Offers Academy for Getting Listings (CFFL 343)
Offers Academy for Getting Listings
Jack Butala: Offers Academy for Getting Listings. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and 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 offers academy for getting listings. If you’re a real estate agent you should listen to this. It’s actually pretty cool. It’s a good, consistent way to get listings. Before we get into it let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LandAcademy.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Ryan asked, “I’m going through the notary closed checklist and I realize that I do not know how to check for clear chain of title. Do I need to do this for every property? How do I check for clear chain of title?”
Jack Butala: Go ahead, Jill. You’re so qualified for this.
Jill DeWit: You have all the data. You have all this at your fingertips. You, Ryan, if you are a member and have all of our tools, which I’m assuming you do, let’s just go with the easy way, you do, you have a thing called Title Pro. Guess what that means you get to do? Do your due diligence just like you’re a title agent. Most title companies when they write their policies and their insurance and all that good stuff, they’re going back between 30 and 40 years. Guess what you can do? Go into Title Pro, pop in the parcel information, go back and look at the chain of title 30, 40 years. You’re looking to make sure grantor, grantee, everything lines up, everything needs to be perfect and smooth in the transaction. No granted to this guy and then all of the sudden this owner pops up like a new thing. You need to see, and you can check all the deeds, you can see the documents if you want. You can just act like you’re a title agent.
Often, what’s so interesting to me is, some of the people that we deal with, it’s been the same person for 30, 40, even more years. I always find that so interesting and funny and it does pop up often. I’m dealing with the same guy that he says, “Yeah, you know what? My wife and I bought this in 1961 and our kids were little and we thought we were going to retire and move out there. Well that didn’t happen and the kids don’t want it.” It’s really easy for me to go back and I can pull up that deed and go gosh darn it, he’s right. I’m staring at it, 1961, and I can see that it’s the same guy the whole time and I can see all the tax payments that he’s made, he’s current on all that, because I have that information.
That’s how you do it. You’re going to go in there, Ryan, you’re going to put in the information, put on your title agent hat, that’s one of the things about our world, you’re wearing a lot of different hats. You take off your acquisition hat and you’re putting on your title agent hat because now you’re reviewing the transaction and you need to do your due diligence and make sure. That’s how you check for that. Do you want to add anything, Jack?
Jack Butala: I do. The first thing you want to do, and our team does it on the very first phone call, is to qualify the signer. Someone is going to convey that property to us or to you and you want to make sure that the person that’s actually going to do the signing is the person that’s qualified to actually sign that document.
Let me give you some examples about how this can be a little bit confusing. I’m not trying to complicate things, but it can … There are certain times you just have to walk away because it’s unfixable because the signer’s not qualified. Here’s a few examples: John Smith owns a 40 acre property in Nevada and his son, Carl Smith, calls you and says, “I signed the offer, you sent an offer to my dad, my dad passed away. I’m Carl Smith and everything in his estate was … I got everything in his estate. I’m the beneficiary of the whole thing. In his will he gave everything to me so I can sign the deed. I’m Carl Smith, I can sign for John. It says so here, I have a will.” That’s just not the case at all. There’s certain things that have to happen to get Carl to be a qualified signer and you have to ask yourself if you are qualified to get this guys estate in order or if it’s just not worth the money. If you’re very, very new in this you want to walk away from that deal or send it to somebody else in our group on the [crosstalk 00:04:31].
Jill DeWit: If you don’t understand how to do it and it doesn’t pass all your tests is what you’re saying.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I am with you.
Jack Butala: That’s the very first thing you want to do when it comes to qualifying or the chain of title, is to … The person who owns it right now, is that the person who’s going to convey it to you properly?
Jill DeWit: That’s the nice thing too, that’s what our staff does right away. The call comes in, it’s super easy to go, “Okay, tell me the parcel information? Great, I can type in the county, I got the APN, pop it up and it says it looks like it’s owned by John and Barbara Smith and you’re John Smith, yep. Is Barbara alive?” In a nice way, “Is Barbara alive and well and able to sign? Yep, she’s right here. She’s actually bringing me my coffee.” Great, check. Now we got that out of the way.
Jack Butala: Now you can actually … Now let’s talk about price and terms and how to do the deal.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Then you do your chain of title checklist down the road, make sure that he didn’t own it for 5 minutes, he really did own it for 50 years.
Jack Butala: You’re very good at saying stuff in 2 sentences that it takes me a year to say. I wonder why that is?
Jill DeWit: Thank you. That’s so funny because you’re so cut to the chase and there’s times that I cut to the chase, so thank you.
Jack Butala: Really this whole show should be like 2 and a half minutes.
Jill DeWit: Yep. We’re done.
Jack Butala: If you have a question or you want to be on show, reach out to either one of us on LandAcademy.com. Today’s topic, if you haven’t noticed already, it’s all about Offers Academy this week, using Offers Academy for getting listings. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit: All right, Jack, I have a question. Who is this for?
Jack Butala: Real estate agents. I’ve noticed that real estate agents and real estate investors are very different people. Have you noticed that?
Jill DeWit: I have noticed that.
Jack Butala: I try to have as little responsibility as possible and work as few hours as possible.
Jill DeWit: How is this different? How is that different? That’s not different.
Jack Butala: Real estate agents are the hardest working people I’ve seen. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: That’s true. So I’m a real estate agent, we’ve covered that. I’m not just an investor, I’m an agent and I need … How can I use this data and the Offers Academy to help me get listings? How is this different?
Jack Butala: Excellent question, Jill. It’s the same 5 step process and the same set of tools. That’s the good news, so you don’t have to go out and get new tools or learn anything else. You want to take the same 5 step process only do it as a real estate agent. Number 1, you want to get access to the tools. We make those available to you if you’re a member. Number 2, qualify a buyer. What a minute, I’m a real estate agent. I just want to get a listing and list it and I want to throw it out there and see who might buy it, put it on the MLS, what are you guys talking about? Don’t mess with my system here. Wouldn’t it be great as a real estate agent if you had 5 buyers and those are the only people you work with? That’s it, 5 buyers, 5 super qualified rich people and their business is to buy houses cheap and your business is to make fees on the houses that they buy cheap. How do you do that? Get there first. You find the houses first and then feed them to your people.
Get qualified buyers, find those 5 or 6 people, in some cases you only need 1 or 2 if they’re awesome. Number 3, what is number 3?
Jill DeWit: Clarify the asset criteria.
Jack Butala: You’re going to take your tools and your tools consist of essentially 2 things, data and good access to a bulk mail printer. You qualify your data. You’ve got your 5 buyers and you want them to say a sentence like this: I need to buy 5 houses in zip code X for about XYZ dollars per square foot. If I could do 5 houses in this area at the same time I would just make a mint. Then you want them to have a huge transaction history. You don’t want to help somebody starting out new. I say that seriously. I know everybody’s got to start somewhere, that’s fine, they can go do that on their own time. We’re serious here. Qualify the asset.
Number 4, now you’ve scrubbed the data down according to what your buyer has said they would love to buy. You scrub the data down and you get it in the mail. Get the offers out there and get them priced properly. In our tool set we do not make, there’s nowhere that you can do it easier and cheaper, period. Jill and I have been doing this for years and years and years. We’ve used printers, good ones and in between. There’s no way better.
Jill DeWit: One thing I think is really important to note here that for licensed real estate agents, getting out there and getting these offers out there and telling these people that you have buyers, even if the buyers that you have that you deal with right now are not looking for … There’s going to be things that trickle through that may not meet their criteria, but they are still really good listings. You’re going to get a ton of listings out of this so careful what you wish for. When people know that how you’re coming at this and how smart you are and you have buyers lined up, there’s people right now that want to put their home on the market but they don’t know how to. They’re afraid to. They don’t want to go through all the steps, but man, I may not have to do all the work because there’s a buyer here and I don’t have to clean it up and get a pod in my driveway.
Jack Butala: I don’t have to stage it, on and on and on.
Jill DeWit: You’re going to become that neighborhood’s best friend for anybody quickly. It’s good. Thank you.
Jack Butala: It’s great. This 4th step here, get the offers out to the owners, that’s the real difference in this between as an investor and as an agent. The real difference is the actual letter that you put in the mail. You have some choices and a lot of this is based on your state laws. There’s huge disclosure rules and they vary widely around the country, how you disclose that you’re a licensed agent, and you want to make sure you check with your broker before you do anything like this too.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Jack Butala: The way I’ve seen it work in the past and it works really, really well is there’s 2 basic choices. You can say, “I’m a partner in a real estate venture that has purchased 58 houses and find out from your buyers, 58 houses in the last XYZ months, the last 36 months, and we’ve identified your house at 123 Main Street as a perfect candidate for that. Please indicate your interest by signing here at this price. It’s not a binding contract, just sign it and let me know.” That’s one way. You’re part of a partnership.
Number 2 is you’re a licensed Century 21 agent and you have secured a buyer who has done that, so now you’re disclosing that you are not the buyer, but you represent a buyer. Both of those ways should pass just about any rules that real estate laws. What you don’t want to do is send it out without disclosing anything. You do not want to do it as our investment group does it with land where you say, “I am an owner and I have cash and I’m going to buy this.” I’m pretty sure you can get in some trouble. Even if you aren’t representing yourself, if all that’s true, as a licensed agent, you can get in some trouble. At least in Arizona you can.
Jill DeWit: That’s not what this is about. We don’t want to scare anybody. It’s just being smart and upfront and honest about all that. It’s so amazing to me what the people that will come back for this kind of stuff. We have agents in our group that are doing this successfully every day and they’re like, “I can’t keep up now. I filled all these … You know what’s great? I have these 3 buyers in my back pocket, they’re deal flow heavy right now. I don’t have to deal with these other 20 assets now that just came in,” which is the greatest thing ever.
Jack Butala: Exactly. Then step 5 is do the deal just like you do any deal which is really for agents who just call your best escrow friend buddy and they do the deal.
Here’s the short list of the things that why this is easier: You don’t have to put it in the MLS. Any real estate agent, if you are not an agent, or if you are an agent, you understand it takes 10 hours. It’s very difficult depending on where you are. It’s time consuming. You don’t have to put a sign in the ground. You don’t have to hire a photographer. You don’t even have to go out there and do any of that. You just put it under contract, however you deem appropriate, you don’t actually have to go out to the asset and meet the owner. You can have your buyers go do that. You don’t have to split the commissions. You don’t have to split the commissions.
Jill DeWit: I know. I was waiting for that one.
Jack Butala: There’s not another buyer on it, there’s not a buyer rep.
Jill DeWit: You’re doing both.
Jack Butala: You don’t have to sit and wait 45 days to do a deal and just see what happens. That’s always cracked me up. All the offers that we send out in Offers Academy, regardless of the asset, we have a buyer before we do that.
Jill DeWit: It’s so amazing to me, and I don’t mean to throw anybody under any buses or anything, but this community is having a little bit of difficulty I think wrapping their heads around the new way of doing business, which is using the data and making it work for them. You don’t have to get in your car and drive around with 20 business cards, you don’t have to hang a flyer. By the way, let’s even think about that. How many agents are still paying people, those companies, to have a 16 year old kid walk around, get dropped off in a van with a stack of flyers, seriously, and hanging them on people’s doors. That costs more money. That’s a lot of money to do that. You don’t have to do that and I don’t think it’s effective. I know it’s not effective versus getting a real offer because the kids not going to … By the way, you can’t have this kid hanging a flyer on that door for that exact house, cheaper than the mailman …
Jack Butala: You’re right, Jill.
Jill DeWit: … Priced appropriately and all that.
Jack Butala: You okay?
Jill DeWit: Sorry, yeah. I get choked up about it.
Jack Butala: The Internet’s a beautiful thing and data’s a beautiful thing, and there’s a very, very efficient way to be a real estate agent. Very, very efficient. The vast majority, if not 98 percent, are doing it incorrectly every morning. They’re going out and looking for business …
Jill DeWit: They’re looking for the deal.
Jack Butala: … Instead of having them come to you, and that’s what this does.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: This is a little anecdote, there’s a real estate group here who I have a lot of respect for, I’ve actually sold a primary residence with them in the past, and they pride themselves on the fact that they spend a million dollars in printing a month. It’s the [inaudible 00:15:32].
Jill DeWit: I know who it is.
Jack Butala: They put out a world class magazine, it’s like Vogue magazine. I think it’s a million a quarter, not a month. I’m not sure. He loves to tell people that. Okay, congratulations. That’s a million bucks that just didn’t go in your pocket. If you just dealt with investors you would be all set.
Let’s say you want to buck the system and just send offers out, or just send notices out that say, hey, I want to list my house, I would love to list your house. I’m your guy. You send it out through a mail merge with certain amounts and sign here if you’re interested, you’re still going to do way better. If you do it wrong then how you’re doing it now, so this really, really works. It’s proven and it’s fun.
Join us I 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 acquisitions and listing ambition. You know we didn’t list a 5 steps at the end.
Jill DeWit: We can do it now.
Jack Butala: Go for it.
Jill DeWit: The tools, getting the buyer …
Jack Butala: Get access to the tools.
Jill DeWit: … Qualifying the buyer, access to the tools, qualifying the buyer, clarifying their asset criteria, what are they looking for? You’re going to go out and look for those properties, get those listings, sending out the offers to get them, and then conducting the transaction.
Jack Butala: That’s it.
Jill DeWit: That’s it.
Jack Butala: Five steps.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: Five fun steps.
Jill DeWit: Yep. Love it. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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