this and how frustrating it can be. And you've been doing it for decades. Welcome to Land Academy and welcome to real estate investing in general. Andy's already light years ahead of the clubhouse discussion that Jill was involved in this morning. Whereas they drive around and they'd look for dilapidated houses. They write down the address, they find the owner's name and they send them a kind little note saying, "Your house is a pile of crap. I'm happy to... Why don't you give me a call? I'll take it off your hands."

Steven Butala:

So Andy's already looking at data sets. He's realizing the data's not perfect. It's a little bit wonky and he's trying to figure it out and get into that real estate market through data, not through the actual real estate. So, if you're new and you're listening to these sentences that I'm saying, and the light bulb's going off over your head, this is for you. And expect some weird data because I know exactly where he's talking about him in New Mexico, and I know how I would do it, but it's all based on experience. So honestly, my opinion on this is just based on... Jill and I've done thousands of deals in New Mexico. So, in the beginning, this is frustrating for me, but not really. If you can crack through this data and figure it out, get it in a spreadsheet, go price per acre.

Steven Butala:

You're going to find similarities. You're going to dig through that data and scrub yourself down to a point where you actually do have confidence that this 20 acre property in this zip code is actually probably worth $12,000. So I'm going to go out. I'm going to offer everybody 2000 bucks. And so you have to just deconstruct the whole thing, chill out, get a good cup of coffee, make yourself a sandwich, turn all the lights off, spend three hours in a dark room,

Interview with Long Time Member Kevin Farrell (LA 1471)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:

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

Jill Dewitt:

I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from Sweets. That's still Arizona.

Steven Jack Butala:

Today we have the greatest treat of all. We have a long time member, Kevin Farrell with us who is also Kevins-

Jill Dewitt:

Does consulting for us-

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah, he does land academy consulting, he's a moderator in a couple of our forums on land investors specifically, and just always a treat to talk to Kevin because he brings a certain serious expertise, but also a certain sense of... I can't describe it. Well, you'll see it in a minute. This type of sense of humor, and this whole thing.

Jill Dewitt:

Welcome! We are Steven and Jill. Together, we've been buying and reselling land since the nineties.

Steven Jack Butala:

Our data-centric approach leaves our buyers asking, "How can you sell it so cheap?"

Jill Dewitt:

Here on the land Academy show-

Steven Jack Butala:

We answer that, and more.

Steven Jack Butala:

Kevin how have you been since the last Land event?

Kevin:

I've been well. I mean, the main word is "well" because we've gone through this crazy pandemic and you know, I'm glad I'm in the land business because I want to tell people that it has not affected my ability to acquire land or my ability to sell it, which is amazing.

Jill Dewitt:

I'm so happy. You know, I want to pause and say thank you, by the way, for all that you have done for us and our other members and the consulting and the hours and the time and the welcoming new people that you put in for us. I really, really appreciate it and I know it makes a difference and people connect with you.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah.

Jill Dewitt:

Thank you.

Kevin:

Yeah, thanks Jill. I appreciate it. It's I still enjoy doing it, so that's why I'm in there every day.

Steven Jack Butala:

Yeah. That's the same as for us here. I stopped telling people that the pandemic hasn't negatively affected us because they just... you never know how it's going to go. I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like I'm bragging or anything, but we were just all really lucky. I can't think of anything else. Just purely lucky to be in this business when this thing rolled around.

Jill Dewitt:

That's true.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Jill Dewitt:

Right.

Kevin:

Yeah, thanks to this I don't [crosstalk 00:02:07].

Jill Dewitt:

Catch us up.

Steven Jack Butala:

Perfect example.

Jill Dewitt:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah, well, [crosstalk 00:02:15].

Jill Dewitt:

What kind of deals are you doing? Catch us up in your world.

Kevin:

Yeah, I've been doing my version of the business, which is kind of laid back. When I speak with people and we're doing consulting calls, they want to know how much mail we send out, and what kind of targets to make. I said, "Well, I may not be your role model. I'm 64 years old, and if I work two days a week, that's a full schedule. I'm pretty good with that". We put ourselves in a position, financially, where our needs are not really that high, so I'm all about being comfortable with what I'm doing. I have also been trying to find my niche. I think all of us in this land business, we're always kind of trying to figure out where's our niche either geographically or property type. Whether it's desert or commercial or infill, et cetera, et cetera. I've learned some things. I've had some real good lessons the past year or two.

Kevin:

I would say the five anchor lesson is a big one that I want to pass on to experienced and new people. There's just something magic, Steve you've said it before. People want five acre properties. I don't care really where you are. If you're selling, what I call, small properties, if you're doing five acre properties that phone's going to ring more than if you had one to two acre properties or even 10 acre properties.

Land Academy Deal Funding 101 - How Deal Funding Works (LA 1470)

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, coming to you from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona. Soon we'll be saying a lot.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about Land Academy deal funding 101 and how deal funding works. Yesterday we talked about private equity and private lending and the basis of that and why I think it's the best way, we think it's the best way to raise capital to get deals done when you don't have your own money. Jill's going to walk us through the mechanics of when somebody sends her a deal, how she chooses it, how she analyzes it, why she says yes, why she says no. Maybe I'll actually submit a couple of fictitious deals to you and you can say, you're an idiot for this and you don't ever call me again.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah, I will happily play that game.

Steven Butala:

Or happily do this deal like right now. In fact, let's all stop what we're doing and fund it.

Jill DeWit:

Got 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 with us in Land Academy, join us on Discord. It's nothing short of amazing.

Jill DeWit:

Anthony wrote, "In using the red, yellow, green test, I have found massive differences in days on market. I searched and found the base formula for days on market. It's a 12 month sold overactive for sale, then divided by 365. So let's say there were 3000 properties sold in the last 12 months and they are 500 sale for sale now. So 3000 divided by 500 is six divided by 365 divided by six, we got it, is 60.8 days on market. Zillow, Realtor, and Redfin all have different numbers for days on market. How do you guys account for the variance?"

Steven Butala:

This is very, very important question and it doesn't just apply to real estate or days on market. Where you have data sets from different sources it's very important not to mix them up. However, let's just pick on Redfin. However Redfin came about having properties in their dataset both for sale and sold is the same for sale and sold. But if you just look at for sale property in Redfin and then sold property in Zillow, it's an apples to oranges situation and you're mixing up two non-life kind data sets with different definitions. I don't mean to nitpick here, but this is actually pretty important because you're spending money on sending mail out based on data. So it's very important to just apples to apples it. So great, Jack. Steve, why are they different then? The real question is why are there's three sources of data?

Steven Butala:

I kept them separate. They're apples to apples to apples, all three. Why are they so different? Because the sources of data for Zillow, Zillow brags about the fact that they have all kinds of data in their dataset for properties. They could be Jill and I posting a property without a real estate agent as a for sale for owner. They could be the MLS. There's all kinds of places that you can get data to do this. Redfin goes the opposite way. They only have datasets in very specific areas based on which MLS is. There's three or 400 MLSs believe it or not, little local ones all over the country that roll up into the National Association of Realtors. So there's only certain local MLSs that participate with Redfin. And why is that? Because Redfin is not really interested in rural areas. They're really interested in urban areas where there's huge high volume of transactions.

Steven Butala:

That doesn't help us as much because we buy rural vacant land. And where that line cuts off, just imagine a boundary of the MLS is all geography based. So where one ends and one starts could be in the middle of a zip code. It could be in the middle of a county. So there's really,

How to Use Private Money to Get Started in Real Estate (LA 1469)

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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how to use private money to get started in real estate. Jill just sat down. This is what happens. I do all the work, hours of work and Jill sits down at one minute till the time we're supposed to record and she says, "Okay, what's the topic? And how do I look?" And I say, this is the topic and you look great. And she gives me an opinion on the topic. And she happened to like this one. It's a 50/50 shot.

Jill DeWit:

That's kind of funny.

Steven Butala:

What were just doing before you got on the show?

Jill DeWit:

Oh, so I was on clubhouse. I jumped into this clubhouse group. It was real estate, just kind of like a real estate one-on-one and there were people in there. Everybody's trying to find houses to like rehab and rent them out. They're trying to buy them, rent them out. By the way, they're talking about some markets like Columbus I want to say and Indianapolis and these stupid places. It's so nuts. You can buy a house for like $40,000 and rent them out for a thousand.

Steven Butala:

That's what my sister does in Cadillac, Michigan.

Jill DeWit:

It's brilliant. They're figuring out these good areas, but where they're falling down is how to buy the asset. So that's where I chimed in and let them know how to get the data and what to do. So one guy said direct mail and you better believe I jumped all over that one.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. I think that rental model is compelling. If you can get a good management company and you can buy a lot all at once, it's still a lot of work. In the end, I would never pull the trigger on it just because land is our thing, but my sister's got 30 or 40, 45 doors she said the last time I talked to her in Cadillac, Michigan because her husband, this is what he does full time.

Jill DeWit:

He's kind of the management company.

Steven Butala:

He is the management company and he has patience. So I don't have any patience for that.

Jill DeWit:

Yes. No, we do not. What do you have patience for babe?

Steven Butala:

Land acquisitions and resales and teaching.

Jill DeWit:

Even then it better go quickly.

Steven Butala:

That's true. 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 with us already in the Land Academy community, please join us on Discord. It's gets bigger every day and I'm getting a lot out of it for sure and I know just based on the volume that our members are really... it's a new tool for us. It doesn't cost anything. It doesn't cost us anything and it doesn't cost our members anything and it's a great way to stay in constant contact with all of us.

Jill DeWit:

Cool. Johanns wrote, "I've done some research about closing costs, but most resources I've found are related to buying house using a mortgage and not buying vacant land without a mortgage. So what are your typical closing costs on the buy and sell side provided that A, use a title agency when both buying and selling the property B, use an agent to sell the property. Let's say you buy a property for 30,000 and sell it for 70. My questions are, what would be your average title agency fees when buying property for 30,000? What other closing costs are there? What would be your overall expenses when buying? How much does an agency typically charge? What would be the title agency fees and other fees on the sell side? Who has to typically carry the title agency fees on the sell side? I understand that it's negotiable, but what is standard? Who typically has to carry the agent's fees?" We're getting a little too brainy here, but I'll answer them.

Steven Butala:

Well,

Jill Friday and Her Take on Relationships (LA 1468)

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, coming to you from awesome Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about it's Jill Friday, and her take on all types of relationships. Are you looking forward to this, or are you dreading it?

Jill DeWit:

No, are you kidding? I love talking about this stuff.

Steven Butala:

She loves this topic.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Butala:

Just actually thinking about it.

Jill DeWit:

It's important. I am write... I'm going to do it. I'm going to write a book series on these things, and I will tell you how it's going to come out. It's good.

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 are already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Can you imagine? If I didn't like talking about relationships, I'd be pretty sucky in relationships.

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

But like talking in general. It's kind of funny.

Steven Butala:

Yeah, it's something that you always improve on. Like I'm always trying to be better in any relationship that I have. I'm always trying to improve.

Jill DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Butala:

Is that obvious?

Jill DeWit:

It is obvious.

Steven Butala:

Is it really?

Jill DeWit:

It's appreciated. It is.

Steven Butala:

That's good. I didn't know it was obvious.

Jill DeWit:

Totally. All right. Johanes wrote, "Learning. If you want... " Lost my question here.

Steven Butala:

Sorry.

Jill DeWit:

Sorry.

Steven Butala:

That was me.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. I guess it's like, "I'm learning. If you want to use money partners, you have to use an agent, unless the money partner will market the property with you only acting as a bird dog."

Steven Butala:

Let me explain this.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

Steven Butala:

This is a legal question.

Jill DeWit:

Oh.

Steven Butala:

And the question here is, do I need a real estate license? That's really what they're asking.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. I missed the whole preface to this.

Steven Butala:

The only reason that you need a real estate license... This is very important, if you don't know about this. Jill and I have talked about this a lot over the years. The reason you need a real estate license is because you are representing somebody else in the purchase or sale or lease of real property. It doesn't matter what kind. We don't need licenses at all, because we represent ourselves. It gets a gray area when you take on a partner.

Steven Butala:

And so, here's how you can completely and totally avoid any legal issue entirely. They are on the deed. So, if you're a money partner you're on the deed, and if you're the person who brings the deal to the money partner... We call that a manager in our... You know. There's the manager and the investor. We're the investor, because we put out the money. You're the manager, because you brought the property to us and you're going to manage the deal. You're going to actually buy it. You're going to sell it. You're going to deal with a title agent. If there is a real estate agent, you're going to deal with them, and on and on and on. Great. We're all partners, and we're all owners.

Steven Butala:

There are times where I don't think it's appropriate for a manager, especially if they're brand new and we don't know if they're any good or not... I shouldn't say any good. We don't know where they are in their land investing career, how educated they are yet... where Jill and I would theoretically just be the only ones on the deed, because we don't want to go through-

Jill DeWit:

Undoing anything.

Steven Butala:

... undoing stuff.

Jill DeWit:

Right.

Steven Butala:

And have any type of confrontation with their manager. We want it to be positive. So,

Jack Thursday and What Your Father Never Told You about Land Investing (LA 1467)

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 sexy Scottsdale Arizona.

Steven Butala:

Wow. How long have you been holding that in?

Jill DeWit:

I just came to me actually, just S word, S word, sexy done.

Steven Butala:

Today, when Jill's not horsing around, today, Jill and I talk about what your father never told you about land investing. this title I wrote, if you can't tell. 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, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:

Jeff wrote, "Hey all. I'm sure this has been answered before, but if you have two comparable info lots across the street from one another, with the only obvious difference being that one is cleared and the other is wooded, is there typically a difference in value? In this case the cleared lot last year sold for $65,000. Just wondering if it's an apples to apples comparison."

Steven Butala:

This is a fantastic question. Reality-based question and an academic question. So if you asked an economist this, if you're not an economist and you're not an accountant, you would never know that economists hate accountants and accountants hate economists. Accountants say to economists, get in reality. Yeah. Great. You sit in your office all day and come up with these concepts. But in reality, I'm an accountant. I'm in there in the field and we're looking at stuff and how to make or lose money. This is an academic question. an accountant would say this, the price different, I'm sorry, an economist would say this, "At the price difference is how much it costs to clear the lot. That's the difference." An accountant would say, "No, you're an idiot. It's whatever the market demands. There could be some real value in a wooded lot, because you're just going to create clear a little part of it to build a house." So there's your academic answer and there's a reality answer. I personally probably price them the same. Would you?

Jill DeWit:

It's the funniest thing too. I'm like, I have to say too. It depends Jeff. So when you say infill lot, now I'm thinking house lots are not that big. If we were talking 20 or so acres, I'd want the wooded one. I think the wooded one would be more valuable than the barren one kind of thing. It's usually, that's how that goes, because you have a lot of options at that point. I totally agree with you. So in this situation, yeah, I would just be pricing it based on per acre average in the area. But my gut tells me that for a buyer coming in, having a cleared lot, if it's, again, I'm going to put a house there. It's somebody did the work. It's like someone poured a pad. Even if it's not exactly what you want to build your house, somebody started to construction and then they walked away. But they put in some of the infrastructure and poured a pad. That's worth something.

Steven Butala:

All true. It's interesting you ask this now because the properties that Jill and I are buying, we really look at this. Because we're improving the property to resell it and we look at the cost of how much it's going to get that property graded correctly and all of that. And that stuff's not insignificant. It can be expensive. But I'll tell you if two people drive their car up to a property and they see a barren lot or if they see with one with beautiful trees on it, guess which one they're going to choose.

Jill DeWit:

Then you have that.

Steven Butala:

Beautiful trees.

Jill DeWit:

There you go. Exactly. And they can decide where they want to put the house and position it and what trees they want to keep. So there's value there.

Steven Butala:

Today's topic, what your father never told you about land inv...