Using Yard Signs and the MLS for Land Postings (LA 1390)

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 using yard signs and the MLS for your land sales postings.

Jill DeWit:

What? What? Hold on a moment. Thought the whole point was not to see the property and not use MLS and agents and all that. I'm so confused.

Steven Butala:

What year is it?

Jill DeWit:

What? Are we going back to 1980?

Steven Butala:

Is it 2020 or 1920? Excuse me.

Jill DeWit:

I love it. We'll explain. Don't worry. I promise we're not eating our words here. We're tweaking them.

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:

This is a shining example of just got to roll with it, man. Things change and you got to roll with it. Okay, Austin wrote, "Hello. I have run into a concern with a few buyers recently. They are hesitant of buying property from me due to the possibility that it may be a scam. The properties I'm currently selling are sub $5,000. So I'm selling with credit card processing on my site with a notary close. I have a clean and professional looking website. On the phone, I'm polite and answer questions in a knowledgeable manner. Any thoughts on how to set up my legitimacy game? Thanks, Austin." You want to go first?

Steven Butala:

Sure. This has been a problem since the beginning of notary close, and since the beginning of credit card sales, and since my days in the '90s on eBay. It's a legitimate problem. I would be concerned with it too. When I started this business a long time ago on eBay, long before I met Jill, I would explain what I do for a living to people socially. And they would just say, "That's got to be a scam. No one can buy property that you can't see." If you talk to a real car person, they're going to say the same thing about cars. "How can you possibly buy a car online that you haven't seen? You need to take a look under the hood. You need to look at it. You need to go through with all things."

So by and large, that's like the professional view. So we have a challenge, all of us, to establish credibility. If you're listening to this, you obviously believe that Jill and I are a credible source for this kind of information. That didn't happen on accident. It happens by us doing five years of shows like this and talking in detail about stuff.

Jill DeWit:

It's true.

Steven Butala:

So online, you have to make yourself credible and actually be credible.

Jill DeWit:

That's true.

Steven Butala:

It takes time. If you're talking to them on the phone, all you have to do is talk to Jill on the phone for three minutes, and you're going to know that this is all credible. I chose this question, a ton of questions on LandInvestors.com, because there's so many responses. There were probably 10 or 15 responses from members and non-members that this is a concern and it's a daily or weekly issue.

So that's good. It's a great start. Your site looks good. You've got the credit card processing pieces in place. But in the end, and I think the consensus on Land Investors was need to sell the property with title insurance and you need to ask them to pay for it. That should soothe all of it.

Jill DeWit:

That's true.

Steven Butala:

Do you have any Jillify advice?

Jill DeWit:

It sounds like he's doing it. When you always answer the phone, you're available, you have a company phone number, like you answer, "Austin's Land Company," something like that. You're consistent. You're available. Then a lot of it's just going to take time to-

Steven Butala:

What's the first thing you do when you question somebody's credibility? The first thing I do is-

Jill DeWit:

Google them.

Steven Butala:

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