Land Crowd Fund is Working (CFFL 519)
Land Crowd Fund is Working (CFFL 519)
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill Dewit.
Jill DeWit: Hi there!
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. In this episode, Jill and I talk about how LandCrowdFund.com, by the way, is actually working, even though it’s not live yet.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh
Jack Butala: We picked a few people to test this out and it’s doing smashingly well. Before we get into that though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Cool! Dave V. asks, “I have a seller (it’s a run-to-the-bank deal) and the property is in her previous married name, Jane Jones. Well, she’s remarried and now her name is Jane Smith”.
Right? This happens.
Jack Butala: Plain Jane.
Jill DeWit: “So what kind of ID or name change proof should I require from her, Jack?”
Jack Butala: Well, I think … Dave’s pretty experienced, so, chances are he has run into this before. There’s a lot of … If you have never done these deals, and you’re kind of new to this, there’s a lot of this that goes on.
So you find a person that wants to sell their property. You don’t want to go through title because it’s expensive or whatever and you want to close the deal. People’s names change, right? This is very, very, very common.
Well, the title industry and title insurance industry and the escrow industry, they’ve long-since figured this out. And here’s why. There’s real specific local rules for each jurisdiction, each county, about how to handle this. Sometimes you attach a marriage license, sometimes you … I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to do it. Jill knows, actually, most of them. Which … I don’t know why I’m answering the question.
Jill DeWit: I don’t know! I just thought it was fun. You know what I was going to do? I was going to say … Here’s what I was waiting for. I was waiting for you to just to say something like “And here’s a reason not to get married”. (laughter)
Jack Butala: Well, I was going to get to that.
Jill DeWit: (Laughter) That’s what I was thinking was going to come out of this, you know?
Jack Butala: It’s a small market. To answer the question. Before we get to the funny stuff, about marriage. To answer the-
Jill DeWit: (laughter) The funny parts of marriage .com. There’s a show!
Jack Butala: If it’s that good of deal and –
Jill DeWit: Or a marriage!
Jack Butala: And, this, Dave specifically runs into frequently. Find a local attorney and ask him to close the transaction.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Hopefully his office is real close to the courthouse and he, honestly, can just close the deal within a week, if it’s that good of a deal.
Jill DeWit: The big-
Jack Butala: If you do it with title, it’s just going to take longer.
Jill DeWit: Right. The big picture is, there’s ways around this stuff. It is the right person, not like there’s anything funny going on. And there … By the way, there are documents that can show, like a marriage license, a name change … So.
Jack Butala: It’s not a ways around it, it’s just a lot of paper work.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm.
Jack Butala: That’s really the issue.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: There’s a lot of stuff you have to do and you have to do it correctly so that, to convey the property.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: And there’s professionals that do this so that you can move on.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Don’t spend too much time on it. Let somebody else do it and you babysit it. Like Jack said.
Jack Butala: Hire a lawyer. And make sure they don’t charge you more than a thousand bucks to do the deal.
Jill DeWit: Got it.
Jack Butala: Title is going to charge you between five hundred and a thousand. But it’s going to take too long.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm. Title kills deals.
Jack Butala: If you have a question, or you want to be on the show, reach out to either one of us on LandInvestors.com. It’s free.
Today’s topic: LandCrowdFund.com is working. So, Jill and I had this cockamamie idea a long time ago, to put people who have money together with people who have deals and no money. And it turns out there’s a lot of people in our group on both sides of that fence and no real way to put them together, like, through a portal. And so we did. We created LandCrowdFund.com. And if you go there right now, this very minute, you’re going to actually see a “Coming Soon” page. But, we invited a bunch of people to try it out and it’s working smashingly well, so I wanted to do a short episode … I think this airs on Friday. A short episode … to talk about what’s coming, so you can plan for it. So that’s what we’ll talk about today.
Jill DeWit: Okay. (laughter)
Jack Butala: So picture –
Jill just picked out her nail polish color.
Jill DeWit: Hello. I actu- (laughter) Okay.
Jack Butala: So, picture a regular crowdfund site, right? But picture somebody who found a fantastic transaction and they describe it in a format that’s very consistent, whether it’s three thousand acres or forty acres or a quarter acre. And it’s presented that way to raise money. And so, but the difference with this crowdfund scenario is that you get your money back. It’s an investment situation. You partnership with that person.
So, if you’re a person with money and you want to do the deal, you just take a look at what’s up there, you say “Heck, yes!”, you plug in the dollars and you get the deal done. And you go do the deal. So it’s truly for our asset type.
Now can you do an eight hundred thousand dollar deal this way and check out with your credit card? No.
Jill DeWit: (Laughter)
Jack Butala: But there are … There are and will be-
Jill DeWit: That would be funny!
Jack Butala: Extremely pricey transactions on there that you click on it, you make a commitment, and then it goes through the title, escrow, lawyer process.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: So. It’s pretty cool. There’s nothing out there like it.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm.
Jack Butala: You know. And we checked with our lawyers. It’s all legal.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm.
Jack Butala: Everybody’s signing documents and stuff. It would be a problem if you were just donating money, but we’re not doing that.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: It’s an investor forum.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm.
Jack Butala: But, everybody knows what crowdfund is, so that’s how we used it.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm.
Jack Butala: Do you have anything to say, Jill?
Jill DeWit: No.
Jack Butala: (Laughter)
Jill DeWit: (Laughter)
Jack Butala: So this is just one big-
Jill DeWit: So, this is the … The opening sentence was “So Jill and I had this idea”, which is really, “I had this idea”, meaning Jack. (Laughter)
Jack had this cockamamie idea. I’m just kidding.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: No, it’s good! No, it’s good! I have been doing it more old school way where I, “Hey! You should talk to so-and-so” and “You should talk to that person”, “You should talk to that person”, which worked for a while, but this is a better way of putting people together, you’re right.
And there’s a lot of people that call me out of the blue. I really do get those calls of people reaching out to me, like, “I’ve been watching your group and I don’t really want to be … but I sure have the money”. So that’s what this is for.
Jack Butala: I get multiple e-mails a week on that topic.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm. Exactly.
Especially like me personally, “Can I just give you five hundred thousand dollars?” I’m like, “Thank you but, no. I don’t want to do that”.
Jack Butala: Man, that would be a mess for us.
Jill DeWit: Right?
Jack Butala: I would not … I mean, there are people in our group that do that. They give somebody a couple of hundred thousand bucks and-
Jill DeWit: And that’s their business.
Jack Butala: And it is.
Jill DeWit: That’s okay.
Jack Butala: So, here’s my question about that kind of investment arrangement. So, let’s say the operator person has 10-15 deals coming in a week. How do you know that they’re not just taking the best runs for themselves. I mean, there’s just so many-
Jill DeWit: You have to get to know the person.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: I mean, you really do.
Jack Butala: I just think if you’re going to do it, you should do it the crowdfund way where you post one piece of property. I’ll just use an example, like I always use: forty acres for six or seven thousand bucks. It’s got good access. All the information is on there that you would ever need to make a decision. Served up on a silver platter by a person who knows what they’re doing, but they just don’t have the acquisition funds and it’s usually because they burn through their acquisition funds really fast.
Jill DeWit: Because they’re that good. Exactly.
Jack Butala: They’ve slated five to twenty grand and they’ve bought and sold and they’re in the process of doing the whole thing and they’ve got ten more deals coming up.
Jill DeWit: And they just don’t have the money to act on them.
Jack Butala: And they’re so good, they don’t want to option them and all that stuff. It’s a lot of extra paperwork. So they need a partner. So it’s real simple to submit it right in there. Especially if you use Parcel Fact, again, not a commercial, but all the data is in Parcel Fact, it just transfers right there and you can see whether or not you want to do the deal within seconds, in my opinion.
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm.
Jack Butala: I mean, I can look at the properties that are in there and I can tell you “Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. No. No.”
Jill DeWit: Um-hmm. Exactly. This really is a good idea.
Jack Butala: Pretty cool venue. I got the idea because I was talking to a guy recently, he said, “You know the way movies get made in this town is on accident. It’s just who you know and the studio … how much, where they are in their budget and there’s no real way to submit a great movie”.
Jill DeWit: Oh!
Jack Butala: Where everybody can take a look at it and say … Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Gosh, there should be!
Jack Butala: There should be.
Jill DeWit: No, you’re right. Put your script or at least the bones of it up here, let people read it, look at it and bid on it, or something.
Jack Butala: His comment … I’ve said it on the show before, his comment, and it will stick with me forever is, “Movies get made on accident. It’s just a series of errors and a series of weird stuff that goes on that actually gets made”.
Jill DeWit: There’s so … I’m sure there’s so many good writers and good scripts out there that they never get into the right hands. And half the time, we know this, it’s going through, like, an intern if you will, before it even gets to the right people. So the intern may not really know what they’re doing. They’re not a seasoned professional, but they’re the ones screening. They’re making that first call. And how many good scripts get missed and looked over. So …
Jack Butala: Probably all of them, except one.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Right. The one that sings to them.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: For whatever reason.
Jack Butala: At that time.
Jill DeWit: Right. Because they just broke up with their boyfriend.
Jack Butala: Because they’re artists.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: (Laughter)
Jill DeWit: (Laughter) And they broke up with their boyfriend, then they want a romantic comedy. That’s what they want … a happy ending. That’s why that got through that day.
Jack Butala: I know you’re right.
Jill DeWit: Seriously!
Jack Butala: You’re absolutely right.
Jill DeWit: Totally!
Jack Butala: Wow!
Jill DeWit: Yeah, thank you.
Jack Butala: Join us in another episode where Jack and Jill discuss how to not make a movie. That’s me.
Jill DeWit: Ah! And use inspiration to save it all. That’s me.
Jack Butala: (Laughter)
Jill DeWit: (Laughter)
Jack Butala: Just about anything you want.
Doesn’t Jill laugh like Snoopy?
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh! We’ll use it every day if I [inaudible 00:09:16]-
Jack Butala: (Laughter)
Jill DeWit: For half of what it’s worth, then sell it immediately.
Jack Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
You know what I’m going to do?
Jill DeWit: What?
Jack Butala: I’m going to pay somebody to go through these 520 episodes-
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: And find all of the places that you’ve laughed.
Jill DeWit: Oh no!
Jack Butala: And I’m going to make a collage.
Jill DeWit: Oh no!
Jack Butala: And then I’m going to run Snoopy’s laugh-
Jill DeWit: Oh no!
Jack Butala: You know, Snoopy’s Peanuts … Peanut’s Snoopy.
Jill DeWit: Oh no! I’m familiar with Snoopy.
Jack Butala: His laugh is very similar.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. We should have it right now, like cued up, that would be funny to throw that in there. It’s all good.
Jack Butala: I’m going to have somebody do that.
Jill DeWit: Okay, cool.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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