Now Licensed to Sell Best Data in the World (CFFL 0071)
Now Licensed to Sell Best Data in the World
Jack Butala: Now Licensed to Sell Best Data in the World. 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.
Jack Butala: Jack Butala here, for Land Academy. Welcome to our “Cash Flow from Land” show once again. In this episode, Jill and I talk about our licensing deal, our brand-new licensing deal with First American Title. I’ll tell you, I couldn’t be more excited about this topic and actually doing this podcast. Say, right before we do this, before we get started, let’s take a question from a caller today. I think that you brought it up right before the show.
Jill DeWit: We do have people call in and leave questions for us, and I’d like to answer one right now from Martin in southern Arizona. Martin called in and asked this: “I’m a licensed agent and I’m having difficulty getting comfortable completing my own transactions without an escrow or a title agent. What do you recommend?”
Jack Butala: What I think he really means, and this is a very common issue with … I’m so glad, by the way, that this person called in, because I think this can really help a lot of people.
Jill DeWit: It’s a good question.
Jack Butala: Many of the members that we have are real estate agents or former real estate agents. A couple of people come to mind who are recently retired and extremely seasoned real estate agents who made enough to retire on buying and selling homes and land and ranches for other people, representing other people.
Here’s how it goes, and when … I think this is a great question, because a lot of very seasoned people and a lot of real estate agents, once they negotiate the deal or help the buyer and the seller get to an agreement to sell their property or buy their property, they shove it off to a title or an escrow agent, who are, by the way, some of my favorite people on the planet. I’ve had many, many, many, and have many, former escrow and title people …
Jill DeWit: Many? How many?
Jack Butala: Many, many. They send the deal over to the title escrow agent, and then no one talks for, what, 15 days, and they magically produce all the papers to sign.
Jill DeWit: Right, then a few e-mails, and then that’s it.
Jack Butala: The agents never learn to do their own deal, like Jill does, that her staff does all the time. They don’t physically produce a deed. They don’t arrange for signatures and do all kind of the paperwork piece of this. Martin is a little gun-shy, a little bit, and probably a little … I have to congratulate him for at least bringing it up. A lot of people are real embarrassed about it.
Jill DeWit: Just to say that?
Jack Butala: Lot of real estate people, yeah.
Jill DeWit: I have one that I’m doing right now.
Jack Butala: Let’s hear it.
Jill DeWit: Have I told you about this? I have a real estate agent who reached out to me months ago, and connected with me on a real estate form that we share, that we’re involved in. Not our own, it’s a different one. Anyway. Next thing you know, he’s bringing deals to me. I’m like, “Wait a minute. I thought he was reaching out to me because he wanted to learn to do what we’re doing,” which I think he does, but he’s so … It’s just like this. He must be gun-shy, because he’s negotiating the deal and then handing the whole thing to me, and I’m like …
Jack Butala: Because you’re the title agent.
Jill DeWit: Because I apparently am the title agent.
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh, Jill, this is perfect for this topic.
Jill DeWit: It’s so funny. Literally, he is a licensed realtor. He said, “Hey, I’ve got a guy that wants some land. He wants to sell it for X price.” I wrote him back and I said, “Hold on. Why aren’t you doing this deal?” I said, “Here’s what I would do. I would offer the guy this.” Do you want me to give some numbers?
Jack Butala: Yeah, because [crosstalk 00:03:29]
Jill DeWit: Okay. I’m not going to say the county.
Jack Butala: Let me interject one second. My point in all this and the reason that we’re taking this call and Jill’s telling this story is that we provide all this knowledge.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: We address this directly, and by the time that you’re done with our program …
Jill DeWit: You know how to do this.
Jack Butala: You know how to be your own title … Not write a title policy, but you know how to be your own escrow person for your own deals.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: It’s really, really simple. It really is.
Jill DeWit: It’s not hard. Yeah, so the scoop is, real estate agent reaches out to me. “Hey, Jill, I have this deal.” I write back and I’m like, “Okay, hold on a moment. Remember what we do. You can do this deal. If you had our program you’d be comfortable with this.” It’s one and a quarter acre property.
Jack Butala: You can give away all the details if you want.
Jill DeWit: I’m not going to give too much. I said, “I would offer the guy …” The guy wants to sell it for $800, right? We all know it’s worth more. That’s still a good deal there. I said, “Look, I would offer the guy $300, then I would post it for sale for $900 or $1,200, whatever.” The guy even pulled comps for me that are $1,200. I’m like, “I’d offer $300, do my own deal, and then sell it for $1,200.” I said, “Why aren’t you doing this?” Instead of the guy writing back saying, “Oh, yeah, you’re right. I can do this,” kind of thing, the guy wrote me back and said, “No, this seller will take $400.” I’m like, “What?”
Jack Butala: He negotiated with himself?
Jill DeWit: He negotiated with this … He’s handing it back to me. The guy is so intimidated to do the deal. I’m like, “Why are you passing up this money? You’re leaving this money on the table. I don’t understand.”
Jack Butala: What did he say? That’s my question, too.
Jill DeWit: I wrote back and I just said, “All right. Is the buyer …” I’m like, “All right. You apparently aren’t into this,” or something. It’s just like this guy Martin who called in. At least this guy Martin, who called in and left us the question, is ready to do this. This realtor is so intimidated by it, he’s losing money and giving it to me. I wrote back and just said, “Hey, is he alive and able to sign?” He said, “Yes, and here’s his phone number.” That’s the last e-mail. I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”
Jack Butala: This is how I address this topic, and it comes up all the time. It comes up weekly for me. Does it come up for you in the form of a question?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Think about if you’ve ever titled your own car. If you’ve ever … You have to go to the DMV or the motor vehicle department in your state and you have to get a license plate. You have to transfer a car into your name. The dealer does all this stuff for you. If you’re lucky enough to just forever buy new cars every couple years, they’ll do it all for you and you get some stuff in the mail.
Jill DeWit: Lucky enough or crazy enough.
Jack Butala: You know what? It’s just like using a real estate agent. You don’t have to do any work.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Jack Butala: I personally don’t … I’m not a big fan of buying new cars. I don’t care what my situation is financially. What you do is you get a blank document, the deed, the title to the car, fill some stuff out on the back, have a notary sign it, and send it in. Put the stamp on it yourself. God forbid you put a stamp on it yourself.
Jill DeWit: Uh-oh. You’re right.
Jack Butala: I think you end up including a check or something like that too, because it costs whatever.
Jill DeWit: I usually go in, because then I just walk out with my stuff right there.
Jack Butala: It’s the same thing with property. In fact, I would argue that it’s actually easier, because you have to have … In Arizona, it’s green. It’s a green special form that you have to get. In our case, for land, you generate a deed out of Microsoft Word. Generate your own document.
Jill DeWit: Instead of a title. When you say “green,” you mean like a title.
Jack Butala: A car title.
Jill DeWit: The car title, right.
Jack Butala: A deed you just generate it on your own computer and make sure it’s okay and make sure the amounts are right. It’s really, really simple.
Jill DeWit: It really is, but it hangs people up.
Jack Butala: This topic, like several other tiny little ones, stop people from doing this and I don’t think that should happen.
Jill DeWit: I know. I guess, back to the question “What do you recommend?” Get comfortable. Do one. Do an easy one.
Jack Butala: That’s the answer.
Jill DeWit: I would say, my quick thing would say buy one from a wholesaler like us, and then deed it to your wife. Deed it to your whatever. Deed it to your brother or something like that. Get comfortable just deeding it back and forth in your family, and then you know how to do it when you have a seller.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: It’s not hard.
Jack Butala: Exactly. Plus, the way that we do it and the way that we teach this, our members have access to all the data to check to see if the person that you’re purchasing the property from actually owns it, if a property is in a name of a trust, or … Those things can take … It can slow you down a little bit, but not very much. There’s not really much difference between deeding a property from John Smith to Sally Jones, or John Smith, LLC, to Sally Jones. We have all the answers. I’m just cutting to the chase. That’s my point. We provide all the tools to make sure that you’re doing your own little escrow title plan thing.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. I can look back right now, with the data right now that we are providing, that I can look back … I can pull it up and put in a … All I need is the county and the parcel number, the APN. I can pop right in. I can see who owns it. I can see their address. I can verify the legal, the size, the taxes, and I can even see the day they bought it, 1979 kind of thing. I’ve got all that at my fingertips.
Jack Butala: Yeah, which is exactly what … That’s what a title person does.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: They take it one step further and they take it to their title plant division of the escrow company, and they actually write an insurance policy on it and get a chain of title. For anybody who doesn’t know what a chain of title is, right before you buy it, lots of people have owned it since it was homesteaded, literally. Since it was homesteaded by the federal government, so that you get a chain all the way back from the 1800s.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: You make sure that it all connects. If it doesn’t connect, it’s called a cloud on title.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: Wow, is that boring enough?
Jill DeWit: It was very boring. You lost me.
Jack Butala: It was hard for me.
Jill DeWit: It was hard.
Jack Butala: Can we talk about some fun stuff now?
Jill DeWit: I know, but this is good stuff.
Jack Butala: That’s what ends up happening now on this show. We talk about the stuff that we have to get out of the way in the beginning, kind of like life. You get all your work done, and then you go horse around.
Jill DeWit: I think that … I hope that helped a lot of people.
Jack Butala: It was less than 10 minutes.
Jill DeWit: That is such valuable information. It’s almost like … I hope we explained it well enough and took some of the mystery out of it, because it’s really not that hard. I love your car example. When you look at it like a car, it’s like … I just got a new car. I’m the third owner. It’s nice to look back and see the second owner and the first owner, and making sure it all ties together. There wasn’t a mystery accident in the middle or something. It’s the same with a piece of property, and it’s not that hard. It’s a teaspoonful of work. A teaspoonful of work. I love it.
Jack Butala: Whoever started Carfax, that guy’s brilliant. That person.
Jill DeWit: Oh, it’s brilliant.
Jack Butala: It’s basically a title report for your car.
Jill DeWit: It’s kind of what we do. It’s kind of the same thing. We could be the Carfax of land.
Jack Butala: Let’s actually talk about the topic that the thing’s title today. Jill and I are now licensed resellers for First American Title.
Jill DeWit: Yay.
Jack Butala: CoreLogic, as they’re called. First American is … If they’re not the largest title company in the world, they’re in the top three. I’ll check exactly what it is. I’m pretty sure they’re the largest, or number two. They, in my opinion … I’ve always used First American, always.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: I’m pretty partial to that unless there’s some reason that when we buy these properties in rural areas, that we hire somebody super local that knows everybody. We got licensed. All day, you hear Jill and I talk about mailer this, mailer that. Get some good data, send some letters out, buy some property. The last two pieces of the puzzle are being put in place here. We now provide you the data, and we provide it cheaper, than you could get it for to go directly through them.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We also … It is the best data in the world. I’m sure of it. I’ve tried all kinds of other data. Agent 24-7, there’s some for … Seth is actually doing a whole log of this.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, there’s a something pro …
Jack Butala: There’s four sources of data in the country. This is by leaps and bounds the best. There’s no discussing it. I’ve used all four and this is the best for a lot of reasons. In fact, I’ll give you a reason right now. You can tell, with this data, the assessed value … With this data, the amount of … The level of detail they give you, you can really smoke out who is showing some serious signs of selling their land. It’s not just like a name and address and 22 acres in northern New Mexico, which is what a lot of this other data is. In fact, a lot of these other data companies … I don’t know this for a fact. I’m pretty confident they’re buying it from CoreLogic and scaling it down somehow, and charging a lot for it.
Jill DeWit: What I think is important, too, is how up-to-date this is. Let’s think about it. It’s First American Title. They’re not messing around. They have the resources behind them to make sure it’s very, very current. I just got a letter in the mail last week. It was somebody reaching out to me to buy one of our properties. I thought that was awesome. When my staff looked it up, we haven’t owned it in two years.
Jack Butala: Wow.
Jill DeWit: I’m not kidding. It was a letter I just got.
Jack Butala: That’s some old data.
Jill DeWit: Right? Wherever that person is getting their data … I haven’t owned it in two years. What a waste of time and postage and money, right?
Jack Butala: Thanks, Jill. That’s a great example.
Jill DeWit: Got to me. I’m like, “You got to use current data.” I should reach out to them and let them know. I should have done that. I should have said, “By the way, I haven’t owned this in two years. Check your data.”
Jack Butala: You know what you should do is say, “Yeah, I’ll sell it to you.”
Jill DeWit: That’s even better. See how far they get. Heck, yeah. I’ll take that offer.
Jack Butala: See if they actually … You never want to go through with it.
Jill DeWit: Just to see what they come back with, and say they go, “Oops.”
Jack Butala: Yeah, see if they actually send you a cashier’s check, that you won’t sign, that you’d never deposit.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I wouldn’t get that far. I won’t get that far, but just see if they start to put the deal into play, and I’ll just have to say, “Hold on, everyone. I haven’t owned this in two years. Shouldn’t be doing this.” That’s a whole other point. What if I did that? What if it wasn’t me and I didn’t just chuck it off, laugh it off? What if I was not a good person, not that I would … Said, “Sure,” just to see how far they went. They might lose the money on that. There’s a chance that could happen.
Jack Butala: Yeah, absolutely.
Jill DeWit: Get current data, and good data.
Jack Butala: If they’re not a Land Academy member, I’m extremely confident that they’re probably not doing this right.
Jill DeWit: Right. That’s the only reason I opened the letter, because sometimes I want to go, “All right, I got to see this. What’s in this letter?” You know what else, it wasn’t as good as ours, and there wasn’t an offer in there.
Jack Butala: Was it addressed to you or me or somebody?
Jill DeWit: Shucks, I can’t even remember how it was even addressed.
Jack Butala: I love looking at those.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I’m going to start … I told you, I’m going to start really saving those, because it’s valuable information to share with our members and everybody.
Jack Butala: They’re always a good example of what not to do. Actually, in our program, I have several examples up on a screen. We talk about “Don’t do this, don’t send postcards. I know it’s cheaper, don’t do this, don’t do this. Send an actual offer.”
Jill DeWit: Right. Don’t mess around. Your time is worth it. I like knowing that we have the best data, and when you send out current offers to one county, whatever, and you can just sit back, relax, move on from the other county. You don’t wait for it. You just move on and you know.
Jack Butala: Yeah, and then the last piece of the puzzle is the actual printing and getting the … Physically getting the … You get the data, you put it all together, you take all the people out of the data set that you don’t want that are showing signs of owning their land forever, you pick the ones who do want to sell it, and you put it all together in what’s called a mail merge, and then send it to a printer.
How did Valerie do?
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