Negotiation Starts with Common Ground (LA 1169)

Transcript: Steven: Steve and Jill here.

Jill: Hello.

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

Jill: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven: Today Jill and I talk about negotiation, and how it starts with a common ground.

Steven: I found myself last week talking to a vendor for a pretty expensive machine for offers to owners. We had, what I think, is a pretty diametrical disagreement. It doesn't matter. You always disagree with vendors and stuff. The whole goal for everybody is to try to get it back to center so they get what they want, we get what we want. Where does that start when everybody's going like this and arguing?

Jill: I can't wait to hear the whole story.

Steven: It starts with some type of common ground. I got the idea from a politician a lot of years ago who was talking about how to be ... Good politicians bring everybody together. They don't make people mad, or alienate people. They try to ... I read and I watched this thing about reaching a common ground first, and then moving forward from there. For instance, we all have kids, and all of us, we don't want them to die via nuclear Holocaust. Yeah, you hate me? Yeah. I'm not a real big fan of yours, but maybe we can make some legislation here where the kids don't die.

Jill: That's great, babe. That was my first example too. Shoot! I was just going to toss that one out. Darn. Funny how we think alike.

Steven: I honestly did. I was looking forward to ... I mean, I am looking forward to doing this show with Jill, because I hear her doing this all the time. I like to blindside Jill on this show.

Jill: Yes, you do.

Steven: I hear her say this stuff to these sellers. Every time I walk by her office, sellers or buyers, and she's saying this stuff. What she's doing is bringing them back to a center. "Hey, look. You want to sell it, I want to buy it."

Jill: What's going to make you happy?

Steven: Yeah. I guess really the thing is just kind of price, right? This is the kind of stuff she says. "If the only issue that you and I have is price, everything else we have, all this worked out, we can figure this out." that's the kind of stuff she says. How can you say no to that?

Jill: Thanks.

Steven: 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: Ivan asks, "Hi. Has anyone dealt with a rollback tax, and are these enforced? Are they addressed at closing, or will I get a large tax bill in the future?" Then it says, "If your land qualified for agriculture appraisal ,and you change its use to a non-agricultural use, you will owe a rollback tax for each of the previous five years once your land received a lower appraisal. The rollback tax is the difference between the taxes you paid on your land's agricultural value and the taxes you would pay if the land had been taxed on its higher market value, plus some percent interest is charged for each year from the date that taxes would have been due." So this was clearly-

Steven: End quote.

Jill: Right, end quote. The notice that he got. Then here he goes on to say-

Steven: Here's the story to this question.

Jill: Right. Where did this come from? Well, Ivan says, "I bought 50 acres that are ag exempt, but plan on selling smaller lots that are already plotted, some less than the required ag exemption size line limit, but now worried about this potential tax. Had a real estate agent bring this up, which has killed some of his deals in the past. I didn't believe it at first, but the above tax is directly from the county. Thanks, Ivan."

Steven: So let me put this in layman's terms. He's saying rollback tax. I'm sure that's some legitimate term from somewhere. What it means is taxes in arrears. There's huge tax breaks for farms for agricultural property, because everybody benefits when people grow crops. We need to eat.