How to Sell Land on eBay Jack and Jill Tell All (CFFL 0199)
How to Sell Land on eBay
Jack Butala: How to Sell Land on eBay. 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 for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow from Land Show. We show you how to but property for half of what it’s worth and resell 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:
In this episode Jill and I talk about how to sell land on eBay, Jack and Jill tell all. Jill, great show, it’s a hugely requested topic. Before we start, here’s some funny stuff that happened to us recently. My dad gave me a compliment. That’s it. That’s the whole joke right there. It’s the first time, because I didn’t even know if he listened to this show.
Jill DeWit:
I thought that was interesting. I like how it came in, you got to show this.
Jack Butala:
He just sent me a little encrypted email and he said, I don’t have it in front of me, but he said, “Son, I’ve looked at your stuff online and I’m very proud of you.” No punctuation.
Jill DeWit:
It was really cool. I love it.
Jack Butala:
My dad’s, he’s an older Korean War vet and he’s got his opinions about certain stuff but.
Jill DeWit:
Don’t we all?
Jack Butala:
It seems like, I’m glad he’s, I’ll take the compliment, let’s put it that way.
Jill DeWit:
You know what? Just in case he’s listening I’m going to be here and keep you in line.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. My dad, like everybody, is also in love with Jill so I can’t do anything wrong now. Since she’s been around it’s been all peaches and cream. No, I’m just joking.
Jill DeWit:
That was really cool. I love that.
Jack Butala:
Hey, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on SuccessPlant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Josh asked, “If you purchase properties that have associated back taxes are you guys finding that you have better luck selling them if you pay off all the back taxes, or just include that in your listing and let the buyer deal with it? I understand this is a personal preference but I was just curious about what kind of response you guys are getting for the ones with back taxes.”
It’s a great question, and it is personal preference. I go back and forth with it. Sometimes I think, for me, I’m going to answer here and I’ll let you chime in jack.
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
For me it depends on the property and it depends on how much the taxes are. If it’s not a lot, if it’s like forty-three dollars due in back taxes, I might not do it but if it’s a couple hundred dollars in back taxes and it’s a large acreage property or something, when they check out, I might wait til that point too and catch them up then. I’ve certainly done that. I have told people that at the time of purchase the taxes will be current, so when they pay me the five thousand dollars or eight thousand or ten thousand, whatever it is that they’re buying the property, I’m going to take out the four hundred and ninety-seven dollars or whatever it is on back taxes and mail it in at that point so it is all current for them
That way it’s nice too because I really am handing them a current, right now, today property with the taxes on it. But no matter what you’ve got to state that in your posting for two reasons. One, you want to be up front and honest. And two, you don’t want them to have any surprises and it takes a lot of the questions out of it. So many times people, if you don’t put anything in your postings about taxes one way or another, you’re going to get a lot of questions about it. People just naturally will ask you.
Even if you are a hundred percent current on taxes you want to state that in the posting, that this one is current. Do you want to add, Jack, to that?
Jack Butala:
Yeah, you’ve very much answered the question in its entirety in my opinion, but it depends. If you’re starting out and you’re strapped for cash, it’s not necessary to pay the taxes, especially back east where they’re really expensive. Jill nailed it. You just got to make sure you disclose it. When you’re not even thinking about cash any longer and you’re just thinking about doubling and tripling your money on every single deal, that’s kind of the situation that we’ve been in for quite some time, you pay all the taxes. You just pay them all. Right when they come in.
You check to make sure that they’re accurate and all that but for me it’s always been an either or situation. One way or the other though, you really want to keep track. This is the truth. I have not really said this out loud before. I have lost properties that I’ve owned to back tax situations where they literally foreclosed on it. I got the notice, got the notice, got the notice, and it just slipped through the cracks. That’s been a lot of years ago but my point is, just have a good system.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you jack, for sharing that because you know what? I really appreciate that because we are real people and gosh, we make mistakes too.
Jack Butala:
Right.
Jill DeWit:
That was a good one, that was a very nice one to share with people that- People ask us what can go wrong. Well here’s one, if you don’t pay attention to your mail you might lose a property.
Jack Butala:
You know honestly, there’s been problems, people don’t realize this, but you have to check everybody’s word. The counties, bless their heart, they transpose APNs and when you do send checks in and stuff you got to make that you have the APN in the memo and that you actually write the APN down correctly. I’ve done that. I’ve paid somebody else’s taxes because I wrote the wrong- They don’t check. They just get a check in and they look at the APN and they say, oh, bang, and they apply it to potentially the wrong property. You just got to cross check everything. That’s my whole point.
Jill DeWit:
That’s good information too. That’s why you’re so full of information. I like that Jack. No, seriously.
Jack Butala:
I thought you were going to say I was full of something else.
Jill DeWit:
That’s why I see, you did kind of pause there and you had this look on your face like, that’s really funny. That’s what you’re so full of. Here it comes.
Jack Butala:
That’s exactly what happened. Exactly.
Jill DeWit:
It’s great.
Jack Butala:
If you have any questions, do you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. Today’s topic: how to sell land on eBay, Jack and Jill tell all. Jill you go first. You are an expert at this, maybe the expert at this.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I don’t like eBay. Just kidding. I’m just kidding. Well you know, no, I’m teasing. eBay used to be like a awesome, awesome, don’t even think about it, gosh you can get good money for property, environment for us. Now it’s one of many ways that we use to sell property. Right now, how it’s come to be, the best way to use eBay is if you’re trying to liquidate, get some cash for something. Because you will sell it. You put it up there, especially the way we do with the one dollar, that’s our favorite ways.
There’s two. The one dollar no reserve thirty day auction, let it ride kind of thing. You will sell it.
Jack Butala:
That’s the only way I do it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, or sometimes I do some buy it nows, but you don’t always sell that way. It’s a good way to drive traffic to your website. Put some buy it nows up there and then you’ll get some attention because your property, but that’s the thing.
Jack Butala:
It used to be that eBay, we were for years the largest seller of real estate, in that category, in the world.
Jill DeWit:
You met Meg, right?
Jack Butala:
We met Meg Whitman several times, sat down with her, talked about all kinds of stuff, but this is back in the day. I’m not trying to sound like your grandfather here, times have changed and we changed with the times. That was our business model for a decade and it was awesome, but I see people now trying to make it their business model and I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Ebay, back then and even now, is a fantastic way to generate a tremendous amount of cash quickly, but I’ll tell you, with real estate, you’re not going to maximize your price. Used to be you could do both. That’s why we have this podcast for Jill and I to just tell the truth and tell it all. If you’re going to post one dollar no reserve properties all over the place on thirty day auctions like we suggest, you are not going to double your money unless you’re buying it for a dollar.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
You just have to be, I’m trying to avoid people having disappointment, however, if it’s a healthy portion of the way you sell property, which is how we use it now, to generate- It’s a great advertisement technique. If you have a property out there that you don’t really care about, we have a lot of properties like that, you just keep it out there and it generates a ton of traffic to your website. It’s a great tool, eBay’s a great tool, but it can’t be your whole business model. I see people over and over again in our group try to make it that.
Jill DeWit:
I agree.
Jack Butala:
That’s why I want to do this show.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you for saying that.
Jack Butala:
Please don’t be disappointed at that. That’s just the only outlet. You can’t generate a ton of cash and maximize price at the same time.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
It goes against logic.
Jill DeWit:
Well, one of the things that you’re famous for saying is true. This should only be one of your things. If you took the effort to make that one eBay post and you’re already got the maps, you’ve already got all the description written. You’ve got it all figured out because you put it on eBay. Why would you not spend ten minutes more on each different environment? Cut and paste it here in postlets and make sure it’s on your website. Makes sure it’s on Land Watch and make sure it’s on Land and Farm and the variety of things that we tell you to do, copy and paste it everywhere else.
I’m sorry you spent two more hours. Trust me, it’s worth it.
Jack Butala:
Does it take that long you think?
Jill DeWit:
I’m just saying. You might spend, if you’re new and you’re copying and pasting it all over the place you want to make sure your photos show up right and your videos if you did a video for it, which is always great.
Jack Butala:
She’s right. The real time is in what we call engineering. There’s three stages to all this; acquisitions, engineering, and sales. All three of them are necessary to make money. I see a lot of people kind of skimping on the last one. You do the acquisition, which is a blast. You bought it for less than half of what you think it’s worth, where you wouldn’t but it at all, and then you put the maps together, you put together a fantastic description, and then you stick it on Craig’s List only and wonder why it’s not selling.
You got to put it on eBay, Craig’s List, Trulia, Zillow, if you’re a member with us you put it on a platinum seller club which is email that goes out. Soon to be posting it on Lands Day which we just revamped. You want to go to LandsDay.com, check it out. We’ve set it up so that it’ll end up becoming like a Land Watch scenario where anybody and everyone can put all their stuff. There’s like a ten point list that you should have when you go to sell property.
It’s funny that we’re talking about this, I just took a, I watched a stream happen in SuccessPlant. A new member, bought a piece of property, celebrated, got all the stuff done, did exactly what he was supposed to do, and put it on Craig’s List with no phone number, no email, and then he went onto SuccessPlant, as he should, he’s using SuccessPlant perfectly. We’re actually going to talk about this in detail in the next show. He said, “I don’t understand it. Everything went great up until now,” and all of our other-
Jill DeWit:
That’s hilarious. They’re like, “Hello?”
Jack Butala:
You did great up until now. Do this, this and this. At the end it has a Hollywood ending. At the end he’s like, “I sold it, but I don’t know how to close it out.” In the next show I’m going to walk you through, without trying to be boring, I’ll walk you through. It’s pretty funny.
Jill DeWit:
That’s good. Okay, I want to hear more about that.
Jack Butala:
It ends with a big check for him.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, good. Cool. Hey, since we’re being honest about eBay, I want to share one more thing for our listeners. I’ve seen the, I don’t know, I’m trying to think of the politically correct term, but the caliber of buyers is different now.
Jack Butala:
Hey, just say it Jill.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Jack Butala:
I mean, just say it. Sure.
Jill DeWit:
There’s a lot of flakes on eBay. Let’s just, okay, we’re all being honest here. There are flakes on eBay. I have seen it and I watch out people in SuccessPlant struggle with that too. They’ll go like, “Oh, this checked out didn’t pay.” Yeah, you know what? The percentages of people not paying has gone up over the years.
Jack Butala:
And you have to budget that.
Jill DeWit:
They flake. Sometimes there’s fake account, you got to watch for them.
Jack Butala:
Twenty to thirty percent of the sales on eBay, it costs ninety bucks to do a posting there by the way, which you can get back but you got to do paperwork and all that.
Jill DeWit:
They’ve cracked down. eBay’s not as cool too. It’s fifty dollars to insert it, thirty-five when it closes. If they don’t pay you get your thirty-five dollars back, but you do not get your fifty dollars back. They stopped doing that.
Jack Butala:
We literally have sold fifteen million dollars, literally, plus, worth of real estate on eBay. There’s a reason that we only have one or two or three properties up there, or zero in some cases, at a time. That should tell you something.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. That’s what I was going to say, what does that say?
Jack Butala:
There’s much better ways to sell real estate this day and age. It all ended around 2009ish for whatever reason.
Jill DeWit:
And it’s not about the fees. I’m not afraid of the fees, I factor that in.
Jack Butala:
There’s some sites that are really looking in the future. Right now, Amazon, I’m so impressed with everything they do. You can’t sell real estate on there and I don’t think you should, but the management and the way that they do things, I’m so impressed and I have to say that that’s just not the case with eBay. Even when you sell other stuff, I don’t know where their management went. They just aren’t showing up for the whole operation any longer.
Jill DeWit:
You’re right. And then the Paypal, Paypal split off and they’ve had some issues too. You can’t do Paypal for real estate, though we used to.
Jack Butala:
I spoke with somebody recently about it who is in the industry and they said that the vast majority of the money that eBay itself makes is from selling cars, the way that the fees are structured.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, really?
Jack Butala:
They really concentrate on that. It’s not from selling-
Jill DeWit:
Not necklaces and jewelry.
Jack Butala:
And tic tacs and little real estate as they said.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. We’re not their focus and that’s okay. They won’t be our focus.
Jack Butala:
We’re here to tell the truth.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Good.
Jack Butala:
Hey, this is the Technical Two. It’s two minutes of property investment advice from our fifteen year, fifteen thousand transaction, experience. Today’s topic, we mentioned it earlier, it’s back tax management and why it’s ultra-important. Let’s just say it again. We preluded it in the beginning, incidentally the question was the same as the topic now, but you have to have a system to manage your taxes. That first property, you’ll always remember your first property and you’ll memorize, if you’re anything like me, you’ll know the APN for the rest of your life.
But once you get ten, twenty, a hundred to thousand properties, tens of thousands like we have and manage, you have to have a system. Whatever that system is, whatever makes sense to you, it might be a yellow piece of paper or for some people it might be spreadsheet or relational database. I’m probably coming up on two minutes here.
Jill DeWit:
You’re fine.
Jack Butala:
You just have to have a system. As I mentioned earlier, I have literally had properties fall through the cracks and lost them to a back tax scenario. You’re going to get a flood. I should take a picture, we have a U. S. Postal Service bin of bad tax bills that come in and get processed.
Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh. It’s true. It’s funny.
Jack Butala:
It’s literally mounds so someone’s got to really take a look at that. I learned the hard way. If you have any questions or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. Jill, tell us about some inspiration please. I’m sure you have some inspiration.
Jill DeWit:
All right. This is something that I have struggled with too. This is a personal moment also. It is better, this is a jewel. I wrote this by the way, this is not a crop of somebody else. It is better to admit you’re not good at something and move on. Jack is cracking up over there. And here’s my other little note; and hire that. That’s my personal thing. You know, we all, sometimes, struggle with, “I should get this, I’m smart enough. I should be able to figure this out. I can do this, whatever.”
You know what? Forget it. Move on. It’s okay if you’re not good at every single aspect of whatever your project is you’re trying to accomplish, and hire that out. For example, some of the people in our group, they are not good on the phone. They’re afraid to be on the phone. They’re, you know, whatever. That’s okay to get your wife, friend, sister.
Jack Butala:
I can’t wait to, I want to hear what yours is. Because you said it’s a personal experience.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, you know what? There’s multiple things, all I have Jack.
Jack Butala:
I can list, write down really quickly, what you’re great at.
Jill DeWit:
Oh. Thanks.
Jack Butala:
This is maybe not the-
Jill DeWit:
This is not the point of this. This is not a throw Jill under the bus moment.
Jack Butala:
No. I said, I can tell you what you’re great at.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Jack Butala:
It’s going to veer from being rated G very quickly.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Jack Butala:
I’m wondering what you-
Jill DeWit:
Wow.
Jack Butala:
What are you not good at?
Jill DeWit:
No, I’m just thinking in business, in the business world. There’s a lot of things I’m not good at. We won’t get into that.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. I want to get into it.
Jill DeWit:
I don’t want to get into it. Okay. Give me yours.
Jack Butala:
You show me yours first.
Jill DeWit:
IT.
Jack Butala:
Yeah, that’s true.
Jill DeWit:
But you know what? Hold on a moment. Let me back up here. You think I’m not good at IT, but you’re comparing me to you. You compare me to most of our friends, I’m pretty darn good with IT.
Jack Butala:
All right. Fair enough.
Jill DeWit:
Seriously. Thank you. I show all my friends stuff. My friends are looking to me for IT help.
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Let’s all put this in perspective here too.
Jack Butala:
I’m not good at doing deeds. Flat out-
Jill DeWit:
Yes you are.
Jack Butala:
I am not. You have never seen me really do a deed job. Have you ever seen me sat down. I haven’t done it recently.
Jill DeWit:
Maybe there’s a reason for that. Yeah, you have done some deeds.
Jack Butala:
You know why I succeed at doing deeds is because I do them through a mail merge. I don’t sit down and read it and type it and read it and type it. Those’ll come back. The county will send them back. If you run a mail merge like we do, we’re actually just about to open a service called Deed Perfect, all premised on the fact that I suck at deeds and I’ll charge the lowest in the industry to complete a deed. That’s not a commercial. I really do suck at these.
Jill DeWit:
But.
Jack Butala:
Using this mail merge thing, which virtually does without errors if you fill it out. Just fill it out a thing and it kicks the deed out, the appropriate deed for the state and the whole thing. Anyway Jill, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
That’s okay. No. I just want everybody to think about this. Just think about in your world.
Jack Butala:
Check your ego at the door is what you’re saying.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
Just accept what you’re good at and accept what you’re not so good at.
Jill DeWit:
Perfect Jack.
Jack Butala:
Don’t get upset about it. Celebrate it. Laugh about it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
Yeah. I don’t like talking on the phone and I suck at deeds.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Jack Butala:
And Jill’s not the best IT person in the world but so what?
Jill DeWit:
I hired somebody else and now we’re that great. Again, I’m not that bad at IT compared to everybody else. You want to see bad, anyway.
Jack Butala:
It’s better that than being a bad mom.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Jack Butala:
You’re a great mom.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Jack Butala:
Hey, 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 every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala:
Get there first. Good show Jill. Everybody wants to talk about eBay for some reason, all the time and I think it’s good.
Jill DeWit:
It does come up. I got to say something. I jotted down something when you were doing your Technical Two. You were talking about remembering your first property and there’s things in your, you know there’s things that you go back twenty, thirty years that are in your head?
Jack Butala:
Yeah, this is a good show. This is a good point.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, and that’s not one of them. I cannot really tell you my exact first property. I think because the way I came into it, I was watching you for some much and doing different things so my first property when I was doing it, the eBay thing? I don’t remember. But what I do remember, it’s really kind of funny, I remember the tail number of our airplane that we had out at John Lee Airport. This brings tears to my eyes. It was like our family road trips and it was a beach craft bonanza with the fuel tanks on the wing tips and I remember the tail number. It was November 5070 Bravo. I’ll never forget that.
If anybody’s listening who has November 5070 Bravo, will you please let me know and reach out to me personally because I would like to rent your airplane or go for a ride with you and go to Catalina for lunch or something. I know that plane’s out there. Somebody’s got it. I think it was built in the sixties so somebody’s still using that plane.
Anyway, that just stuck with me.
Jack Butala:
That’s a great memory.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Jack Butala:
Hey, what’s the first and last name of the most recent person that you’ve met, in person, to transfer deed work for properties that you’ve bought? Quick. Just think, just answer.
Jill DeWit:
What’s the question?
Jack Butala:
What’s the first and last name of the person that you met in person, recently, to buy a piece of property or properties?
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I can see her but I can’t think of her name.
Jack Butala:
I thought you would know. You always remember everyone’s name and I always remember.
Jill DeWit:
No, I don’t. I know.
Jack Butala:
I know the properties.
Jill DeWit:
I could tell you the Starbucks we met at and the money going to her daughter. Shucks, I can’t remember her name.
Jack Butala:
You’re usually so good with names. All right. That was a test that failed.
Jill DeWit:
That was good. Yeah, that failed. Sorry.
Jack Butala:
Jack and Jill, information and inspiration. Let’s go buy some property.
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