How to be a Full Time Investor on Part Time Hours (CFFL 420)
How to be a Full Time Investor on Part Time Hours (CFFL 420)
Recording Location: LAT (i.e. 33.488237) (LONG i.e. -111.921540)
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hi there.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today, this Friday. In this episode, Jill and I talk about how to be a full-time investor on part-time hours. All these shows this week are Jill’s brain children. Before we get into this one, though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on a landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Matt wrote and asked: “I have a few properties that I put through a title company coming to me tomorrow. Few questions for those more experienced with title policies.” Awesome. Oh this is a good question. “One, how do you advertise these properties differently than properties that you don’t put through title. Two, how much more is a title policy actually worth? Say I bought 15 acres for a couple grand. And would list or sell it for $15,000 to $18,000 without a title policy. Could I sell it for $20,000 to $25,000 with one? Thanks in advance.”
Jack, you want to start?
Jack Butala: A slight 10 seconds of background. There’s two ways to buy property. Directly through recording the deed yourself. Two guys in a coffee shop put a deal together on a napkin. And the second way is through title or through, if you’re in the eastern part of the country, with a lawyer. Title was designed to avoid using lawyers, but that’s a whole different topic. There’s those two ways.
Matt, here, decided to buy properties through title. And what he’s asking is are they A, more valuable somehow and B, how do you sell them if so? If they’re more valuable, how do you advertise the fact that you did it so you can get more money? That’s really what I think he’s getting at. And we do this all the time. In fact, our rule is if we pay more than five grand, in general, we put it through title, as you stated here. We have title close the deal for us.
We have a slot right in Land Pin where you can download or upload your PDF for your title policies so that everyone can read it and see it and know that you did it, full disclosure. That makes it more valuable. Does it make it more valuable? Yeah. Does it make them $20,000 more valuable? I’m not sure. I will tell you that if there’s somebody that’s serious about buying real estate, vacant property for whatever reason, and they’re looking at your property and six other properties around the area, and you got a nice presentation put together with a full title policy and they can see that you bought it a month ago or a week ago and justify the price and it’s priced right, they’re going to buy yours.
Jill DeWit: That’s what I think. You can’t mark it up another 25% because of that.
Jack Butala: Right. A lot of times people, if they really know what they’re doing, they’ll just say, “I know you didn’t buy it on title, but I would like to buy it so we’re going to go back and do it together.”
Jill DeWit: Get the title.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: And that’s okay.
Jack Butala: And that’s fine. We do that all the time and we ask them to pay for it. But I love the idea of attaching a file to your posting with a PDF of the whole file so they can read it.
Jill DeWit: I think it’s the greatest thing on the planet, I agree. I love that. And put it up top. We put it in the description sometimes, “purchased with title insurance,” so people know right away. Or at least at the very top line. Because that’s a nice, important piece. And that’s, like Jack says, that’s something that yours will stand out.
Jack Butala: You know what Carfax is?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. With the fox.
Jack Butala: Carfax is the paper that’s associated with the car you’re buying. It’s good. You didn’t get in an accident. It’s just like a back check. That’s what title policy is. It’s an insurance policy, literally, on the condition of the property from a chain of title standpoint. It comes with a little bit more peace of mind.
Jill DeWit: That’s a perfect example because you don’t need to buy it with the car, but sometimes you just feel better looking at it. Even let’s like-
Jack Butala: You have three cars the same color, same age, one’s got the Carfax-
Jill DeWit: I want that one.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: And I can make sure, you really are the third owner because I see it. And it’s the same, too, as when someone … Used to be before that, I would just have the stack of receipts. Remember that? My dad taught me that. I didn’t have a log book, but I had a stack of receipts showing all my service work done. I’m not kidding. You remember? Come on. You remember that silly car that I sold and that guy that bought it. Because you were there helping with the transaction.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: And he was impressed because I had all my receipts and all my stuff in a row, this was many years ago. But it does make a little bit of a difference. Would it have changed the transaction altogether? Maybe not. But he put his mind at ease and he was really happy to get all that car and there you go.
Jack Butala: If not anything else, it’s a great sales tool. So to make it even more interesting, we’re coming out with a product called Title Plan.
Jill DeWit: Title Mind.
Jack Butala: The website is called Title Mind. We’re allowing you to order a title plan. Not a policy, just a basic title plan, so you can read it and see it and provide it for a very small amount of money. A fraction of what it would cost to get the actual deal done. It won’t be released for another 90 days or so but there’s a huge company, one company, that’s behind First American Title, that does all their title plan work and we cut a deal with them. We’ve actually shaken a hand. We’re waiting for the contract.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: That’s just another creative way. So yes, I love it. Love the title piece.
If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on landacademy.com. Today’s topic: how to be a full-time investor on part-time hours.
Jill DeWit: I’ve successfully mastered this and that’s not at all what this is about. But as you said that, I have to say that.
Jack Butala: What do you think, Jill? How do you become a full-time investor on part-time hours?
Jill DeWit: Oh, I got this.
Jack Butala: You wrote this.
Jill DeWit: I did write this.
Jack Butala: I have a real clear, I know exactly how to do this.
Jill DeWit: I have written about this many times. I have written about this in great detail. I’ve written about this in each little section. I’ve dissected this for our people in our newsletter. It’s not crazy. You have to have a system, you have to be organized, you have to have the right tools, you have to not mess around.
Jack Butala: Not mess around?
Jill DeWit: You know what I mean.
Jack Butala: That’s what this whole show is messing around.
Jill DeWit: Well, that’s true. It’s like you have to be the mindset that you’re going to do this right and do everything possible and hold yourself to these goals and your plans. You really have to sit down and go, “All right, this Sunday I am going to devote four hours. I’m going to be on the internet. Everybody, I love you. Dad’s over here.” And I’m going to pick a county. And then next Sunday, I’m going to come back to it and I’m going to do this. And then next Sunday, I’m going to do this. And then next Sunday, I’m going to do that. And if you do that and you spell it all out, four Sundays from now, you own a piece of property, or several, depending what you did.
Jack Butala: Well said.
Jill DeWit: You now own four pieces of property and now the next week, you’re waiting for the buyers to reach out to you. And then six weeks have passed, and now you’re staring at the bank account.
Jack Butala: Exactly. So, the root of this question is the very reason that Jill and I started Land Academy. Because we have developed tools over the years by doing so many deals. We’ve done 15,000, almost 16,000 deals now, that have really saved a tremendous amount of time and made this a cash flow machine or just a machine in general. There’s a lot of moving parts to this. Some of them are incredibly time consuming and some of them aren’t.
Here’s the top three time consuming. In the anatomy of any deal, there’s three places where you really get hung up from a time standpoint and it kills it. If you’re a busy person, it has the potential to kill it.
Number one, when you buy a piece of property, sending out mailers is incredibly simple. We’ve made that so simple, it’s silly. They’re going to come back and you’re going to talk to a seller and invariably, several of them are going to say, “Heck yes, I do want to sell my property for super nothing.” And you’re going to say, “Great.” You gotta close the deal. That’s time consuming.
Once you do close the deal, you have to prep it, from an engineering standpoint, to get it up on the internet. That’s time consuming. We have a tool for that. We have a tool for the purchasing end, too. We’ve developed these tools so that it’s a lot faster. So, once you do purchase it and it’s engineered and it’s up on the internet, someone’s going to click on a button and they’re going to buy it. They’re going to put their credit card information in, they’re going to buy it. Now you gotta facilitate that transaction. Those are the three big bottleneck places in any deal and we have huge tools.
Jill DeWit: And I like to follow-up with the reason why. Because we need them, too.
Jack Butala: Yeah. That’s why they got developed.
Jill DeWit: That’s the whole thing.
Jack Butala: We got tired of it, too.
Jill DeWit: We got tired of it, too. And it got to the point where our people in our community were coming to us, and they still do this. I’m working on things right now and you are too, Jack. “I need help with X.” You know what? So do we. Now there’s 200 of us that all need help with X and I bet with the 200 of us, we can make it a lot cheaper. Jack and I are happy to outlay the cost upfront and develop the tool, get the data, get the mapping. All the things you’re working on without me leaking lots of stuff, like the deeds, like the title stuff. We’re happy to lay out that cost up front, because we use it too, and we’ll share it with everybody. And then we all save money and we all save time.
Jack Butala: Exactly. But, Jill, my original point is dead on. With all the best tools in the world, if you don’t open the tool box, if you don’t have a system, if you don’t have a blueprint to whatever you’re going to build, use it, choose it, build, it’s not going to happen.
Jill DeWit: That’s a lot of it. It’s interesting the number of people that come to me quietly, separately and say, “All right, I’ve got it all, I just need a kick.” They do. And I understand that.
Jack Butala: Me, too. I completely understand that.
Jill DeWit: You think that you’re not ready. I don’t know why. We think we’re not ready. “I just need six more hours, I gotta review this again.” No you don’t. No, you got it. And what I think, and this is another thing about us, how did we help our people solve that? By saying, tell you what. Take that step, take that leap. And if anything goes sideways, we’re right here.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: “How?” You can reach out to us in our online community. “Oh, okay.” You can talk to us in person on our call. “Oh, okay.”
Jack Butala: Success plans.
Jill DeWit: So I think that’s-
Jack Butala: There’s really no excuse.
Jill DeWit: It really is, right. So for a lot of or people when I say, what’s to be afraid of? I’m right here? They go, “Oh, okay.” I’m gonna catch ya. You’re not gonna fall that far. I’m gonna catch you. And even little things like, “God, this deal.” Sometimes I know, some of your deal reviews that you get, Jack, that you do with our people is because it might sound too good to be true and they just want you to look at it and go, “Yeah, that is a ‘run to the bank’. Run to the bank.”
Jack Butala: Yeah. I’ve said that this week.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: There are two “run to the bank” deals in there.
Jill DeWit: There’s another reason that we solve stuff. You can do this. Like I said, we’re right here to help you. Now we have a really great community, too, which is so great. That it doesn’t have to be Jack and I. There’s a lot of Jack and I’s running around with lots of names in our world and they are so happy to help. And I think it’s because we really have created a great community. We paid it forward and they want to pay it forward.
Jack Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: Mic drop. I don’t know what to say after that.
Jack Butala: I can say this. 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: 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 real estate ambition. You can do that, you know? It is amazing.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: I started out part-time. You started out part-time.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Exactly.
Jack Butala: I forgot to mention.
Jill DeWit: You know when you really think about this? We are technically part-time investors but full-time developer … You’re a full time, what is your title?
Jack Butala: I don’t know.
Jill DeWit: What do we call you?
Jack Butala: You’re right. We have a staff but, you know.
Jill DeWit: I get in on stuff, you get involved in stuff.
Jack Butala: I look at the deals and I say yes or no. That’s my involvement in it right now. But we started right where everybody else starts. And it’s not that far away. And “developer” meaning not real estate developer.
Jill DeWit: No, like program developer. You’re a tech developer. You’re coming up with all kinds of great things. I’m really good at saying, “Hey, I just got of the phone with so and so, how can we solve this?” And you go, “Wait a minute, I can do this.” And that’s what we’re doing.
Jack Butala: That’s what happens, you’re right.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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