Flip Houses 2 of 3 Use County Data to Send Offers (CFFL 0172)
Flip Houses 2 of 3 Use County Data to Send Offers
Jack Butala: Flip Houses 2 of 3 Use County Data to Send Offers. 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:
S. Jack Butala here for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land Show. We show you how to buy property for half of what it’s worth and resale it the very next day. Great information and instruction from Jack, that’s me.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration from Jill, that’s me.
Jack Butala:
There’s some funny stuff that happened to us recently.
Jill DeWit:
I hope I get my car back. You know what I’m talking about?
Jack Butala:
I do. Well, you got to tell us.
Jill DeWit:
I think I just donated a car-
Jack Butala:
We live a crazy life.
Jill DeWit:
To my best friend’s family. To my best friend. Yeah, so now that we’re kind of unofficially living in two locations, it doesn’t make sense to bring cars back and forth, so I left a car and a bike. Now I realize I might not see that car again.
Jack Butala:
Jill was all worried about where we’re going to park the car and stuff, so she told her girlfriend, “Hey, do you have any ideas about this?” Her girlfriend said, “Heck yes I have some serious ideas about where you can leave a sports car convertible for a month.”
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. You know what’s really funny? My car now took the prime spot in her garage and there’s other cars on the street. I thought, this is awesome.
Jack Butala:
Got to kick the husband’s stuff out.
Jill DeWit:
Totally.
Jack Butala:
That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit:
Yup.
Jack Butala:
I hope she’s having a blast.
Jill DeWit:
I think she is.
Jack Butala:
We’ll be back here in a month anyway.
Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah.
Jack Butala:
It’s all good.
Jill DeWit:
All good.
Jack Butala:
In this episode Jill and I talk about flipping houses. This is episode two of three in this little series. How to use county data to send offers. Imagine that. We’re going to talk about sending offers out using county driven data. Great show today, Jill. Before we start, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on SuccessPlant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Presha, from Columbus wrote, “I know a guy in my hometown who buys properties, fixes them, and sells them. He makes bank. How does he not have business cards or a website. How does he do this?” Oh, I love it.
Jack Butala:
Oh, this is a great question.
Jill DeWit:
I think there’s a lot of people out there like that, which is funny.
Jack Butala:
I do too. I know several people just like this that do not own a computer.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala:
Go ahead, Jill. I want to hear your answer to this. This is a great question by the way.
Jill DeWit:
You know, he’s got the right people in his cell phone. That’s really kind of what he does. Like us, I mean, we work with a number of people just like this. There’s no-
Jack Butala:
They don’t have to have a website or business cards because we do.
Jill DeWit:
Right, we do.
Jack Butala:
That’s the answer.
Jill DeWit:
We find the deals. We hand them to them.
Jack Butala:
That’s right, Jill. Thank you.
Jill DeWit:
They take it and run. The beauty of it is, they know us so well, it’s almost like we don’t even talk about them. We did that for a long time with land. We also do it with houses, where there’s really no discussing it. If they like that area, they know we killed it, got a great price, and they’re going to do even better.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. Here’s how it works. We utilize county data. That’s really what this show is about. We utilize data [inaudible 00:03:07], we send a ton of offers out. Then, the people who are interested in having their houses purchased quickly for cash call us back and we buy them. We call the guy who doesn’t have any business cards and doesn’t have a website because we have an established relationship with him now. It’s incredibly easy for new people to establish relationships too. He takes the property over, fixes it, and flips it. On the backend, we don’t even know what happens. There’s a lot of times, with several people in our database here that do this. I don’t even ever go see the asset. I look at it on Google Earth and that’s it. Then, they go and go take a look at it and they either say yes or no.
One guy in particular, my favorite, he goes and sees the asset and he either buys it himself if it works for his business model, or he calls his hard money lender guys, or all the people that he knows in the industry and says, “Look, hey Jack,” or whoever it is. “This thing doesn’t work for me, but it looks like something that you have done in the past that worked for you well. Here’s the price. Here’s the amount that my guy’s marking it up,” That’s Jill and me. “Then, I need to make just a little bit of money too because I don’t want to waste my time.” Usually Jill and I make ten thousand. If the other guy wholesales it on top of that, it’s about five, so you’re only marking up an asset maybe fifteen thousand dollars, which everybody can swallow pretty easily. Then, that guy [inaudible 00:04:34] it all up and makes a ton of money. He’s usually a real estate agent on top of being a flipper, or he has a real estate agent and he just doesn’t need to talk to anybody. Maybe he’s a contractor. A lot of time they’re contractors.
Jill DeWit:
Well, you know what? It comes back to this same saying that you say all the time. No one is going to hang up the phone on you if you’re calling them saying I have this incredible acquisition, I don’t have the cash right now, we cannot let this go to waste. Every single person is going to go, oh okay.
Jack Butala:
If you’re the newest of new real estate investors, an REI person, brand new and you post that in Craigslist, I have a bunch of acquisitions in area X, I just don’t have the money, I’m brand new and I don’t want these to go to waste, watch your phone ring.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. That’s perfect, thank you.
Jack Butala:
Hey, if you have any questions or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. We’d love to have you, especially if you’re a funny person. Today’s topic, flip houses, episode two of three. How to use county data to send offers. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
What does that mean, Steven?
Jack Butala:
The meat of the show?
Jill DeWit:
No. The meat of the show. Hey, by the way, where did that come from? Do you have any idea?
Jack Butala:
I don’t. I should look it up.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I am curious.
Jack Butala:
It’s kind of like it’s the meat of the sandwich or meat of the hamburger. The other stuff’s kind of fun and funny, but hey, this is the meat. This is the business end of this.
Jill DeWit:
Got it. I mean, I know, but I’m just curious. Like, where did that saying come from? You know, that’s a funny topic, but we’ll save that. You come up with good things.
Jack Butala:
This is the time, if you have a pen and paper, to take it out. It’s only going to take about, the meat of this show is very brief. There are exactly three places you can find data in the universe of data to send offers out to people. Place number one, the county assessor. You can walk over there, call him up. You can send a note on the internet to the assessor themselves and say, because by law they have to provide their tax role. Their tax role is the universe of everyone who owns property. They send property taxes every once, maybe twice a year depending on where you live, maybe more.They maintain that pretty vigilantly, and that’s how they send letter out every cycle to get their property taxes paid, to bring new revenue in. They maintain a great database and they, almost all of them provide it to you either free, or for maybe let’s say fifty dollars, or a hundred dollars just to cover their cost of managing the database.
That’s place number one. Place number two, you could go find a list on the internet. Sometimes it costs thirty cents. Sometimes it costs thirty thousand dollars, but it’s still just a list. Option number one, the assessor, that’s database. Option two, it’s just a list. Option three is from us, [inaudible 00:07:35]. We have spent decades making sure that we are using the single best database available. Our database, it consists of ninety-nine percent of all of those assessor’s databases. You can go to three thousand plus, almost four thousand counties in the country and ask for the assessors data fifty dollars at a time. You’re going to get it in all different formats. Sometimes it’s printed out in a green bar sheet like you’re in third grade, or you can-
Jill DeWit:
[inaudible 00:08:07] like, how long would this take?
Jack Butala:
Purchase our product on a subsription bases and have access to that stuff immediately. No matter where you choose, don’t choose number two. I don’t care how cheap it is or how tempting it is. It’s an old printout. It’s an old list of somebody that accessed the database sometime ago and they’re just reselling it. They’re hawking it. It’s like a medicine show. It’s not a good thing. The assessor’s data, that’s the real thing, but it’s going to be in a format where most of us would need a PhD to deal with it. What you want is consistent, fresh database access to people who own property.
Then, all of the other associated statistics with it. That’s how you make an intelligent offer. You don’t make a four thousand dollar offer on a house that’s assessed for seven hundred and twenty million dollars. You’re wasting a fifty cent stamp. In the end, you need to get great county data, that’s maintained by professionals like us, who have been in this business for decades, who show you, provide you the information, the education, and hopefully a little bit of entertainment here too, on how to use it and why it can be so profitable. That was about two minutes.
Jill DeWit:
That was good. What was I supposed to write down?
Jack Butala:
What you were supposed to write down is this. There’s three places to get data. The county assessor, a silly little list on the internet, and us.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala:
We have taken all the headaches out of getting the best data on the planet to send offers out.
Jill DeWit:
You know, one of the things I love about it too, and I hear our members saying all the time is, it’s so nice because the way our data is delivered, it’s one consistent format, regardless of the county. Whether it’s on Florida or California. It’s delivered the same way, so you could be doing things literally all over the country in the same manner. It’s really easy to do the mailers. You don’t have to change gears, and whatever. It’s there.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. If you don’t have the associated records, I mean, the thick of it is this. If you buy a list and you find out who owns that house over there and you send them a letter, you’re wasting your time. If you access a database and you tell yourself, and you’re armed with this information long before you even get the data, that you’re going to find out who owns all these houses over here in this area because you’ve chosen it for a reason because you’re educated, we educated you, and you say, “All right, there’s a thousand people that own houses in this area. Half of those people have mortgages. I don’t want to call them. I don’t want to send them an offer. I only want the other half. Then some of those, the assessed values are just to high. That tells me that maybe somebody already fixed and flipped it. We want the low assess value, no mortgage, sleepy little property that everybody forgot about. You want to send them offers. Those are the properties that no one knows about.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly.
Jack Butala:
This is the if, then, segment of the show. If you do X, then Y will happen. If you use bad data, but do everything else correctly, you’re probably not going to complete a deal.
Jill DeWit:
Uh oh.
Jack Butala:
Does that sound like your father?
Jill DeWit:
You do. You know I got to tell you, Steven, you are. I know why, because this is important, and I appreciate this. This is very near and dear to your heart and you just said it perfectly right there. You have to do all the steps, but if you don’t have this core foundation of like you just said, the right data, and it’s current. You’re wasting your time.
Jack Butala:
I’m going to give you exactly two examples. Example number one, Jill and I have a pro level phone call every Thursday at four o’clock, I think. Four o’clock our time. The people that are involved in that call are doing it, making money. They’re the cream of our crop members. They have our data package. They have all of our education. They’re there because they’re making money, and they want to make money. They continue to make money, and learn, and grow. One of the members had a problem. I think it was, I don’t remember exactly what. They didn’t get the response that they though they would get.
After talking, and talking, and talking with the whole group, and asking several questions like somebody’s father would, we finally got to the bottom of it. That this person, for whatever reason, used a data service. They did not sit down in front of the computer themselves, make the tiny little decisions that go in. They didn’t follow the education that we provide. The step by step, no stone unturned education, do this, do this, do this, right inside the computer with you. They either got lazy, or they were uninterested, or didn’t feel like they had the skills. They quote, unquote hired a data service and-
Jill DeWit:
It didn’t work out.
Jack Butala:
It didn’t work.
Jill DeWit:
Well, you know what I come up with too?
Jack Butala:
What’s crazy about it is it took a half hour of questioning before they just confessed.
Jill DeWit:
Right. What I think is funny, in the bitter end is sometimes I’ve heard people saying this, you know I went down that path because I thought I was saving money. They said, “Oh my gosh, the month that I spent trying to figure this out and analyzing it, I wasted so much more time and money.” I’m like, “I know.”
Jack Butala:
If had moved from county to county with data, and you do one county and you figure it all out. The next county that you go to, you’re going to have to start over because the format’s all different. You’re only going to become a data expert and I’m not sure that’s what you want. You want to be deal expert.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
The second example is, Jill and I gave an REI talk recently. Same situation. Somebody stood up at the back when we were done with the talk and said, “Look, the show’s over. We can’t buy cheap houses anymore.” Which cracks me up. That really cracks me up. Then, I start the line of questioning, “Well, what do you mean?” “Well, all the properties that we used to send letters to, the back tax property and the foreclosure property, those have all dried up. It’s too competitive.” I said, “Well, are you …” After a half hour later of asking questions, the guy finally confessed and said, and I kept saying, “Are you sending letters to people with no mortgages and no signs of any duress or stress at all?” “No, we’re not.” I said, “Okay.” Jill and I own a house in Scottsdale that’s a perfect renovation candidate with no mortgage. We’ve lived there for years and years. I’ve never received a letter, not once in my life from somebody like us.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s interesting. You’re right. I love it.
Jack Butala:
If you use bad data, but do every other point correctly, you’re probably not going to complete a deal. If you have a question, or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. Jill, do you have some inspiration for us today?
Jill DeWit:
I do. I have another question. Who is the most dependable person you know?
Jack Butala:
Oh. Geez, you know what? We added this segment to the show when? How long ago? I don’t know, probably a few weeks ago. I just love this and I love this how we end this too.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Jack Butala:
It’s not all brainy data and all that. It’s just fun and interesting. It’s perfect for you too.
Jill DeWit:
You do need to be inspired here.
Jack Butala:
You do.
Jill DeWit:
There’s a lot that goes into this.
Jack Butala:
You need to keep moving forward.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, so who is the most, I know who mine is.
Jack Butala:
What was the question?
Jill DeWit:
Well, I just changed my answer. Geez. Oh my gosh. I was going to say you, but you didn’t even remember my question two seconds later.
Jack Butala:
Who do you rely on?
Jill DeWit:
No, no.
Jack Butala:
Oh, what’s the question?
Jill DeWit:
Who is the most, well, you could say that. True, yeah. Who’s the most dependable person you know.
Jack Butala:
Oh, hands down it’s you, for me.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. I was going to say that. That’s what I was going to say. It’s you. It’s-
Jack Butala:
I think the bigger question is, do you have somebody in your life that you can really depend on? I’m not saying run out there and make a mistake in a relationship, but I’m just saying, is there somebody around? Maybe it’s a parent. Maybe it’s an uncle. Maybe it’s a spouse. Maybe it’s a kid.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala:
I’d love that. I mean, our kids are too young, but-
Jill DeWit:
Maybe it’s somebody that you don’t know personally, or you know them a little bit, but you don’t know them that close, but boy you know they show up when they say they’re going to show up. They’re dependable, man. Maybe it’s your boss. I don’t know.
Jack Butala:
We don’t have to sit around and even talk about it. The answer and the question are all the same. I think the statement is this. I don’t care who you are, or what’s going on, you need somebody in your life you can depend on.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala:
That’s what I hear in that, out of that.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Thank you.
Jack Butala:
Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration, that’s me.
Jack Butala:
To get just about anything you want.
Jill DeWit:
We use it everyday to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala:
Get there first. Great show, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. This time you were kind of all business.
Jack Butala:
I love this inspiration. I know because data’s so important.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Jack Butala:
Had to do this show. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to because people, I get it. When you’re new, trying something new, you want to save money.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala:
It’s just easy to go out and get cheap data.
Jill DeWit:
It is.
Jack Butala:
It’s hard. It’s hard to use.
Jill DeWit:
Hey, what about, I’m just thinking about cheap data. [inaudible 00:17:33] I’m thinking about, like a Match.com or some dating sites. Is there like a data, cheating to meet, no, I’m serious. I’m kind of curious.
Jack Butala:
Cheating to meet?
Jill DeWit:
Well, okay, [inaudible 00:17:48]. That’s, whoa.
Jack Butala:
That’s what you said.
Jill DeWit:
Not what I’m talking about. No, I’m just thinking about we use data for this purposes. What about can you use data for personal purposes like, I don’t know.
Jack Butala:
Like to check an FBI record?
Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah, you could do that. You know what, I guess that’s the answer right there. If you’re using data to find the right people, to hit everyone in your town that meets X and Y criteria and doesn’t have a background, maybe that’s the wrong approach, I don’t know.
Jack Butala:
I mean, when is data not useful. I’m clearly slanted towards these answers, but more data is always better, right? I mean just think.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, that’s a fact.
Jack Butala:
I think that we could use data for a ton of things that we don’t use it for.
Jill DeWit:
You know what, let’s be honest. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You need to know those answers. I don’t care if you are the most spiritual, inspirational person. You still are going to use data to find out, who are your clients, who buys your books.
Jack Butala:
There you go. There you go, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Who likes your message. You need that data too. It’s not like it’s for-
Jack Butala:
Who are your customers.
Jill DeWit:
accountants and it’s for Wall Street people.
Jack Butala:
Right. That’s how I think it gets misused. The word data itself, I mean half the world just shuts down when you say that one word.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Jack Butala:
But dating’s a good way to say it. Wouldn’t you rather have all the information on the ten guys that that you’re considering going out with? Wouldn’t that be great?
Jill DeWit:
Look, you know, you’re probably right. Let’s be honest. I would like to know who’s been married six times. Who has kids all over the country. I would like to know those answers because I’m going to weed them out.
Jack Butala:
How about what’s their grade point average, all of that. The more data on that, the better.
Jill DeWit:
Maybe I need to know what they like and they don’t like because if they really like something I don’t like, it’s not going to work.
Jack Butala:
Data causes me to ask myself questions. That’s how we came up with this almost airtight acquisition program for all types of property. It didn’t happen because I dated the right person first. I’m making the data dating analogy as we go here. It happened because I did it wrong. I did wrong, I did it wrong, I did it wrong, I did it wrong, and then I found the right thing. Like, if you line ten people up that you think about you want to date, then you have these twenty lines of data on them. Let’s say one of them is hair color. One of them is whether or not they have any hair at all. One of them is grade point average. I’m throwing crazy stuff out.
Jill DeWit:
No, one of them is-
Jack Butala:
What that causes me to ask myself is, you know what, I’m forty plus years old here, does a grade point average in high school really matter? No, I’m going to take that off the list. I don’t even need to look at it. Just like picking houses. Does the fact that it has a pool really matter to me or not. Yeah, it kind of does. I’m going to keep it on the list. Does the last sales price matter? Yeah, it kind of does. Does the assessed value matter? Yeah, it does. Does the paint color matter? Nope.
Jill DeWit:
Nope.
Jack Butala:
And on and on.
Jill DeWit:
Good stuff.
Jack Butala:
All the blondes are going to come off right away. There’s no blonde girls.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, no blonde for you too.
Jack Butala:
If accumulated tertiary debts over thirty-five thousand, that’s a deal killer for me. How about you, Jill? You must have some. This is fun. What are your deal killing issues for men?
Jill DeWit:
Too many divorces. There’s a flag. Kids all over the country. There’s the flag.
Jack Butala:
Those are deal killing issues, not even flags.
Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah, I know. You know what, and honestly if you’re showing all the signs that you are in or have not yet had your midlife crisis, there’s a flag.
Jack Butala:
Flag. I like deal killing issue better.
Jill DeWit:
You call it a deal killing issue, I call it a red flag. That’s all.
Jack Butala:
That’s it?
Jill DeWit:
I’m not going to, we’re good.
Jack Butala:
Well, I have a lot more to say on this.
Jill DeWit:
Oh okay, I’ll tell you later.
Jack Butala:
Let’s go buy something for half price today and resale it. Jack and Jill, information and inspiration.
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