Steve Reads His eBook Cash Flow From Land (CFFL 0076)
Steve Reads His eBook Cash Flow From Land
Jack Butala: Steve Reads His eBook Cash Flow From 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.
Jack Butala: Welcome to land academy, this is the Cash Flow from Land Show, where we show you how to buy unwanted vacant land and sell it for more on the internet. I’m Jack Butala
Jill DeWit: And am Jill DeWit. We are your host
Jack Butala: We are your host. With over fifteen thousand completed transactions we are the experts in this nichey land flipping business
Jill DeWit: We hold a joint to win a free property every month. Enter to win by reviewing this show on iTunes and downloading our free eBook at landacademy.com. All right. lets get the show started
Jack Butala: Jack Butala here from land academy welcome to our Cash Flow from Land Show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about my first eBook. it is called Ten Thousand a Month for Life, Cash Flow from Land. It gets a tonne of daily downloads and generate a lots of questions, like in a really good way questions. Jill, I wanted to read some of these aspects of this book, certainly not read at all because I’d put everybody to sleep, but read some of the highlights and then maybe you can comment on as if you were a new member or somebody that’s new in the business. I’d love to get your opinion
Jill DeWit: Okay
Jack Butala: Before that as always lets take that question from a caller that you can read
Jill DeWit: That I can read? Just so you know, if you want to have your question answered on the air maybe even get you on air you just need to call 888-735-5045. I’m going to do that again. It’s 888-735-5045. We just started doping that. We may read your question on air, we may have you on the air. Here is what we get. Alice from Chicago ask how do the pros by real estate?
Jack Butala: What?
Jill DeWit: I’m going to leave that to you because I think that’s cool.
Jack Butala: I love this question. How do pros buy real estate? Let me tell you. I used to be an acquisition person, vice president of acquisition for a long term care company that eventually we took public. I think what Alex is really asking is are you guys really pros? Are you doing this in a pro way or are hack way or is it something in between? I will tell you, this is the triple A pro way to do this. We purchased long care facilities, nursing homes and assisted living facilities by contacting them via direct mail and via, back then faxes. We did it all through software just like we do now. I’s so glad that this person asked this question. I don’t think we have ever talked about this.
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: We give away, I’m not a big fun of saying secrets, we give the secrets away. We give away the process and the procedure of how real commercial real estate acquisition shops work. We avoid brokers. We avoid the MLS at all cost, go directly to the seller and go directly to a lot of sellers at the same time through direct mail to see if they are interested. Inevitably the percentages comes back in your favor. Even if it’s one percent. Ours is closer to seven, eight, ten percent, but in commercial buildings it’s about one percent. For every hundred reach statistics you get out there you get one back. Alex from Chicago great question. Thank you.
Jill DeWit: Cool.
Jack Butala: Did answer it?
Jill DeWit: Yeah, you did. That’s good. Thank you.
Jack Butala: On to the topic, I wrote this eBook a long time ago. It was a long time coming and started to give it away on a regular land stay website which is where we actually sell property, which is where real business is. We decided to turn it into a manual or a get your feet wet introduction to what we do, buy and sell land super cheap. Buy and sell unwanted rural land through direct mail and then sell it for more on the internet by dressing up. I’m going to read a few things, some of the highlights. By no means, this is no reason not to get the eBook at landacademy.com. It’s free
Jill DeWit: You can get in the drawing by the way. We haven’t mentioned that in a while. We still give away a property every month and all you have to do to be eligible is go to landacademy.com, download the free eBook and rate the show on iTunes and if I can’t make out who you are because, you’re …
Jack Butala: Cherrypicker672
Jill DeWit: Something, I was going to say hotmomma123. Something. If I can’t tell who it is, send me an email so I know it’s you and I’ll make sure that you’re in the drawing at jill@landacademy.com.
Jack Butala: I’m going to highlight each chapter, just a brief overview and then I’m going to ask Jill to make some comments or maybe she’s just going to say, you should’ve removed that chapter a long time ago. Chapter one gives my background. In case you don’t know we’ve completed almost sixteen thousand transactions, Jill and I, since the 90’s and generated tons of money. More than twenty million dollars. Land Academy is my way of giving back. That’s your introduction, Jill do you have anything to say about that?
Jill DeWit: Nope. Move on.
Jack Butala: Don’t quit your job too soon.
Jill DeWit: No, I love it. I’m looking at that, we could update the numbers. It says fifteen thousand in the eBook and now we’re pushing sixteen thousand which is awesome.
Jack Butala: Right. Chapter two is titled this, drop everything and do this exercise. This is worth talking about for just a minute. Go to Craigslist. Again, no reason not to get the eBook. Just this is what the exercise is. Go to Craigslist in your area, wherever you are, and make a posting that says some version of this. We pay cash for unwanted rural vacant land. Any location, any condition, and we make offers on every response. We’re not real estate professionals and we’re not licensed real estate agents. Only if you’re not, obviously. Give us a call at this number, whatever your number is, or give shoot us an email and we’ll take a look at your property and make you an offer. I can’t count the number of people that email us daily now that say, why doesn’t everybody do this?
Jill DeWit: I know. They’re like, ah. I remember in the beginning when at first, it was like, uh oh, it works. Now what?
Jack Butala: Yeah. They still call and say, fifteen people called me back. What do I do now? I’ve never done anything like this in my life. Try that. You can try it with anything by the way. It works with cars and all that stuff. I’ve done that.
Jill DeWit: It’s a great thing for people who are, may be hesitant in this business and they’re not sure that there really are that many people out there with unwanted land. Throw it out there. Your phone will ring and you’ll see.
Jack Butala: Yes. Even if it rings and somebody says, it’s not that I have unwanted land. I do have a bunch of land that I want to get a certain price for. Now what you’re doing is you’re in the real estate business now, for free and in five minutes. Chapter three. Get started with nothing. We get this question all the time. How much does it really cost to do this? What’s the deal with zero down on real estate and all that? I’ll tell you the square candid truth. There’s virtually no way to buy real estate with no money. People who tell you that there’s zero down methods and all that stuff, most of them are full of malarkey. What you want to do is learn how to send mailers out to people who own property, to buy the property very inexpensively, or at least to negotiate a deal verbally and then you want to have some people behind you that can close the deal and you can get them through Craigslist or through networking in your local environment.
What ends up happening is you don’t put any money in but you find a fantastic deal and you just don’t want it to go to waste. Neither does anybody in the real estate business. Believe me, they’re going to drop everything that they’re doing. If they get a call from you and say, you don’t know me from Adam but I got a great deal on this. I don’t want it to go to waste. These guys live for that. There’s way more money out there than intelligence. Trust me.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Jack Butala: Or talent. Jill and I have developed, very quickly, a long time ago this concept of an option. When we find a deal like that and it’s slightly over what we’re willing to pay or out of our comfort level, we say yes we want to buy it but we want to option it. We don’t want to actually pay cash for it. We’re going to find a buyer first and then we’re going to close the deal for you and get the money that you want out of it. Otherwise we can close it right now for half of what you want, let’s say. Chapter four is my story which I’m going to skip because I personally don’t care about my story. Do you?
Jill DeWit: It’s a good story, though. You put numbers in there. you show about …
Jack Butala: There’s actually how money we’ve generated since 2001 in there.
Jill DeWit: I like that.
Jack Butala: It’s a lot.
Jill DeWit: 2001 to 2013 [crosstalk 00:09:02]. It’s pretty cool.
Jack Butala: I don’t feel wealthy. Do you feel wealthy? You wake up everyday and you’re like, this is fun.
Jill DeWit: Do you know what’s funny? I don’t necessarily walk around feeling wealthy but I don’t walk around worrying about money. I don’t worry about it.
Jack Butala: Well said. I’m a leader. I can’t improve on that.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Excellent. Chapter five. Now we’re getting to the important stuff. That’s funny because chapter five on the program is where we get into the real stuff too. It’s called the anatomy of a land deal. You start with acquisitions, and then sales. Very important here and very [inaudible 00:09:41]. You get a list of property with their associated back taxes or a list of the property that’s in a county that’s just fit your acquisition criteria but the important point to this, the takeaway is, get a great list of properties. Get a fantastic data source. Then contact those property owners through direct mail. We’ve done this millions of times actually and it works out really well if you know what you’re doing.
Tons of people are going to call you back and say yes or no or you can go to hell because you offered too little for my property. You’re going to weed all those out. You’re going to pick the ones that you like by researching the property on the internet through tools like Google Earth and things like that and you’re going to buy them. It’s as simple as that. Then you’re going to chose whether to sell it for cash. If you buy a property for a thousand bucks you’re going to sell it for two or three thousand dollars really quickly, pocket the money, maybe reinvest it, buy some other properties. Get a new computer or whatever. Or you can say I want to sell it on terms, which is what Jill and i do all the time now.
You buy a property for a thousand bucks and then you sell it for, I don’t know, ten thousand but it’s ninety-nine dollars a month or ninety-nine down or ninety-nine a month. Then you amass a fortune of little payments like this. It’s very easy to get to ten thousands a month.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. The payments just keep coming in. You don’t have to do anything.
Jack Butala: On to the next chapter. A bunch of math. Three reasons why property won’t sell quickly. I love this. I did a blog about it and actually ended up being pretty popular blog. The first reason is that the property is not priced properly. All property, I don’t care what it is, that doesn’t sell really quickly, it falls into one of these three categories. My favorite is, it’s just not priced properly. Who dictates the price of property? The person who sells it? No. The mortgage company. That’s now an indication that maybe you paid too much if you’re a seller. If you have a mortgage on a property you’re hands are tied. Us, acquisition people, we don’t even deal with properties with mortgages on them, ever.
They never get a notice from us. Never get a letter or an offer from us. Number two, the property doesn’t have one of what I call the four a’s. Access, attribute, acreage, or affordability. That’s how Jill and I gauge our acquisition criteria. Does it have access? Can you drive up to it? Does it have a great attribute, like it’s next to the Grand Canyon? Does it have any acreage at all? No or yes? Is it ten acres or a quarter? Higher is better, and is it affordable? Again, just like number one, if it’s priced too high you’re not going to buy it or sell it. Number three, and this gets overlooked all the time, you’re just not reaching the right people. This is a short way of saying, you didn’t announce it on the internet that you own this property. There’s lots of venues that you can announce to send, like Landwatch and eBay and your website and Twitter and the whole thing.
Jill DeWit: You know what I think is funny along those lines? We’ve had some of our members that have actually driven out, looked at properties, bought a for sale sign on the way out and popped it on the property and sold it right away.
Jack Butala: I know. I have never done anything like that.
Jill DeWit: That is cracking me up.
Jack Butala: That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: I’m like, brilliant. The next door neighbor always wanted it or the guy across the street or whatever, always wanted that property and now it’s for sale, everybody’s driving by and then all of a sudden they sell it. I’m like, that was brilliant.
Jack Butala: That just goes to show you, this program’s packed for a ridiculous information for the money, I think. We have a lot of the answers but not all of them. Our favorite members, our most successful members are constantly coming up with crazy stuff like that.
Jill DeWit: They share it with us in success plan and I love it. We all benefit. Thank you.
Jack Butala: Chapter seven is really what Jill just touched on is the concept of reach. You want buyers and sellers contacting you, not the other way around. What we do, and I think almost all real estate professionals do this backward. The old way, which is how most people do it now is they sit in their office and maybe they get a call from their broker and their broker says, I got this deal down here. Take a look at it. You spend three hours looking at the property or researching it. You’re not sending any vibe out or reaching out to have all these people come back to you. That’s what we do with direct mail. We send out several thousand offers a month or a week sometimes and then the people that are interested, they do all the work for you.
They call you back and then you decide. It’s not the other way around. You don’t get in your car and drive for dollars, go look for property. From an efficiency standpoint it doesn’t work. I get into a lot of detail about that. Chapter eight, how to pick the best target market. I get this question for whatever reason recently …
Jill DeWit: A lot. This does come up a lot. I’m glad that we’re going through this right now, because that’s a good thing that I can refer folks back to the eBook.
Jack Butala: Have you ever read the eBook?
Jill DeWit: I have. Oh boy have I read the eBook. Funny question.
Jack Butala: Have you really? I didn’t know that.
Jill DeWit: Are you kidding me?
Jack Butala: Yeah. I’m not kidding.
Jill DeWit: Who do you think helped edit and put this together and stuff? I don’t know, my name might be on it. Have you read the eBook? If you’ve read the eBook my name is actually on there and I’ve wrote something in there. I have read the eBook.
Jack Butala: Oh, my gosh.
Jill DeWit: Silly.
Jack Butala: I’m going to get her after this.
Jill DeWit: Yes, you are. A good point is it’s a really good prelude for our program and it’s a good thing for people to have on hand to go back and look at. It’s a good snapshot of our program. Sorry.
Jack Butala: Chapter eight, how to pick a best target market and it comes up a lot. The questions range from, Steve, can you just tell me where to send the damn mailer? Which I never do. Then on the other side, I go through this in great detail about how to chose a best market and it involves census maps and taking a look at very rural properties. There’s a three step process, taking a look at very rural property, start that way, and then population density is even better. Then take a look at what, maybe there’s a lot of back taxes in that county. We’re not going to target just back tax property but it’s usually a very good indicator that if a lot of properties have back taxes on them you’re going to have a successful mailing and buy some real estate there.
The third piece is, hey, take a look at what other people are selling. Go out on sites like Landwatch and eBay. Run some numbers. See if it’s worth it to even work that area. If there’s lots of other people with lots of property that are selling for pretty good [inaudible 00:16:43] of money and there’s back tax property. Now you’re set up to success. Three step process. We’ll talk all about it in our program and the eBook. Chapter nine is called, what triggers a motivated seller. Then in parenthesis I have hint, they’re probably dead. No. In all serious the vast majority, not the vast. There’s a lot of people who, the parents own the property and they passed away and they handed it down, the kids want no part of it. They just want to cash it out.
They want to check it off the estate list. We get a lot of deals like that. Sometimes they die with no heirs at all and the state gets it back and the state’s not going to pay taxes on it. They’re not going to pay taxes to themselves so there’s a lot of triggers. That’s one of them. Or they just lose interest or their health is bad. Through data, which is what we teach, or what we talk about all through our program, you can see the indicators of who’s interested in selling and who’s not. I go into a lot of detail which I won’t now about how to really find unwanted property that way. Chapter ten is called, using direct mail to get hundreds of motivated sellers, and in parenthesis, they’ll call you every day and just about give away their property. I never get tired of this, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh. (affirmative)
Jack Butala: Tell us a good story, someone recently that called, maybe even today, if you have one, where they just said, here’s my circumstance. You’re a woman. I’m a woman, maybe. Here’s my circumstance. I just need to get this property out of my life, maybe check it off my list, or maybe if you could send me a few hundred bucks that’d be great.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I had a really sweat gal, she was in Florida, that I bought a couple properties from, and she was telling me the whole story because she has no children and her dog is her child. This is a totally true story. Something had happened with the dog and undergoing all kinds of surgeries and this thousand dollars she got from me she could put on the vet bills for her dog. She was so grateful and so appreciative because she didn’t want this property anymore. She’d inherited it from her parents. She was never going to use it and I had to check in her hand, she had a cashiers check in three days and she was saying to me, even afterwards it was so sweat.
A month after the whole transaction she’s like, it’s the end of the year now. Do I need to do anything special with the stuff? I’m like, no. You’re all good. It’s all recorded and nothing you have to worry about and she just again thanked me how much she needed that money. Her child was her dog and she was thrilled. What can you say?
Jack Butala: That’s great. Once in a while, not too often anymore I get a comment or an email from somebody. Usually it’s somebody I know well, like a friend, where they say, why are you taking advantage of these people? If your property’s worth four thousand dollars why are you just paying a thousand dollars for it? This is my response. I use the milk analogy. There are three places that this seller can go buy a gallon of milk. They can buy it in Walmart which is probably about the cheapest. They can buy it in the grocery store which is a little bit more expensive but maybe closer to their house, and they can walk down to the corner to the convenient store and pay top dollar. All three of these are intentional on this buyer’s part and for whatever reason they’ve chosen to buy the milk where they chose it.
Some people want the absolute best deal. They want to get the best price for the property so they do the Walmart thing. Some people are on the fence that maybe call a realtor in the middle and then some people in the convenient store, they just want the money. They just want to get out of it. Price is not their primary motive so they call us. At no point during the process are we tricking them or telling them, everybody thanks us I guess I my point.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Chapter eleven, you’ll have little to no competitors. We address a lot in this eBook. I forgot about it.
Jill DeWit: Me too.
Jack Butala: There are way more vacant houses out there than houses or condos or anything like that. Way more, like multiples more. Again, that’s exact numbers on that in a future podcast because it’s coming up a lot but a lot of people, and I get it. They say, why would I join a group that’s got a bunch of people sending out mailers to the same place and then start competing? Trust me. It’s not going to happen. It has not happened yet.
Jill DeWit: There’s so much land to go around it’s not even funny.
Jack Butala: Yeah. There’s no competitors. Most of the people who are doing this kind of thing are doing it with houses or they’re doing it with apartment buildings or something like that. Even with houses, I think that it’s, I know it is. We do it all the time actually.
Jill DeWit: I’m just reading a line that you have in there too which is really good to point out. Real estate agents typically don’t deal with it because their commissions are too low. I have that going on right now. I have real estate agents that are handing me deals that they could buy and close and sell themselves but they’re like, no. Just not worth my time. This is not my thing. They befriended me, which I love, and they’re just giving these deals to me.
Jack Butala: That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: It was funny because they’re even being the middle man with the negotiation. I’m like, I wouldn’t pay this but I’d pay x. Next thing I know I get an email back saying, guy will take it. Here’s his number. I’m like, it’s so funny. Okay. Yes.
Jack Butala: Chapter twelve. Researching accepted offers. We touched on this a little bit, in parenthesis, most real estate pros do it backwards. They review the deal and then they make an offer. What you want to do and what we do is we send out offers in the mail and then the people that are just ready to take that offer they sign it and they send it right back. Takes ninety percent of the work out of it for you. Then you go look at the deal. Maybe you have ten of them on your desk. You’re staring at them, and you buy two. They fit your criteria. The mail does the work for you, [inaudible 00:22:56] about forty-five cents a unit.
Jill and I have just released a mailer/printer program where if you send enough mailers out it can get cheaper than the price of a stamp, literally. If you go to landacademy.com it’s all there. Closing the deal, there’s two ways. You buy it directly through hiring a notary, generating a deed, having the notary go out, deliver a cashiers check and closing the deal that way which is our favorite way. We usually cap it off around five thousand bucks. Anything lower than that we do it this way or if it’s higher we get a title agent in general and they close the deal. Cash or terms, chapter fourteen. We covered this already. Do you sell it for cash? You want to double your money quick, or sell it for terms, our favorite way? Chapter fifteen, what could go wrong?
Jill DeWit: I like that.
Jack Butala: What could go wrong, Jill?
Jill DeWit: You could flake. You could overpay.
Jack Butala: You could overpay.
Jill DeWit: You could not follow the things and not buy the right property.
Jack Butala: You could get emotional.
Jill DeWit: You could get emotional. Oh, my gosh. That’s how you overpay.
Jack Butala: You know what I’ve seen a couple of members do is they excited because it works, on their first mailer and they start making bad decisions because they want to be in the business so bad and turn it and all that and you just got to hold out. It rains offers after that.
Jill DeWit: What I’ve noticed sometimes too is once the offers start coming in they start looking at each one instead of looking at all of them. I remind them often in our community site for our members, at successplan.com, tickle those fifty phone calls that you got. Now let’s pick out the top five, top ten, whatever your funds are, don’t go one through fifty in order. Look at them all as a number and just pick the top ones and the easy ones, make the money, move on.
Jack Butala: You know what I used do? I used to have the attitude, we’re going to buy them all and we’re going to make lots of money on some of them and very little money on the others. I really don’t have to look at anything. We’re just going to treat it like an ashtray or a widget or whatever, whatever you manufacturing, and I was wrong. You really have to just spend, it doesn’t take long. Maybe five, ten minutes with Google Earth Pro to see if there’s access and stuff like that and you just pick the ones that are best.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. We have enough that we can do that.
Jack Butala: Right. Chapter sixteen, a note from a Jill.
Jill DeWit: Look, I am in the eBook.
Jack Butala: I’m sorry.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: I wrote this a long time ago.
Jill DeWit: Yeah you did. You’re giving me a hard time, you didn’t remember that I’m in there. Thanks.
Jack Butala: What are your final thoughts?
Jill DeWit: Look at that. I officially joined the team. Now you know a little about my background, what I bring to the business, and what are my final thoughts? I love what I do.
Jack Butala: I do too Jill.
Jill DeWit: I think you and I are perfect partners. What you bring to the table, what I bring to the table are very different and that’s so great. Sometimes it’s not great because it’s like, we don’t always see eye to eye because of our backgrounds. Which is good, but it’s good. Every time you and I butt heads on something it comes out better in the end. I’m positive of that.
Jack Butala: Me too. I think that by now, when you say yeah this is the way it’s going to be, if there is a really darn good reason for it and vise-versa I think. I just say, you know what? She knows way more about customers and how to deal with stuff than I do and whatever she thinks is fine.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, that’s a good point. You and I have separate executive veto power, I guess. We don’t use it very much but it’s like, there’s a time that you have to step up and I respect it and I know you respect mine too. Thank you.
Jack Butala: Then chapter seventeen is some information about the programs that we provide. All in all, I was just thinking reading this that I don’t know where you’re going to get this kind of information for the money.
Jill DeWit: No. Like, free.
Jack Butala: If you don’t want to spend a dollar, if you don’t have a dollar, get the eBook. Get into success plan while it’s still free because it’s not going to be free long. Ask as many questions as you can and learn and learn. Maybe you do a couple deals then you buy the package. We’ve had people do that, buy the program.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Join Jill and I in another episode where we discuss your all important in a real estate investment and in life. Was that just a college lecture, awful boring?
Jill DeWit: You know what, that was one of our longer shows that we’ve done in a while and I think that it was so beneficial though. I think it’s going to be a hit. I really do. We just go through so much information there and what’s available for free. If I was just reading that and hearing the show, I just found us, I’d have the eBook in my hand before the show was over.
Jack Butala: You know what? So would I. That just goes to show you, it can’t just be fun and games all the time. We horse around a lot on this show. There’s got to be a balance between learning some stuff and just horsing around.
Jill DeWit: That’s who we are. A lot of people have shows that just horse around. They don’t talk about anything. You and I do a little bit of both. We like to share some valuable stuff, help some people out, because that’s how they found us and why we’re here but we really want to horse around.
Jack Butala: That’s why we do this, so we can go horse around when we’re done.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, like right now.
Jack Butala: Let’s go buy some real estate.
Jill DeWit: We hold a drawing to win a free property every month. Enter to win by reviewing this show on iTunes and downloading our free eBook at landacademy.com.
Jack Butala: If you want to get involved or you need more information about our profitable nichey real estate operation call 480-467-0359. You just might get Jill at the other end of the line.
Jill DeWit: Landacademy.com. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
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