Land Pin Goals for 2017 (CFFL 375)
Land Pin Goals for 2017
Jack Butala: Land Pin Goals for 2017. 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.
Jill DeWitt: Jill DeWitt with Jack Butala.
Jack Butala: Hi.
Jill DeWitt: Welcome to our show.
Jack Butala: [inaudible 00:00:04] today. Hello.
Jill DeWitt: In this episode, Jack and I talk about LandPin goals for 2017. Wonder what else Jack is going to bring up as far as goals for 2017. I am curious. This is going to be …
Jack Butala: I like this [crosstalk 00:00:18] this yet.
Jill DeWitt: This is going to be a great show. First, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on LandAcademy.com online community. It’s free.
Jack Butala: Michael asked this question. “I’m looking at buying some OTC properties (which is over-the-counter). What are the benefits and drawbacks of buying properties this way? Would you recommend it to a beginner?” Jill?
Jill DeWitt: Nah … Well, you know what? Actually, I would.
Jack Butala: What are over-the-counter properties?
Jill DeWitt: Properties that were taken back by the county, usually for non-payment of taxes. Like always. Now they’re available to purchase. Some counties, it’s pretty darn easy to go there and just look up a list and see the property and see the purchase price and see if there’s a bidding thing or if you need to go through the board of supervisors, when their meetings are. All kinds of good stuff. So, I actually think this is not a bad way to pick up some properties.
If you buy 20 here, keep in mind, you’re not going to have a varied- and you’re new, you’re not going to have a varied website presence because you have 20 properties in the same county. That’s not going to look as pretty and maybe entice as many people. But gosh, pick up a few here that way to beef up your inventory. I think it’s great.
Jack Butala: All right, so over-the-county properties, back tax properties in general are a great thing. It doesn’t preclude you from doing any other work that you have to do any other way. You still have to go through due diligence period and review the thing. I should say there’s two types of over-the-counter properties, tax deed properties and tax lien. This is primarily tax deed, where the county actually owns it and when you buy it, you buy the deed, you buy the property. A lien is a different, more complicated process. Usually, way more economically beneficial, but is way beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here.
Yeah, it’s a great thing. Here’s a problem, you’re not learning how to scrub data.
Jill DeWitt: It’s true.
Jack Butala: And that’s what you need to be learning how to do, especially if you’re brand new. That’s what this is all about. I think it was yesterday or the day before, we talked about a show- or we talked in a show about [countertuitive 00:02:36]. Oh, it was the secret sauce show. I know this doesn’t sound- the first time you hear this, it doesn’t sink in, I’m sure of it. The first 25 times I heard it and then when I started saying it, it still didn’t fully sink in, but please listen.
You are in the data business. If you want to succeed at this, you need to learn how to use data and scrub data and get offers in the mail. That’s what’s going to make this a long term career for you. Buying over-the-counter properties, there’s a lot of over-the-counter properties right now because we came out of this economy, a lot of properties went back. That is going to dwindle, I guarantee it. That way of buying properties is pretty inconsistent. There’s a lot of luck involved. Sometimes you go to the casino and win, sometimes you don’t. It’s the same thing here. You win every single time when you send mail out. It’s incredibly consistent. To answer your question directly- I think I kind of answered the first one, what are the drawbacks and the benefits. Would you recommend it for a beginner? I think no.
Jill DeWitt: Okay.
Jack Butala: I’ll add this and then we can move on. Our practice with Arkansas, this is what you want to do. If you don’t want to listen to us, that’s fine. Lots of people don’t.
Jill DeWitt: Sometimes I don’t.
Jack Butala: Including our children. Arkansas has a state-wide single place where you can go and buy over-the-counter properties. I’ve purchased properties there for a long time and made a lot of money. If you’re not ready to get involved with this group or any other group and you’re not full time and going to do it for a career or want to do it for a career, go take a look over there. Get to know the system, buy a few properties, make a couple bucks. See if it’s for you?
Jill DeWitt: Super easy to Google and find this.
Jack Butala: I don’t do it anymore and I’ll tell you why. Because the deals we get consistently with the mail, sending offers to owners, it’s always better.
Jill DeWitt: It is. Our numbers are better.
Jack Butala: It lasts forever. You’ll send a thousand letters out, get a couple deals or a few deals the first month out of it. The mail will sit- those offers will sit in the files of these people forever. Jill and I answer calls or our company. We’ve sent millions of letters out and we are getting calls back on letters that we sent in 2004. It just never goes away. The benefits just keep coming. I would stay away.
Jill DeWitt: Thank you, Jack.
Jack Butala: You send two mailers out, you’re never going to even think about doing those OTC deals anymore.
Jill DeWitt: You’re going to get too busy with good deals.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWitt: Awesome. If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either of us on LandAcademy.com. Today’s topic: LandPin goals for 2017. This is the meat of the show. This is kind of Jack’s topic.
Jack Butala: What the hell is LandPin?
Jill DeWitt: I wanted to … Exactly. Yeah, would you please, Jack? Please tell us, what is LandPin and how did this come to be part of our thing?
Jack Butala: For years and years and years, Jill and I had a website called LandStay. L-A-N-D-S-T-A-Y. That’s where we sold land. We went on our merry way and it was fantastic. We loved it and it worked great.
Jill DeWitt: It was just ours. It was only our properties.
Jack Butala: Then we were posting properties like we always say to do. Through an evolutionary process of trial and error we started posting properties on other sites. Land and Farm, LandWatch and on and on and on. Then, we developed LandAcademy. We got a group membership to- signature membership with LandWatch.
Well, a sales guy duped us at LandWatch. His name is Shawn, he’s no longer there anymore. If I seem like I’m naming names, I am. I am naming names. Duped us and said, “Oh yeah, LandAcademy, all your members can …” The whole thing. Then four months later, we get a call from the CEO, extremely inflammatory, yelling, swearing call saying, “You guys are taking advantage of the system. It’s terrible. We’re kicking you all out of it.” So I got mad.
Jill DeWitt: We did nothing wrong.
Jack Butala: I decided to convert- very long story short- convert LandStay to LandPin where we can all sell property. Eventually, we’re going to take over LandWatch. That’s the whole point because the guys really pissed me off. I’m serious. You know I say, “Choose your battles?” This is a battle I chose.
So we turned LandStay into LandPin. Sites done. We launched it last week and our member call on Thursday and tons of people now are posting their property on there. Tons of members. It’s a members only for a while and then we’re going to open it up to real estate agents who have land listings and also …
Jill DeWitt: Anyone.
Jack Butala: Anybody who’s got property, who owns land and they want to sell it. It will become THE portal.
Jill DeWitt: It will be cheaper and better, because we are land people.
Jack Butala: Because we know what we’re doing. We’re not IT people. The guys over at LandWatch are sales people and IT people that don’t even own real estate themselves. It’s a joke. And they’re awful people.
Jill DeWitt: They don’t get it.
Jack Butala: Land And Farm is the only other. There’s 3 of us now in the game instead of 2. Land And Farm, I don’t really see as a threat anyway. They’ve got some good momentum but they’re still not land people. We know what we’re doing.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly. Yeah, they don’t have any of their own properties on there. This is not their thing.
It’s a way to collect money for this. Big deal. Will you please tell us some of the goals now for LandPin 2017? What’s coming? What can we expect?
Jack Butala: My goal, my whole goal for 2017 is to take over- take substantial market share away from LandWatch and to benefit our members. We’re pouring a small fortune in banner ads and ways to drive traffic. Jill and I have been selling properties there for years, really successfully. With organic, just organic SEO and organic traffic. Then, we asked about 8 of our members, we call them early adapters or test crash dummies, to post some property on the site while we developed it. Kind of in secret. Well, they sold property while it was still LandStay. Actually, all of them reported selling property. So it’s working.
Here’s a super special- 2 new attributes we will be doing in 2017 early on. Search by map so you can take a look at all the properties that are posted on there regardless of seller. You can search by map. Let’s say you want to take a look at all the ones in Arizona, completed sales and active sales and pending. Either pending on the acquisition side of pending on the sales side. And we will allow you to take payment by credit card. Your own credit card account. It will be linked.
If you listen to this show at all, or if you’re already a member, you know how hard we’ve plugged making it easy for buyers to buy property. One of those ways is just clicking and buy it in the middle of the night. Or click it and put the down payment down. Get the process started if you’re going to sell it through a title agent.
Jill DeWitt: One of the things that I’ve come across too is people just in this world, not necessarily in our group, but one of the common things I see on the internet is people going, “Shucks, it’s property. What credit card company is going to let me do properties?” Paypal won’t and this one won’t and that one won’t. We’re solving all of that.
Jack Butala: We’ve solved it. We’ve solved it for ourselves, that’s really the premise of LandAcademy. We’ve solved it all for ourselves and now we’re just sharing it all. If you want to get in the business, our members are doing it. They don’t have to go through the same crap we went through. For a small monthly subscription fee, you get access to all this stuff. We’ve figured it all out.
Those are some of the goals. One of the things I’m personally ridiculously excited about is bulk posting. If you have 50 properties, anyone who’s ever been in this business or if you’re a real estate agent or a real estate assistant, you know how time consuming and frustrating it is to post property. When you get a listing or when you purchase a property, you have to post it like 8 places on the internet and it takes all day. Sometimes days.
If you got 50, 100, 200 properties, 300 properties, you can post it in literally a minute. You fill out a spreadsheet according to the specs, send us stuff because we’ll review it and we post it up there and bang, it’s done.
Then, we’re connecting, at some point later in the year, we will connect that posting everywhere else that you should be posting property for sale on the internet also.
Jill DeWitt: That’s going to be awesome.
Jack Butala: That’s huge, man. You post it on ours first- on LandPin first …
Jill DeWitt: And it will go everywhere else.
Jack Butala: And it goes to all the places. Right now it’s free. It’s free to all LandAcademy members and for a certain amount of time, it will be free. After we release it and announce it, we will make it free for a certain amount of time. Then it will be a very nominal monthly subscription fee. I can tell you this for sure. It will be priced less than half of what LandWatch charges.
Jill DeWitt: That’s kind of how we roll.
Jack Butala: We buy property for half, we expect stuff to be half. It’s not a massive profit center for us. Look, we’ve already made a ton of money.
Jill DeWitt: Our whole membership stuff is less than half of what everything would be retail, by the way. So it all ties together. There’s a common theme here. You know what? Jack, I’ve got to say this. I love it.
It makes you feel so good. Every week, especially member calls, I’m constantly told, I cannot believe- Even emails that we’re getting. I cannot believe what you guys are bringing to the table for what [inaudible 00:12:06] has been. Our whole thing is, well yeah, we want you to be successful. You need your money for acquisitions. You don’t need to be giving it to us. You don’t need to be giving it to something silly. You don’t need to be giving it to a VA to scrub a list that you bought. Just to recap this week. You don’t need to be giving it to your real estate agent. Let’s see, what else can I tie it all into? All the things that we did this week. You need to be having your money in your pocket for acquisitions so you can do this right.
Some day, you’ll have your property posted on our site. We’re going to help you. By the way, we don’t get a commission off your sales.
Jack Butala: Some people think that.
Jill DeWitt: They think that. They go, “Okay, what’s your percentage on the sale?”
Jack Butala: There’s no tricks.
Jill DeWitt: I don’t get any. It’s not eBay.
Jack Butala: There’s no fees or tricks.
Jill DeWitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: It’s free for members and we will eventually charge a nominal fee. Exactly the pricing, I’m not sure yet, but it won’t be per unit like it is in some other places.
Jill DeWitt: Right.
Jack Butala: We’re not here to gauge.
Jill DeWitt: It’s not like an eBay, $85 average posting.
Jack Butala: The other 2 people in this space, LandWatch and Land and Farm are there to maximize profit. Period. They have no idea how to treat their customers. They have mediocre to substandard IT people. It’s just the nature of the way it is.
Jill DeWitt: Thank you for telling it like it is.
Jack Butala: It’s just the way it is.
Jill DeWitt: I know. I appreciate it.
Jack Butala: There’s no law against posting it on all 3.
Jill DeWitt: This is true.
Jack Butala: Why wouldn’t you do that?
Jill DeWitt: Exactly. Go for it.
Jack Butala: You see which place it sells. For years and years and years, we’ve branded ourselves as the wholesalers. The site used to be- the phrase used to be- the catchphrase was “Land acquisitions for resalers.” Like the wholesale place. You don’t want to go to a retail place and buy stuff. You want to go to a wholesale place. Always for anything. I’m extremely confident that we will win.
Jill DeWitt: I agree. Any other goals for LandPin for 2017? Should we wrap this up?
Jack Butala: No, I can’t think of anything. You’re a good host.
Jill DeWitt: Thank you. After this, I’m going to ask you a few personal things in the after show.
Jack Butala: Oh, okay.
Jill DeWitt: I am. Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s Jack …
Jack Butala: And inspiration, that’s Jill.
Jill DeWitt: To get just about anything you want.
Jack Butala: We use it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jill DeWitt: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
I want to ask you, Jack, now that we’ve covered LandPin’s goals for 2017, because we are kind of a full week- 2 weeks now into 2017. What are your goals?
Jack Butala: My personal goals?
Jill DeWitt: Yeah!
Jack Butala: Wow. I have some financial stuff and we’re going to hit that, so I don’t even … You want me to disclose all that?
Jill DeWitt: No.
Jack Butala: Okay. We always hit our financial goals. You know, I don’t know. I really have everything I want Jill. We have a happy membership base, our kids are doing great. I honestly don’t have … I’d like to be less fat, but I have control over that.
Jill DeWitt: You know what’s so funny about that? I’ve got to tell you. You know, you and I were watching the other day? We were doing research to do a new show so we’re on YouTube looking at other people’s shows, other successful shows. Some that are in our world, most of them are not in our world. We’re just looking at other people’s shows. One of the speakers was doing a whole thing about 2017 and his whole point was, don’t just say you want to lose weight, say you want to lose 30 pounds. Like really assign it a number. I really don’t see the difference, but he did.
Jack Butala: It was a half-witted attempt to get specific and be real specific and make a plan.
Jill DeWitt: Right.
Jack Butala: Not just say …
Jill DeWitt: Don’t be so vague. I’m sure for a lot of people, that does help. That made me think when you said, “I don’t want to be as fat.” Well that couldn’t be more vague. I love it. I’m trying to think for me. Do you want to know about …
Jack Butala: Yeah. I do.
Jill DeWitt: I’ve got books in me. I’ve got a couple books in me and there is going to be a live event. It keeps coming up. For 2 or so years now, it’s been coming up. We’ve had members that have written the live event for us. They’re almost like, “I’ll do it. I’ll produce the thing. Just tell me when and what’s my budget?”
Jack Butala: Jill and I had a little brain storm thing about that. I’m the one who said, “I don’t know if we should do this” because I’m not a huge fan of these rah rah sessions. So what we came up with was this. Let’s get somebody from RealQuest to show us how they use RealQuest. How it’s really used. Let’s get somebody from Title Pro. Show us how to do a vesting deed, just look it up. There’s really serious information from the credible source, right? It’s not just a guy standing up on a stage saying, “I made a bunch of money and you can too.” I can’t. Who the hell cares about that?
Jill DeWitt: No. We don’t want that. So yeah, it will be really really really valuable and very detailed.
Jack Butala: This is why you need a website. We’ll have somebody who’s an SEO expert that can really say this is the right way to drive traffic and this is the wrong way or the expensive way? All of it.
Jill DeWitt: Right. Even all the different social media mediums. There’s so many little details that you don’t realize. It will be very detailed. It will be really good. That’s one of my goals too.
Awesome. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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