How to Implement Infill Lot Offer Campaigns (CFFL 492)
How to Implement Infill Lot Offer Campaigns (CFFL 492)
Transcript:
Jack: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit.
Jill: Good day.
Jack: Welcome to our show today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about how to implement infill lot offer campaigns. This is, if you can’t tell-
Jill: It’s really specific, I like it.
Jack: One of my topics, not Jill’s. Before we get into it though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on landinvestors.com online community, it’s free.
Jill: What’s that supposed to mean? I wouldn’t come up with something like this on my own?
Jack: If it sounds like we’re going to talk about something Tony Robinson talked about, I didn’t come up with it.
Jill: If it sounds like really-
Jack: If it sounds like something Bill Gates would talk about, I probably came up with it.
Jill: Okay. Fine. All right. Before we get into the HTML discussion about … Just kidding. Okay. All right. Daniel asked, “I have tried to get a hold of the index maps from a few counties and have come up empty handed. Can anyone shed some more light on who is the best person at the County office to talk to in order to obtain these maps, or any additional information that may be helpful? Thanks.”
Jack: Excellent question Daniel. In fact it’s topical, it’s perfect to the topic today. So a lot of … New people in counties don’t understand, very frequently, what an index map is. And what an index map is, quite simply, is this. If you picture a map of a county there are certain areas … When it got all subdivided, there are certain areas where the APN that starts with, let’s say, 100 might be in the north east corner. The APN that starts with 200 might be in the south east corner. And it gets mapped out, it’s a map that literally indexes the APN scheme based on the numbers. So, depending on where you are in the country, they don’t call it an index map, they call it an APN map or a bunch of other stuff. Out west here they do call it index maps, which is why … That’s what we call it.
But, let’s say that you’ve talked to 19 people at the county and no one has any idea what you’re talking about, here’s what you do. This is really the show. This is the show.
Jill: It’s actually funny ’cause it’s like … You know what … I gotta pause and interject here ’cause, you think you’re … I mean, let’s be honest, they’re real people. They may not have been there for a long time, they may be filling in for somebody, they may be brand new. They may just have not-
Jack: They may be dizzy eating cake.
Jill: They may just be in their own little world and all they do is stamp things ’cause that’s all they do, and pass them to the next person. So, it’s funny, you call the County and you think you’re getting a wealth of information, like a formally trained librarian-
Jack: Like a library, yeah.
Jill: Exactly. It’s not like the librarian. Sometimes you will find yourself educating the County person who answers the phone.
Jack: You’re interrupting them.
Jill: Like this.
Jack: You’re interrupting their cake eating experience.
Jill: Jack, would you stop that. It’s not nice. ‘Cause of one person. But, no it’s not just one, but anyway. So, Jack.
Jack: So, what do you do when no one knows what an index map is at the place where you’re paying your taxes to pay their salary.
Jill: Oh my gosh, here we go again. Boy.
Jack: If you don’t know what Redfin is, please drop what you’re doing if you’re not in the car, and go to Redfin and get a free username and password. And turn on the mapping function, and wherever you live, start searching around. What Redfin is is a direct IDX feed to the ML … Multiple Listing Service. And you’ll notice that maybe half or less than half of the country is blacked out, and that’s because they don’t have … I think there’s like 104 or 108 separate MLS’s in the country. And they, just like RealQuest Pro and everybody else like us, have relationships with some of these MLS’s and some of them collaborate and some of them don’t. Be cool of us to get them all, but at some point … You’re gonna find Redfin at some point in that endeavor. And you will start looking around at all the properties for sale, so take out houses and commercial property and just do land, just click on land. And then, even further than that, only look at land up … The maximum price is 50 grand, well now you have yourself an effective index map. You’re gonna see-
Jill: ‘Cause the goal here … Can I?
Jack: Yeah, go ahead.
Jill: So what Jack’s explaining is, the reason you want an index map is you’re trying to figure out what areas are really expensive, what areas are high price, medium price, low price, that’s the goal. So Jack’s Redfin example is a beautiful work around here.
Jack: What you want to do … So you never want to send out … Unless you’re Luke Smith, you never want to send out-
Jill: Shotgun.
Jack: You know, Luke’ll stand out … ‘Cause Luke’s got the huevos, you know, to send out a $500 a lot offer for every single five acre property in the state of Arizona, for example.
Jill: Right.
Jack: And he deals with that how he deals with it, effectively. Personally, what we do is … And this taps into the … Let’s just say that now we’re talking about the shell, this taps right into the shell.
Jill: Okay.
Jack: This is how to implement and infill lot offer campaigns very effectively.
Jill: Good. So let’s just get to the meat of the show and include it all-
Jack: This is the meat of the show now.
Jill: Good.
Jack: So now you’re looking at Redfin and you’ve set the settings. I’ll say them again just so … In case you missed it. You set Redfin to land only, and up to maximum of $50 thousand. I would set it lower but you can’t, that’s their max. I mean, that’s the minimum. Now you’re looking at, all over the country, in participating MLS’s, all the properties that are listed for less than $50 thousand, all the land. And you’re gonna look at, let’s say, pick a state. I don’t know, Arizona, pick any state that you can see in the screen, in the whole screen, like Colorado I’d say. And you’ll see that in the south east corner it’s a lot cheaper. In the center, where Denver is, it’s really expensive. And you can start to see a pattern. And eventually, you’re gonna find a place, and not necessarily Colorado or any state, where there’s properties that are listed for two thousand, five thousand, eight thousand, even 15, 12. Some numbers like that.
And let me tell you, and here’s the takeaway from the whole show, where there’s 2 to 5 to $10 thousand properties listed, you send a mail campaign there, you’re gonna buy some property for $500 or $1000. And the same is true where there’s $300 thousand property listed, infill lots let’s say, this is … Infill lot is a lot that’s in a subdivision. For lack of a better description I’ll describe it like this, it’s right in between two houses. We’ve all driven down the street and said, “What the heck? Why is there a lot there?”
Jill: Yeah, it’s already paved, there’s power to the lot line, it’s all ready to go.
Jack: It’s 2017, nobody’s built anything on there. What’s the story there? Maybe they need an offer.
Jill: Exactly.
Jack: So, chances are, there’s a situation going on that hasn’t been developed yet, where you can buy it real cheap. So that’s what an infill lot is. And this is a great way, this Redfin way, it’s a great way to create your own index map to find out where … See the patterns of value. Jill and I do it, we have done it in Santa Barbara County, and really expensively. In counties like that, where there’s $1 million property listed, you’re gonna find $800 thousand property, they’ll sign an offer.
Jill: Right.
Jack: In our case, 4 or $500 thousand. So that’s how you effectively send, what I call, micro campaigns.
Jill: At what point in someones career should they be really focusing on this. At the beginning?
Jack: It depends how smart they are.
Jill: Okay.
Jack: You know. If you love excel and … Almost everybody I talk to now, who I do consulting with, they’re nautical engineers, or they’re mechanical engineers, you know, they love data, they love excel. If you’re not a member of our group and you really are bright like this and you get a paycheck somewhere, consider being a member. I’ve never said that before, but, I mean it. If you’re afraid of computers and you don’t understand numbers and math … When someone says math and you say, “Oh my God, I just … I’ve never been good at math.” Then this is not for you.
Jill: Right. Or they say data and you go, “Uh-oh.”
Jack: This whole career is not for you and I’m not exaggerating.
Jill: I think data is sexy.
Jack: So do I.
Jill: I just gotta say that. I’m gonna get … I really like hashtag sexy data. I’m gonna wear that around.
Jack: Oh my God, that’s a great t-shirt for you.
Jill: You like that?
Jack: Sexy data.
Jill: Sexy data. Hey, I need sexydata.com.
Jack: Remember that show in the eighties … Whoever is listening is gonna go get it now.
Jill: Oh my God. Someone get me sexydata.com, just kidding.
Jack: Remember that show from the eighties where the two computer geeks create a woman out of their computers?
Jill: Yes, of course, Weird Science.
Jack: When she comes out … Yeah, Weird Science, and the first thing she says is, “What do you two maniacs want to do first?”
Jill: We might know that person.
Jack: I fondly remember that movie for a lot of reasons.
Jill: Yeah.
Jack: So anyway, now you’re staring at some state that’s got $300 thousand property in one corner, $800 thousand property in the middle, and $3000 property in the bottom right. You have just created an index map, so start clicking through that stuff. ‘Cause it turns out, Redfin and the MLS, they force you to … They force whoever is posting the property to post the assessor’s parcel number. And so you will very quickly click through all these properties and you’re gonna see the $3000 property has an APN scheme of 102 through 213, or some numbers like that. And the $800 thousand, same thing. There’s gonna be a range. So now you’re staring at the data that you pulled from RealQuest Pro, this is the exciting part-
Jill: Oh, yay. I’m sorry.
Jack: This is the sexy data … I just woke up Jill.
Jill: Yay.
Jack: This is the sexy part of the data.
Jill: I’m sorry, Jack just turned to look at me and then you really did have this exciting look on your face. You’re just like, “This is getting so fun.”
Jack: It’s like cheating.
Jill: I know.
Jack: Truly, it’s like printing-
Jill: It kind of is.
Jack: Like printing money if you do this.
Jill: Why people, though, haven’t figure this out, I don’t know. But it is exciting and it is like cheating. But it’s not, it’s legal.
Jack: People gravitate for the $100 an acre property, I don’t know why.
Jill: It’s like inside information. This is your inside information, we have it.
Jack: You want to make some serious money in this business? Forget about the $100 an acre property, that’s just practice.
Jill: Yeah, yeah. That’s an example.
Jack: So then, now you’re staring at the data in a spreadsheet that you pulled from RealQuest Pro, based on this intelligent way that you’ve done this thing at Redfin. And you’ve got, not thousands and thousands and thousands of records, a few hundred to let’s say, I don’t know, 5000 … Between 1000 and 5000 properties. And you know, ’cause you started on Redfin, what 50% of … Everybody’s got it listed for $100 thousand, now you’re gonna start sending offers out for 40 to $50 thousand and selling it for 75. And you’re still far under the retail value that people are gonna snap it up left and right.
Jill: Yep.
Jack: If you do everything right. So that, in a winded way-
Jill: An exciting way.
Jack: In a sexy data way.
Jill: Yeah.
Jack: Is how you create your own index map without talking to the cake eaters.
Jill: Oh my goodness.
Jack: I had a thing up in our office a few years ago called, “Let them eat cake.” It was-
Jill: Yes.
Jack: You know, print it out off a printer and stick it up with tape kind of thing.
Jill: Exactly. Oh boy.
Jack: Join us on another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to use information, that’s me.
Jill: And inspiration, that’s me.
Jack: To get just about anything you want.
Jill: We use it every day to buy property for half of what it’s worth then sell it immediately.
Jack: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. All right, I felt like that episode of this silly podcast that a lot of people listen to for some reason, I feel like-
Jill: That was a good one.
Jack: We conveyed some really valuable information.
Jill: I think, for the first time, we had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It wasn’t a rant.
Jack: It wasn’t. We were not upset about anything.
Jill: No, no.
Jack: It was actually positive.
Jill: That was good. You really got excited there in the middle. I could just … You turned to me with this look and I’m like, “Wow. He’s like jumping up and down in his seat.”
Jack: We haven’t even talked about how to use it for buying houses, ’cause that’s exactly how Jill and I buy houses.
Jill: That’s even sexier.
Jack: Using Redfin. ‘Cause the urban places in the world … It is. The urban counties are covered. And the rural ones are a little tougher on at Redfin. You don’t have to use Redfin. There’s other places you can do it.
Jill: Yep.
Jack: There’s none of them that are as reliable. Redfin’s got a bajillion … They spent a bajillion dollars on their mapping function so it’s real easy to use. You can do it on your phone.
Jill: You know, this reminds me of … This is where I was going with the sexy thing, ’cause, while it’s on my mind, I was talking to a guy about … He’s like, “You know, I went into flipping houses because this whole flipping land thing wasn’t sexy.” And I said, “You know what, well when I look at my bank account it’s pretty sexy.” He said, “Yeah, I get that now.”
Jack: My 1970 [inaudible 00:13:05] that I purchased for money, that I flip land with, that’s really sexy.
Jill: That’s pretty sexy.
Jack: That’s how you get a girl like Jill by the way.
Jill: Thank you.
Jack: So, don’t tell me it’s not sexy. If money’s not sexy, there’s something wrong with you.
Jill: That’s right.
Jack: Information and inspiration to buy undervalue property.
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