Land Easements 101

Transcript: 

Jack Butala:                       Jack Butala with Jill DeWitt.

Jill DeWit:                           Hi.

Jack Butala:                       Welcome to our show today. In this episode Jill and I talk about land easements 101. We're going to define the three basic kinds of land easements and let you know what you need to know and what you don't need to know and what you don't need to know on our product type. Before we get into that, let's take a question posted by one of our members. On the land investors.com online community, it's free.

Jill DeWit:                           Okay. Jim asked, buying a property that has no deed on file with the county. But an affidavit for transfer of real property title and a copy of the will R. But I don't have a vesting deed. Is that an issue?

Jack Butala:                       I think is a real serious issue.

Jill DeWit:                           Yeah. That's funny.

Jack Butala:                       So like anything in this product type, you're going to run into these crazy situations and there's good news and bad news to this Jill. I always ask on these types of questions, when there's issues to resolve with title and with ownership, what the economics are. So if you're buying a property for a thousand bucks that you know is worth $85,000, you're going to solve this issue.

Jill DeWit:                           Oh yes.

Jack Butala:                       Even if you have to [inaudible 00:01:13] title the whole thing.

Jill DeWit:                           Hire a team or attorney, whatever you gotta do, you'll do it.

Jack Butala:                       If you're spending $500 on a small piece of property really rural, and you think you can sell it for about $1500, I think I'd just close the file on this and walk away.

Jill DeWit:                           I'd walk away, yep.

Jack Butala:                       The answer is, is this an issue? Heck yes it's an issue. Is it solvable? Absolutely. It's going to take a bunch of time and probably two or three thousand dollars worth of resources. Depending on where it is in the country.

Jill DeWit:                           So that's it ...

Jack Butala:                       There are some people in our group that made this their career. And they do it very very very well. They have made a career out of buying property from dead people's children, who didn't have their estate in order. And they solve all those problems and take it off their hands for a substantial discount. So if this is your kind of thing, it's not my kind of thing, is it? I don't think it's your kind of thing either.

Jill DeWit:                           No. Not anymore.

Jack Butala:                       It's too easy to solve these problems by sending out more mail.

Jill DeWit:                           Right, exactly.

Jack Butala:                       And if you're staring at 15 deals and one of them's the one you just described Jim, and then you've got these other 14 there's no issues and you're going to make some money on them, why bother.

Jill DeWit:                           You know I have a question about this one too. If this is the only thing too, maybe it's worth solving. But you throw something else in there, like now it's got, it may have some associated back taxes because no one's been monitoring it, no one can figure out how to transfer it, so why bother paying the taxes on it. Now you've got another issue on it, and that for me is even more reason to walk away. There's so many properties out there. This is one thing I want to make sure everybody knows, stop hitting your head against the wall. Quit picking these hard things. There's so many properties out there.

Jack Butala:                       This is how she talks to the kids.

Jill DeWit:                           Yeah. Why?

Jack Butala:                       It's the exact same tone of voice.