Why Fees & Commissions are Deal Killers

Transcript: 

Jack Butala:                       Jack and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:                           Good day.

Jack Butala:                       Welcome to the show today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about why fees and commissions are deal killers.

Jill DeWit:                           I promise I won't rant.

Jack Butala:                       I promise I wrote that title. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on landinvestors.com online community. It's free.

Jill DeWit:                           Okay, Bart asked, "I have a lead from California. I did some research and found out that he is one out of three that own the property. How do you guys normally handle these types of leads ... " I'm going to say deal ... "Especially if they're in different locations?" This is hilarious. "Is this deal dead? If not, are there any issues I might run into?" This is not.

Jack Butala:                       There's two types of transactions, two types of situations where you find multiple ownership, and specifically in California. For the rest of you out there, you don't have to worry about this as much. There's the real way, the good way where there's three people on a deed. Let's say it's a ... I don't know ... three business partners, three companies, a man and wife and a child. So, that's all good when you're all sitting there looking at one piece of paper and there's three names on it. The second situation, which you don't really have to worry about in most of the country, I think Texas and California did it for a while is where each owner has a separate APN, assessor's parcel number.

If that's the case here, it's called an undivided interest. If that's the case, run from the deal.

Jill DeWit:                           Was that set up so they could at least collect taxes from whoever would pay?

Jack Butala:                       I honestly can't answer that. I've looked into it pretty heavily.

Jill DeWit:                           Thank you. I was trying to figure out why we didn't do that.

Jack Butala:                       Whose great brainy idea it was-

Jill DeWit:                           [crosstalk 00:01:42].

Jack Butala:                       ... through a separate APS.

Jill DeWit:                           You and I on the property together and instead of making one APN when it's you and I, it's like, "Well, Jack, you're 105, 102, 301A. I'm such-and-such B and then we each get separate tax bills cut in half." That's just got to be a mess.

Jack Butala:                       The truth of it is this comes up so infrequently that it almost isn't worth really even talking about it. It came up pre-extensively in the last show or the last Thursday call that we did where we answer all these questions. I'm getting concerned now that we're talking about it too much. I just don't think it should get that much attention.

Jill DeWit:                           I'm assuming this is the first one, so can I answer the question?

Jack Butala:                       Yeah, so, let's assume that.

Jill DeWit:                           Because this is really how it normally goes.

Jack Butala:                       Right, like 99% of the time.

Jill DeWit:                           Yeah. So, say, it's three brothers. This is when I run into it. It's often siblings. The parents did this and the parents were getting older, so they passed the property onto the siblings. Instead of picking up, they put all three names on it. Very common.

Jack Butala:                       Very common.

Jill DeWit:                           One lives in California. One lives in Montana. One lives in Florida. It's that kind of a thing.

Jack Butala:                       One went to college and he's doing really well as a dentist. One loves hookers and eight balls and lives in Mexico.