Deals We are Doing This Week (CFFL 439)
Deals We are Doing This Week (CFFL 439)
Jack Butala: Jack Butala, Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today and in this episode, Jill and I talk about the deals we’re doing this week, and it’s a lot. It’s more than 200 deals, I looked at it just a few minutes ago. Before we get into it though let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Investors online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Cool! Alright, Trevor … This is actually good.
Jack Butala: Trevor is just … he’s … you should be a comedian.
Jill DeWit: This is actually a story more than a question and I just had to put it in here because I was rolling when I saw this. Alright, here’s what he wrote.
“Well, I was buying five acres in Arizona this Saturday, the only time the owner could met the notary was 8:00 p.m., California time. I got a call from the notary in a panic, she said that the owner had just got another offer for $250 more than I offered. Damn old lady shook me down.
Jack Butala: (laughs)
Jill DeWit: I was gonna call her bluff but with enough already in with the notary, etc. I asked if she was actually gonna uphold her end of the transaction and she flat out told me $250 is $250. All I could think of was a “Dumb and Dumber” quote about getting ripped off by an old lady in a motorized cart but I didn’t.
So the notary went and got her own $250.
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh, wow, that’s California.
Jill DeWit: Talk about nice, and gave it to the renegotiating mean lady and now I have to send her another payment.
Jack Butala: (laughs)
Jill DeWit: So the funny thing is this was from my first mailer and she had called me multiple times to sell it. Now she was laughing at her good luck. Yeah, real estate. Hope everyone can laugh at this and realize that it is all okay. You’re going to have some crazy stuff come up. Welcome to business. It is still much better than having a bank back out on you on a large apartment deal. Been there and done that.
Jack Butala: Boy, you said it. If you remove the lender from all of this, you’re way, way ahead of the game. So here’s the deal. I’m gonna up the story. Jill and I sold a bunch of properties, like a 1000 properties to a guy who used to be on our A list. And we negotiated the deal and it went to title, the whole thing. And five minutes before it was supposed to close –
Jill DeWit: Like wiring money –
Jack Butala: I get an email from the guy with a number in it. So we agreed to sell a property for five hundred dollars a property … a 1000 properties, a half million bucks, and I get an email that says 400. So needless to say, I was not a lot of fun to be around when that happened. And I blew my top and the guy, I’m not even on speaking terms with the guy anymore. We did end up closing the deal and he got his way that time.
Jill DeWit: That’s the last time you do anything with him.
Jack Butala: I don’t do business that way and he’s lost … He’s contacted me a hundred times after that trying to buy more property and I refuse to sell him … I refuse to take his call. I don’t do stuff that way.
Jill DeWit: You know, that brings up a good point –
Jack Butala: If there’s a reason, you know if there’s a reason like, jeez, you know, I just don’t think .. just be … Your word really matters. This is not … this is a small town, this land investment community we’re in. It’s probably a couple thousand, maybe two, three thousand people in the country that really know what they’re doing, max. Probably less. You get to know … You know, everybody gets to know each other.
Jill DeWit: You do and I don’t want this to be a complaining session, however.
Jack Butala: (laughing)
Jill DeWit: You know, I’ve had that in a lot of different areas in our business, you know? And Jack and I are always up front –
Jack Butala: And transparent.
Jack Butala: If I promise you something and even if it’s a mistake on my part, you know what, I did. I’m going to follow through and it really drives me batty when people don’t do the same with us. If you come to me and there is something legitimate, we need to rework something, oh okay great. But if you try to pull a fast one on me, then you’re not my friend. I don’t like that, I just don’t do it. So there’s plenty of good people out there, I’d rather work with them.
Jack Butala: Yup.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Oh yeah, that’s, you know, they weed themselves out. You know what, honestly Trevor, I would have done the same situation as you. Chances are you’re probably buying the property for 500 bucks or so, so 750 it’s okay. And you wouldn’t be buying it if you didn’t think it was, you’re were gonna make a lot, five grand, ten grand on it.
Jill DeWit: That’s just so funny.
Jack Butala: It’s fine.
Jill DeWit: I love it. And you’re right, it’s gonna happen, you know, that’s a good point too. If you … Any business you go into it’s not gonna be all rosy and peachy and perfect, we love to think it is but I mean, I don’t care what you’re selling, someone … One of your customers is gonna come back is gonna come back and say you know I thought it was gonna be a brighter blue and not a dark blue. You’re gonna have to deal with that.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: So, that’s just doing business like Trevor said.
Jack Butala: Here’s the good news. Jill and I own Land Investors and it’s a membership based group and we all do deals together and about once every six months we get some rogue weirdo who joins us and he’s super high maintenance and he calls Jill some … A negative name or something and then I get to be Detroit Steve. (laughs) And I get to address that the way somebody from Detroit addresses stuff, when spouses get called … And so, we have a lot of control over who’s in our group and I’ve made exactly three phone calls like that since we’ve started this group.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: So, sometimes you can get into situation where you can really control it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Are we ever really out of control here? No. We’re in control of these real estate deals. As an acquisition … As a buyer. If you have a question or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on landinvestors.com
Jill DeWit: Hey, before we go on to the topic here. We’re sitting in the car, you might hear waves in the background, and so we have this beautiful view and there’s people here sitting next to us and I’m like, why are they still sitting here watching us?
Jack Butala: Are they watching us?
Jill DeWit: I don’t know. These two gentlemen are just kind of sitting here waiting to see what we’re doing. We’ve got our headsets on and we’re talking and they’re just like –
Jack Butala: This is Los Angeles so –
Jill DeWit: I know, I’m like –
Jack Butala: This stuff goes on all the time. I walked into a movie set a couple of weeks ago on accident. Like not indoors, but where they’re shooting. On the beach.
Jill DeWit: You were totally just like walk through the scope.
Jack Butala: I didn’t like walk right through it, but I would have if I was like, less paying attention.
Jill DeWit: You were an unpaid extra. (laughing) Is really what you were.
Jack Butala: Exactly. You know I have a buddy in New York and he grew up there and he said “you know, a lot of things get shot in the streets of New York … And with the city going on in the background and some people wreck it for everybody by gawking, you know what I’m saying.” Really early … As a young person in New York, you learn early that you just keep … You just walk right through and forget it. Not stand staring at the camera.
Jill DeWit: Right. That’s so funny.
Jack Butala: Seeing what star you can see. (laughing)
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Today’s topic. These are the deals we’re doing this week. Jill go.
Jill DeWit: Well, the one I’m working on the most right now is this big 168 combined parcels in –
Jack Butala: Southern Arizona.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna share here.
Jack Butala: (laughing) You’re essentially buying a RV park.
Jill DeWit: Right. That’s what’s taking up the most of my time right now … It’s really not taking much time cause I’m doing it through title with an escrow agent but I’m just making sure everything’s spelled out perfectly, so. But it’s easy. These are nice too. I like it when … These are some of my favorites. When I negotiate with the owner, you know, a wonderful transaction, everybody’s happy. He’s got his own little escrow company down the street that he loves, he works with. “Hey, call Susie over here” Great. I just call Susie, make sure she has all my information and we’re gonna close real quick, and everybody’s happy.
Jack Butala: You know, we’re buying this for 200 and something … A spot. So think of the terms of that, and we’ll sell them for probably –
Jill DeWit: At least a 1000.
Jack Butala: Yeah, at least a 1000, probably closer to five and on terms for more. So the down payment that we receive will cover … Pretty much cover the acquisition. So it’s an amazing deal, but we don’t do any deals that aren’t amazing.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: So we’ll clear a quarter million bucks in the deal. In like, two or three weeks. I mean not, two or three months.
Jill DeWit: Let’s share how this came to us because I want people to know.
Jack Butala: Sure, sure.
Jill DeWit: This is from one of our members. One of our people in our group had a deal review with Jack and it was a rather larger transaction that they … I don’t know if they weren’t ready for it, or didn’t have the, it just worked out that hey, do you wanna … I think they were asking you –
Jack Butala: It was too much money. They didn’t want to bite that much off. So, we split it.
Jill DeWit: We’re like, alright sure. So then it was great. I got involved and negotiated a way different price then what the starting sales price was.
Jack Butala: Yeah, that’s an awesome job. I mean it’s less than half.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. It’s wonderful.
Jack Butala: It’s a smoking deal.
Jill DeWit: It’s gonna be great. Everyone’s gonna win on this one. So we do really do deals with our people.
Jack Butala: Here’s what I love about these multi[inaudible 00:09:32] deals. It’s all in one subdivision so we essentially have to really do an html description and all the engineering for one property and then adjust it for 167 other ones. So if you buy 168 properties that are in different states and different places, in different subdivision, you gotta do … It’s a lot of work. This is … Man, I mean, this is all juice. You just do it once and copy it. Not copy it, but you gotta change a little bit.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: And then, inevitably, you find out that somebody’s gonna stumble … Somebody on our A list is gonna stumble on it, and they’re gonna say you know what, I’ll take it all for 900 bucks, and then you’re done.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: So that’s what has happened on every single deal.
Jill DeWit: $900 dollars each, or whatever it is. So what else you want to share?
Jack Butala: We’re doing a bunch of 40 acre deals … 40 acre transactions in Northern Arizona and I love them. We basically buy them for four, three or four thousand bucks and sell them for anywhere between 12 and 20, cash.
Jill DeWit: Two of them I got less.
Jack Butala: Yeah, way less.
Jill DeWit: It was 3000 combined.
Jack Butala: Exactly. And then we’re doing … A ton of houses, wholesale. We buy houses for a flipper, so the guy with the tools and he cleans them up. We just mark them up 10,000 … Send a bunch of mailers out. He goes out and sees them. He says “yup, I want it,” and we mark them up 10,000 grand. We do those all the time. And then, my personal favorite, we’re doing some real high end, right out of Los Angeles, ranches. For like movie start type ranches. And with an equity partner and man … Talk about printing money. We don’t do a deal unless we make a hundred grand on it, and we don’t do a deal unless it’s sold before we buy it. (laughing)
We’ve got this figured out.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: It puts a smile on my face just to say that stuff.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t that funny? It’s like, for you and I, it’s second nature, and people like … We were just at that party this last weekend, and we were just talking. And the way we talk people are like, this can’t be right.
Jack Butala: Yeah, they just don’t believe us.
Jill DeWit: They’re like, what? Like, no no, really. It’s really not that … It’s not crazy. We’ve been doing … You know, and it’s second nature to us.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: And people still can’t wrap their heads around it all the time. But yeah, why would you put your neck out there. You need to know what you’re getting into, and have a buyer lined up, and then it’s easy.
Jack Butala: It always leads me … This party’s perfect, thank you. I’m glad you brought it up. It leads me to start asking questions like well, why don’t you send out a bunch of letters to everybody that owns a house around here and price it all out. Make sure you can get at least 100,000 dollars more overnight, why don’t you do that?
Well, I don’t know how. What do you mean you don’t know how? So this is what it prompted me to do.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Launch … We will launch … I’ll do it this weekend. We’ll launch a component of offers2owners.com, the number two, where we’ll … we will do a mailer for you. So you type … You get us an address, we’ll do the rest, for houses.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Or get us a name of a subdivision. Let’s say, I always use Anthem in North Phoenix as an example cause it’s a perfect master plan community, and you can buy property real cheap there. Let’s say you wanna … You don’t want to mess with the mailer, you’re too busy, or you have a job.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Send us a note that says we would like to purchase … We would like to send a mailer to every house in Anthem for $82 a square foot, and check out here and we will … Jill is setting up, literally setting up a team this week to do that, and I think it’s gonna cost two bucks an offer. Or you can do it like our members who are incredible intelligent, get a subscription, and it will cost you 50 cents an offer, 49 cents, plus the data so. This is all being set up for people who are not pros at, and don’t want to make it a career.
The people in our group, it’s a career thing. I’m excited.
Jill DeWit: I am also. Totally. Yup.
Jack Butala: That covers it I think. [crosstalk 00:13:25] There’s like three or four hundred properties in the system that are in some point of being reviewed.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: Those are the ones that right off the top of my head I get excited about.
Jill DeWit: That we’re working on, exactly. Very cool stuff.
Jack Butala: What is some deals that you recently turned down?
Jill DeWit: Oh –
Jack Butala: There’s a few that I have.
Jill DeWit: There’s, you know what, there’s a lot of one offs that are just small, too small. There from mailers still from years ago, I turn those down a lot and I feel bad. Cause, I hate to say no. They’re almost like, you sure, really? They almost want to give it away. You get to this point where we are in our careers, in our business where it’s just not worth my time. Unless I’m gonna make a lot of money, I’m just gonna pass.
Jack Butala: When we open up a gold level member we won’t … Because everybody’s at a different point in their career … When we open up the gold level membership, we will make those opportunities available.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: We’ll put the contact information in there and the first person who is a member grabs it.
Jill DeWit: Our people are doing that … Well, we started that. We started doing that a while back and I got too busy to even to do that. But, our members are already doing that with each other.
Jack Butala: Yeah, I saw that. Idea board, right?
Jill DeWit: They use our … We have a backend communication for the people in our group and they share deals all the time.
Jack Butala: It’s called –
Jill DeWit: I’ve even see people who say “Hey, I need some cash something came up. Does anybody here want to buy these”? And they’re totally helping each other.
Jack Butala: Every single time I respond to that … Cause I’ll bail anybody out on that stuff if the price is right. And I’ve never been able to do a deal because somebody else got there first.
Jill DeWit: Grabs it. I know they do.
Jack Butala: That just tells me the system is working.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. All you see is quick sell, here’s my number call me. Oh, okay, good for you guys.
Jack Butala: I have a confession to make about acquisitions. I was involved in a deal until recently that I politely backed out of because the guy I was doing it with is an ass.
Jill DeWit: Oh!
Jack Butala: And I don’t do ass anymore. And if the seller even looks side wise, I kill it. So, that’s a gage for me.
Jill DeWit: You handle that so much better than I do.
Jack Butala: But you know … I’m with you though. If we’re going to talk about it this much, now it’s … And this is the thing that I’m often explaining to people that are new in this world. Just wait, just wait, just wait, don’t get married to one deal, don’t hang on to every deal. If you do this right, you’ll be able to pick and choose also. You’ll be able to take the easy ones, the ones you want, the good people that don’t want to talk your ear off, and you can take the cream off the top and move on.
Jill DeWit: And now that we’re using JillLive, we started about, what, a month ago, to answer our phones, boy, what a difference. Even … Cause we were using our own receptionist for that, and that person has since moved on to bigger and better things within our organization. What JillLive, to have somebody answer, a trained person scripted to answer your phone, it allows you to get a little bit more bold in the type of letters, offers that you send out because no ones yelling at you anymore.
Jack Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: It’s beautiful to get an email from an unrelated third party that says call these 19 people back, they all want to do the deal. Nevermind 900 people called back to yell at you.
Jack Butala: Right, well even that. It’s even detailed, they’ll have all … I mean, I can sit and look at all the deals right there. It’s not just here’s this person’s name and number, here’s the deal, here’s the parcel, here’s what your offer price was, here’s what they’re looking for, here’s how quickly they want to close. I mean, dream it up, you can be that specific, which is a huge time saver.
Jill DeWit: This was full-blown Jill’s idea and I have to admit I fought it in the beginning and now I’m like man, this is awesome.
Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jack Butala: And inspiration, that’s me.
Jill DeWit: To get just about anything you want.
Jack Butala: We just it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth and sell it immediately.
Jill DeWit: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. You make me proud you know that?
Jack Butala: Thank you. The JillLive thing rocks.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: One little thing after another, we’re removing all the stuff out of … All the stuff out of our world.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Making everything easier.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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