Why Land Flipping Really Works (CFFL 0134)
Why Land Flipping Really Works
Jack Butala: Why Land Flipping Really Works. 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. In this episode Jill and I talk about why land flipping really works. It’s cheap, fast, and you don’t need to leave your computer. Boy, there’s a lot of other things I have to say about why this really works too, but those are some really … That’s the title. Anyway.
Jill, great show today. Before we start let’s take a question from a caller.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Richard from Seattle asks. “I’m doing my due diligence but what I’d really like to find are those properties that are off market. Where do we begin looking for those type of deals?”
Jack Butala:
Richard, that’s exactly what we teach. We teach this, all types of real estate, not just land. You send a direct, you orchestrate and implement a very well thought out and methodical direct mail campaign to send offers to people who own real estate for less than the market value. You wait to see what comes back. We’ve been doing it for so many years, that I can pretty much tell you what’s, you know, where you’re doing it, why, and what the numbers look like, before you send it out. To find the, there’s two or three places on the planet to find great off market deals. Number 1 is through a direct mail campaign. I’m not talking about sending it to people who just have bad tax property, or any of that stuff, because that market can get a little bit saturated. I’m talking about sending it to everybody, just to see if that day, they decided to sell their property and, all of a sudden, you’re offer came up, came in the mail. That’s my favorite, it always has been, there’s no replacement for a great, direct mail campaign.
Another place you can find great off market, off market super, undervalued property is through tax liens and tax deeds. Those sales are still very alive and well and you see some of that stuff on late night television and I’ll tell you, it works. It might not work to get a Ferrari, or whatever they’re hawking on those TV shows, but buying property, you can buy a house for five or six thousand dollars worth of back taxes if you know how to work the system. People do it all the time, every single day. That’s great off market situation.
Then there’s a lot of large corporations, not a lot, but several, large corporations that are talking about this in their programs, actually …
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I know.
Jack Butala:
that have a ton of properties lying around and they just want to get rid of it. If you scour the internet or buy our program, one of our programs, it explains all of that. You’re on the right track, that’s the right first question to ask. Where do you find off market deals? I know where you don’t find them, and everybody looks there first. Go ahead Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Well, is it my favorite one?
Jack Butala:
Yes.
Jill DeWit:
Driving for dollars.
Jack Butala:
It’s that. That’s one of them. There’s like four …
Jill DeWit:
Are you saying MLS?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
It’s that, MLS cracks me up.
Jill DeWit:
I know. Because that is the market. It’s not off market, you want to hit them before they get there.
Jack Butala:
I’m writing a book called “Get There First” for all people in real estate. If you didn’t’ get there first, then you’re kind of wasting your time. If the property is in the MLS, and it’s all polished up, there’s pictures of it and stuff, somebody else got there first. Maybe a bank did it, if they’re foreclosing on it, maybe a real estate agent, more likely, got there first, but it wasn’t you. So you can offer, you can make seven thousand offers on proprieties on the MLS and maybe get one.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
That’s a lot of work. Our way is better.
Jill DeWit:
It’s true. Thank you.
Jack Butala:
Don’t even get me started on Driving for Dollars.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Jack Butala:
Any of that stuff, or bandit signs. Someone brought that up recently.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Jack Butala:
You know those little signs, when you’re stopped, or waiting for a red light and it says “we buy ugly houses” or some silliness.
Jill DeWit:
Right. Can you imagine driving our car with a bandit sign on it? I buy ugly land, slapped on the back of my car.
Jack Butala:
A lot of people, that take kind of a cute approach to this and I don’t know why.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
Just be professional about it.
Jill DeWit:
Right, I agree.
Jack Butala:
I’s like to buy your property for thirty-two thousand dollars next week.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
I have cash and I’m ready to go, and if you don’t want to, I’m sorry to waste your time and have a good life. Because I just sent out five thousand other offers just like this one, and lots of people are going to call me back.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it. You know what’s really great too Steven, you touched on something fantastic that happens to me all the time that I have to tell people. I’m not making it up, are you interested or not, because I’m going to move down the list, I actually have a lot of acquisition that I’m working with, and it’s kind of like dating. You want to be honest and upfront and that’s what I do, and I’m like “hey, here’s the deal, happy to buy this from you, happy to date you, you’re not the only one.” Just kidding. You know what I mean. My friend last night said, “Jill, I”, it was last night by the way, she actually pulled me aside and said, “Jill, I think I’m ready to up my numbers.”
Jack Butala:
What prompted that?
Jill DeWit:
She finally closed the door on this relationship that was just, was like, I don’t know, it was just never ending, and she finally, kind of, decided, all right, I really got to let this.
Jack Butala:
What pushed her over the edge?
Jill DeWit:
She just got tired of it, I think. It was just not going anywhere.
Jack Butala:
Oh, I think, I bet that she …
Jill DeWit:
What do you think?
Jack Butala:
was talking to someone that was much more interesting.
Jill DeWit:
No. She was talking to me.
Jack Butala:
Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s what I mean, somebody more interesting.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you, no, she just, she and I were having a chat and some dinner and she said, “Jill, I think I’m,” she on her own, I didn’t say this, on her own she thought that up and I said, “good for you and I’m just the wingman to help.”
Jack Butala:
Excellent.
Jill DeWit:
We won’t go any further there. Anyway.
Jack Butala:
I’d love to go further there. I don’t want to talk about land flipping and why it works.
Jill DeWit:
You want to talk about me being a wingman.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. That’s what everyone else wants to hear too.
Jill DeWit:
All right, okay, well …
Jack Butala:
You brought this up.
Jill DeWit:
We can spend a minute on being a wingman. I’m a pretty good wingman.
Jack Butala:
What’s a good wingman?
Jill DeWit:
I stand there and help the conversation flow and I bring it back to my friend, and how awesome she is and it’s good stuff. We all laugh, have a good time.
Jack Butala:
You’ve have a really, really good talent Jill of making things incredibly vague. I don’t know where it comes from. I really, I’ve thought about it a lot. Instead of just saying, “this is what you got to do to be a great wingmam, you do x, y, and z, make sure you avoid this, this, this and this.”
Jill DeWit:
All right, all right.
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I’ll tell you, if you want more …[inaudible 00:06:30]
Jack Butala:
Give it to us Jill and set it up for us.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Jack Butala:
So this girl is, I don’t know, what? It doesn’t matter.
Jill DeWit:
It doesn’t matter.
Jack Butala:
Her late thirties, early forties.
Jill DeWit:
No the point is, I’m a good wingman because I know what she’s looking for. Number one, we have had detailed conversations and I know what she likes and what she doesn’t like. Down to …
Jack Butala:
In men.
Jill DeWit:
Right, down to, in men. Down to height, we talk about whether they’ve ever been married before, we talk about, do they like dogs, I mean all kinds of … Seriously.
Jack Butala:
This is the detail we need.
Jill DeWit:
Right. I do my homework for my friend and I’m like, give it to me now, and I’m going to help you. We all have a pretty good idea of who we want to be with. It’s easy to say I just want someone who’s not crazy, well we all want that.
Jack Butala:
Right.
Jill DeWit:
But there’s more to it than that.
Jack Butala:
Right.
Jill DeWit:
What are you attracted to? Do they travel? Are they physically active or do they like, or what else do you want? I know that, so when we walk into a place, an establishment, I’m actually scouting the room before she is and kind of, because she has a height thing, so it’s kind of easy to do, I can kind of scan the room and then I can kind of point out, I did it last night, I pointed out a couple options for her and said, “what about that, what about that, what about that?”
Jack Butala:
Did you walk up these guys and just say, “hey,”
Jill DeWit:
Actually, one of them approached us, on their own, which I was actually, I was even more impressed, because one of the things, that she likes, is confident people. This person obviously, this person had the height and they had the confidence, and they approached us. Then there were other things that I picked up on, that she didn’t pick up on, and I was like, “Kelly, the guy has a dog,” you know the few things like that, you’re in there, you know? The guy hikes, so there’s some good things in there. Do you want to know more or is that it?
Jack Butala:
Yeah, I want to hear more without using people’s names. I don’t know if you’re doing that.
Jill DeWit:
I did.
Jack Butala:
I mean I know you’re doing that.
Jill DeWit:
I didn’t mean to, oops. Okay, I just kind of help the conversation, and I help her leave when it’s appropriate, because you don’t want to be there too long.
Jack Butala:
Okay.
Jill DeWit:
What?
Jack Butala:
This is hilarious.
Jill DeWit:
You think I’m kidding?
Jack Butala:
No, this is hilarious.
Jill DeWit:
Is this good information.
Jack Butala:
Guys need to know this stuff.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack Butala:
This is really good stuff to know.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, you want to hear something funny?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, so this dingdong was doing fantastic, really liked him, thought this was great, my friend was interested, all the good signs, his friends, his other friends were a little weird, but this guy was good, okay, we liked that. Well, he went to the bar, to get us fresh drinks and got waylaid at the bar because some other girl started talking to him and instead of saying, “hey, nice to …”, you know, we’ve been talking for like an hour and instead of saying, “thank you,” and coming back, he was hung at the bar for a little bit.
Jack Butala:
Maybe he found a better one.
Jill DeWit:
Maybe he did. That’s okay, that was our exit. We ducked out. So it was fine, but he’s got her number so we’ll see.
Jack Butala:
Okay, good, that’s good, good wingman stuff, I guess.
Jill DeWit:
Is this good information?
Jack Butala:
Yes. [crosstalk 00:09:40]
Jill DeWit:
Anyway, where were we? All right, I’ll bring it in. Why land flipping really works. Sorry. Okay, you can do as many as you want, this couple of things I wrote down and I love it. You can do, we have members that are happy doing a couple a month, some are happy doing a couple a week, we have members that are doing one a day. I love that and this works. You can dial it up, dial it down, whatever. What do you have to say about that?
Jack Butala:
I think land flipping really, really works because it’s, from a time consumption standpoint, the way that we teach it, it is very, very, very easy to send out a ridiculous amount of offers in the mail, field the calls that come back, pick the absolute best ones, without ever leaving your computer. In some cases, I just hire a photographer to go get pictures but it works so well because there is such a wealth of information on the internet that it is just easy to do.
I think when you line it up against, let’s say house flipping, or anything that you would buy and sell, even cars, as silly as that sounds, we have a lot of members, we have several members who flip cars and want to get into flipping real estate and they’re part of our group now. Why land is different than all of those other product types is that you have to touch the product, build the product, improve the product, and there’s a lot of stuff that goes on when you buy a house that not, in any way, goes on with land. You don’t have to change any of your utilities over, you don’t have to have the car inspected, and do all, you know, there’s just, I hope I’m making my point.
Land flipping really, really works because there’s a piece of property out there somewhere, probably not in the same state that you’re in, that you know that you purchased for half of what it’s worth, at least, maybe more, maybe less than what it’s worth, just by looking around on the internet and seeing what everything is selling for in the area. If you’re real organized, and motivated, and committed, land flipping really works because it will reward you. There are only so many cars that you can look at in an hour there are only so many houses that you can review from an asset standpoint, and really realize what you’re going to do. I’m not going to use the word scalable, because it’s not the correct way to use that word, but it’s very accomplishable.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
And realistic to do a lot of deals pretty quickly. Especially, when you get to the point where Jill and I are, you have good people surrounding you, there’s very little work to do that’s involved.
Jill DeWit:
I love it. It is inexpensive and that’s one of the things that I talk to people about a lot. They’re worried about acquisition funds and those costs and you really can start with a small budget and quickly grow it. You have five hundred dollars, all right, you can work with that for your acquisition budget. Right Steven?
Jack Butala:
Yeah, I mean, think of it this way. I’ve done this several times just to make a point, you start with five hundred bucks, don’t quit your job, pay your bills like you’ve always been paying, but you start with five hundred dollars and you double it and now you have a thousand, you take the original five hundred bucks and put it back wherever you got it and now you’re with five hundred dollars that is all margin and you double it again, double it again, double it again, it doesn’t take very long to do the math on that before you have a pretty substantial amount of money to deal with.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Jack Butala:
I mean, but you have to be committed and really stick to the schedule, and the whole thing, just like anything else if you’re going to be rewarded, if you’re that kind of person. If you’re doing this because it’s easier, and it is, I think a lot easier, for my personality type it’s a lot easier, but if you have a commitment, a calendar in front of you, it is a very viable option.
Jill DeWit:
Well, you brought up another thing too earlier, that you don’t need to leave your computer, and that’s one of things I love about this and I think that’s what a lot people. I know a lot of people are in this business with us because they want to travel, they don’t want to be tied to a certain city, or whatever it is. They want to have that flexibility, they don’t have go show up to an office space basically everyday and there’s not an inventory like you said. I don’t have to make sure we have enough widgets to ship out. People love that and I love your quote years ago, buying land and shipping paper.
Jack Butala:
Buying dirt and shipping paper.
Jill DeWit:
Steven you came up with that, fifteen years ago, and it’s the best thing ever. Realistically, could I do this from another country, yeah, I might spend a little bit of postage mailing it from somewhere, if I’m really right there.
Jack Butala:
Bunch of members doing it.
Jill DeWit:
Right. But I could, or I have someone here that mails things out for me, for the mailers that come from the States anyway, that’s a no brainer. For the actual doing the little deeds, maybe I’m doing my deeds for myself and I’m somewhere else, I can do that, it’s not hard. It’s really easy. We have a number of members, who are, that’s another thing, they already are in other countries. It’s something they can do that makes sense from Thailand.
Jack Butala:
Literally.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly, and who doesn’t feel safe about owning property. It’s one of the things that it’s going to be there tomorrow.
Jack Butala:
Right
Jill DeWit:
You don’t have to think about it, the market is not going to fluctuate like a stock market thing. It’s not going to change, my property value is not going to fluctuate as much overnight as anything. Can you think of anything?
Jack Butala:
That’s one of the things, I did a very large deal early on and I outlaid a ton of cash, did exactly what I just described before. I doubled my money, and doubled my money, and accumulated a bunch of money and then a deal fell in my lap because of a mailer that I did and it was expensive, it was, for at the time, it was extremely expensive, I think I had to write an eighty or ninety thousand dollar check. Well, long story short, I turned that into almost seven hundred thousand pretty quickly, in about six or seven months after that, but one of the things I convinced myself and said over, over, and over again while I was writing that check, hard as it was back then, was hey the worst thing that happens is I end up for a bunch of real estate, free and clear, so how bad can that be. Fortunately, it did everything right but that’s what we teach with our members, we try not to let people make bad decisions at all, in fact, I’m trying to think of one, if anybody has made any type of real big, bad decision and I can’t think of one.
Jill DeWit:
No, you’re right.
Jack Butala:
Can’t think of anybody in the success plan that says, “boy, I really messed this up.”
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. You’re right. It’s good.
You know what’s funny about that? The only thing that I see in success [inaudible 00:16:43] sometimes is people are like “I want to make eight times what I bought” and you’re good at piping in and going “let’s double and triple our money and get out guys. It’s okay.”
Jack Butala:
It’s so easy to try and maximize value in every deal and I usually sit there and never get anything done because doubly it and tripling it is not enough for a lot people. They want to buy it for a hundred dollars and sell it for fourteen thousand which is very possible but you should give yourself about seven years to do that on one deal …
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Jack Butala:
instead of three weeks.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
Triple your money in three weeks or eight times your money in nine years.
Jill DeWit:
Let’s think. I love it.
Jack Butala:
Hey, join us on another episode where Jill and I discuss your all important success in land investment and in life.
You’re cracking me up with this wingman stuff.
Jill DeWit:
I know. Why did you ask more? You want to know?
Jack Butala:
Because it’s just so much more interesting than land. It really is and I think I speak for the vast majority of our listeners.
Jill DeWit:
You know, I like socializing, it’s no secret, seriously, I like talking to people. I have so much fun and I like talking to new people, I really do. I have so much fun with our new members, getting to talk to them. I just talked to Brandon a little while ago, and I know Brandon listens, so hi Brandon.
Jack Butala:
Oh, good.
Jill DeWit:
I love getting to know new people. What’s going with them, it’s just fun for me, and then when I get to follow their successes and everything, it’s just awesome.
The whole wingman thing with Kelly, shoot, nobody. My fun with my friend, is just fun stuff, it’s all good.
Jack Butala:
Good. Let’s go buy some property.
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