40 Acres for $4,000 Too Good to be True (CFFL 0236)
40 Acres for $4,000 Too Good to be True
Jack Butala: 40 Acres for $4,000 Too Good to be True. 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 with Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about 40 acres for 4,000 bucks. Is that too good to be true?
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Jack Butala: Great show today, Jill. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on SuccessPlant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Cool. Ryan wrote, “I just moved back to Denver and the market is crazy. It has been hard to find a place to live for my family and I, so I decided to see if I could use Data to Doorstep and mailings to get a personal house or duplex property that is at least 20 to 25% discounted. That way I can get in for only the closing cost. I need some help figuring out what criteria to use in Data to Doorstep to get a highly targeted list. Any help ASAP.” Sounds like he’s looking for a roof. “Thanks, Ryan.” Awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Jack Butala: I’ve got a couple things to say.
Jill DeWit: I am so glad that Ryan is understanding the big picture on all of this. Ryan knows how to do this with land, so Ryan made the natural progression to …
Jack Butala: Is that our rock star, Ryan? That’s the guy that kills it, the Ryan that kills it in our group, right?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: There’s more than one Ryan, but I know he’s doing really well.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. He’s obviously going like you and I years ago said, oh gee, light bulb went off. I guess if it works for land, it might work for something else.
Jack Butala: That’s what Data to Doorstep is. It works for all property types from vacant land to skyscrapers and everything in between. Yes. The answer is heck yes, and I’m happy for you. A lot of our members use it for this. We are in the process of putting together a whole program on how to buy your next primary residence for a lot less than you think. What I don’t understand is that way I can only get it for the closing cost.
Jill DeWit: Maybe that’s the money that he’s got set aside or something.
Jack Butala: Well, I think what he means is the lender’s going to let him out of the down payment because he bought it so cheap. In my experience, that’s not how it works at all.
Jill DeWit: I didn’t even read that part of it.
Jack Butala: The point to making a down payment is so that you got some skin in the game. If you’re going to sidetrack that … If you found a lender that does this, will you let me know please?
Jill DeWit: I love it. Oh my gosh.
Jack Butala: All we do around here is buy property for way less than 25% off. I guess we could get it all for free then.
Jill DeWit: Answer the question, Claire.
Jack Butala: No, good for you. Primary resident, our products used, heck yes.
Jill DeWit: I guess he’s wondering about the criteria. You know what I would do, Ryan? Go on my … I just put it on there, on Land Academy, if you dig through Data to Doorstep, you’re going to find a criteria … Excuse me. Search criteria list. You could easily go and print that out and highlight the things that you need to know. That will help you to go through, because otherwise you’re sitting there guessing and going, “Where’s that found?” and all of that good stuff. You can sit in there, Ryan, and you can isolate a duplex, you can isolate the size of the property, you can isolate how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms. You can even isolate … I wonder if you saw this. You can isolate the direction that the property faces, by the way, which is just mind boggling. You can put in lakefront.
Jack Butala: There’s a mapping function.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. You can put in all that stuff and then you can isolate …
Jack Butala: You can just draw a map around the whole neighborhood you want to live in and send every single house or duplex that’s in that area an offer that’s 20% less than you think, 25% less.
Jill DeWit: Right. You know how to do this, Ryan. You can put in what the capped assessed rate of whatever your …
Jack Butala: I wouldn’t even cap it. For this, I wouldn’t cap it. It’s a whole different sort criteria, in my opinion, Jill. I wouldn’t even look at assessed value. I would take, let’s say … All the houses are probably different square footage unless it’s [inaudible 00:04:00] community. I would take a look at completed sales and the average price per square foot. Let’s say it’s 100 bucks. Then I would take all the square footage …
Jill DeWit: There you go. It’s the same thing.
Jack Butala: Multiply it times 80 if you want it 20% off or multiply it 70 … I would go way cheaper than that. Then see what comes back in the mail. Somebody’s going to sell you their house for 40% … Jill and I, when we do houses, I send that out at between 40 and 60% of ARV, which is … ARV is the spit shine version of itself that’s been cleaned up and Jillified. It’s all perfect and smelling good and perfect like Jill. I’m the 40% version.
Jill DeWit: No, you’re not. You’re awesome, so yeah. You’ll see, and you can figure out without a mortgage and all that good stuff. Yay.
Jack Butala: Hey, if you have a question or you want to be on the show or if you want to interrupt Jill like me constantly, call 800-725-8816. Today’s topic, 40 acres for 4,000 bucks. Too good to be true? This is the meat of the show. Jill has the answer. We deal with this every day. There’s a module that we have taught or mentored or instructed on where sometimes it’s appropriate to raise your prices pretty dramatically because people don’t believe it. It’s so damn cheap. That applies to a lot of … We buy it so cheap and our rule is to double it. If you’re buying a 40 acre property for two grand and selling it for four, the first thing people are going to do is say, “What’s wrong with it?” unless they know us. This whole show can be summed up like this, or the topic of the show for this show. Sometimes it’s important to charge the right amount, way more than you purchased, way more than twice what you purchased, to make the deal believable. There are such good deals out there that you get that you just want to price it maybe 20, 30, 40% below market instead of 80% below market, right?
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: This is the Technical Two. Two minutes of property investment advice from a 15 year, 15,000 deal experience. Sometimes you’re going to get questions, often you’re going to get questions about property, why’s your property so cheap? What’s wrong with it? A, have a canned answer, and B, to avoid the questions altogether, just price it rationally. Don’t price it so cheap unless you’re wholesaling it. This is only for retail sales, by the way. You’ll never get a question from the wholesale guy about why it’s so cheap. He knows.
Jill DeWit: I’ve done this, and I actually have had some of our members too say this that they’ve gone in and repriced things and upped the price, and that made it better. It’s totally serious. Like what you just said … I will go in and up it.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: It’s great.
Jack Butala: Hey, if you have a question or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. Jill, inspire us.
Jill DeWit: Don’t be afraid to be creative.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Jack, what have you done creative recently?
Jack Butala: There’s a lot of stuff that I do creatively. You know, it sounds silly, but I look at how data is used creatively. There’s lots of creative ways that you get into the database, an assessor’s database, the ones that we provide at our company for our members and use the data. That’s kind of what the question was earlier, creatively use data. You want to buy a house? Use it for that. We have a member who’s a contractor who’s using this data because it’s national, nationwide coverage. Storm chasing data, like he’ll find a hailstorm, he’s a contractor, a roofing contractor, find a hailstorm where it just happened and send letters to everybody about roof damage, lickity split. The day after the storm, two days after the storm they get a letter saying, “I’m ready to fix your roof.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: That’s creative.
Jill DeWit: It is. That’s perfect.
Jack Butala: I kind of dodged your question.
Jill DeWit: No, that was great. You know, you’re good at thinking on your feet, Jack. I got to tell you this, you’re really good at that.
Jack Butala: That’s creative.
Jill DeWit: That is creative. If you are wondering, we do not rehearse this stuff at all. We really don’t.
Jack Butala: Everybody knows that.
Jill DeWit: Okay. You think they can tell?
Jack Butala: Here they go again, it’s rehearsed.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Oh gosh. Oh my goodness. They’ll never be Card Talk. I don’t know.
Jack Butala: I never looked at myself as creative ever, until maybe the last few years.
Jill DeWit: You know what’s funny about that?
Jack Butala: Accounting, you know. I have an accounting background.
Jill DeWit: You are very creative, and here’s why, you like to sit … A lot of it’s graphics and you like some of that stuff. Like I said, I don’t think you think of yourself as creative, Jack, but I look at you as creative. In a perfect world, you might like to sit and work on a graphic role. You did our logo, all of our logos. Those are all you.
Jack Butala: Yeah, we could’ve sent that stuff out. You’re right. I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: You enjoy that. You’re good.
Jack Butala: There’s some hobbies I have that … We could sub a ton of this stuff out and we don’t. I swear, it’s one of the reasons that we’re successful because we just have a lot of control. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff we sub out but we have a lot of control over the creative stuff. I think it’s important. Some people teach this, to outsource how you manipulate and download data, which is the craziest thing in the world to me.
Jill DeWit: You don’t need to.
Jack Butala: You live and die in your career as a real estate investor by the data, the data that you choose to get in the mail. If you’re going to hire somebody to do that, that’s crazy.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. You said something the other day about that, how do you know that the first ten lines are perfect and they didn’t just fluff off the second, the other 2,000?
Jack Butala: You know, everybody cooks, some version of cooking, whether it’s opening a can and eating it without even warming it up, which I do all the time, or it’s … If I want a good French meal, I’m not going to learn how to do that. I’m going to go to the restaurant and have somebody who’s an expert at it, they’re going to make it for me and I’m going to pay a lot.
Jill DeWit: Happily.
Jack Butala: Yeah. That’s their creativity.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: There’s a lot of stuff in life you need to look at that. When you’re starving, open a can and eat it. Don’t outsource that.
Jill DeWit: My part is too about being creative, there’s a lot of benefits that come from that. Doing something creatively might take your mind off things and just help your psyche and stuff like that too. I know I’m getting kind of deep, but it really does help. I mean, I watch you, Jack. I watch you. Your creativity is, like you’re talking about, it really ties in, you get lost in it. How many times do I come up to you and I really don’t mean to, I walk in your office, this happens all the time, I walk in your office and I really try to make noise, seriously, and you jump.
Jack Butala: It scares the hell out of me.
Jill DeWit: You’re so into whatever you’re doing and it’s really healthy and good.
Jack Butala: I don’t know how this became a show about me.
Jill DeWit: I like it.
Jack Butala: I look at you as ten times more creative than me.
Jill DeWit: I’m not.
Jack Butala: Yeah, you are.
Jill DeWit: I don’t know.
Jack Butala: You are, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Maybe I’m creative at bending the rules.
Jack Butala: I mean, you know, your creativity comes out with people. Mine comes out with … My head’s in a computer screen, I think. If a conversation’s not going in a direction that you think it should go, and I’m not just talking about sales, although it happens there too, you can very creatively bring it back around pretty quickly.
Jill DeWit: Thanks.
Jack Butala: This is a pat each other on the back show.
Jill DeWit: It is. I appreciate that. I’m getting all warm and fuzzy.
Jack Butala: You’re radiant. I hear cell phone clicking turning off all over the country right now.
Jill DeWit: I’m just thinking our staff is rolling their eyes like, here they go again.
Jack Butala: Often, our regular friends, long before the show, it comes out, last night we met somebody that Jill and I have known for a lot of years and told them that we do a show and his jaw dropped.
Jill DeWit: It was hilarious.
Jack Butala: I’m sure he’s listening to this now.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: It’s weird.
Jill DeWit: It’s so funny. What do you guys talk about? That was so funny.
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’ll use it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone with your real estate ambition. Creative. Be creative, huh? You know, somebody asked me, our direct competitor was my first student and people say, “What happened, man? Did you guys have a breakup or something?” I’m like, “No.” He has no creativity, truly. I’m not busting on him. He’s the hardest worker I’ve probably ever met. There’s no more hardworking guy. He and I were at an investment bank together. I was on one side, he was on the other. Every single month he won the award for number of calls made, every single month that I was there.
Jill DeWit: How did you do, Jack?
Jack Butala: I mean, I was in a different … He was in a buy side, I was in a sell side. I won the award on that side, too.
Jill DeWit: You know, it’s funny, that’s how I see it. His was a number … That’s what he thinks. I know this true, too. I know this in his world right now because of what you share with me. He is all about numbers. We’re all about not numbers. We’re creatively helping people, doing it a different way.
Jack Butala: You know what? I’m going to say this. We could triple the amount of money that we make overnight, but I don’t think it would reach as many people. I don’t think it would help as many people, and that’s not why we’re doing this.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: We’re not trying to maximize revenue for this, for Land Academy, we’re not. For a bunch of other stuff, we are. This is a way to create a community where we can all do deals together. We do more deals now because of Land Academy than we ever did.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: I love your creativity thing. It’s really, really important. It’s important to have a crazy imagination. Every company starts that way like, “Wow, what if we did this?”
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Everything starts that way. What if we sent a bunch of … I had this moment a lot of years ago, what if we went a bunch of offers to people that own all these properties to see if they want to do it, and so I did, and they did it all wrong. I think I actually sent out postcards. I don’t remember.
Jill DeWit: You didn’t drive for dollars.
Jack Butala: No. No, I never did that. The only time I ever drive for dollars is when I’m at a relative’s house out of the state or something and I’m so bored and I’m sitting there at the coffee table, I’ll go do something and I’ll drive around and go get real estate.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: I catch myself and I’m doing it.
Jill DeWit: Right, it’s funny.
Jack Butala: Hey, thanks for the compliments.
Jill DeWit: You’re welcome.
Jack Butala: You do smell nice, by the way.
Jill DeWit: You’re awesome.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration. I just got flustered by your awesome thing. Thank you, Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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