The Basics of the Land Business (LA 1579)

Transcript:

Steven J Butala:

Steve and Jill, here.

Jill DeWit:

Hi.

Steven J 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven J Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about the basics of the land business. This whole topic came from a discussion on Discord, which I just thought was brilliant and so we'll talk all about ... Every business comes down to a few simple things.

Jill DeWit:

Right.

Steven J Butala:

Like when you think about Amazon or Walmart, there's one or two sentences you can describe the whole thing.

Jill DeWit:

Cheap.

Steven J Butala:

Cheap, fast.

Jill DeWit:

Fast.

Steven J Butala:

Easy.

Jill DeWit:

Let's see. Costco ...

Steven J Butala:

Abundant.

Jill DeWit:

... is quality.

Steven J Butala:

Quality. Yep.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah. Nordstrom is customer service.

Steven J Butala:

Is it?

Jill DeWit:

I think so. It is for me.

Steven J Butala:

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

Jill DeWit:

I like to add ... We're going to rewrite our things here, too. Even though I'm interrupting all this to insert one more thing, I'm going to insert one more thing because our team asked me to and I need to fix this. We mentioned the Discord. Have I mentioned Clubhouse lately? Every Thursday at one o'clock Pacific Time you can find us on Clubhouse. Check it out. Go to the group or the club called Land ... Shoot, I think it's called Land Investors. How funny is that? Get to know your own stuff. I don't know. And by the way, too, don't forget you can also find us all over the heck on YouTube on Land Academy. Thank you.

Jill DeWit:

So, Chuck wrote, "I'm finding huge differences for properties on the market between LandWatch, Redfin, Zillow and Realtor. For example, in one county I'm looking at LandWatch and it shows 1,883 properties. Redfin shows 334 properties." These are all for sale, I'm assuming. "Realtor shows 959 and Zillow 346. Zillow's six months old shows 651. Redfin shows 389. The Zillow for sale/sold ratio is good but the others not so much. This makes it weird trying to evaluate what's really going on. Using the largest for sale, which is LandWatch and the most six month sales, which is Zillow, results in an undesirable ratio. This contradicts the fair ratio in Zillow for sale/sold. I'm coming to the conclusion that I should find another county." This is hilarious. "But ..."

Steven J Butala:

I'm coming to that conclusion, too.

Jill DeWit:

"... I want to see if anyone else has this issue and how it's dealt with. Thank you."

Steven J Butala:

Here's ...

Jill DeWit:

That's a tough one. You got to do apples to apples, not apples to oranges and oranges to pineapple, which is, it sounds like, what's going on.

Steven J Butala:

Jill's exactly right. Whatever you do for the red, green, yellow test you need to do it if you're going to look at Zillow active versus sold ... You need to look Zillow/Zillow.

Jill DeWit:

Right.

Steven J Butala:

Redfin/Redfin. Here's the deal. Realtor.com only lists properties that are listed with an active real estate agent. Period. It's the national MLS. Redfin has a very vested interest in listing properties that are with their agents or agents that comply with their business model, and so if you need to learn more about Redfin, which I'm pretty impressed with ... Redfin's kind of taking an ... This is an off-shoot comment/opinion of mine. Redfin has taken a terrible ...

Jill DeWit:

Alert, alert.

Steven J Butala:

... A terrible situation, which is this damn MLS, and made something good out of it. And so, they're only in certain places, in urban areas, not rural. But we're in the business of rural land so Redfin, we don't use it that much.