Buying Cheap Land is Getting Easier Due to Tech (CFFL 0290)
Buying Cheap Land is Getting Easier Due to Tech
Jack Butala: Buying Cheap Land is Getting Easier Due to Tech. 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 buying cheap land, and it’s actually getting easier as technology is more prevalent, but what isn’t? Who doesn’t benefit from technology? I’m not sure. It’s much, much easier to buy property these days than it was ten or fifteen years ago. Before we get into it though, let’s hear some funny stuff from Jill.
Jill DeWit: All right, this is so good. This is hilarious. Two days ago I’m reaching out to … I like to do this sometimes, we have people that do this, but I came along and I was making some out calls for people that had reached out and expressed some interest, good interest in some of our properties. I thought it would be kind of fun to follow up with some people and see if they’re really going to make an offer or just see what questions they have. We’re really good about putting everything in the posting, but still, people seem to want to talk sometimes. Anyway, I pick up the phone and I call. It’s like a Pennsylvania number, something like that. Anyway, the phone’s ringing, this guy answer the phone and he says, “I don’t think you want me.” I’m like, “Hi. My name is Jill. I am from LandStay and I’m following up on a call.” He’s like, “Oh my goodness.”
Jack Butala: No reason to argue with this one. That’s awesome.
Jill DeWit: Oh totally. He’s like, “I thought you were somebody else. They’ve actually called me back three times now and I assumed it them calling again.” I said, “Totally got that.” It was so funny, he goes, “You know, I’m just finishing up something right now. Can you can call me in five minutes?” I said, “Sure,” so I waited and I called him back, and poor guy, I’m sure he just had to compose himself and go, “Oh I can’t believe I just did that.” I called him back after that and we just had a good laugh. It was so funny.
Jack Butala: Did he ask you on a date?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: Obviously he was done with that one.
Jill DeWit: Yeah right. He’s done with that relationship. It was so funny, but the guy was so embarrassed. I would have liked to make him more of a joke, but it’s all good. You know, we’ve had those … Everybody’s had those little situations. I’ve never answered the phone like that but, it was just so darn funny. It was cute. Then I … Actually I ended up email … He’s in our world now. I emailed him back some information about it and he replied and-
Jack Butala: He’s never going to forget that.
Jill DeWit: – said thank you again. Oh no. He’ll never forget this.
Jack Butala: Neither will I.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: What’s his first name?
Jill DeWit: I don’t remember.
Jack Butala: If he becomes a member, I’m going to call him out on the weekly call, on the call out.
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh.
Jack Butala: Oh it was for land.
Jill DeWit: It was for land.
Jack Butala: Oh okay.
Jill DeWit: Well you know what’s funny about that, and this is what happens often. As we’re talking, and I’m talking about this property for sale, and he’s asking about other property for sale and I said, “Well you know, I happen to know a lot of people by the way with a lot of property for sale, so here are,” I directed him where to go because I’m like, in our world, with our people, we all advertise. Just because he may not like my property in that same county, one of our members or people will have something that might work great for him. What goes around comes around. We all help each other and market stuff together and do that together. I was directing him to a lot of our group properties. Anyway, then he started asking about it so he might be in our world at some point. It’s kind of funny how that goes.
Jack Butala: He probably listens to the show too.
Jill DeWit: Maybe now. It was so funny.
Jack Butala: Hey let’s take a question, posted by one of our members on successplant.com, our free online community.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Kathleen asks, “I seem to recall that this question may have been answered but I can’t find it again,” so she said, “If an offer price is re-negotiated with a seller, should you send them out a revised purchase agreement,” I like this, “reflecting the newly agreed upon price-”
Jack Butala: That’s a good question.
Jill DeWit: “-with the new deed to the mobile notary for signing or no?”
Jack Butala: That’s a preference situation. It’s a personal preference. Is it necessary to do a purchase agreement?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: To do a transaction? No. Let’s talk about a couple of other things that are completely unnecessary. Do you need a license to buy and sell property?
Jill DeWit: Nope.
Jack Butala: I get this question all the time. No. Do you need a purchase agreement? No. Sometimes when you close through escrow there’s no purchase agreement at all, and they’ll do one, but the title company will do one. They charge you for it.
Jill DeWit: Do I have to close through escrow?
Jack Butala: No, and on and on and on. Do I need a real estate agent to buy a house? You know somebody did a poll on this, and 60% of the people said yes.
Jill DeWit: They didn’t even know.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: They didn’t know what FSBO means?
Jack Butala: You know, we have a show-
Jill DeWit: I’m sure there’s a lot of people that don’t know what that is
Jack Butala: -We have a show coming up called … You know what really matters? Title agents do 95% of the work in my opinion. The best people we’ve ever had working for us with few exceptions, are former title people. I can’t say enough good things about them.
Jill DeWit: You can be your own title agent, which is what Jack and I do.
Jack Butala: Exactly. No Kathleen, it’s up to you. What do you do Jill?
Jill DeWit: You know what Kathleen? It depends on the person. If we re-negotiated and we’re all good, we’ve already had enough conversations that we’re comfortable with each other, I wouldn’t. It’s really up to that person. If it would make them feel better, that you send a new thing to them, but I wouldn’t even send it with a notary. I would email it to them. That’s usually what I do. Ours are signed, scanned, emailed and that’s how we do it. It’s not that big of a deal.
Jack Butala: You know, if you’re listening to the show … I should have have prefaced this, what she’s asking is, our whole business model and what we all do here as a group, we send purchase agreements in the mail, with a signature block that says, hey I will buy your property for X. If that’s okay with you, please sign it and send it back, or fax it back, or email it back, or whatever. What she’s saying is, well yeah, somebody called me back, they do want to sell a property but for a different price. Do I need to re-do the purchase agreement, and I say no.
Jill DeWit: Right. Only if they ask, I think if they really want it.
Jack Butala: Yeah. That’s actually the only time I ever do a PA, purchase agreement, PA, is when they ask.
Jill DeWit: When they ask. Good question.
Jack Butala: If you have a question or you want to be on the show, email us at, or log in to Success Plant and reach out to us. We’ll make sure it happens. It’ll be fun.
Jill DeWit: Perfect.
Jack Butala: At least we’ll ask your question on the show if you’d like us to.
Jill DeWit: Cool.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic is buying cheap land is getting way easier because of technology, not harder. Like everything I think.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, we talked about that on the show yesterday, which I love. I mean, the differences from when you started and now, with what’s available, mapping … Could you literally … Here’s the thing Jack, I’m sure you couldn’t even imagine. You could literally run this business from your cell phone.
Jack Butala: Yeah, oh yeah. Especially like a-
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that funny?
Jack Butala: – Oh yeah, and I bet people do. There’s some people that don’t have a computer. Especially these young kids. They just do everything on their phone.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. I can send stuff to be printed other places and all that good stuff.
Jack Butala: Especially if there’s an app, whatever you’re working on, Facebook comes to mind because I think there’s some stuff that in the Facebook app, especially with analytics and stuff is better and easier on the phone with that app than it is on the computer. It’s also very different because you have a Mac and a real computer.
Jill DeWit: Jack.
Jack Butala: It’s very different. The applications for those two operating systems can be very different.
Jill DeWit: Silly.
Jack Butala: One is more-
Jill DeWit: I have a Mac and I have a grown up computer. Oh that’s nice. Oh my goodness. That is hilarious. Yes, some of the social media things by the way, they don’t even function, like, is it Instagram? You have to do it from your phone. You can send stuff to it, but you have to post it from your phone. It’s only mobile.
Jack Butala: It’s Instagram. Instagram does not have a Windows 10 application.
Jill DeWit: It’s a pain.
Jack Butala: I think that’s kind of cool if you can get away with stuff like that.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Jack Butala: Kidding aside now, land and houses and real estate, all of it, I’ll tell you what’s massively changed over the last few years, is the mapping technology. We talked about this yesterday, but man does it save time to not have to go look at an asset.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Even the houses we buy, we don’t go look at them. The person who’s going to buy them from us, they go sign … We don’t need to see it. I don’t care what it looks like. I’m going to sell it to person X. You go see it, and you’re going to buy from us. There’s massive time-saving and the stuff you can do online, through research, it’s technically called due diligence, is amazing.
Jill DeWit: I love what people in our world are using our data, but they’re using like an intersection. It’s interesting that I could put a, basically a pin drop if I … Maybe I’m a realtor and want to get listings or whatever it is. I want to get all the owners in this intersection within one mile of this, whatever it is. You really have that. You can do a pin drop and draw a circle around it now, and then just upload all the owners in that one mile radius, and then, by the way, before I do that, I can sit and filter out, I don’t want anyone with a mortgage over this percent. I want only homes this size.
Jack Butala: Yeah. It’s amazing.
Jill DeWit: I want lots this size, and I want the values between X and Y. Like what you just said, I can get that detailed about it, and that’s why it’s getting so much easier for us.
Jack Butala: We know … Think about this just for a philosophical point. We owns who owns 99% of the properties in this country and –
Jill DeWit: Including San Juan.
Jack Butala: – how to get a hold of them. That’s amazing. Think about that from a selling a house standpoint. No one does this and I don’t know why. We do, we do it. I’m doing a program, a full education program and I’m going to tell all about how we do it, but between-
Jill DeWit: Jack tells all.
Jack Butala: -Between 40 and 60% of people who buy houses, live within a one mile radius of the actual asset. It goes like this, oh my sister wanted to move here. Maybe we should go look at the house, and then she buys it. If we know that statistic and we know everybody, why not sell the house to somebody right there?
Jill DeWit: Well, in our world-
Jack Butala: It’s so silly. Especially if it’s under-priced.
Jill DeWit: -The people that do, oh shoot, you know your five rental homes will feed a family for generations, that article?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Which I love that, that you wrote awhile back. That was a great article. Yeah, it’s the people that do more of that, they rent homes out, have them one area. Talk about making it easy. They’re perfect candidates.
Jack Butala: Oh I didn’t think of that.
Jill DeWit: Well I’m thinking of it because you and I are actually looking at assets and we have a little Scottsdale bubble that we do some rental stuff, and I keep an eye on it.
Jack Butala: Your RBO.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. I’m trying to think-
Jack Butala: What do you think of that? What do you think, in the next several years, that’s going to make this even easier? I have a few ideas.
Jill DeWit: I have one that we’re planning on.
Jack Butala: Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Can I share it?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: We’re planning this, an engineering platform where you can pop in an address or just a city-
Jack Butala: City or county.
Jill DeWit: -State, APN.
Jack Butala: State, county and APN. Accesors parcel number
Jill DeWit: Accesors parcel number, and it’ll just do it all for you.
Jack Butala: It spits out the post.
Jill DeWit: GPS.
Jack Butala: Maps.
Jill DeWit: It’ll spit out maps, plot map-
Jack Butala: All the information sorted and everything.
Jill DeWit: – photos. I mean-
Jack Butala: It pulls data from nine or ten places on the internet and saves a ridiculous amount of time. It’s getting easier.
Jill DeWit: Right now, we have to go to several places and pull it just to do our little due diligence, which is not bad.
Jack Butala: What it allows you to do, is to be a deal maker. That’s what we all want to do. We don’t want to push paper and do research. We want to do deals.
Jill DeWit: You could review deals as fast as you want that way. That’s the greatest thing. Look it up, yes, no, no, yes.
Jack Butala: This is why we started Land Academy because to help people do deals, and to provide them with the back office tools and all that stuff, the research tools and everything.
Jill DeWit: Then we do deals with them too, so that’s another little benefit.
Jack Butala: Yeah, exactly.
Jill DeWit: We all get to do some good deals.
Jack Butala: 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 everyday to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate technology ambition. You got calls scheduled today with people?
Jill DeWit: I do.
Jack Butala: Are they acquisition calls to buy property?
Jill DeWit: My calls today that I have going on?
Jack Butala: I have a couple of calls scheduled too later. I can’t wait. They’re deal review calls.
Jill DeWit: Actually my calls are people that are asking about, learning how to do this.
Jack Butala: Oh, they want to be members, or they’re thinking about it or something?
Jill DeWit: Thinking about it. They’re like-
Jack Butala: How does that go?
Jill DeWit: Which is the normal thing. Once people get ahold of …wait wait wait, it’s like a backup.
Jack Butala: What do they ask?
Jill DeWit: How the heck do you buy it this cheap? That’s a lot of it. THey’re like, “Well first,” you know what a lot of it is? They just don’t get it. They’re like, “Are you really telling me?” I’m like “Yeah, I’m really telling you the truth. I know it’s mind-boggling. I’ve had this conversation with so many people before and they test it, and they go oh yeah, you are right. I’m like. Yeah”
Jack Butala: You know in that free eBook, that whole Craigslist thing, I say before you ever start in your RAI career … You know that Craigslist exercise?
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: You should maybe … Did they already read the eBook or not? Usually when you talk to them?
Jill DeWit: Half and half, I’d say. I think, honestly I think a lot of people that I get to talk to in this situation, they’ve been following us a little bit and now they’re getting serious and that’s why they want to talk to me. They’re not just scheduling a conversation with me just to shoot the breeze. They’re really having-
Jack Butala: You had to work that in. Nineteen people just scheduled a call with her. I didn’t know I could talk to Jill.
Jill DeWit: They have good, well thought out questions. This is hilarious. That’s not where I was going with this. Now watch. This is going to be funny. Anyway, yeah in case you were wondering, if you are thinking about doing this, this is true. Right now, I have time to do this. If you schedule a call with me, you will get a call from me. It’s not my team, it’s me. There you go.
Jack Butala: Me too, but you got to pay and it’s [inaudible 00:15:27].
Jill DeWit: Yeah, mine are free. What’s up with that?
Jack Butala: We should change that.
Jill DeWit: We need to change that.
Jack Butala: You know what that is?
Jill DeWit: Well I do some consulting stuff too. I don’t call this consulting because it’s like, it’s some skip along the top questions.
Jack Butala: I’m going to get emails about that.
Jill DeWit: Here we go. Jill’s free.
Jack Butala: It’s not a gender thing.
Jill DeWit: Just kidding. Ha ha.
Jack Butala: Or is it? No it’s not. I’m going to get hit. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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