Physical Legal Access to Land (CFFL 0062)
Physical Legal Access to Land (CFFL 0062)
Jack Butala: Physical Legal Access to Land. Every single month we give away a property for free. It’s super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don’t even have to read it. Thanks for listening.
Jill DeWit: You should do that. If anybody hears any clicking right now, yeah, I just wanted you to know that we have a photographer in the room with us, and I am sucking my stomach in and it’s killing me.
Jack Butala: You know we’re rolling?
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: It’s not her stomach that she’s worried about, it’s mine.
Jill DeWit: Whoops.
Jack Butala: Jill worries about my stomach right here. Jack Butala here from Land Academy, welcome to the cash flow from land show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about a question each of us answer every single week, if not every single day, in my case. What is [inaudible 00:00:35] physical, and legal access in real estate, and does it really matter? Jill, I’m so glad we’re doing this show. Hopefully we can-
Jill DeWit: All the time.
Jack Butala: Hopefully today we can really answer this once and for all, not really.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Could we just say, “Refer to podcast number 62”?
Jack Butala: Yeah, oh that’s not a bad idea.
Jill DeWit: Hey, I’m going to put that at the bottom of my email address. For questions about ebay, refer to this podcast. For questions about legal access, refer to this podcast.
Jack Butala: Right? Right, to hear us fail, go to this podcast, episode, whatever this is.
Jill DeWit: That’s right. My most embarrassing moment, listen to this podcast.
Jack Butala: No, in all seriousness, we do a lot of horsing around in shows, but this show, I think is actually, it’s extremely beneficial, so let me start this way. Wherever you live, you live in an apartment building, or you live in a townhouse, or a condo, or house. You drive right up to it, and take your groceries out, and put it in the, take it into the kitchen.
Jill DeWit: Correct.
Jack Butala: That’s access.
Jill DeWit: That’s access.
Jack Butala: That’s accessing a parcel of real estate on county roads, or whatever. I find that when I describe it that way, and everybody says, “Oh, that’s what it is.”
Jill DeWit: That’s a good … I like your …
Jack Butala: Wherever you live, you probably have physical or legal access. When you’re buying properties, rural properties that are, specifically when they’re unwanted, or they have bad taxes, or kind of this, what we do for a living, what Jill and I do, you have to check that stuff. You have to check if there’s physical or legal access, so if you’ve got a 40-acre property that’s, let’s say in the middle of a northern county up in Arizona, or any state for that matter, you want to make sure that at least, at the very bare minimum, you want to know the facts.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: Can you get to it legally? Can you see it, sort of on a plat map? Does it have legal access, and can you drive right up to it? I don’t know, Jill, tell us a funny story about some customer that, or, you buy property every day, do you know how do you check … Let’s start with this, how do you check physical and legal access before you pull the trigger on an acquisition?
Jill DeWit: This is a show where I’m asking you the questions.
Jack Butala: I haven’t bought a piece of property in the [crosstalk 00:02:46]-
Jill DeWit: I thought I was going to ask you all the questions.
Jack Butala: You buy all the property now.
Jill DeWit: Well, it’s just interesting how much this comes up, and it’s funny because I get it two different perspectives. Sometimes I have people that, they’re hoping there’s no access. I’ve had a few people that, I’ve had some that they had access, but it was not well traveled.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill DeWit: I kind of gave them a heads up that, “Hey, make sure you have 4-wheel drive and a GPS to get out there.” They’re all excited, because it’s a tree cabin, they want a little off the beaten path something. Then some people are worried about, “Hey, I want to build this, I want to put that out there,” kind of thing, “I need to make sure that I can get my workers out there,” and I get that.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Oh, no doubt. There’s a huge end user client [inaudible 00:03:32] that intentionally seeks out property that’s incredibly difficult to get to.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: Because they don’t want to ever talk to anyone again for the rest of their lives.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: I understand that, and there’s a lot of weeks that I feel the same way.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Well, what’s the big picture? Can you give us, is there a one sentence answer to legal access and physical access, Steven?
Jack Butala: Yes, there is. With legal access, in most states, in fact, I don’t, I have never, I don’t recall running into a state where legal access is an issue, by law. In all the states I’ve come across, you can, there’s legal access to every single property.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You can’t force someone to fly a helicopter, and that’s the one I kind of … People think that that’s, that you can legally be forced to drop onto your property, and not touch anybody else’s property. Okay …
Jack Butala: Do you remember the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s? Do you know who that is?
Jill DeWit: I do. Well, I wasn’t around for that, but …
Jack Butala: [inaudible 00:04:35], neither was I. That’s what their whole beef was about, keeping to their land.
Jill DeWit: That was a western, wasn’t it? [inaudible 00:04:42] a western?
Jack Butala: No, it’s like a real story.
Jill DeWit: Okay, well I just remember they …
Jack Butala: Yeah, sure they made movies about it, and there’s some books and stuff.
Jill DeWit: Okay, yeah. I didn’t know they were real, real people.
Jack Butala: There was two neighboring … The Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s lived next to each other, and they had debates over, you have to cross my property to get to yours, so that’s what an easement is. When you plat property, or when you, when the original sub-divider sub-divides a very large property into smaller properties, at least if they do it the right way, they plan for easements.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: It’s land that’s in between two owner’s land, so you can drive right through it like the street that you drive down to your house.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: You own the house, but you don’t own the street, so that’s legal access.
Jill DeWit: Sometimes, I love it too … On some occasions, I’ve seen it written in into the, I’m not telling this to you, I’m telling this to our listeners, to the legal descriptions. All but a 20-foot easement on this side, and this side, and this side, and this side, written right into the legal description, and I love that because then it’s black and white for everybody.
Jack Butala: I don’t want to make this complicated. Legal access, in general, is allowed by law. What, in physical access, this is how I check physical access before I purchase property, and it’s as simple as this, I go to Google Earth Pro, and see if there’s a road going through it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: If it’s not, we usually shy, I mean, I don’t ever remember buying property, intentionally anyway, that doesn’t have physical access.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Legal I don’t worry too much about. Physical I want to make sure, because if you’re selling a piece of property, especially to an end user, you usually want to give them directions, and they’re going to punch in the GPS code, as we ask them to, and it’s going to plot out a course. We just want to make sure it all makes sense before they get out there and call you in the middle of the night and say …
Jill DeWit: “I’m trying to get in.”
Jack Butala: “I’m trying to get to that property that I want to buy.”
Jill DeWit: Right. Now I have a-
Jack Butala: Does it matter? Yeah, it really matters.
Jill DeWit: Do you remember the funny story about the, one of our members, Luke Smith, and the gun story, remember the [inaudible 00:06:47]. I’m trying to remember the, no, that was just kind of funny, it’s silly.
Jack Butala: I don’t. No, I think the story that Jill’s referring to is that we have a member who had a customer go out and the Hatfield and McCoy thing happened.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I have never heard of them.
Jack Butala: No, and that story ended well because he followed up with me, and they worked it out with the neighbor, and …
Jill DeWit: Everybody’s happy.
Jack Butala: Yeah, it worked out great.
Jill DeWit: Well, I guess, I think maybe too it’s just kind of like who are you, why are you out here, no one ever comes out here kind of a thing. Just one of those.
Jack Butala: Yeah, exactly. You must be out here to rob me, or something.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: It’s good.
Jack Butala: Yeah, I mean, you have to make, on your due diligence list, in our business, and any business, well, in our business, not so much if you’re buying apartments, you want to check physical and legal access. We covered physical, you take a look at Google Earth Pro, see if there’s some roads in there.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: That, 9 times out of 10, satisfies my, what I look for for physical access. As far as legal goes, you can pull up a plat map, and almost all counties they have them online, and you can see if those easements, they’re the straight lines, on a plat map are generally, the perimeter of the whole parcel, and the dotted lines are the easement that the platted, it’s called a platted easement, and if your parcel has a platted easement, then you have legal access.
Jill DeWit: Got it. Often in the plat map you see the easement drawn out there.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill DeWit: There is gap. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes you can see the gap in there, and the road if you will. It may not be maintained, but it’s there.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Regularly maintained, but it’s there.
Jack Butala: We’re about 9 minutes into this podcast, and I think we should start talking about fun stuff because we pretty much covered the topic.
Jill DeWit: I think that’s it. I guess the funny thing is for me though, for some reason, this subject comes up a lot.
Jack Butala: I was just going to say the same thing.
Jill DeWit: It’s got a negative thing, and it’s kind of like, I have, kind of like people that … I don’t know, I’m trying to think of another example. Well, someone that’s done a real estate deal and had not gone well, they think they’re all not good, or something, you know what I, I don’t, that’s not a good example, but …
Jack Butala: Here’s an example.
Jill DeWit: Some people have a negative thing about access, and I haven’t figured out why they think it’s a big deal, and it’s not a big deal.
Jack Butala: Because they’re trying to find a reason about why we can buy property for $500.
Jill DeWit: Oh, there must be something wrong with it.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: A lot of episodes ago, we had a guy on the show called, his names Jason Hartman. If you listen to real estate podcasts at all, he’s very high up on the distribution list. He has a lot of shows, and a lot of followers. We had him on the show, and we described our business model, namely Jill did, so we purchased property through traditional channels, with direct mail, and then we resell it on the internet. We buy it as cheap as possible, in fact, we target people who own property, who don’t want it anymore, it’s unwanted.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Then we sell it, we double, or triple our money. A typical deal for us and our members are 500 to $1,000, and then resell it for cash for three or four thousand, maybe.
Jill DeWit: Percent? Or, oh, dollars.
Jack Butala: Yeah, dollars, three or four thousand dollars, or you buy property for a couple grand and sell it on time, or terms for many months of payments. After we got done describing it, Jason Hartman, who’s a seasoned real estate investor said, “So, oh, you’re just buying a,” said this to Jill, “Oh, you’re just buying a property in the middle of nowhere, with no access,” and my business partner Jill proceeds to blow her top.
Jill DeWit: I did. I was like, I can’t believe I just got mad on the air, but Jason Hartman …
Jack Butala: If you’ve listened to more a few episodes of this silly little show that we have, we all know that it takes a lot, a long path-
Jill DeWit: It does.
Jack Butala: To get Jill to the end of her fuse, but when you get there, everybody runs for cover.
Jill DeWit: It was so funny.
Jack Butala: When I say everybody, I mean me.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I got-
Jack Butala: You blew the top.
Jill DeWit: I did.
Jack Butala: What fired you up so much? Let’s start with that.
Jill DeWit: Oh, it was just-
Jack Butala: Why did that fire you up so much?
Jill DeWit: It was just the typical, it just, he didn’t know. He doesn’t, maybe, I don’t know why he doesn’t know, but anyway …
Jack Butala: This strategy had been, I’m not knocking on Jason Hartman, he was trying to cheapen, or lessen, or like everybody, find something wrong-
Jill DeWit: Find something wrong-
Jack Butala: With what we do.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We’ve done probably six shows on that exact topic.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Find something wrong with what we do.
Jill DeWit: That was so funny, I remember that now. Well, it’s so important to us that, look at our four A’s, we look for four main things on every single property, access is one of them. I mean, that’s pretty high up on our list. There’s times that if it’s to hard to get to it like you’re talking about, on the side of a mountain, I’m not going to buy it. It doesn’t make sense.
Jack Butala: Yeah, in our main education program, cash flow from land, whenever you have an acquisition candidate, we look at the four A’s, so it’s affordability, attributes, like is it close to the grand canyon, or it’s got tall pine trees, or mountain views, or any of that, access, can you get to it, and what’s the fourth one?
Jill DeWit: Acreage.
Jack Butala: Acreage, yeah. The larger the better.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: Thank you for reminding me of what I teach.
Jill DeWit: You’re welcome. That’s why I’m here.
Jack Butala: I have to say that I have some great news today.
Jill DeWit: Tell me.
Jack Butala: Our podcast, this episode is not going to, it’s going to air at least, it’s going to air long after we’ve been recording.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: Our podcast for, now it’s official, it has gone viral. In the podcast world. I mean, it’s actually amazing to see. I thought this show would never work.
Jill DeWit: I can’t believe it’s, we keep crashing our website.
Jack Butala: That’s what I have to do the rest of the day is migrate our website to figure out, yeah, it’s crashing our website.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, in an awesome way, that’s great.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, everybody wants that.
Jack Butala: What did you think would happen with this show when we started? Did you even think about it?
Jill DeWit: No, you know-
Jack Butala: Have you ever done anything like this?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: I’ve never done anything like this ever.
Jill DeWit: I have, I will be honest with you Steven, I kind of thought this was one of those Steven horsing around things. Steven comes to me-
Jack Butala: Like our whole business?
Jill DeWit: Well yeah, that too. Steven says, “Hey, I think we should be here, and doing this,” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” Then, the next thing I know, it’s the latest and greatest thing, and he was totally right, and I’m eating my words, so I have to say when you came to me with this podcast thing, I was like … Well, because you and I don’t really commute very far too, I was not in tune to this, so I didn’t know the whole … I know the whole podcast world now.
Jack Butala: Yeah, because you’re listening to music from the 80’s in your car.
Jill DeWit: Well, there is that. Because my car is [crosstalk 00:13:56] right now.
Jack Butala: It’s got a cassette deck [crosstalk 00:13:56]. Your car is in the 80’s.
Jill DeWit: On my original cassette, no.
Jack Butala: It’s not versions of songs from the 80’s, it’s actual 80’s music recorded in the 80’s on a cassette.
Jill DeWit: Listen, my car does not have cassettes, thank you very much. I have a CD player, but to your point, I do not have any of the Siri, or the Sirius radio, or anything like that.
Jack Butala: All right, I’m going to tell the story, I’m going to embarrass you.
Jill DeWit: Oh, great.
Jack Butala: One time, we were cleaning out a closet, and we ran into this shoe box full of cassettes, and they were all labelled something like this …
Jill DeWit: I can’t believe you know this.
Jack Butala: Depeche Mode at, what’s the name of that Los Angeles …
Jill DeWit: The palladium.
Jack Butala: Yeah, Depeche Mode at the palladium in 1983, and then like three girls names on it, like Jill, and Jackie, and something else.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, Eileen and …
Jack Butala: Anybody would do, I went and bought a cassette thing, because nobody has a cassette thing anymore. I stuck it in there, and this is what [crosstalk 00:14:57].
Jill DeWit: I can’t believe you’re telling this, I’m so red right now.
Jack Butala: The whole thing is this …
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