Sticking to a Calendar Schedule is Imperative (LA 1316)

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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, humid Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about sticking to a calendar schedule and why it's imperative. Boring, but completely necessary and possibly fatal if you don't do it, I think.

Jill DeWit:

You know what's interesting, is when we were talking about this topic, I was thinking of a different version of this. This is cool because I think this is how we are different. What I was referring to was being consistent in things, and how you interpreted that is putting it on a calendar because that works for you. Does that make sense?

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

So, I'm excited to talk about this a little bit because, just like most men and women, we see things very differently, interpret things differently.

Steven Butala:

That's people in any relationship.

Jill DeWit:

Or just men and women. I don't care if you're related, or don't have to be in a relationship or not. We're going to see things... I say whatever. I say teal, and you go, "Hmm, green." Not you, but...

Steven Butala:

I thought you guys were going to talk about real estate. I thought the show's about real estate. I'm a first time listener. I'm not here to talk about calendars. I'm here to talk about making money in real estate. Tell me how to do it quickly. I have other stuff to do today. No, I'll tell you what, the truth is, I'm joking around about it, this topic comes up. It's one of the top five topics that I deal with inbound from people asking me questions. And it started on our first live event. I did a module about getting organized and people just, we spent three times the amount of a lot of time on that during the presentation in the live event, and it just keeps coming up.

Jill DeWit:

Well, I think people take a step back and go, "How are you so successful in what you do?" And a lot of it is there's a healthy mix of A, being smart and knowing what we're doing, and B, just getting up and doing it. That's the point. And that's where the calendar comes in.

Steven Butala:

Yeah. Well, we'll get into it in a second, but there's a huge component of outsourcing when it's necessary and then managing the outsourcing correctly. And I borderline want to do an education... I want to do a two hour education thing on it because, and I don't have any formal training in this. I just know from screwing stuff up all throughout my career that, wow, I can't do that again. Or we got into this and it was too much because of X. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

Lucas wrote, "Hey folks, I'm planning my first mailer. And I had an idea, but I'm not sure if it's a good one or not. I was thinking of adding a professional headshot of myself to the top of the first page of each letter. Not sure if offerstoowners.com prints in color or not, or how well the print quality would manage a photo. I was thinking it'd be valuable to add a personal touch to the letter. Has anyone here tried that? Was it beneficial? What do you think? Thanks." Do you know what my first thought is? What?

Steven Butala:

I'm talking to the camera.

Jill DeWit:

Oh. Well, I'm over here. Okay. Do you know what my first thought is though?

Steven Butala:

Go ahead.

Jill DeWit:

I'm on the fence. My first thought is, do you look like a supermodel and that fantastic? And if you do, I'm still not sure it's going to send the right message. What do you think?

Steven Butala:

You got to be kidding me. What do I think about this?

Jill DeWit:

I know what your answer is.

Steven Butala:

What is my answer?

Jill DeWit:

No way.

Steven Butala:

It's way beyond no way.

Jill DeWit:

Thank you.

Acquisition Diversification is Part of Real Estate Investment (LA 1315)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Good day.

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 and humid Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about acquisition diversification is totally and completely part of your real estate investment scheme. Jill's got an idea she just shared with me about what that diversification is all about and why it's important. Give us a little prelude.

Jill DeWit:

Well, we talked about this, this topic came up yesterday when we were talking and I was just thinking about where we are in our career, and how good we're getting at picking things and dropping things. Like if it doesn't work out, let's not do it. And what I mean by that is, focusing on business that you know something about, and everything that we do is real estate base, because even within real estate, you can have a lot of niches, which is what we're doing and we'll talk more about this, and having several niches helps me sleep really well at night because I don't have all my eggs in one basket.

I'm not doing one specific property type, in one area, in one price range. And I know people do, a lot of people do that. They just hone in and that has worked. But for me, I just, like I said, I sleep so well because I have all these different things. I know that if one goes a little sideways, I got three other areas over here that's going to take care of it.

Steven Butala:

That's about it.

Jill DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

[Molle 00:01:45] wrote, "Good morning. I have a couple of deals under my belt, but finally ran into a little problem on my third deal in Arizona. I have a buyer ready to go, but the escrow found a false deed of trust with the seller."

Steven Butala:

Did they?

Jill DeWit:

How is that?

Steven Butala:

Did they?

Jill DeWit:

How's that possible?

Steven Butala:

Jill's going to explain to us in a minute.

Jill DeWit:

And they-

Steven Butala:

The mistakes that escrow agents are capable of.

Jill DeWit:

They can do, yes. "And they might need to do a quiet title action and get the attorney involved. Given that this is my first time dealing with this, any advice on what I should do? Should I help pay for attorney's fees or anything else to get the deal done? Is it going to take a lot more time, like months? Is it even worth it or should I back out? Any advice helps." So I see ... Do you want me to read-

Steven Butala:

No.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

Steven Butala:

No. This is a hot topic on land investors. So what Jill's referring to is just, I put in ...

Jill DeWit:

Some of the comments.

Steven Butala:

Just the comments, just to get a feel for what the ... It's not necessarily my opinion, but it's the opinion of other people on the forum. And just to give you a gauge, quiet title actions are amazingly profitable if you know what you're doing, the same way that restoring a '68 Camaro can be amazingly profitable if you know what you're doing, I do not know what I'm doing in both of those situations. So, I stay away from it. Quiet title simply means this. There's a piece of property somewhere, and somewhere along the chain of title, the ownership, how it was conveyed, is questioned. There's a cloud in the title, so to speak. That's the language in the industry.

Jill DeWit:

Can I say, it could be a spelling error. It could be something even that minor. I just want to throw that out there for people. That's not like a catastrophic ... It could be a missing deed, like from here to here, or just a spelling little thing. So, thank you.

Steven Butala:

And so, a quiet title action is meant to remedy that to the satisfaction that, Hey,

Now is the Time to Act on This Market Condition (LA 1314)

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 Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about how now is the time to act based on this COVID marketing condition we're in.

Jill DeWit:

Do you think this is a surprise for anybody?

Steven Butala:

I don't know.

Jill DeWit:

I hope it's not a surprise for anybody.

Steven Butala:

I think you have a different take on what the show's about.

Jill DeWit:

Well, I think we've obviously been talking about this for a while, and I was listening to somebody else's podcast, yes I do that now and then when I'm on my walk, and they were talking about it in their words and I just kind of wanted to hit it home for all of us.

Steven Butala:

Give us a little hint.

Jill DeWit:

I just did.

Steven Butala:

What were they talking about?

Jill DeWit:

They were talking about if you're sitting on the sidelines waiting for stuff to happen right now, you're an idiot as an investor.

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. We're going to find out why we're all idiots in a minute.

Jill DeWit:

Did I do that wrong?

Steven Butala:

According to Jill.

Jill DeWit:

No, I didn't say that. Did I do that wrong?

Steven Butala:

No.

Jill DeWit:

No, you asked me what they said. I verbatim told you what they said. I mean, that was really the gist of it.

Steven Butala:

Okay.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. All right, Lucas wrote, "Hi all, I just got my first response on my initial Craigslist ad. It's very gratifying and a nice reassurance that I'm doing the right thing. The parcel is 30 acres and not far from blank city in North Carolina, beautiful area. The seller is a half owner, undivided half interest." Yikes. "He said the other owner may also be interested in selling depending on the offer." Well, it's kind of important by the way, we'll go on here.

"I'm also trying to do due diligence now. The land is in a killer location close to town and a major freeway. Comps are 10 to $20,000 per acre retail in the neighborhood. A similar lot on the other side of the hill is on Realtor for $310,000 and other comps in the area have sold for $90,000. My biggest concern, other than the ownership issue, is access. The land is not directly on a road. The next parcel over is on the road. So it appears that the father probably owns the roadside parcel on the son owns the interior parcel, but shares the ownership with someone. I can see the land was timbered recently." How many flags are you counting?

Steven Butala:

As if there's not enough, I was just going to say the same thing. As if there's not enough issues, now it's been timbered recently.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah. I'm sitting here counting red flags on my hands. "Many of the trees have been cleared and there are quite a few logging roads crisscrossing across a lot. The exit road passes through the father's land. Because of that, I'm thinking there is a row through the father's lot to the parcel in question. So my question finally is for you," well this is long to get to the question. "Which is the best tool to determine if legal access exists on a property? I'm having trouble getting my [inaudible 00:03:10] account set up. I'm going to call them tomorrow." You get that as a member, by the way. "If ownership issues and access are cleared up, I'm thinking $60,000 could be a good offer. Could be tempting for each [inaudible 00:03:24] to get $30,000. I feel I could easily sell this for $120,000, especially with the other properties nearby at a much higher cost. Many thanks to all." I have a lot. I know you do too.

Steven Butala:

Let me start with the really good news. This person, what's their name?

Staying Involved in a Professional Grade Land Investor Group (LA 1313)

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 sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about staying involved with a professional grade land investor group just like Land Academy.

Jill DeWit:

The value of this is-

Steven Butala:

Every role, every professional job I've ever had where I worked big company, small company, usually bigger companies more so, they have a thing called continuing education, which I'm a huge fan of, and that's what the show is really about. We didn't want to just throw out some program and then not support it. And so we supported it in a million ways by land investors site, doing a Thursday webinar, and I can list off all the stuff. We do this daily show so we're big fans of continuing education and updating stuff as it happens.

Jill DeWit:

I completely agree with everything that you just said. Even for me, I see it a little bit different, which it's like an alumni group. It's like a fraternity. How about this? I see this as being with investors at your level and always wanting to be involved with investors at your level because there's going to be times you help each other out. Hey, remember that deal we did back in 2000 and whatever? Do you want in on this one? I got one of those again and I need a money guy or whatever it is. There's going to be something-

Steven Butala:

You're going to run out of something. For us, it's always money. And just now we have-

Jill DeWit:

Or expertise or something.

Steven Butala:

Endless capital to buy the... We both know that we're good at buying property, really cheap. But when you spend $4 million in a month on acquisitions and then you're rolling through them and they're smoking deals, you start to bring in partners. And it's good to be involved in a group, which is what this is, and have access to stuff like that.

Jill DeWit:

I want to talk more about this in a minute on the show here.

Steven Butala:

Oh, yeah.

Jill DeWit:

Thank you.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted... I got ahead. Posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

John wrote, "I have a potential parcel acquisition that is bordered on one side by a railroad. The road has an access road that runs parallel with it as well. It's a desert property in Northern Arizona. Is this a bad thing or does it even matter? Thanks."

Steven Butala:

Jill?

Jill DeWit:

I think it's great. I heard access road.

Steven Butala:

You got to be real careful on-

Jill DeWit:

Depending how big it is.

Steven Butala:

On utility access roads like in the mountains where there's really large power lines coming out of a power plant. A lot of times there's gates and stuff. This is not my first choice on property. And if you put a gun to my head and said, "Is railroad property good or bad?" I would say bad. I think there are some positives to it. Number one, it's not out in the middle of nowhere, right? There is something there still, but in general, we're experiencing... Here's the reason I included this question. We are experiencing as a group, certainly Jill and I, but as a whole group, some of the best acquisitions we've ever done ever because of this COVID because people they need money. They're in a situation where a life event happened, that COVID happened or probably some job related thing or where people are passing away, and they're selling us their property. So I don't think you have to sell.

Jill DeWit:

We could be pickier now, which is true. Bordered on one side by a railroad and it's 40 acres, I'm not going to worry about it because I could be over here. 40 acres is pretty big with the railroad way over there. You know what I'm saying?

Steven Butala:

Recuperate Your Land Academy Investment in 60-90 Days (LA 1312)

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 Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how to recuperate your Land Academy investment in 60 to 90 days.

Jill DeWit:

That seems crazy.

Steven Butala:

So this was a direct request by our customer service team, because apparently this is... I don't know. Usually this is in response to some... Jill has a very successful click open rate on Facebook, and it's usually something that she says, or it happens that, that generates this. So I'm happy to listen to Jill explain this title. But before we get in-

Jill DeWit:

Because you don't know what it is? It's a big secret. Don't tell Steve, I'm going to save it for the show.

Steven Butala:

I know exactly how you can recuperate your initial investment. It's by buying land and selling it for more and doing it quickly and efficiently and without emotion. Before we get into it-

Jill DeWit:

Well, right, now it's-

Steven Butala:

...let's take a question [crosstalk 00:01:04] posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

Martha wrote, "Hello. My name is Martha from North Carolina. I'm in the process of starting this business of land investment, and there are a lot of training programs out there." I'd love to know what people said here. "Can you share your thoughts about this training? Why did you join Land Investors?"

Steven Butala:

Now she has six questions.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. Are they all in different threads, or it is all in there?

Steven Butala:

It's all one thread.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

"Is it worth the cost of the training for your results? How long was it before you actually started making money? What has been your worst experience, if any? I'm a fashion designer, at least I have been for the last 20 years and I'm at a turning point, changing careers at age 50 and want to make the right decision as far as a training program goes. Please help. Thanks, Martha."

So I didn't see in the comments. Did they have-

Steven Butala:

There's lots.

Jill DeWit:

Oh, good.

Steven Butala:

There's lots. And they're on both sides. We used to say this all the time. If you're thinking about joining Land Academy, this is ties into this. Usually, I don't want to sound like a commercial here, I really don't. It's either for you or it's not. And it ties into this topic, which is why I put this in here. But I will tell you this and I'll answer the question like this. Jill can... feel free to answer these questions individually or not. There's a very, very specific profile of a person who makes it into our advanced group very, very quickly. Here it is.

You've owned another one or two or more companies in the past, or you do now. And you're looking for another line of revenue or another line of income. And you see the value in the marketing that we talked about yesterday. Please go back and listen to yesterday's show, because I think it was really telling about why this works so well.

More than 80%, probably 90%, of the reason people succeed with this or anything in life, I don't care if it's a brain surgeon or being a great plumber, is because they just don't stop. They don't know when they've been beat. They just barrel through it and come out the other side and it either works or it doesn't. I'm not sure if fashion designer is the best previous choice to be a Land Academy member.

Jill DeWit:

Unless she owned her own company and she was-

Steven Butala:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Age 50, I think that's only going to help you.

Jill DeWit:

Sure, exactly.

Steven Butala:

So, but I think that this takes a lot of structure, [sticktuitiveness 00:03:35], put a smile on when everyone around you is crying.

Jill DeWit:

Like me. Just kidding.

Qualified Sellers will Call You in Droves Cold Calling is Dead (LA 1311)

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 sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about qualified sellers will call you in droves, and cold calling is dead. Cold calling's been dead for a long time.

Jill DeWit:

You know, isn't that funny? But that came up recently. I saw somebody talking about that. I want to say it was in social media. I'm like, "Hold on a moment. Please don't go there," and here are the reasons why, and so we'll talk about it here. I wanted to bring it up here on the show.

Steven Butala:

So why do you think this cold calling or driving for dollars or, like, what's the root of the person that's saying ... Like, what's the story? Tell us the story.

Jill DeWit:

I'm guessing they either have too much time and too much money on their hands.

Steven Butala:

Right.

Jill DeWit:

Which I can't imagine, because that's what it takes. I don't want to take from the show, but you know, honestly, I'm asking too. Or you know what? I'll tell you. They just don't know there's a better way, because that's the reality. If you knew there was a better way to get customers, I don't care what kind of business you have. You would do it.

Steven Butala:

So throughout my entire career-

Jill DeWit:

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Steven Butala:

No, I think you're a hundred percent right. I think it goes way deeper than that, but this is kind of the show, so before we-

Jill DeWit:

You think ... Oh, you're going to say more about it?

Steven Butala:

No, that's in there. It's the topic of the show, and it comes down to personality type.

Jill DeWit:

Alright, well we'll talk about that.

Steven Butala:

There's people who start systems-

Jill DeWit:

Sorry. I got us to close here. My bad.

Steven Butala:

People who I think start systems in life who are just systemic. You know, just people who start systems and are people who just want to get through the day, and I think cold calling, it's so unnecessary now and so ineffective and so annoying and just, there's nothing good about it, but it still happens.

Jill DeWit:

I know.

Steven Butala:

Then there's warm calling. So if I was writing this title I would have said warm calling's dead.

Jill DeWit:

You know what's funny? The only cold calling I get now today, right. In today's age, I don't know about you. Two things. One, "I want to give you money."

Steven Butala:

That's it. That's the one I get.

Jill DeWit:

Okay, well and there's two. I get one, "I want to give you money," and two, "Hey, could we talk about the upcoming election?"

Steven Butala:

Oh, I don't get that at all.

Jill DeWit:

I get both of those. That's it.

Steven Butala:

Wonder what list I got off of.

Jill DeWit:

Lucky you. I'm not off of it.

Steven Butala:

Oh, you know what? I know why.

Jill DeWit:

Why?

Steven Butala:

Because one of us just registered for party affiliation and one of us isn't.

Jill DeWit:

Oh. Poop. I goofed that up. Oh, so they don't know. That makes sense. So if you were registered for any party, that party would be calling you-

Steven Butala:

I think so.

Jill DeWit:

If they want to talk. They know how you feel about it.

Steven Butala:

Well that, and I've really spent a whole day about five years ago-

Jill DeWit:

Undoing it.

Steven Butala:

Contacting the federal do not contact list. Not political. Anything. Just, don't ever call me ever, registering all the numbers I can think of in my life.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah. Mine's all goofed up. Okay.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about ... I already said that. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

Luke says, "Hi everyone. I've been searching through CountyWise tax sale...

Recessions Weed Out Unnecessary Businesses (LA 1310)

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, Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how recessions weed out unnecessary businesses. And if you listened to yesterday's show, we will resolve the mystery apparently. The mystery in this title.

Jill DeWit:

Don't worry, it's not you. We don't mean you are unnecessary or your business is unnecessary. It's a bigger thing.

Steven Butala:

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.

Jill DeWit:

I hope you we play more truth time. It's your turn to do truth time.

Steven Butala:

Okay.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

Steven Butala:

I mean, don't hold back on that. I love the truth time concept.

Jill DeWit:

That's funny. Okay, Lucas wrote, "Hi, folks. I'm scrubbing my data on accounting, and I was looking at historical sales prices. There is a pretty wide range from $300 all the way up to $800,000. I was thinking of cutting out all the properties with historical sales prices above a certain threshold. $30,000 as an upper limit, for example. Many of the properties don't have historical sales prices in the data, so I'll leave those alone. Does this make sense? Am I missing out on big cash opportunities by omitting these properties? Or is it practical to assume that they won't be good offers? My gut tells me to delete them from the data. Thanks." This is all you.

Steven Butala:

This is really, really important. And Lucas is relatively new, I think. He's pretty vocal in land investors, and I appreciate that. This is a huge issue. The issue is this, the underlying... What he's saying is this, if I go into a zip code in a rural County, specifically in a rural County, and I look at all the property that's there, all the land, big Atlanta. And I look at all the historical prices and I narrow it down to, let's say, a zip code. Because the more narrow you can get, geography wise, theoretically, the more accurate the pricing is going to be, because if you look at any County or any zip code, there's expensive areas, there's cheaper areas. There's waterfront property, there's property that's on a County road and on and on and on. There's things that make properties more expensive based on attributes or less expensive.

So it's hard to do that when you're staring at data in a spreadsheet, it's hard to get a real average, is what I mean. And so he's asking about this decision. What, should I cut off the tip top? Should I cut off the bottom? Kind of go with that centered, bell curve average and get it all out there, or should I just start really surgically cutting out properties, which leads me to the two theories. There are two theories about pricing mail campaigns, the shotgun approach, and the rifle approach. We exclusively use the rifle approach for sending out mail to houses because houses, we have all these algorithms from Redfin and Truly, and all these other places that say, the house is worth 120, 130, 140, 99, and you average those out and you've got a real good offer price, and then you take some money off of that. Real simple stuff when you send out a mailer.

You can try to do that, which he's alluding to here, for land. But here's the problem, we just don't have enough data for land. You just don't, because it's not an active market. Properties, people aren't buying and selling properties the way that they do houses. It's just, the velocity of the whole industry is a lot slower. So here's the answer. He's asking, do you delete the top and the bottom? And the answer is yes, but not seriously. You take the top two or three, because there are anomaly, weird things like $25 million in a rural. Come on. There's a clerical error.

Jill DeWit:

Inconsistency in Sending Mailers Equals Inconsistent Income (LA 1309)

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 sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today Jill and I talk about how inconsistency in sending mailers equals inconsistent income.

Jill DeWit:

That's a mouthful.

Steven Butala:

Seems simple.

Jill DeWit:

Say that three times fast.

Steven Butala:

It seems simple. I can easily do it and bore the heck out of everyone. It seems like a simple concept-

Jill DeWit:

Saying it three times fast?

Steven Butala:

Yeah. It's a very, very simple concept, but it's hard. It's harder to do, we're finding from our members and even with us, once in a while, in our land buying and selling effort, harder to do than it seems. You know why? Because you run into issues.

Jill DeWit:

I don't think it's hard, I think it's discipline.

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

That's really all it is and this-

Steven Butala:

You know what? That's exactly right. Discipline's hard.

Jill DeWit:

Oh, well, that's true.

Steven Butala:

Well said. [crosstalk 00:00:55]

Jill DeWit:

Who was the last person you disciplined? And please don't say me.

Steven Butala:

Geez.

Jill DeWit:

Give me your last discipline moment.

Steven Butala:

You know what? I hate the concept of discipline. I always have.

Jill DeWit:

I suck at it.

Steven Butala:

It's the thing about being a parent that I just... I never have gotten my head around it and never will.

Jill DeWit:

I know. Someone said that once a long time ago and I believe it to be true, the hardest thing about parenting is parenting. I would have easily been one of those parents that just went to bed at whatever time I was tired and let the kids just figure it out. Like, I'll fall asleep when they're tired. No, we got to do bedtime, we got to get them... That's a lot of work. That's not what this show is about, but anyway.

Steven Butala:

It's a lot of stuff.

Jill DeWit:

It kind of ties in to-

Steven Butala:

It totally ties in.

Jill DeWit:

...to this too. And I know we'll talk more about it.

Steven Butala:

We just recorded a show, actually, with a couple of guys, and it aired yesterday, or I guess, by the time this series, last week. And we really ended up talking about this topic. The stuff that it takes to do well, anything in life, is all the same. It's discipline, and a schedule, and staying on a schedule.

We used to say stay motivated a lot. I don't think that comes up that much any longer, because I think being motivated at this is pretty easy. I just think it's sticking to a schedule. It's all some version of that.

Jill DeWit:

I hear you.

Steven Butala:

Why don't you stick to a schedule? Because stuff goes on.

Jill DeWit:

That's true. I hear you.

Steven Butala:

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

Skylar wrote, "Hi Jack and Jill. I found out about your live event the day before and I could not attend." You must have saw my note here, too. "I've been, however, listening to your podcast every single day. Please, would you consider this live event again? I'm a beginner, by the way, and I would really like to do what Jack says in the podcast." And then this member is just killing it. That was your note?

Steven Butala:

This member is just killing it? No, they wrote that about themselves.

Jill DeWit:

Oh, that's funny. Well, I wrote... It's funny you say this, I'm getting out my calendar right now so I can look it up. So I responded to the person and said, "Yes, because here's the whole deal, it's all about our live event." And it's cool to get together-

Steven Butala:

The reason I included this question is-

Jill DeWit:

Yeah, tell me.

Steven Butala:

...there's a bunch of strings in there that,

You Either Love Your Mask or Hate It (LA 1308)

Transcript:

Jack Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Happy Friday.

Jack 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 sunny, southern California. I'm chilling it out. It's Friday.

Jack Butala:

It is sunny.

Jill DeWit:

It is sunny.

Jack Butala:

Do you know about this Apple fire?

Jill DeWit:

No. What Apple fire?

Jack Butala:

It's east of Riverside. It's pretty serious. It's causing most of this gloom and haze. It's not the weather.

Jill DeWit:

I don't see any gloom. I'm looking behind me. I don't see the gloominess.

Jack Butala:

I'm just going to check and see if it's cleared up. Anyway, today, Jill and I talk about you either love your mask or hate it.

Jill DeWit:

You either love your husband or hate him.

Jack Butala:

That's probably true.

Jill DeWit:

I'm sure it's true. I'm sure the guys are saying, "You either love your wife or hate her."

Jack Butala:

Here's a spoiler alert for what we're going to talk about. The types of people that watch TV, and really love taking direction, and being issued orders, and told where to stand, and how to stand, and when you can go outside, and when you can't, love their mask. That's their comfort zone. Am I judging them or engaging one way or the other and this side? No. But they're very, very comfortable in a W2 environment. In their minds, contribution to the effort, it's optional for them.

Jill DeWit:

I would argue this. I just want to bring up this thought. Remember, how do I say ... You know how people are on the phone, they can say things they would never say in person? And on the computer, oh, gosh, especially on the app NextDoor, people are so verbal, and social media is so verbal. They say things they would never say in person and out loud. I wonder if there's a little sense of security with this that they think, "They don't know who I am, I'm going to say what I want."

Jack Butala:

I'm sure.

Jill DeWit:

Interesting.

Jack Butala:

Absolutely. I'm sure there's some elements of that.

Jill DeWit:

I hadn't even thought of that.

Jack Butala:

Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:

John. I'm looking for the question, like where's the question? It is a one-line question. John wrote, "Hello all. How is the pandemic affecting the land business?"

Jack Butala:

I love these simple questions.

Jill DeWit:

You want to go first?

Jack Butala:

Yeah. It's not.

Jill DeWit:

You just do it all.

Jack Butala:

Here's what happened. This ties in actually to the mask thing. Really, I could have titled this whole show, how does this mask thing tie into real estate investors and investing? And that's really what we're going to talk about. So, how does the pandemic affect the land business? It had had somewhat of an opposite effect that usual recessions have had. The recession is dramatically affecting employment, unemployment rates, but they're only affecting very specific types of businesses, specifically hospitality and retail. Those two are the major ones. Manufacturing, durable goods seem to be okay. So how is it affecting real estate?

The people that have their jobs, mostly the demographic that listens to this show, have been able to go home and effectively work at home. So they're not unaffected. The vast majority of the people in our social group have been unaffected by this. So the land ... What they're doing is buying real estate. They're making like we all do, some stuff changed and we're making decisions to change our life to adjust to it and hopefully, for the better. So it hasn't been affecting the land business. If it has been affecting it, it's only positive.

Jill DeWit:

I was going to take it to the next step, which is sales.

Jack Butala:

Please do.

Jill DeWit:

The jury's out.

Getting Rejected by a Local Escrow Agent (LA 1307)

Transcript:

Jack Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Howdy.

Jack 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 Southern California.

Jack Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about getting rejected by a local escrow agent. This is something, for the 25 years I've been in this business, has never, ever happened with very, very few exceptions. Happens a lot now. Jill's going to tell us why.

Jill DeWit:

Before we get into it, should I do that?

Jack Butala:

Sure.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Investors online community. It is free. John wrote, I downloaded a list from real class, and there are a ton, almost half of properties with the same mailing address and situs address. Would you mail those or take them out? Well, that's interesting. You know what it makes me think of? It's like you download a not big list and one guy owns half the County. Is that how you read it?

Jack Butala:

No, not at all.

Jill DeWit:

Oh.

Jack Butala:

So there's counties, I'm almost sure this is not County data. This is the zip code data. There are zip codes for air force bases that have seven APNs in them. There's zip codes in some big cities that are a medical campus, like acute care. There's zip codes for all kinds of stuff that are not what we all think of as a zip code. So what happened here with John is-

Jill DeWit:

That makes sense. You're smart.

Jack Butala:

The data people... Really?

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Jack Butala:

I don't know if she means it or not.

Jill DeWit:

I do mean that. That was sincere.

Jack Butala:

I don't know if it's like, "You're smart." Bam"! Smack on the head.

Jill DeWit:

No. When have I ever done that?

Jack Butala:

Don't make me answer that.

Jill DeWit:

Oh.

Jack Butala:

I'm trying to get through the question here.

Jill DeWit:

What the heck was that?

Jack Butala:

Can you imagine if your siblings asked you that?

Jill DeWit:

What? My goodness, go ahead.

Jack Butala:

I can't imagine having that conversation like with my sister, Like, "Oh no, we never hit each other." She would just crack up.

Jill DeWit:

Okay.

Jack Butala:

So yeah, especially with zip codes, there's specific use zip codes. I think there's like 26,000 zip codes in the country, and I think that, for our purposes, the usability ones are like 12,000 to 18,000, some number like that. I don't know exactly. But here's the good news. All these data sources that we use, RealQuest, Datatree and TitlePro allow you to preview the data very, very easily without ever spending a nickel, ever. John didn't check. He pulled up his data set, he did all the stuff that you're supposed to do, like we teach.

Jill DeWit:

Click, click, click, click, click.

Jack Butala:

He's looking at it and he just hit buy. He didn't do that last step where you just kind of peruse the data. Like for instance, there's counties out West here that have a tremendous amount of Bureau of Land Management owned property, there's municipality owned property, a ton of native American owned reservation type property. And so for whatever reason, over the years, those properties have gotten assigned APNs, and they're of no use to us. We're not going to mail the US government a letter to see if we want... or any native American reservation. We're just not.

So you have to check the data to see if it's usable or if it's what you anticipate. There is some properties that have huge cemeteries on them. You don't want it. You got to remove all that stuff. So, check your data for free before you download it. So you don't get disappointed. Same property? I don't think it's the same. The only time-

Jill DeWit:

No, I think you're right. I mean, there's times that it does. If there's a big developer, let's just throw this out there, a Del Webb community. If Del Webb owns a whole thing as he's,