Person Specific Offers to Buyers are Best (CFFL 354)
Person Specific Offers to Buyers are Best
Jack Butala: Person Specific Offers to Buyers are Best. 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: We talk to Jill DeWit
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today and this episode Jill and I talk about person-specific offers to buyers and why they’re the best.
Person-specific offers, hmm. This is one of the reasons why we are so successful at this and as well as our members.
Awesome show, Jill. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on landacademy.com online community. It’s free!
Jill DeWit: Okay, so, Eric asked: I have a question on dealing with JTROS, which is joint tenants with rights of survivorship, vesting where one owner is deceased. When I create the new deed from the remaining owner to myself, who is the grantor? Just the surviving owner or do I somehow need to have both of these original owners on the new deed as grantors?
This is such a good question, I love it.
Jack Butala: It really, really is.
Jill DeWit: And I love the person that set it up correctly because that’s why you do this. The joint tenants with rights of survivorship means that if someone should pass on instead of it going to, down the chain to heirs and all that, it’s just the surviving member is now the sole owner. So, go for it Jack.
Jack Butala: I mean, this is what I would do. There’s some state requirements that are weird, but the vast majority of joint tenants works like this. So, the grantor would be something like Jack and Jill as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, period. That’s it, ran residents of Arizona, maybe. But, let’s just say it’s Jack and Jill with joint tenants with right of survivorship.
Jack passes on. Jill wants to convey the property to somebody new. That’s it. Grantor’s exactly the same as it was on the vesting deed. It’s Jack and Jill as join-tenants. Jill is signing. Both people as joint-tenants have signing power to convey 100% of that property. So, are there some exceptions? Yeah.
Always, always, always, if you’re new at this and haven’t worked in that county before, this is even what we do at this level. In a new county we call the county and make sure that we’re doing it right before we send it all in.
Is that how you would do it, Jill, or would you alter the grantor?
Jill DeWit: You know, I think you’re correct, but I would follow up with, and I’ve done this in the past, recording just in case, down the road, there’s any question I have sent in and recorded in the past death certificates. Proving that.
Jack Butala: Yeah, because some states, if it’s not recorded in joint-tenants, you can still get away with doing that. If one person is deceased, the other person’s a signer they can designate some stuff. So, yeah. [crosstalk 00:02:56]
Jill DeWit: I may have been going above and beyond, but it’s just an extra little insurance thing. Sometimes I do that. I’ve been known to go above and beyond. That way it’s crystal clear it was all legitimate and nobody pulled a fast one on anybody, you know. Because what if it was joint-tenants and it’s just like two brothers, let’s just say, because the parents gave it to the two brothers. They’re not married, they’re not living together. They may not be getting along and I want to make sure everybody knows this is all legitimate.
Jack Butala: Sure, that’s a good point.
Jill DeWit: It’s really easy in this situation to get an original copy of the death certificate from who you’re getting the property from. Once it’s recorded, the county will send it right back to you. They just basically make a copy of it and return it to you. They don’t keep it. And then I will then send it back to the original person saying “Hey I need to basically borrow this.” Well, I do it and then send it back.
Jack Butala: Yeah, you know I’ve done it both ways, now that you say it that way. I like your way better. Just take that extra step just to make sure. Either way the county recorder is going to tell you exactly what they want.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, that’s for sure.
Jack Butala: In my stint in accounting, somebody said “Just do exactly what you’re told. Don’t do anything more, don’t do anything less and provide this and that and then we’re done.”
I think, in the end, Jill, honestly, I really think that your way is better. The recorder has a shredder in their office. If they don’t need that death certificate they can just send it back or whatever.
We get death certificates, original death certificates, sent back to us all the time. I see them in the mail when we’re recording property.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Anyway, another great question.
Hey, if you have a question or if you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us and landacademy.com.
Today’s topic: Person-specific offers. Send them to buyers. They’re always the best. This is the meat of the show.
All right, so I love this topic and the root of the thing is the mail merge. If you send an offer to a person, really, specifically to John Smith at 123 Main St. “We would like to buy your property in Mohave County, Arizona” you’re going to get a much, much, much better response than if you just sent it to “Whom it may concern” or “Mr. Smith, I understand you have some property in Arizona.” The more specific you can be in these offers and in these documents that you mail to people, offers to owners, the higher degree of acquisition yield will be, hands down. I’ve tried it all different ways.
It’s a lot easier than you think. You just line up a bunch of data in rows and link it to a document. It’s so simple.
Jill, I know you’ve tried the other way, too. What are your thoughts on this? I wanted to do this show with you because there’s some stuff that you and I do because we’re so far into this that we kind of take for granted. And this is something because I had a conversation with a person that was like “What do you mean you can do that?”. They had never heard of a mail merge before. Again, somebody who has been in real estate for a lot of years and they had no idea how easy this is.
So, I know that you deal with landacademy members. Sometimes we send them stuff that’s really mail merged or email merged and I think you get a better response, right?
Jill DeWit: Yeah, I’ve had people do that. Though, I’ve sent emails and I’ve worded them so well. I do send a lot of personal emails, but sometimes my group will send out emails that we put names on them and people really do think that “I’m the only one that got this. I’m very special.” And that’s what you’re doing to these buyers.
What’s interesting to me, like you said, is I have talked to a number of people that have been in real estate and flipping and things for years and they never thought of putting anything other than “Dear resident”. And when I sit and tell them “Hold on a moment, think about this for a second” and they go “Wow, no wonder. That would have a better strike percentage here if it really said “Dear Mr. Smith, my name is da-da-da-da-da. This is my company. This is who we are, this is our business. We are very, seriously interested in your property at this location and I know it’s this size, this acreage. Here’s the legal. Here’s the APN.”” It’s all very personal, like you said, “And here’s the price I’m willing to pay. And here I can close by this date. And here’s how the transaction would be handled.” Who’s not going to go “Whoa” and pay attention?
Jack Butala: That’s what I think!
Jill DeWit: And it’s so funny, the people that go “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I never thought of that.” I’m like “Yeah!”. They sit and put themselves in that recipient’s shoes and go “Well, heck yeah. I would sit up and pay attention, too.” And it changes their world in a very positive way.
Jack Butala: So, imagine you sit down like it’s 1949 and you have a piece of paper and a pen and you write an offer out. And let’s say, now, you want to it to ten. You want to make ten offers. So, you sit there and you write ten offers out on a piece of paper, like a yellow pad, right. Flip one page over and you do it again. It’s the exact same offer except some stuff changes. The address that you’re sending it to changes. The person’s name, first and last name change. The offer amount might change because it’s different pieces of real estate. So, you get the idea. The vast majority of the document’s exactly the same. What’s changing are maybe, let’s say, five or six or eight variables. That’s a mail merge. Now imagine an excel spreadsheet with 10,000 names in it and 10,000 lines of data and the data is only the variables-the price, the first and the last name and things like that. It’s very, very simple. It takes ten minutes to send out 10,000 offers the way they have this set up.
And you’re exactly right. You nailed it. Actually, you took the wind out of my sails a little bit. Coming from you, it’s actually better because we have a person in our group who’s in the commercial real estate business in Texas. Makes a ton of money. Actually left his position to do this full-time because, he said “I’ve been buying commercial real estate for years and years and years. We’ve been doing it all wrong. I tested this thing before I joined your group and it works like a dream.”
So, I’m not sitting here trying to sell anything, I’m really not. I’m just saying I get a lot of personal pleasure out of people saying “You know what, I had the basics and we were doing just fun but now we’re killing it because this is even better.” You’ve got to send a personal thing out. Think of women.
Women don’t want to be with a group of women. They want to be the only girl and the best girl and the best treated. You know you want this. Everybody, everybody wants to have special treatment. I don’t care who you are.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. What I think about, too, when you personalize it, like this, and you do it correctly you don’t have to use any gimmicks. You don’t have to do the pretend yellow, make it look handwritten. You don’t have to put a dollar in there. You know, all those little things that people do, you don’t need to do that. That kind of cheapens it for me. I have to say.
Jack Butala: Yeah, absolutely. It’s disrespectful. I agree completely.
Jill DeWit: It is. It’s like “Oh, it’s a little trick. You put a little dollar in here. You put a magnet in here. Something like that.” And that’s one of the things, Jack, that I love. This is all because of you. Let’s just be respectful and have good, decent offers and be very respectful of these perspective sellers. And it sure comes across. When they sign them and send them back they’ve done their homework. They’ve thought about it. They’re legitimate. They’re ready. They’ve checked us out. They know this is real and they’re ready to go.
Jack Butala: Yep. I’ve done it multiple ways, but I still do remember. It was around 2004 or 5 or 6 where we really invoked, a lot of it is because of Real Quest, really started to do mail merges.
First it was just the first name and last name. Kind of like your newsletter, you know. There’s not a lot of newsletters. Online newsletters, I mean, where in the body of the newsletter there aren’t too many variables, if any. It’s really just the person’s first and last name or first name. So, we used to do a version of a mailer back then like that. And then we really said “Why not just tell them what we’re going to pay?” And avoid all this back and forth. That was when a light bulb, seriously, exploded over my head and I just went “Ahh”. And it’s really, really, really exciting.
To this day we still improve it. A lot of times we get people calling, I don’t answer the phone anymore, but I just remember a lot of people were legitimately concerned about where I got this data. Like “How do you know all this stuff about me?” Not like “Your favorite color’s red”, but where you live, what the tax rates are, the assess value, what we’re willing to pay. The fact that you have six properties, not just one in Arizona and on and on and on. So, like everything I formulated a sentence that said “I don’t mean to freak you out, but this is a matter of public record. If you want …”
Jill DeWit: “I’m not stalking you.”
Jack Butala: “If you want me to take you off the list I certainly will, but, I’ll tell you, I meant it as respect. I’m not horsing around. I really do want to buy your property.” 9 times out of 10 they respond very favorably to that.
Jill DeWit: They do. I think, honestly, it’s all transparency. And I think, now, with the internet as a recipient I now have a way to go look you up and make sure you are legitimate. That makes me feel good. We can all do that. I’m not just saying it in the letter. This is one thing that I tell our members, too, I’m like “Everybody, you’ve got to be out there. You cannot hide behind your thing or if you do, if that’s your goal, you’re not going to do as well because these people want to know that you’re real and they want to do their homework and check you out before they sign something and send it back. So, you might be missing some people if you’re not doing that.”
Jack Butala: Exactly. Oh, I know you are. I’ve made all these mistakes.
Jill DeWit: In life, seriously, Jack, it’s funny. I know for a fact that you and I are out somewhere and we meet people and I know that they’re googling us. You know what I mean?
Jack Butala: Oh yeah, sure.
Jill DeWit: You know they’re going “Is this for real? Are these people legitimate?” I know they looked us up. It’s kind of funny.
Jack Butala: Sometimes they’re Uber drivers and they do it before we’re even done with the ride. Remember that one time?
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh, yes. It’s because they hear our conversations. Yeah, I’ve had at least two that I can think of in the last six months of Uber drivers reaching out wanting to learn about landacademy because they want to get investing in property and they haven’t figured out how to do it. They hear us talking in the back and laughing, having a good time. They’re like “I want to do what they do!” So, that’s funny.
Jack Butala: Yeah, we make it sound too easy and too fun.
Jill DeWit: That’s true. “There is a teaspoon of effort” to quote Seth Williams. I haven’t used that quote in a long time.
Jack Butala: Our COO is famous for saying that. “You’re making this look too easy. You’re portraying this as there’s no work at all. There is a little bit of work, a teaspoon of work.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly. He’s so funny
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 every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your mailer ambition.
Specifically there was that one Uber driver in Los Angeles. She looked like the Black Dahlia.
Jill DeWit: Oh yes!
Jack Butala: And she was just “smack” on the phone. Jack and Jill, you know?
Jill DeWit: Yes!
Jack Butala: People have different reactions to that Jack and Jill thing.
Jill DeWit: Usually they giggle.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s what I see. They’re like “haha”. They’ll meet me “The Jill” and then they meet “The Jack” and there’s a three second pause. Then the light bulb goes off.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: It’s really funny.
Jack Butala: Most of the time, with real estate guys, they don’t believe me. They’re like “Okay, whatever.” Then I say “Look, Jack’s my middle name and this is Jill and it’s been a lot of years that we’ve been doing this together.” And they’re like “Okay, all right. That’s okay, then.” They just think that it’s a flat-ass-out lie, like a publicity stunt. It cracks me up.
Jill DeWit: That’s so funny. Then we have to tell them “Look, it just happened. It’s okay”.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
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