Bird Dogs Get There First (CFFL 0241)
Bird Dogs Get There First
Jack Butala: Bird Dogs Get There First. 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 bird dogs, that is us, and hopefully you how we get there first. Great show today Jill. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members on Successplant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Gary asked, “My first deal was just about to go through, and the guy calls me and asks about the type of deed. I explained what a special warranty deed is, and then he went on to tell me about how he bought it from a tax sale, and the previous owners want it back. Is there something wrong with the title, and it cannot be insured until 10 years or so? He wants to make sure the special warranty deed doesn’t hold him liable after the sale. He wants to do a quick claim deed. It is in Colorado, and I am paying $1500”.
Jack Butala: What are your initial thoughts on this?
Jill DeWit: That the previous owner does not have a leg to stand on.
Jack Butala: Well let me-
Jill DeWit: It is is a little too late for that now.
Jack Butala: Let me just bring it to the third grade/ Sesame Street level here. Somebody owned this property, and they didn’t pay the taxes for a super long time. The county took it back, and it went to a tax sale, and somebody bought it, probably the guy who is selling it to Gary here. Well the people who didn’t pay the taxes for a really long time, apparently want it back, and they are probably going to have difficult, to and impossible time getting it back because the protocol it is statutory. The state’s statutes mandate how these properties go back and forth through ownership, but that doesn’t change the fact that they want it back.
This is my advice, and this is exactly what I would do, I would close the file on this, and I would walk away. There is so many deals out there you can go through, and Jill has said it a million times, why go through the headache of a property even you are right, when all you have got to do is send out more mail to get more deals? That is what I would do here.
Jill DeWit: I have another idea too.
Jack Butala: That is the background here, and this happens once in a great while. He is wrapping it all up in a question about special warranty deeds, versus warranty deeds, versus I think treasurer’s deeds or quick claim, which I am going to explain the definitions here very briefly in a second, but go ahead Jill.
Jill DeWit: My other thought was, okay big picture, if they really want this property back there are going to be attorneys involved. Attorneys can be expensive to probably go with the county and try to get it back, don’t you think? There is going to be some time-
Jack Butala: A lot more expensive than $1500.
Jill DeWit: That is what I was thinking. Here is my thing, I might sell it back to them.
Jack Butala: Beautiful Jill, that is the perfect solution to this.
Jill DeWit: He could buy it, and own it, and sell it right back to them.
Jack Butala: Jill’s solution is awesome, but here is, in my opinion, one of the flaws with that, now you are doing a deal. What? I thought we were supposed to sit here and do deals all day? Do you want to go to do a special deal, and make 15… No, you send a bunch of mail out, have easy, simple transactions to do that don’t involve stuff like this. The seller signs a purchase agreement, you do the deal, and you put it in your marketing machine and sell it. Those are the kinds of deals we are here to do. We are not here to talk about my aunt wants the property back, but my cousin is in… You might as well just go like a real estate deal as a real estate agent, and talk to everybody about the color of curtains and stuff. You want to just get in a machine. The second they said the seller wants to do this, the previous tax sale owner, I would have just closed it and said there is going to be a lot of talking and a lot of whining, I am out.
Jill DeWit: It is great advice, thanks.
Jack Butala: All right. Technically a warranty deed, if you sign your name to a warranty deed you are warranting the title all the way back to homestead. Who the heck wants to do that? Not me. A special warranty deed warrants the quality of the title for the time that you owned it, in our case a couple of weeks, a month, maybe two months. No problem there because we owned it. A quick claim deed provides no warrants in any way. Should you run away from quick claim deeds? Not at all. Jill and I do tons of quick claim deeds all the time. These are very low priced assets, and in all the 15 thousand plus transactions we have done… I am not going to knock on my glass desk because there is no wood around it, oh wait here is some wood. We have not had any title problems. Jill is famous for saying, Gary I just think you are getting caught up a little bit in some stuff that you don’t need to worry about. Close the file, send some mail out, and do some real simple deals, especially if you are new. I don’t know Gary. Do you know Gary Jill?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: I don’t either. Usually a lot of members we know by their first name. Yeah. Anything else?
Jill DeWit: No, thank you.
Jack Butala: Hey if you have a question, or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. Today’s topic, I wrote this title and I love this topic. It came from, I will tell you in a second. Today’s topic, bird dogs get their first. This is the meat of the shell. Jill and I were at a holiday gathering recently, and somebody asked me, as they always do, oh I so I heard you are in real estate, what do you guys do? I said we were bird dogs, and I immediately clicked with him, and I have never answered that question that way. I have been struggling to answer this question for more than a decade. What do you in real estate?
Bird dogs, it comes from going hunting with birds and shotguns and stuff. They get there first. They go retrieve the duck that you just shot. You know, if you are into that kind of thing. I am not, but if you are into that kind of thing, that is what a bird dog is, they get there first, they source the transactions, and they get the deals to the people who are actually going to go through all of the work, and do the deals, and do all the talking, and some people call it wholesaling.
That is what we do here, and I love it. We send a lot of mail out, offers out, to owners, and they sign them and send them back. We got there first, you can get there first, and then we start shipping them off to, wholesaling them out to people, whether if it is houses it is people who flip the houses, or renovate and flip them they do all the work. We mark them up 10 grand in our case, or land, which is our bread and butter, and we put them out on our website landstay.com, as a wholesaler, and we wholesale them out for rock bottom prices because we got there first, and then a lot of people in the business resell them retail, on terms or whatever else. Being a bird dog, I love it. I love this position that we have.
Jill DeWit: You know what I was thinking? It is funny, I love that term too, and it does answer a lot of questions. I am in my head, redesigning our business cards, and I am thinking if I had that title below my name, you know real estate bird dog, they might go, oh.
Jack Butala: I was thinking that too. The same thing.
Jill DeWit: Acquisition bird dog. Real estate, acquisition bird dog, or something like that, they are like oh now I get understand what you do.
Jack Butala: This is what happened with this guy at this holiday party. It always starts like this, so you are in real estate? Well what do you do? Well we buy and sell land. Oh, I got a couple of pieces of property over here that there is this commercial property and this, and I say stop, stop, stop. Somebody got there first. If you know about it, I don’t want to talk.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. That is nice.
Jack Butala: He wasn’t the guy that was there first anyway, he just knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy. Now there is four people involved, and that is not the business we are in.
Jill DeWit: Right. Exactly. That is so funny.
Jack Butala: This guy, I told… Jill was at the party too. I phoned her across the party, and I like I got it we are bird dogs, and she said, “What? Get away from me”.
Jill DeWit: No it perfect. Then I thought about it, like no it is perfect, you are right. That makes a lot of sense, and like you said, he started to go down that path, and once you said that he just went okay, done, got it.
Jack Butala: He handed me his card, and he was like oh.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, call me next week.
Jack Butala: Yeah he said that.
Jill DeWit: Then you passed the test.
Jack Butala: You know what he did, he immediately in one phrase, saw our value.
Jill DeWit: Well and he upped his game.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: He started to say, well I have… Like wind up to you which was really nice. I appreciate that.
Jack Butala: I honestly have been struggling about how to describe… We are land wholesalers, oh really, I have got a good… You know, it is just so overused, and it could mean 50 things.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: Bird dog, I like it.
Jill DeWit: It’s so funny, so many times when we are out I sit and think about what other occupation do I want to use tonight because… seriously… because you and I have this difficulty, like please don’t ask me what I do, please don’t ask me what I do.
Jack Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: It is hard, it is not difficult once you get it, but it is hard for to kind of… I don’t know why, but the general public cannot quite wrap their head around what we do.
Jack Butala: Well it has to be how we are delivering because if I said I am a plumber, they are like oh yeah okay good. I am a doctor, oh what kind. I am a real estate agent, oh good for you.
Jill DeWit: Oh that is nice.
Jack Butala: You know what I have been saying?
Jill DeWit: Oh bless your heart.
Jack Butala: It is just that everybody wants to put stuff in a box, and that is fine. What I have been saying lately is I own a real estate data company. What? Oh yeah, we provide all of the ownership data to real estate agents. Oh okay, that is nice. That stops them too.
Jill DeWit: That is true.
Jack Butala: My whole goal is to stop it.
Jill DeWit: I do too. You know what, sometimes I used to use open ended data company thing because they don’t even want to ask questions.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Most of them will go, oh I don’t really understand it, I am not going to follow up on that. Then they will follow up with, well where do you like to travel? Perfect, now I want to talk about that.
Jack Butala: Exactly Jill. We have the same goal. The person who cut my hair, recently for the first time, asked me what I did.
Jill DeWit: The crazy lady?
Jack Butala: Yeah, I did the real estate data thing, and she said oh that sounds so complicated. Where do you like to travel? Just like that. It stopped her, and that is my whole goal.
Jill DeWit: That is it. That is great.
Jack Butala: Hey, if you have a question, or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. This is the technical two. Two minutes of property investment advice, sometimes less than two minutes, or more than two minutes, from our 15 year, 15 thousand plus transaction experience. You have heard me say it a million times, but it deserves to be said again, get there first. We are in the bird dog business, we are not really in the real estate business. If you really philosophically think about. I don’t want to steal Jill’s thunder here because she is the inspiration, I am just the information. That is why we are here, to use data, understand it, get there first, pre-negotiate the deal, and get it to the people who are really going to do a real estate transaction.
You think that turns people off? You think they want to kind of be in… I mean you could do both. You can be the bird-dog, and the wholesaler, and the retailer. Some of our members do that, a lot of them actually.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I don’t think that is crazy at all. It depends on what you want to do, how much time you want to spend on the phone.
Jack Butala: That is what it is Jill, and that is where I stop.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, do you want to be exactly … I mean do you want to just be making the deals, or you want to be out there doing the selling, and the dressing it up, and making it look pretty? It depends on what you like. I agree.
Jack Butala: We provide some of those services for our members right now. Eventually we will provide them all because we have been doing for thousands and thousands of deal, a lot of experience dressing up property, specifically land, and putting it out on the Internet and having it sell the next day. We are in the process of putting together the tools that are included in the data to doorstep group of collection of tools. We are making it easier, and easier, and easier. My preference is just to wholesale it out and just keep the machine like a stamping machine, just keep stamping them out.
Jill DeWit: Do you know what is funny about this, what you just said? I just thought about, I have had people that come to be and are like confused, and maybe a little like hesitant because they don’t say I have a lot of property for sale, duh, let’s think about why.
Jack Butala: You know that is a great point.
Jill DeWit: It is the funniest thing, and I never say that, and it just made me think about it. I am like gee I wonder why you don’t find a lot of the available property under my name. Hmm let’s think about it. I cannot keep it in, next.
Jack Butala: We sell the property long before we buy it. Really what we do, I call it, selling the APM, assessors person number, the A-list group of buyers that we have, all they want is an APM. They don’t want us to do maps, they are so used to doing this. We never end up doing the engineering, well that is going to stop because for what Jill just said.
Jill DeWit: It is silly though.
Jack Butala: We are in the process of putting all of our completed sales up on landstay so that everyone can very clearly see it, and look at the exact properties of all the 15, 16 thousand deals we have done.
Jill DeWit: I don’t want to spend too much time on that because it is kind of after the fact everyone.
Jack Butala: Well I mean, you know why, I am just tired of answering. You nailed it Jill, there is a lot people keep asking, well there is 22 properties on sale on your website, and I look at this guy’s website over here and he has got 800.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, let’s think about that.
Jack Butala: I am just tired of answering it. Within days, well by the time this airs it will be done.
Jill DeWit: That is cool.
Jack Butala: So check out landstay.com, there is a lot of completed sales there.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. A lot more than available property.
Jack Butala: You know what that could be? A comparison value site because all the sale prices are on there. That is cool.
Jill DeWit: That is true, that would be kind of fun to see all the different dates and everything. I think that is cool. Awesome.
Jack Butala: If you have a question, or you want to be on the show, or you want to be a bird dog, call 800-725-8816. Jill is the inspiration. My favorite part of the show, inspire us.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Do you have goals? Do you have dreams? They are different, and one of them you need to write down. I want you to think about where you want to be, and big, big, big picture. Those are your dreams. I want to live here, I want to retire here, I want to have this, I want my family around me, I want the security, whatever the big, big, thing is, those are your dreams. Now bring them down a notch, now set some goals. Those are the easier, obtainable ones, and it might be, gosh I want to be debt free in two years, or one year, or five years, whatever it is depending on your plans. Those are your goals.
Jack Butala: That is awesome advice.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: I believe in that.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I want you to write those downs because as you think about and write down, and solidify those goals, that is going to get you to your dreams.
Jack Butala: Can I take it just one step further?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Give my take on it?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: I would even go so far and just to sit down often, especially if you are really new, or really young, in your early 20s or teens, close your eyes and think about it a lot. You know? When you are a kid daydreaming is just part of it, is part of your whole thing. I would encourage you, I don’t think you should spend four hours doing this, but I think you should sit down, and really look at and see where you want to live in five years, see what your bank account balance looks like. I mean really visually see it, when you close your eyes. It is proven. I include a very short book in our Cash Flow From Land program that it has been from… Somebody wrote it from the 30s or 40s, and it talks all about the power of really seeing yourself and going through the habits and saying the same stuff, like Jill does about where you want to be, and it really, really, works. Honestly, I didn’t do this until I met her, and even then I thought it was a pile of malarkey, until I started doing it, and it is like yoga. Okay, that is for sissys, until you do it a few times, and then it is like this is the greatest thing ever.
Jill DeWit: Well it can even happen on little things too. Haven’t you ever been somewhere and there is a drawing, and you are like call my name, call my name, call my name, and they call your name? You know, I mean you could almost really, not to get to weird out there, but I mean you could think about it-
Jack Butala: Telekinesis.
Jill DeWit: I know. I mean are you going to make fun of me?
Jack Butala: Uh huh.
Jill DeWit: I thought you were going to give me a whole, here it comes.
Jack Butala: I am now because it went the way of Jill.
Jill DeWit: Here is goes. Well you went down this path, so I am going to end it.
Jack Butala: I don’t think you can move pencils with your head, and your brain, or maybe somebody can.
Jill DeWit: I don’t know.
Jack Butala: I really think you can form habits, in your head, and do stuff every single day. Little tiny mind things, every single day, and power of suggestion, and suggest yourself into being wealthy if that is what you want. Young boys always want fast cars. This always comes up when I say this, I say well picture the car in the driveway of the house that you want every single day, and it really will get you motivated. It will happen.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Good.
Jack Butala: It is all where you see yourself Jill. I can see where we are going to be with all this stuff five years from now, and beyond.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Can you? Do you actually do it?
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Oh I do. I do smaller things, you do bigger things. I don’t think it is gender specific, I think it is person specific. I look at how I want today to go, this week to go, I am on the short term things because that is really all I need. Good day, good week, good month, something to look forward to, a trip on the calendar. Those little things. The other stuff, I know it is out there, I know it is going to come, and I don’t … You know why I don’t want to worry about it, but they are out there for me.
Jack Butala: That is my job. That is why we are partners.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It is kind of funny.
Jack Butala: If we did the same stuff all the time, it would not be good.
Jill DeWit: You know what? My dreams are smaller I think than some people’s because you know what, I kind of have all of the stuff I want.
Jack Butala: Well that is good.
Jill DeWit: Maybe that is why, this is different for me.
Jack Butala: That is great.
Jill DeWit: When I really look around, I mean it is seriously… My birthday was just the other day. You asked me what do I want, and I really had to sit and think about it. Hmm, I cannot think of something that I really want that I don’t have. You know?
Jack Butala: What did you get?
Jill DeWit: I had and awesome, awesome me day, which was a total spa day, and I disappeared and had a blast. Thank you.
Jack Butala: You came back happy person.
Jill DeWit: Yeah because I disappeared.
Jack Butala: I mean you are happy all of the time, but you came back-
Jill DeWit: Relaxed.
Jack Butala: Like on morphine, like I don’t care what happens.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: That is awesome.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, and then I had a nice dinner to look forward to with our friends, and that was it.
Jack Butala: You know what, that makes me feel great. When you are happy and all satisfied, it makes me feel happy inside, seriously.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Now you are getting all touchy, feely.
Jack Butala: Yeah, but I am not going to move a pencil with my head.
Jill DeWit: All right. I think I can do that.
Jack Butala: Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jill DeWit: Inspiration, that is me.
Jack Butala: To get just about anything you want, except moving objects with you mind.
Jill DeWit: Well I don’t know, I use it everyday to buy property for half of what it is worth, and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. You know what is great about this inspiration thing with you? You always dance right on the edge. I am always like, did you ever see the X-files where the two characters, one is all like empirical evidence, and the other one is like you have see this and believe it, I want to believe.
Jill DeWit: Which one’s? The woman or the guy?
Jack Butala: The woman is me, the empirical evidence. She is a medical doctor, and the guy-
Jill DeWit: Ah. Sculley, or what?
Jack Butala: Sculley is her name, and Molder is like…. If you young people are listening, whoever is young, turn it off, the show is off a long time ago.
Jill DeWit: I don’t even know the show that well. I watch reruns with you.
Jack Butala: You know, but the guy, the main character Molder’s all… The poster in the back of the office for years in the show is I want to believe.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: That was what that whole show was about.
Jill DeWit: Yeah I am definitely more him.
Jack Butala: I know. Good show.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Anyway it was supposed to be about bird dogs, and how we get there first, and that is at the root of how we make a really good living.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jack Butala: Using data, and finding people who want to sell their property. They want to just get rid of it, they don’t care about price. I am going to have some cards printed up.
Jill DeWit: I think it would be really funny to do.
Jack Butala: Real estate property bird dog.
Jill DeWit: Property bird dog. That would be great, just have that-
Jack Butala: Have you ever me anybody who doesn’t know what a bird dog is? Did you know?
Jill DeWit: Well yeah, I know what a bird dog is. I have never owned bird dog, and I have never hunted.
Jack Butala: No not the real definition.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Jack Butala: You know what? It just occurred to me that no one-
Jill DeWit: Now you have go to explain that to some people.
Jack Butala: No a bird dog is just somebody who is just sniffing around, finding the deal, and getting there first.
Jill DeWit: I wonder what the actual definition is. I am going to look that up.
Jack Butala: Okay.
Jill DeWit: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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