LandPin.com – Why Our Website Works (CFFL 360)
LandPin.com – Why Our Website Works
Jack Butala: LandPin.com – Why Our Website Works. 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 and Jill DeWitt.
Jill DeWit: Happy Christmas eve, eve.
Jack Butala: Yeah and Friday too.
Jill DeWit: It’s Friday.
Jack Butala: We’re the only ones working.
Jill DeWit: Christmas eve, eve. Yes. Got it.
Jack Butala: What’s wrong with us?
Jill DeWit: I don’t know.
Jack Butala: You know what was great, is that we went to a five day show, five shows a week instead of seven. Remember that?
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Man, that was better.
Jill DeWit: That was much better.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show. It this episode Jill and I talk about landpin.com and why our website works so well, so yours can too. 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: Okay. Chip asks, do you find that five acre parcels sell quicker than 40 acres? Or do larger affordable, wait, or larger due to the affordability and a wider group of buyers? Or if you buy it right does that even really matter? Boy, it’s a good question.
Jack Butala: It really is a good question and there’s multiple questions actually in the whole question. He’s right at the end. If you buy it right it’s all going to sell. If you buy it wrong it’s all going to sell but here’s the thing. It’s going to take a lot longer. We always talk about yield on acquisitions. We want to increase our yield as much as we can to buy good property cheap. Same thing with sales here. You want to buy the right property but you do not want to own it for long at all. That’s the whole key. You’re gauging against time. The money, the way we buy it, we don’t even talk about that. The sales prices are always more than double than what we paid.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: There’s no issues with that. The general rule is if you’re selling property for cash the cheaper the better. Yes, five acre properties sell better. We try to target buying property for 500 to 1,000 bucks, five acres and sell them for about …
Jill DeWit: How much cash, how much terms. There’s two different …
Jack Butala: I know. Two to four thousand bucks for five acre properties and I love 40’s too.
Jill DeWit: Me too. It’s like, there’s something about five acres for people. It seems manageable. No, my neighbors are right on top of me. Yeah, it’s not like it’s a big piece of property.
Jack Butala: Five acres is a lot.
Jill DeWit: It really is.
Jack Butala: It’s a lot of property.
Jill DeWit: Remember we were driving around just here right where we live and I was looking at this, they just leveled what used to be a home and they’re starting over and I’m like that’s like a point one maybe and it looks big. It can’t hurt the beach.
Jack Butala: I think it’s point o one.
Jill DeWit: Maybe. It’s so funny. It’s really small. Small on the scheme of things but you can do a lot with that. Back to what you said about five acres. Man, if we saw five acres here at the beach Jack, it would be like huge.
Jack Butala: Churches are on a half acre here. No, if there’s 43,560 square feet in an acre, times five, it’s almost a quarter of a million square feet and the typical home is what, 1,200 feet?
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jack Butala: We’re talking about 250,000 square feet for five acres.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: It’s amazing.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Jack Butala: It’s a big piece of property. Jill and I had a house on a acre in a nice community, like a suburb of Arizona and that’s big. An acre’s big.
Jill DeWit: It is big.
Jack Butala: There was a lot of landscaping that went on.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Actually way too much for our personality types.
Jill DeWit: Correct.
Jack Butala: In fact, zero. Point o one landscaping is too much for my personality type.
Jill DeWit: That’s good.
Jack Butala: Then there’s term sales. If you can just sale anything for a hundred dollars down and a hundred dollars a month, that you can drive right up to and use that weekend, you’re not going to keep it in inventory at all.
Jill DeWit: Correct.
Jack Butala: You’re going to sell it that minute. There’s a sales theory out there, I don’t personally believe it, but nobody asks the price. They only asks for the payments. That’s all they care about. Car manufacturers have caught onto that. If you’ve noticed that.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: You never see a car manufacturer advertise in a commercial where they say, this is eighty-two thousand dollars. No. It’s just 99 dollars …
Jill DeWit: Exactly. No, it’s 359 a month.
Jack Butala: That’s it.
Jill DeWit: We’re seeing them all right now at Christmas time too. You’re seeing the Lexus and then the Mercedes. We’re all going to put that under the tree because it’s only 359 a month, or 899 a month. I don’t know. It’s the Land Rover or something usually.
Jack Butala: On terms, in general terms property, the larger terms property is, I haven’t never really closely looked at it. I just gut check it and it sells fast. 99 down, 99 a month for a 40 acre property and sell it for what, 18 to 20 grand?
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jack Butala: You’re going to keep that long.
Jill DeWit: My favorite number is, what we usually do is just 500 down, and then 99 a month and they can scrap together 500 dollars and then I just got my initial investment back.
Jack Butala: Yeah. What’s not part of this question is how they check out and that’s really material. This is going to lead us into this whole point here to this episode. If you’re collecting a down payment you want to take that on their credit card just like they’re buying a pair of shoes. They want to click on your website and buy it and then in a larger acreage scenario you’d probably go through escrow. That opens escrow. If it’s a cash sale you want to be able to collect a hundred percent of the cash sale on their credit care, after they’ve been drinking and it’s the middle of the night.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Which happens.
Jill DeWit: Hopefully not the drinking part.
Jack Butala: Then you have to refund it because the wife found out, but that’s part of doing business.
Jill DeWit: Hopefully not drinking. Yeah, but they do. It’s great. It’s the greatest thing on the planet. You wake up that morning, you’re like, look at that. My checking account just went up 3,000 dollars. How’d that happen?
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: Bingo.
Jack Butala: It all sales. This is the takeaway. It all sales. It’s just a matter of time. Maybe in some cases it takes ten years if you buy it super wrong but it will sell. The ideal scenario if that you want to sell it before you even buy it. That’s how we do house deals but that’s a different topic. If you have a question or you’d like to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on landacademy.com. Merry Christmas Jill.
Jill DeWit: Merry Christmas, Jack.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic, and this is the meat of the show, landpin, why our website works.
Jill DeWit: In cast it’s new to you, yes it used to be landstay and now it’s landpin and I’m very excited about all of the things that we are doing with that website now.
Jack Butala: Why the hell would they change the name of their website?
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: That’s what half our listeners are saying right now. Doesn’t it go against everything you’ve ever heard, the branding and building things up? Here’s why. Land watch, a very popular place to post property at this type of asset or any kind of land, really pissed Jill and I off about six months ago.
Jill DeWit: Thought it was just going to be me.
Jack Butala: I publicly promised the CEO and the owner that we were going to do everything in our power to take over their site. They’re not land people.
Jill DeWit: They’re not.
Jack Butala: They’re salespeople.
Jill DeWit: They clearly are not in the business.
Jack Butala: They’re salespeople and IT people. They have no idea what a [inaudible 00:07:30]. Then, there’s land and farm out there and if you look at their website it looks like they’ve slapped it up in a couple of days.
Jill DeWit: They’ve messed up hundreds of people. They made me mad. My people.
Jack Butala: Yeah, we’re not going to get into that. They messed with our people, man.
Jill DeWit: They messed with our people.
Jack Butala: That was it.
Jill DeWit: Momma bear came out and look out.
Jack Butala: Landacademy.com. It’s the same site where we sell our property. We converted landstay over there and we will allow, eventually, we were going to release it to all of our members, they’re going to post a property on there and we’re going to make it real easy for them to check out and piles and piles of money and traffic on advertisement we’re going to spend to drive traffic there and mark my words, within a certain amount of time we will overcome land watch.
Jill DeWit: Yep. Bingo.
Jack Butala: We’ve created an environment that is by land people, us, that works.
Jill DeWit: For land people.
Jack Butala: That’s what this show is all about.
Jill DeWit: By land people, for land people.
Jack Butala: Yeah. I like that.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. You like that?
Jack Butala: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jill DeWit: Just came up with that. That’s it.
Jack Butala: We will incorporate our, whatever, 15, 16 years of experience selling property on the internet and this site pulls out the stops. We expect it to double your sales rate as a member and then a little later on we’re going to release it to the whole public for less than half of what land watch charges.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It’s going to be awesome. Look out.
Jack Butala: In fact, closer to one tenth and I’m not exaggerating.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It’s going to be phenomenal.
Jack Butala: Why, Jill, does our website, what’s so unique about our website?
Jill DeWit: One of them is that we are land people and we understand it. We’re going to make it easy for our people. We are making it easy for our people. Posting the property, it’s not going to be as much work. It’s going to be really good. There’s going to be a lot of automated things that just happen for you.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: We’re going to help you get set up and be ready to take payments quickly and easily and have your buyers check out through our website. We’re going to do marketing for you and help you.
Jack Butala: If you’re in this business at all, not just land business but real estate, or if you’re a real estate agent, commercial or residential, you know how long it takes to input a piece of property. It’s awful. It can take days with certain [inaudible 00:10:00] post it. Land watch makes it awful.
Jill DeWit: It’s so archaic.
Jack Butala: We’ve developed what’s called a CSV import. It’s just basically you put all the properties you own right on a spread sheet and just hit the button and they’re all up there and they’re looking good and beautiful and the whole thing. Jill and I spent a ton of money developing this website and I was personally involved for every step of the way, to make sure that it’s by the land people.
Jill DeWit: You know why, because our properties are up there too by the way. Let’s just think about this. That’s really the reality. We’re not here just to, and I hate to slam the other people slash however I’m not really happy with them. They’re not there for the right reasons and we are here for the right reasons and we’re doing this because it’s our property too and it’s our people too and the more everybody sells it’s going to be fantastic. I’m so excited. We’re not playing games. We’re not messing around.
Jack Butala: Our website works. Let’s get into the meat of it here. Our website works and now your website, if you’re a member works, because we can take credit cards. That’s a huge point. One of the things that the website does is establish credibility. You want positive presentation and when we’re sending all these mails out from an acquisition standpoint, all these offers to owners out, first thing people do is they get on and check your website to see if you’re credible. See if there’s a lot of traffic, see if it looks professionally done and all of that. Your website has to do that. The other thing that all websites have to do is have either your logo and I prefer a picture of who you are nad a real one, not some silly one.
We have a monument area for our members where they can put all of that stuff, that information. You can see exactly your whole inventory. It’s really cool actually. We’ve spent a ton of time trying to make you look as good as you can and make it easy for the buyer to get as much information as they can as quickly as possible and click on that button to check out. I’m pretty darn excited. I don’t get personally involved in some of this stuff. I have been, because I am determined to take all the market share out of this. I spent ten to 14 hours a day on this, seven days a week for the last two months.
Jill DeWit: You know what’s funny I think is this was something that was in the back of our minds that you and I threw around that someday I’d like to be at this point and we’re going to offer this kind of a product. Boy, what was it, September? Three months ago they threw us for a loop, man. We said, all right. Game on. Here we come. We’re not messing around.
Jack Butala: We could’ve sued them. We would’ve won.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, we talked about that.
Jack Butala: All that. You know what? I chose not to do that but we’re not going to just accept it.
Jill DeWit: We’re taking the higher ground.
Jack Butala: That’s right Jill.
Jill DeWit: Taking the higher ground and said, you can do whatever and yeah, that’s fine.
Jack Butala: Those are a few things that we, it’s not just our website actually. Now it’s your website.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Our website is here for everyone and I still want all of our people to have their own websites for their own online presence and all of that. It’s all good. In a perfect world it drives traffic to each other. You know what I mean? Some of our members specialize in certain types of properties. As people find you on landpin and then they go, they’re doing all the vacation properties in the south that I like, you’re going to have your own buyer’s list. In a perfect world when it’s all going smoothly you’re going to have our buyer’s list which we’re reaching people on on your behalf and then you have your buyer’s list. It’s all working together.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I’m excited.
Jack Butala: I really am too. In true land academy form we’ve spent the time and the money that’s required to do this right and to provide a truly unique product. No one has a product like this.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, and another thing in true land academy form like you just said Jack which I love, we want to know what you think. We really hear. We listen. Our members who’ve been with us for a while know it. If you say something, all right here it comes, we’re going to do it. Why do we have this? Our members asked for it. Why are we doing this? Our members asked for it. If you have some comments about as we’re growing and making this better, you have some ideas, we listen.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: That’s another thing. I can’t call land watch and say, hey guys. I wish I could, hey guys you screwed up my postings, put them back. I’ve tried that. Didn’t work. We listen.
Jack Butala: All 15,000 of our completed transactions are up there. If you’re going to line your property up right next to our 15, 16 year experience and all of transaction history. Think about the SEO that’s involved there. All of that free traffic you’re going to get in exposure for nothing, just as a member. Then we’re going to pull in a lot of data from elsewhere on the internet, from other websites, from posting sites like Zillow and Trulia and things like that and it’s amazing.
Jill DeWit: You know what, and it’s being linked to social media. With the click of a button you can have your property shared in many different arenas.
Jack Butala: You can sell your property that’s for sale throughout any group in Facebook and if you know anything about Facebook it’s a huge marketplace for these types of assets because there’s very specialized groups. There are rural land in Arizona group. There are multiple groups for buyers like that. I expect amazing things. The other point too is that I just have a peeve about this. It’s difficult to post property. It’s time consuming. There’s picture involved and graphic sizes. We made that simple. You can literally post a thousand properties if you have that many and you have the data all lined up in a spreadsheet properly in seconds, where that would’ve taken on land watch or land and farm, it would take you a week.
Jill DeWit: A year.
Jack Butala: It would take you a week full time inputting separate stuff. I’m Jacked.
Jill DeWit: You are jacked. I’m Jilled.
Jack Butala: You’re Jilled? Oh, my gosh you should start saying that.
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. I’m so Jilled. They jillify things.
Jack Butala: Yeah. Sounds like thrilled and it’s the same thing. Thrilled Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thrill with a J. Whoops. That’s another show.
Jack Butala: Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information. That’s me.
Jill DeWit: Inspiration [inaudible 00:17:08] and 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 disgust with land watch.
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh.
Jack Butala: Good show Jill.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Friday before Christmas. I’m so excited. Are you excited, Jack?
Jack Butala: Yeah, I am. I’m excited to see the kids and all of that stuff.
Jill DeWit: Jack, is there a special gift that you’re hoping that’s going to be under the tree?
Jack Butala: Yes.
Jill DeWit: Can you share it with me?
Jack Butala: Uh-huh (affirmative). I would like a real espresso maker. I’ve decided.
Jill DeWit: I guess I better get out and get some shopping done.
Jack Butala: That’s what I would like. I have everything else I want on the planet. Honestly I do.
Jill DeWit: Good.
Jack Butala: If it wasn’t so close to Christmas I would’ve gone and bought that for myself too.
Jill DeWit: I love it. Good. Thank you for sharing.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
Jill DeWit: Merry Christmas.
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