Jacks Way of Getting Past First Deal – the Right Way (CFFL 0262)
Jacks Way of Getting Past First Deal – the Right Way
Jack Butala: Jacks Way of Getting Past First Deal – the Right Way. 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 today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about Jack’s way of getting past that first deal. It’s the right way. Great show today, Jill. Let’s take a question posted, before we get into it, by one of our members on successplants.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Okay, Daniel asked, “Hey guys. When buying my first property,” yay, “I did my first warranty deed and learned exactly how to do it. Now I am selling it because I have a buyer. What exactly do I have to change on it when doing a special warranty deed besides writing on the top ‘special warranty deed'”?
Jack Butala: You can answer that, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thanks as much as always.
Jack Butala: This is the shortest answer to any question in the history of ever.
Jill DeWit: I love it. You are doing everything right, Daniel. Yes, make it a special warranty deed because we want to warranty the time that we owned it, not forever time. Put that at the top and then you are going to change, you are now the grantor. When you bought it, you were the grantee. Now you’re going to move your name to the top when you recreate the deed, just like the one that you have now.
You’re going to be to be the grantor on the top and the grantee is going to be below and that’s the person you are selling it to you. That’s your buyer. The legal description, the same. You’re going to change the date, obviously, and you’re going to put the right address and everything up at the top for the county and stuff for your buyer and then of course you are going to be the one now to sign and have it notarized and delivered to your buyer.
Jack Butala: That’s it. You nailed it. It’s one word, you just change it. You change “warranty deed” to “special warranty deed” and you do what Jill just said. Here’s the difference, really quickly. Warranty deed, when you sign their name on the bottom of a warranty deed, your warrantying the condition of the title since the beginning of time. How could you possibly do that? Were you alive in 1888, 1788? No. So it’s a little silly. A special warranty deed warrants the condition of the title for the time that you owned it. Can you do that? Yeah. Yeah, you can with pretty much confidence say, “I owned this property for these 14 months and I enjoyed it.” I’m a huge fan of special warranty deeds. That’s actually, unless a state mandates like let’s say-
Jill DeWit: Grant deed-
Jack Butala: Let’s just say it’s a grant deed-
Jill DeWit: In California-
Jack Butala: Yeah, and Nevada does too I think.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Anyway, let’s say mandated, we’d use special warranty deed almost a hundred percent of the time. Today’s show, Jack’s way of getting the first deal done, it’s the right way to do a deal. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit: I’m glad we’re doing this topic.
Jack Butala: I am too, because we spent some time about, we talk about driving for dollars, we talk a lot about why you guys wasting your time. You’re not people in our group, but other real estate investors because maybe they haven’t been informed, or they haven’t sought out education in the right places or for whatever reason, they might not be doing it right. Well, this show is all about how exactly to do it the right way or how we think, how it works for us, let’s say. Jill and I are going to walk you through step-by-step how we do a deal and why we think it’s the most efficient.
Jill DeWit: I want to add a note too. The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because a lot of people, even if they have everything in their hands, it’s a little scary getting that first deal under their belts, so that’s why Jack, thank you for doing this. I wanted you to slow down, take a little breath and tell everybody, “It’s not crazy. It’s not hard and I’ll walk you through the steps so you can do your first deal and get that under your belt.”
Jack Butala: Awesome, so I very often say, “It’s not so much about the actual piece of real estate. What it’s really about is manipulating data and doing paperwork and dot the i’s, crossing the t’s and then eventually having some people around you that are even better at it than you might be,” so step one. Send out a bunch offers to a county that you’ve identified where you think they’re going to sign them and send them back.
So great. You send a bunch offers out. You sit around, you look at your clock, you look at your watch 15 times, open the refrigerator, see if there’s anything different than the 5 minutes before that you opened the refrigerator. Nope. “Oh, my gosh. I might’ve failed.” Two weeks go by and the mail hits and several offers come back in the mail and you get several phone calls. You get signed offers and phone calls back with people that want to renegotiate.
People on successplant.com and ask any of our people, our members, is this how it works? They’ll tell you. So now you’ve got a signed offer. We do you do? What do you do, Jill?
Jill DeWit: Take it. Just kidding.
Jack Butala: No, you call them back, right?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: And see if there’s a real person at the other end. They want to hear from you too. They want to know there’s a real person. What do you say?
Jill DeWit: “Hi, I got your offer. I want to just confirm some of the details,” and by the way, this is when I’m really doing my homework. I mean, I did my homework on the front-end. That’s not what this show is about right now. So now that I’m really ready to complete this deal and say, “I looked at it, the numbers. I was right on with my comps and everything,” so I might just confirm everything. I’m going to confirm the access. I’m going to look it up now. I’m just going to briefly state the stuff that I go over and like Jack said, make sure the person I’m talking to is the right person and if there is a husband and wife, make sure they’re alive, able to sign where they are and start making those arrangements.
Jack Butala: So “John Smith, whoever signed this is John Smith. Is this you, John Smith?” “Yes, this is me, John Smith.” “Do you own any other property or do you own this property outright? Do you own it with your sister or anything like that?” “Oh, no. No, I’m John Smith. I bought it 15 years ago. I’m the only person on the deed and I’m ready to sell it for the price that you offered.” Great, so you hang up the phone and say, “Fantastic. I just need to confirm a bunch of things before we actually make actual arrangements to send a notary to your house with a cashier’s check, so when you notarize the deed that we’re going to prepare, that person’s going to hand you a cashier’s check for that price we agreed on here,” and that’s it. That’s all.
The notary is going to send the deal back but before that, you take a look at Google maps, you do some research of the county and make sure there’s not a ton of back taxes on the property. You make sure it’s something you want to buy. Is it at the top of a mountain and a slope that you could never use it or is it a property that’s right on a lake and you can’t believe that it’s such a good deal? So you want to make sure that you want to buy it. That’s what we call engineering.
Jill DeWit: Well, I wonder too if one of the hangups that individuals have on this first deal and as they’re worried that “When I send these mailers out, oh my gosh, I’m not going to be able to back out. What if they all answer back ‘yes’? I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars sitting around that I can buy them all,” kind of thing. You have an out so like Jack was just stating, you have some time. You are confirming that that’s them and you’re going to get back to them and just make sure. You’re going to confirm the tax situation and all those details.
Jack Butala: We go through this, by the way, in cash [inaudible 00:07:31] program, but it’s good to talk about it.
Jill DeWit: We do. I just want to make sure you have some time. You have an out. It’s not a rushed thing. It’s your timeline, whatever works for you and as long as you communicate with this person … What if you have a full-time day job, by the way, and you’re doing this now on, it’s Thursday night at 6 o’clock and your Friday’s busy and you’re not going to get to look until this weekend and you’re worried about your seller? All you’ve got to do is tell them.
“Hey, you know what? I’m going to be able to get back to you on this time Monday night. Are you going to be around? That would give me time to do my homework and double check everything,” and if not, just arrange when it’s better for them, but as long as you’re … Don’t worry. You have time. Tell them what you’re doing and “I’ll get back to you,” and when. Give yourself that cushion and it’s good.
Jack Butala: Would you rather buy a piece of property from somebody who says this sentence or the one right after it? “Hey, I’m a guy who’s an investor. I have a full-time job. I can call you at 6 PM or whatever time is convenient for you, but I really do want to buy this property, but I don’t want to inconvenience you because I have this full-time job so if we can kind of arrange the times we can talk, that’d be great. I don’t want you to be disappointed and I want you to take this seriously. I want property.”
Jill DeWit: Perfect.
Jack Butala: Or would you rather buy from somebody who says this: “We’re a large corporation, Mr. Smith and you either do what I say or you don’t and if you’re not available when I tell you to be available, then we’re not going to do the deal.” Click.
Jill DeWit: Right. That’s hilarious.
Jack Butala: I think a lot of people get hung up on the fact that “Oh my gosh. It’s my first deal. I’m just a guy. I don’t know. I have a job. They can’t get a hold of me.” You just got to pull a Joe. That’s what I call it. Just make them your best friend right away.
Jill DeWit: And it’s okay to have a … What if you really do have a full-time job? This is your first deal. You have a full-time job and you’re only able to call people back on your lunch break-
Jack Butala: Do not quit your job.
Jill DeWit: And after hours? Yeah, do not quit your job to do this, yet. Hang in there. So yeah. No, it’s okay. You have a voicemail and on your voicemail, I’ve heard many of our members very good voicemails. I’ve called them and they’ve said, “Hey,” they confirm they are, “This is John Smith with landspecialty.com,” whatever it is, “And I’m not available at this moment. Very excited that you’re calling me back about your property. Please leave your name and number and maybe the parcel number or whatever and I will get back to you within 24 hours or whatever you,” and then you call them back and explain to them, “Hey, great. Thanks. I’ve got a few minutes I can talk to you right now. I appreciate your talking. I’m going to be available tonight after X time. Can I call you then?” whatever it is, “We can discuss it more.”
Easy and this came up with you, Jack, too because we had any member that was worried about these missed calls, but they have the caller ID. Should I call them? Heck yeah! Why wouldn’t you? Just explain, “Gosh, I’m sorry I wasn’t available. My name is Jill and I’m with [Land Stay 00:10:22] and I got a missed call. I was trying to buy some properties. Do you have something? Did you have a letter for me?” “Oh, yeah. Okay,” and that’s it. Then take it from there.
Jack Butala: Okay, so all good advice. So here we are. We’ve got a signed letter back from mail. We did the engineering. We looked on Google Earth. We liked the location. We checked the fact that the guy actually owns the property. We checked the back taxes, did the basic stuff. He told a story that makes sense. I bought the property 15 years ago. There’s nobody else in the deed. Check, check, check, check, check. Now it’s time to close the deal. If it’s less than $5000, this is our internal rule, then we close the deals ourselves to save money.
This deal is less than $5000 and we’ve confirmed that we can sell this property for more. We’ve done that through our whole engineering piece, so we want to close a deal, Jill. What do we do? More than $5000, we usually close it through title, through escrow, but this is not. This is less, so walk us through.
Jill DeWit: We’ve done all our tests and now everybody’s, we agree on the price and we’re all set, ready to go. Okay, so I’m going to arrange, “Okay Mr. Smith, where can I have my notary come to you with cashier’s check and a new deed which I prepared all ready to go. Gosh, I’m home every day before noon. Fantastic, then I will arrange … Is tomorrow good? Yeah, great. Oh, perfect. I’ll be home. Okay, great. Let me get my notary, all set up here and I’ll email you all the details and if you have any questions let me know.” Click.
What do I do next? I’m going on notary, I use like Notary 123, I think is the one I use the most and you put in a ZIP Code, find notary in Mr. Smith’s area. Tell them what’s happening. I’m overnighting them the documents and then I email everybody copies of everything. I have notary just to back up. Now here’s Mr. Smith’s information. Here’s where you’re going and here’s tracking information and all that good stuff and I have Mr. Smith also, the notary information in case he’s sitting around waiting for her to show up. You know him, shop up has all that.
Then I am going, getting my cashier’s check. I made a new deed. I have it all ready to go and I send it to my notary and … Is this, are you looking for more information Jack because [crosstalk 00:12:44]? Is that too much or not enough?
Jack Butala: No, it’s great.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: There’s some people that get kind of hung up on actually producing a deed from a blank sheet of paper.
Jill DeWit: We cover that.
Jack Butala: Jill and I created a product called, a website called deedperfect.com where you can actually, if you’re a member, go over there and produce a document using. Use it, literally, type in all information. It prompts you and that spits out a document at the end and you can use it.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep, so you’re going to get a deed-
Jack Butala: Super-simple.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, just think about buying a car. There’s a piece of paper that goes with this. There’s a deed that goes with this.
Jack Butala: Yeah. That’s it.
Jill DeWit: I got to get the payment to the guy I’m buying the car from. Same as a payment for property. You’ve got to get the payment there. You verified everything so you’re giving them a cashier’s check and that’s part of their excitement too is why they’re so happy and gain this price and whatever because they’re getting a cashier’s check in days and all they’ve got to do is answer the door, sign a piece of paper and they’re handing them a check.
You really are solving their problems. They’re getting this property of their plate. So anyway, their notary is going to complete that, show up, do it for you and then they’re going to send you back … and there’s a little more steps to it which we go into. I’m just kind of giving the big picture break down here. Notary is going to complete it, send it, the completed deed back to you and then you’re going to turn around and send it to the county to be recorded. Then you’re kind of done.
Jack Butala: And you own it.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: As soon as you get that book and page, not from a legal standpoint but from a practical standpoint, you own it as soon as you get what’s called a book and page, that recording stamp. Book and page are the same, they’re [synonyms 00:14:19] as a recording stamp. Sometimes you can record in big counties right online as soon as you get back.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: So now you record the … Here’s the good news. Now you own it and that was the acquisition piece. The sales piece, you can be doing this whole time the acquisition piece is going on. You have the APN. You checked on the Internet to see if you liked the property, if you were going to buy it. You get the maps, you know the whole thing. By the time you get that deed back, you should have the property posted or your finger on a button to post the property all over the internet, on your website, if you’re a member us, on our website, landstay.com. There’s multiple places that Jill and I literally provide you to post a property that pretty dramatically increases your chances of selling it very quickly.
So in essence, you do. You create some maps. Write a simple description. Just copy ours or copy somebody elses where they’ve sold a ton of property and sell it. Then when you sell it, it’s the exact reverse process.
Jill DeWit: Yeah because that can happen. There’s times like technically like Jack was just alluding to, technically once that deed is signed and notarized, you own it. It’s only recording is for public knowledge or whatever you want to call it. It’s public recording for them so you own it. So while that deed is on the way and most notaries, they do it for me automatically, they’ll take a picture of it and show me the document that it’s signed as it’s being overnighted back to me so I can see it’s done. I can push the button then and I could be posting it, and by golly, have I sold things that fast? Yeah. I’ve seen our members do it like, “Oh, my gosh. The deed’s on the way back to me and it’s already sold.” “Congratulations. Good job.”
Jack Butala: Exactly, here’s some practical advice. If you’re excited about it, then everybody’s going to be excited about it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: If you’re excited about buying it, your buyer is going to be real excited too. If you’re excited about selling it, they’re even going to be more excited, but if you’re walking around saying, “Oh, on Saturday, I don’t know. I’ve got to talk to my parents because I think we’re going to have … I’m not sure if I’m going to be available. I’ll call you back. I don’t know,” if that’s the way you’re going to do transactions, you’re going to have some trouble.
Jill DeWit: That’s funny.
Jack Butala: Again, you’ve got to Jillify the whole thing. You’ve got to get a little bit excited about it.
Jill DeWit: Is that a new word? I like that.
Jack Butala: Here’s Jillify. Let’s … it’s a verb. Let’s Jill this thing.
Jill DeWit: Oh, no. That sounds scary.
Jack Butala: Let’s Jill this thing to completion.
Jill DeWit: Oh, no. Oh, no.
Jack Butala: I say stuff to our people all the time like that and they know exactly what I’m talking about.
Jill DeWit: I know. It’s going to come up. It’s going to come up. I can hear it now. It’s going to be a success pants thing. I hear it. I know exactly who’s going to bring it up on our member call right now too.
Jack Butala: All right, so did we complete the deal?
Jill DeWit: I think we did. I think that’s good. That’s I think for a lot of folks that I talk to, I wanted to touch on some of the hangups on getting that first deal. Let’s just go through a trial run here on the air again so you can kind of see the little steps. It’s not crazy. It really isn’t and there’s little things like, “Okay, how do I do a deed?” All right. We can help with that and copy it. There’s all kind of things that we can help with, like Jack said.
Jack Butala: When you go to sell it, it’s even easier just to wrap this whole point up. Nine times out of ten, when we sell a property, people … Just like you’re buying a pair of shoes on a website, people click on it and they put their credit card number in and it’s done. They receive a deed a couple days later in the mail. They own it.
This is the technical two, two minutes of property investment advice from our 15 year, 15,000+ transaction experience. Do a mock deed. If what Jill and I just talked about isn’t enough, and I get it, I was real concerned about my first deal. Everybody is. Practice. Deed a property to your wife and have her deed it back to you. Literally, if Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you’re John and Sally Smith. John, you’re concerned about this. Take a piece of property and record it at, deed it to your wife. Go through the whole process and then do the reverse.
That will alleviate all of this if that’s your hang up. If your hangup is, “I just can’t make a decision about whether or not to do this. I don’t have enough information. I see it on Google Earth. I know there’s no back taxes and I understand that John Smith owns a property, I’m just not sure if I can make any money,” then go out of the website, websites like land watch or wherever else and see what people are selling their properties for. It’s like cheating.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: You’ll get past that. It’ll be all right.
Jill DeWit: You will.
Jack Butala: You’ve just got to get past that first deal. You’ve got to push yourself through it. You’ve just got to get to the end.
Jill DeWit: Totally.
Jack Butala: If you have a question or you want to be on the show, call 800-725-8816. My favorite part of the show, Jill’s inspiration of the day.
Jill DeWit: I love when I write these down before the show and they actually tie in to what we’re talking about. You just brought up a good point that totally ties into my inspiration, which is “Are you hungry to do this yet? Do you have the drive and the energy and excitement? Has it got ahold of you yet?” If not, go find it. I’ll tell you, maybe it’s going to take that one deal. Maybe that first deal is going to go, “Oh, now I get it,” or maybe that first, not just the selling it, just the acquisition part. What gets me fired up is that.
You heard me talk about yesterday on the Monday show, the “Hurry up, run to the bank,” deals. That’s my drive and my hunger and I’ve got it and keep that going because like Jack said, if you’re excited about this and you’re excited on the buy side, no and don’t be too excited on the buy side, but excited as you’re posting it, you’re excited about having the property, you’re excited about just being able to make this available and you’re writing a beautiful description, that’s what’s going to happen and everybody will know, so thank you. I love how that ties in. Jack, what do you have to say?
Jack Butala: Excellent advice. 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: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Good talk, Jill. I hope that really helps. It seems to be a topic that’s coming up, just getting past that first deal. Then it’s just pure excitement after that. You either love it or you’re just like, “I can’t wait to do the next deal,” which most of the people we talk to [inaudible 00:21:23] “This is way easier than I thought.” It’s kind of like getting your eyes checked. It’s like, “I should’ve done that two years ago.”
Jill DeWit: Oh, yes. That’s very true. There’s a lot of things like that in life. Well, I’ve had people come to us saying, “I wish I found you two years ago.” I’m like, “I’m sorry. We got here as fast as we could.”
Jack Butala: Do you say that, really?
Jill DeWit: I do say that. Yeah, it’s funny.
Jack Butala: That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: But yeah, that’s really really true because I think you and I joke about it, half joking, half serious, “Gee, I wish we had us 10 years ago.”
Jack Butala: Oh, my gosh.
Jill DeWit: That would’ve been nice, telling us all [crosstalk 00:21:53]-
Jack Butala: Talk about wasting time driving for dollars, slash, I’ve made all the mistakes you can make.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s what I think is one of the most valuable things about us, Jack, is not just even showing people exactly how to do this in what we’re doing right now and talking them through it, but all the mistakes that we’ve made are … That would be a funny thing, Jack. I want to see a spreadsheet of all, what we can say the value of our mistakes, what they’re worth, is probably a lot of money.
Jack Butala: Oh, my gosh.
Jill DeWit: You know what I mean?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: How much revenue we probably lost because of social media. You know what I mean?
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: And how much this costs us and how much that cost and this is how we’re saving all these people.
Jack Butala: That’s a good point. You know what? Jill and I, we sit here and we sound like we’re all [inaudible 00:22:41] and we know everything and quite frankly about buying cheap real estate, we do. I don’t know anybody who’s better at that, but I’ll tell you what’s very new to us, very new to me specifically, especially at my age. The sales part and this Land Academy thing, how we promote ourselves or not promote ourselves or what we do, this is all extremely new, so I’m in a way identifying because we’re going through that, identifying with people that are doing their first real estate deal. I’m learning a lot about that every day.
Jill DeWit: Well, and a lot of these avenues are still new also because look at over the past few years, you couldn’t, in the beginning of Facebook, there were no ads on Facebook. Forget it. You can do ads for all kinds of things and some of the websites that are popping up that you can do and other ways to buy property and things that have changed to sell a property-
Jack Butala: I got a Facebook username less than a year ago and it’s 2016.
Jill DeWit: It’s amazing what has changed, and just from one of the companies.
Jack Butala: Yeah, that was not, like people my age, a lot of them was-
Jill DeWit: That was all just-
Jack Butala: Yeah. It wasn’t for me. It was for the other kids.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, and that’s what you, I think for people, you have to accept it’s forever going to be changing. It’s going to forever be changing and this is one of the reasons too why we are also successful is because you know what? I actually have a team of a couple hundred. It’s not just my in-house team. All of our member-base, every last single person’s success plan is part of my team. You know what? There’s one person out there that is going to come to me tomorrow and say, “Did you know I just realized you can sell property on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and this is the way to do it.” I’m going to go like, “Fantastic.” If it costs a lot of money, who cares? We’re all going to do it as a group and we’re going to figure this out.
Jack Butala: Exactly. Well-said.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: We learn a lot from our members.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Thank you.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy an undervalued property.
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