You Won’t Believe the Acquisition Data that is Available (CFFL 0277)
You Won’t Believe the Acquisition Data that is Available
Jack Butala: You Won’t Believe the Acquisition Data that is Available. 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 and Jill DeWitt.
Jill DeWitt: Hey there.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about how you won’t believe the acquisition data that’s out there and available. You can’t believe how much data is out there about people who own real estate. It’s staggering. If you’re new at this, it’s shocking what you could go to the assessor and find out.
Great show today Jill. Let’s take a question posted by one of our members and success plant dot-comer free online community.
Jill DeWitt: Okay, Chip asks, “Hi everyone. In a previous life I sold retail land lots and acreage. The company I worked for would subdivide large parcels and then we would sell them. Part of their value added benefit, was all the properties sold included a boundary survey. In your experience, are you often buying land that has a survey available? If not, are you providing a survey to the end buyer? If so, what is the average cost to have it surveyed? I’m thinking, that not providing a boundary survey may not be an issue because we’re selling at such a great price. If the end buyer wants one, maybe they could purchase one on their own with the money that they saved by purchasing at a discount from me. On the other hand, I can see that this may be a good thing to offer with the property at the time of purchase. Thanks in advance for your feedback.”
Jack Butala: Chip, this is a fantastic question and you’re all ears. I can tell with the experience that you have and the type of questions that you’re asking, that you’re going to do great at this. The answer is yes, and yes and yes. I have purchased property that has been surveyed. I have sold it unsurveyed and I’ve actually completed surveys at the request of a buyer. In the end, a survey ends up being, in our product type, a way to differentiate yourself or that property from all the other stuff out there. Just like a title policy. Every time we do a title policy transaction, we attach it to the posting on the internet, and it separates us from maybe any other properties that people might be looking at. Yeah, surveys are great.
You know another thing that doesn’t cost anything and it only takes a few extra minutes is, getting the corner points on Google, getting a GPS corner points on Google Earth pro, which is real simple if you know what you’re doing. It just takes a few extra minutes, because you have to center point anyway. From an information standpoint, this is how I steer people who bring up the survey topic just like this. How about I go do corner points and so you can hold your GPS and stand on a corner if you’d like. That effectively, is a survey in my opinion.
You don’t hear of young bringing up surveys too much anymore. You hear that from older guys like me, and maybe you should, I don’t know.
Jill DeWitt: That’s a good point. You know what you’re right, a lot of people don’t even know what that is.
Jack Butala: You know prior, maybe prior …
Jill DeWitt: That’s true.
Jack Butala: 10 or 15 years ago, before Google Earth I’ll say and before GIS certainly, now a little bit, maybe 20 years ago. This is the only way you could find a property. You weren’t holding something in your hand, going out there to figure it out. Right pilot?
Jill DeWitt: Right.
Jack Butala: I mean, the way you fly an airplane now is completely different.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my gosh yes. That’s very true. There’s lots of things that and you have to learn from the basics going up. Can you imagine if you walked in and learned nothing but a big jet and you know that’s all you knew, you would know what went into it. You know what, like our cars, let’s think about this. The car I get in, it just does it automatically. I don’t know what goes on behind it and the computer that’s involved there. I don’t know the back stuff, so it’s an interesting point to bring up.
Jack Butala: Again, if you can do that and save a few minutes, I think it’s great. For little tiny properties it doesn’t matter.
Jill DeWitt: You know …
Jack Butala: Go ahead.
Jill DeWitt: What I put in there with Chip is that, because I answered the question in success plant 2, and I told him where to listen here. I am a fan of the first one, which is, and I have done this. Look, if you really want it surveyed you can go do that, and usually it’s not even $1000.
Jack Butala: No, yeah.
Jill DeWitt: From what my experience has been.
Jack Butala: Especially in the rural area.
Jill DeWitt: I’ll tell them a couple hundred bucks, let’s just say. Now, I can charge you a 1000 because I’m going to put some time in here, and I’ll go get it surveyed and have it all staked for you if you want, or we can save that money and I can pass that on to you like Chip came up with. Most of the time my buyers are gone. It’s like, I really can only think of 1 time in the last 5 years that I think it’s even come up. I don’t even know if they did, but they were like, “You know what? You’re right. We’ll just pay for it if we want it and go have it out there and do it ourselves. We’ll take that savings and then … Even do it down the road if we want to,” kind of thing.
Jack Butala: I always look at surveys for urban property where you’re pouring concrete, or you want to check an easement, or there’s real serious stuff going on. You see those guys with their instruments in the middle of the street, you think they’re going to get run over. That’s a survey, in case you don’t know. I don’t ever look at it, and never have looked at it as going out in rural property and looking for orange stakes in the ground, which get blown away and rained on and the whole thing. They’re not there for very long.
Jill DeWitt: You know what? You’re right. Even if they spray stuff in the dirt, how long is that going to last? Yeah we have a whole boundary, mark the whole thing out that’s like, that’s 2 storms and it’s gone, you’re right. You know what that’s a good point. If I surveyed it … You know its 3 months ago. That’s good.
Jack Butala: Jill and I buy and sell a lot of property in Northern Arizona, and for quite some time, this is sort of on the topic but not really. For quite some time, somebody with a survey up there was doing section markers. It’s a big piece of concrete stamped with a section number in it. You know, the mix and balance township branch section.
Jill DeWitt: Who was doing that?
Jack Butala: I don’t know, but if you go there’s one specific subdivision where we have a lot of property right now, Jill. We’re buying and selling it actively. They have surveyed markers that are concrete, so there’s pros and cons to that. The pros are, “Hey it’s never going to go away,” and the con is you don’t want to take an ATV around there too much because you’re going to knock into 1 of these things and seriously some of them stick like a [re-bird 00:06:17] and all kind of stuff. It’s dangerous.
Jill DeWitt: That’s true. You can spin it however you want.
Jack Butala: Yeah. I say that because I’ve run into those things, that’s why.
Jill DeWitt: Tell us about that. What happened there Jack?
Jack Butala: You know if you take a four-runner and run into something or if it gets so too far sideways, there are all kind of alarms go of. I ask people who own SUVs if they have ever set the alarms off and most of them say, look at me like, “Okay, well then this is done. You’re crazy.”
Jill DeWitt: Really?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: I didn’t know that, happens in an airplane gets … You have a stall warning. You have a trucks going to flip over stall warning. That’s what you have. I didn’t know that.
Jack Butala: I wonder if like an F150 has got that, that’s a vehicle that probably really needs it the most.
Jill DeWitt: I’m really curious. My car doesn’t have it, good luck trying to flip my car. My car is heavy and low, I don’t think it’s … Not necessary, that’s hilarious. That’s cool.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic, you wouldn’t believe the acquisition data that is available. This is right up my ally, I love talking about data and acquisitions and stuff. Jill, you are into this 5, 6 years now, like when you started, did you have any idea …
Jill DeWitt: 5 or 6 years? It’s more than that, Jack.
Jack Butala: Is it?
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh.
Jill DeWitt: That’s hilarious.
Jack Butala: 8 years then, I don’t know.
Jill DeWitt: Something like that.
Jack Butala: When you started, were you shocked at the amount of data that’s available, that gets collected for every property that’s out there, like they access your data?
Jill DeWitt: Yes and I’m still because we are adding new products all the time and we are adding a product now that basically, it’s for title companies that we get to use. Seeing the data, I’m constantly surprised and I think too Jack because I keep adding stuff. As they keep adding it, we are going to access it because we are going to have it. It’s amazing to me, it really is and it’s a little bit scary. Sometimes when I’m talking to somebody who is not in our world, you have to be careful saying, “You know, I can pull up right now exactly what you paid, where you financed it, your mothers maiden name,” It’s not like that much, but you’ll be surprised how much I can tell of your home right now and your situation, it’s a little bit spooky.
Jack Butala: Here’s an example, every single property … This is from sky scrappers to down to like little rural properties, way rural. They obviously have the owners name and address sometimes the email and number, this is the assessor that’s collecting data now. Why do they need all these stuff because then you do assess the value of the property the best they can so they can tax it. They don’t want to tax a property that’s pretty rural for a ton of money and they don’t want charge too little in an urban area, like for a hospital or something. They need to collect a lot of data so there’s all kinds of data on the square footage, the structures that might be there, the assess value, the improvements you know the structure, the assess value of the land, the last sale date, they type of mortgage that it has, where the lien is, where the mortgage is, how much value that it is and on and on. You can’t imagine, so why do we care?
Well, here is why we care. If you take a real hard look at all that data and what it means and really get creative about it, you can really see who might want to sell their property and then you send them an offer. We don’t send offers to every single … You would go broke over night, every single property out there. When you look at our [sort 00:09:51] criteria is what I call it, our data scrubbing, you need a huge data set like that to really make some logical … We’ve made a career out of it for 20 years, almost 20 years. It’s nothing even close to gambling any longer about who might want want to sell their property, you can really tell.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: There is huge flags in there about, “Hey, I might want to sell it.” That’s the whole key to this. You know when somebody says, “What’s the secret to real estate? All these people that know about real estate, they are driving these fast cars, they live in these big houses. What is it with you guys? You have some time to burn, to do a daily show.”
Jill DeWitt: You are right.
Jack Butala: That’s the whole key. The key is data, understanding data.
Jill DeWitt: Well and not just that, having the right current data. Let’s say that too, we are not talking an old list or something like that, it’s current, real time, right now, today that lets us send really good, well thought out and that’s you Jack, offers to the right people.
Jack Butala: That’s right. It’s almost like a … Everybody wants to be on a winning side of everything, right? Everyone does, it’s almost like cheating. After you get a bunch of experience, you pull a data and especially with the way that how we do it and our members do it. Nobody taught me this, I just figured it out by failing 500 times, probably more. If you are into that kind of thing, this is the thing for you.
Jill DeWitt: It’s funny but you are right. For me, the whole big thing about this show is, people don’t realize what’s available.
Jack Butala: Yes.
Jill DeWitt: I think that’s the big picture.
Jack Butala: That’s why I wanted to do this show [crosstalk 00:11:36].
Jill DeWitt: We joked about it a couple of months ago, me in the …. Running into those guys in the elevator at the library. They had no idea this is available.
Jack Butala: Tell us that story again.
Jill DeWitt: These 2 guys were having a conversation and it sounded like they were talking about driving around, some people call it driving for dollars. They didn’t have a name for it, but it was driving around trying to find properties. They are obviously in real estate and looking for properties that seemed to be like they might be something you can pick up cheap based on what it looks like. I’m sitting there going, “Why are you guys driving around picking out 4 properties a week or however long, that’s time you just spend on this and just use the data to help you and send offers to people.
They just looked at me sideways and the reason I brought it up is, 1 guy said, “Yeah, I have this girl …” He’s like, “How did you find whatever property?” This guy says, “Well, there is a girl in my office and she had some data.”
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh. Oh, no.
Jill DeWitt: I’m like, “Bingo,” I’m like, “All right.” The guy is obviously thinking along the right path but he is not following through. He doesn’t realize, if you keep on going with this and just get the data you will have all the answers. It was funny because I made a comment and they just looked at me like I was talking in another language, it didn’t even make sense to them.
Jack Butala: No and I know why, because I started out the same way. How old were they? Were they younger?
Jill DeWitt: That’s a good question, almost like 30s, not younger.
Jack Butala: That’s about right.
Jill DeWitt: Not younger than me, just kidding, 30s. Hey, let me have that, would you?
Jack Butala: Absolutely.
Jill DeWitt: Listen Jack, this is my show too. Let me have my little time here to pretend [crosstalk 00:13:14]. Okay, thank you. Why is this so hard for the whole general real estate population to accept? This is my argument.
Jack Butala: I wonder why.
Jill DeWitt: Seriously, why is every single person thinking that we need to hire a realtor and drive around all day. I don’t get it.
Jack Butala: I think you and I have a genuine interest in this topic, I do, with data and real estate and the whole thing and I love it, so we dig deeper, we find out what’s going on really. The fact is, I just don’t … Unless you are in this business or you really want to … You are like a chronic money saver, like a money, you know what I mean. I don’t really dig in to why my combustion engine in my car works as well as it does and try to bypass that in any way so we are just interested in it.
Jill DeWitt: That’s true.
Jack Butala: That leads me to the technical 2. This is the technical 2, 2 minutes of property investment advice from our 15 year, 15000 deal experience. If you have a pen or pencil, write this down. You are not looking for a great piece of real estate, you are looking for a great situation. What the heck? People focus on the real estate, like these elevator guys, they think if the roofs fall in, they are going to get a better deal. Maybe that’s true, but why wouldn’t you just send every single person an offer and a really well educated offer in the area and let them come to you.
That’s a situation, there is triggers in situations. The situation is what you are looking for not that actual piece of real estate. We’ll get to the real estate later. You want to find a motivated seller who’s just done for whatever reason, they are moving on, they don’t care about getting top dollar, they want to get out, they want a check. Check and then once they say, “[X 00:15:14] I do, I do I want a check,” then check the real estate and see if it works for you.
If you have a question or you want to be on this show call 800-725-8816. Jill inspire us.
Jill DeWitt: Make a decision an go with it, don’t waffle and be committed. How many of us make a decision and do it half A asterisk number symbol.
Jack Butala: I think we can say ass on this show, don’t you [crosstalk 00:15:49].
Jill DeWitt: I don’t know, can we do that? I’m just being politically correct just in case, your children are in the car right now. There might be children in the car.
Jack Butala: He said ass.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my gosh.
Jack Butala: Oh my God, tell him mum.
Jill DeWitt: Remember the time we were out and 1 of the children and they were younger. We were at a restaurant and they had a big ass burger and they pointed to it.
Jack Butala: They loved that.
Jill DeWitt: Do you remember that? They said …
Jack Butala: It was on the menu, big ass burger.
Jill DeWitt: They said, “Can I say that?” I said, “Yes,” and they were so excited to say, “I’m having a big ass burger.” It was really funny, anyway.
Jack Butala: You can say big ass when referring to a burger any time but not your mum’s [crosstalk 00:16:24].
Jill DeWitt: Not your mum …
Jack Butala: Not your mother.
Jill DeWitt: Not you sister, not your girlfriend and not your wife.
Jack Butala: None of that stuff.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my goodness, do not do that. If you make a decision, do not insult your girlfriend go with it, don’t waffle and be committed.
Jack Butala: Hey big ass, burger.
Jill DeWitt: Oh my gosh, syndrome.
Jack Butala: Tourette’s. Make a decision and stick with it.
Jill DeWitt: Yeah.
Jack Butala: That’s good advice there.
Jill DeWitt: Come on people, just do it. I mean, come on, I’m going to do it for 2 months and test it out. Why? You are never going to get anywhere.
Jack Butala: We are your test.
Jill DeWitt: We are your test. Just do it. If you are going to do it, do it. Jack and I, we do this everyday and we are doing it right now. We made a decision to put together Land Academy and we went with it and we never looked back. We did not waffle and we are committed. We could have 16 times said, “Oh no there is … Gosh these customers need this,” or “Gosh this isn’t going in the way I planned or something. It’s just too much.” We could have done that a 1000 times by now and we didn’t, we are committed. Thank you.
Jack Butala: Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information that’s me.
Jill DeWitt: Inspiration, that’s me.
Jack Butala: To get just about anything you want.
Jill DeWitt: We use it everyday, to buy a property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. You know some of the simplest stuff sometimes makes the most sense. We all know we are supposed to exercise every morning, right?
Jill DeWitt: True.
Jack Butala: No one can debate that. You can debate whether running is better than swimming and all that, it doesn’t matter, We all say, we all know, we feel better when we do it and it’s just better, it’s better but we don’t … Not all of us do it.
Jill DeWitt: I don’t know why.
Jack Butala: We all know that learning how to manipulate data and sending offers to people is a way to make a bajillion dollars and to make a good living, helps with people out and on and on. It can lead to stuff like Land Academy, if you want to, like we let it but I don’t know. I think there’s a just do it in that. If you just did it you could find out either way, pretty quickly.
Jill DeWitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree. [crosstalk 00:18:45]
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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