Why Data from Database is Better Than a List (CFFL 317)
Why Data from Database is Better Than a List
Jack Butala: Why Data from Database is Better Than a List. 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: Hello.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about why data right from a database is better than a list. Before we get into it, first Jill let’s take a question posted by one of our members on Land Academy’s online support community.
Jill DeWit: Cool, all right. Luke asks, “I sold my second property on terms today and the buyer wanted the clause I had in the contract that disallowed them from altering the property to be taken out of the contract. Do you guys allow buyers to make alterations to properties that you sell on terms?”
Jack Butala: Yes, and here’s the direct answer to the question, yes we do, and we encourage it. What is the worst thing that can happen to you as a seller, selling on terms? If somebody makes improvements to the property, this is vacant land now and they build a house on it, or whatever but they don’t finish …
Jill DeWit: Put a well.
Jack Butala: Yeah, put a well is a great example. They don’t finish the contract out, right? They just make five years of payments and they say you know what, I’m done with this, thanks, I’ll see you.
Jill DeWit: Didn’t work out.
Jack Butala: You get to collect all the … You keep the improvements on the property.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, they’re not going to go pull the well out.
Jack Butala: But I think there’s … Right, or burn the house down … But, maybe they would though. I think the root of the question, I think what Luke is really asking is, what if the improvements are not really improvements? What if they dump a bunch of sludge on there? What if they do some really awful stuff to the property and you don’t know, you’re not even in the same state, right?
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: There’s a second clause, and I spent time on our contract, a tremendous amount of time saying … writing the clause, “You can’t use it for illegal uses, you can’t dump anything on there, you can’t make it worse than it is.” Want to make it better … Really the contract says a legal version of this. Want to make the property better, knock yourself out. If you’re going to make the property, in any way, worse than what it is …
Jill DeWit: A toxic waste land … No.
Jack Butala: Then, no. I think that’s really the root of this question. Don’t you?
Jill DeWit: Yes. You got to just have a Breaking Bad. This all goes …
Jack Butala: I know, I was thinking the same thing.
Jill DeWit: You know what, it all comes back to Breaking Bad with you Jack.
Jack Butala: Well, you said it.
Jill DeWit: I know, but I just … Gee, I’m just stating the obvious.
Jack Butala: I’m just fascinated. You know why? Because it’s such a good business model.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: There’s parents all over are turning the show off right now.
Jill DeWit: It’s hilarious. You know what’s funny about that is that some of our … Some people in our world are buying and selling vacant properties in states that allow marijuana. This whole marijuana … It’s kind of died down now but it was a big topic in the beginning when it was legalized in some of these areas. It was just kind of funny how the marijuana topic kept coming up, so it makes you think of that too. It’s funny.
Jack Butala: We have a member who has a property in California that allows that. You have to go obviously through the proper channels, but, and he specifically marketed it to those people and they bought it.
Jill DeWit: Could be your business model if you want.
Jack Butala: I mean for way, way more than half of what he purchased it, so it was … That’s not crazy. I don’t care what you think about that stuff. I don’t have any opinion about it. I honestly don’t, but you would sell it to a soybean farmer.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, like you said, there are legal ways to do it. Do it … That’s how we roll. Let’s all be upfront and legal and do things the right way. Knock yourselves out, have fun.
Jack Butala: Right. Hey, if you have a question, or if you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on Land Academy’s online community. Today’s topic is why data from a database is better than a list. I love this stuff. I love data. This is the meat of the show. Jill, please tell us your opinion about where to get data.
Jill DeWit: Every time you start anything with “Give me your opinion” is like … That means I have one. I often don’t … You know, I try to be neutral on a lot of things, but yes there are a few topics that I get very excited about. One of them is, don’t waste your money on a stupid list. That really does make me mad. You’re right.
My opinion is, if you’re buying a three year old list from someone online, it’s just a bunch of names and addresses of owners and properties years ago, I got some other things I want to sell you.
Jack Butala: There’s exactly three places that you can get a list of property owners. Jill just referred to the one of the most common. You get it from a list reseller. It might … Would you eat food that you don’t know what’s in it?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: Would you ever do that?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: You would never do that. So, why would you ever use a list to send out in the mail. To send properties. This could be 50 years old, could be complete fiction.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: It could be … Yeah, does it cost 25 bucks? Okay cool, you’re only going to spend about 50 getting the data the exact right way.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Number 1 is a list. Number 2 is go call the county. Each state, I think it might even be Federal, there’s a statute that says property ownership has to be public knowledge. A lot of states, they take it even a step further. They say yeah, for 50 bucks we’ll send you a whole list. It’s called a tax roll. We’ll send you the list of everybody who owns property in the whole county, regardless if it’s an office building, or a trailer park, or a house, or a piece of vacant land. That’s exactly what a lot of them send you. With, and, nothing else.
Jill DeWit: Some of them, I’ve heard anywhere from zero to $50.00 to a couple hundred dollars. I want to put that out there too, it’s not $50.00 across the board. Don’t be surprised if you call ABC county and they charge $300.00, because they could.
Jack Butala: In exact, you don’t know what you’re going to get, same thing. You might just get a list, a name, a first name and a last name, an address where to send the tax bill, and an address for the property or an assessors parcel number and that’s it. You know what? That’s crappy data. Right from the source, but it’s bad data.
Jill DeWit: Right, you don’t have everything you need.
Jack Butala: The third place that you can get list, and it’s the best way is a professional real estate data company like us. Where, all the data is aggregated into a single format regardless of the county that it comes from and all the data is there. Assessed value, really the brainy, geeky stuff that’s involved in scrubbing down a list and doing it right. When we say we extend offers to everybody, we don’t send it to everybody. We send it in a very logical manner that’s according to our price and how we break it down. That’s a topic for a different show. How we scrub data is a topic for the next show even. For tomorrow’s show.
Those are the three places you can get data. Number 1, a list on the internet from China. Number 2, the actual county itself, substandard data. Number 3, leave it to the pros like us. A list aggregator. It doesn’t have to be us. A list aggregator that is managing the quality of the data and it’s age.
Jill DeWit: I was … That made me think, I need to make sure that’s available on our website too. People don’t believe the access of what we have from our database. We can get down to, you just mentioned assessed value. We’ve got the land assessed value and the improved assessed value. Acreage down to perfection. What the taxes are. Want to know what school district it’s in? Think about for homes. I can tell you the school districts if you want to get that picky. We can get it down to an intersection if you want to get that picky. I can do all 3 bedroom, 2 bath homes if you want to get that picky. We can even do with or without a pool and north facing, south facing, dream it up. I’m talking, you don’t have that from a list.
Jack Butala: You can draw a subdivision. You can draw a map.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, and say I only want what’s in this box. All the 3 bedroom, 2 bath facing north and whatever in this box. It’s that detailed.
Jack Butala: You nailed it. Dream it up. Let’s say you are one of those crazy back tax people, which we say every other sentence is, please don’t just concentrate on that. But, if you are, you pull the data that … If that’s important to you then take a … Or, let’s say high taxes are important to you. High taxes are an indicator to me that property’s pretty valuable. Everybody sees data a little bit differently but no one is going to learn anything if you don’t have all the data in front of you to make those choices as you go.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: You learn, every mailer we send out, I learn a little more. Like, whoa, maybe we can use this data for something.
Jill DeWit: Every time I go in there, right. That’s why I was wanting to pull that list up, made me think right now. Every time I look at that list I’m like, oh wow I can’t even look at that. Even mortgage information, too.
Jack Butala: And, mortgage value.
Jill DeWit: That’s good for a lot of people in our world that … There’s people that use our data for other things. Because they want to know who the lenders are, what the mortgage reach is left on, the percentage of the mortgage and all kinds of good stuff. I don’t even know what they all use it for, but it’s all right there.
Jack Butala: One guy, he’s a storm chaser with this guy. He’s a contractor and when there’s a hail storm and stuff he uses the mapping function and mirrors the path of the storm. He’s a contractor. We don’t talk about the crazy uses of this data. Maybe we should more often.
A database is always better than a list. It’s always better because you’re pulling it from the exact source. It’s not in real time, it is copied in but you can see how old it is. You don’t want to just get a list and trust it. You don’t want to just trust the food that you eat without kind of really checking to see how old it is, whether it’s in there … What’s really in there and so on.
Jill DeWit: My other point is, I’ve talked to people who think they’re doing it because they’re saving money. When we really sit and talk about the extra postage that was sent, and this that was wrong and that was wrong and the time that was wasted. The effort they had to put in, the hours they had to put in. The inaccuracy of the data and the money wasted on the postage. You just sit and write it down on a yellow pad. You kind of go, “Oh, got it, never mind”.
Jack Butala: I had a conversation with somebody recently who said, “Oh my gosh, you’re right”, because they mailed out a very large mailing, like tens of thousands of units and it was from a list that was very old an half of the people on the list didn’t own the property any more.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, it’s like a waste … Even just, you’re right, just a simple waste of postage money. [crosstalk 00:10:32] dude, if I was paying 55 cents, even what we’re paying is cheap. Fifty cents, lets just say, going out to the wrong owner, 500 wrong owners, I didn’t need to spend that money.
Jack Butala: You waste it.
Jill DeWit: That’s just dumb.
Jack Butala: If you have a question, or if you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on Land Academy’s … Oh, I already said that.
Jill DeWit: That’s okay.
Jack Butala: Wow. Jill loves to do this. Wait until he’s done and he can make a full idiot out of himself.
Jill DeWit: No, there you go. I’m not going to say anything. You go. You’re so silly.
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 even though you repeat sentences.
Jill DeWit: I know how to follow a script and I use this every day. There really is no script. You know that’s what’s so funny, we have no script. There are four sentences that are the same and Jack just screwed up one of the four. Just kidding.
Jack Butala: Good thing we don’t screw up mailers.
Jill DeWit: No. We’re good at that.
Jack Butala: This show is one big unintended consequence, but our mailers are not unintended.
Jill DeWit: No. You know what’s so funny though? We have done mailers that didn’t go out. Didn’t go out exactly how they should and we bought some great properties anyway. I tell you I have a hard time messing it up.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Please go on.
Jill DeWit: Oh, about that? Oh, like go on what? Who were you talking to?
Jack Butala: Yeah, we sent … Made huge mistakes in mailers I the distant past and ended up in acquisitions.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, like oh we just sent out insane offers for somebody’s really great properties and then we still bought some because they’re like “Yeah, you know what, take it.”
Jack Butala: That’s worth just mentioning. For this product type, rural vacant land, we try to send offers. Well, we do send offers to the bottom 20% of assessed value, which means in any given county, it’s the least valuable property in the eyes of the assessor. I made a mistake, a big mistake one time and sent it to everybody. People were getting offers for a one and two and three thousand dollars for their 40 acre properties that had assessed value in the millions and guess what happened? We bought some.
Jill DeWit: That’s like we were talking about boats, it’s not uncommon with boats. But you’ve looked at every boat is for sale can be a million dollar boat and you pick it up for like really cheap, it happens.
Jack Butala: It does, I’m here to tell you. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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