Anatomy Of A Perfect Blind Offer Campaign (CFFL 525)
Anatomy Of A Perfect Blind Offer Campaign (CFFL 525)
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit
Jill DeWit: Hi!
Jack Butala: Welcome to the show today. In this episode, Jill and talk about the anatomy of a perfect blind offer campaign. Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members. On LandInvestors.com online community, it’s free.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Richard asks, hi everyone, I’m trying to use Real Quest to get mailing lists, mailing lists from micro-areas to market that I have looked at on Redfin. I’m not having much luck searching for vacant land areas smaller than a whole county with Real Quest. What search criteria are you guys using to pull small lists for say a specific zip code or town. I tried using township range section but Real Quest did not return any results that way.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Many of the properties that I have looked at on Redfin don’t have a subdivision listed for them. That was a good idea by the way. Jack says look for clusters in Redfin, which I did.
Jack Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: But I can’t figure out how to pull those small area lists to mail property owners using Real Quest.
Jack Butala: Alright, good.
Jill DeWit: What method have you guys been using for that? Thank you. Do you want me to go on cuz I have one reply here and you want me to read it?
Jack Butala: Yeah. Go ahead and let’s hear what Trevor has to say and then, I know where the confusion is and I can really simplify it and make it easy. Go ahead, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Okay, so one of our members had already replied here and this is what he wrote. As Trevor says, hey look up the property, the addresses are usually on these closer-in town areas. Use that address, with the county to look up the subdivision then go to Real Quest, do a table search by subdivision or subdivision by table search. Then, you can find any and all properties in that subdivision. Get after it, be darn careful you look up the correct phase of each subdivision as well. You can leave yourself out to dry in these subdivisions with lots of phases.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: Some on the eighth tee box may be worth $500,000 and the 10,000 acre square foot the back next to the highway may be worth $50,000.
Jack Butala: Great advice, Trevor.
Jill DeWit: Love it!
Jack Butala: I’m gonna add to Trevor’s instead of replace it, cuz he’s 100% correct. But here’s the way to get to the bottom of it. If you’re in our group, you understand and respect the data. If you’re not and data is just a concept to you. Every answer to all of these thing’s comes back to data. So, when somebody goes to apply for a new subdivision, a developer or whomever, they go to accessor and they say, thanks for approving my subdivision. Please assign a set of accessor parcel numbers to me. And they don’t just randomly, it’s not the lottery. They don’t put…
Jill DeWit: The next ten in line, here you go.
Jack Butala: There’s a rhyme and reason to it. So, and it’s a numbers scheme. So, if you find, Redfin, you did perfectly, you did great on Redfin. You found a cluster and you can see some consistent pricing and that’s great. That’s what you want. Then, go back and find out, and there’s 90 ways to do it, at least. What APN scheme is in that little subdivision or sub-subdivision? Like Trevor’s talking about and then send letters to those people. There might be ten little subsets inside a data set to send price letters to. So, is it complicated? No, not really. It’s just really digging it out and doing some research. In fact, this is [crosstalk 00:03:23], powers into this topic perfectly today. I wrote the title of this, the anatomy of a perfect blind offer campaign. Cuz Jill and I were sitting around talking and we get some really complicated good questions on the Wednesday call and land investors all the time.
But I wanted to bring it back to the grassroots scenario. About how easy this can be to understand the concept anyway. Cuz talking to somebody who’s a very seasoned real estate professional recently and they said, you do what? Oh, you send low-ball offers out to everybody. No, no, I said no they’re not listed for sale. And the guy said, what? Anyway, let’s get into the show and I’ll tell a story.
Jill DeWit: Thought we were.
Jack Butala: Do you have a question, or you want to be on the show? Reach out to either one of us on landinvestors.com.
Jill DeWit: I was gonna add one thing to the question, please.
Jack Butala: Oh, yes. Sure.
Jill DeWit: You were on a roll, I didn’t want to stop yeah. So, I was gonna add that this. And this does tie into the show too. This is what it’s all about. Spending more time, more energy on the front end, really digging into this data. You might need to spend a week, playing around [crosstalk 00:04:34], right? Or more. A week’s worth of time. Let’s say 40 hours.
Jack Butala: No, I agree.
Jill DeWit: You might, and however long that takes you, you might have to spend that much time really, thoroughly understanding and getting to know these products. They’re there, and if you do, you will win. I guess that’s the point. Spend, like Richard did, spend some time on Redfin. I’m gonna bet the guy spent, all in, eight to ten hours, a couple hours here, couple hours there. You think you have an area, you gotta look around. You don’t want to mess around here, it’s worth it. And then, now you gotta take that and transpose it into getting the data that matches that area that you want. That’s a lot of work. But it sure pays off. And then like Jack’s gonna talk about pricing it right and all of those things. There’s a lot of moving parts. You spend the time on ’em, it’s gonna be perfect.
Jack Butala: Yeah. And every single time you do it, you get better. That’s the whole thing. This is a career situation. [crosstalk 00:05:33] If you want it to be. This isn’t a hobby. I guess some people do it as a hobby. Some people use it to just buy a house. Their next primary residence. But, most of us here.
Jill DeWit: A vacation property or whatever.
Jack Butala: Right. Most of us want to kill it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. I’m here to kill it.
Jack Butala: I’m here to kill it, kill it dead.
Jill DeWit: I’m all. I don’t know Jack. I’m thinking about it. I think I’m gonna go all in.
Jack Butala: This is show number 525. I think we’re here to stay. [crosstalk 00:05:57]
Jill DeWit: We’ve been testing your theories. That is so funny, I was reaching out to somebody the other day and I hadn’t said it in a while. I was in bigger pockets and I hate to say. I don’t know, but we’re going on 16,000 transactions, what do I know? You know. So, I think then that I get, people go, oh, ohhhhhh, you’re not just some girl.
Jack Butala: You’re not just some girl. [crosstalk 00:06:20] Let me tell yeah.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Sometimes I wonder that too, what do they see me, they see my picture. They go, oh yeah, what can she know?
Jack Butala: No, I’m here to tell you Jill, you’re not just some regular girl.
Jill DeWit: Thank you, very much.
Jack Butala: For a bunch of reasons, most of ’em I can’t say on the air.
Jill DeWit: Hello?
Jack Butala: Here’s the deal with how to send out a mailer. Why we’re all here. Why we fight. You find an area of interest. There’s a million reasons you might be interested in an area. The number one reason that comes up, across my email is, hey, I want to buy a house or I want to buy a piece of property in a vacation spot so I can take my family and I don’t want it to be expensive. Or, I want to buy 62 properties in that subdivision, one county over because I heard from my buddy that there’s whatever. So, what do you do? So, that is Step A. You locate an area, for whatever reason. The pros in the group, include us. We can locate these things by looking at population density maps or Redfin, anywhere there’s a map, for whatever reason I see the data that way. Where there’s clusters of like-kind property there, relatively priced similarly, right? If you look at a map of Los Angeles county, specifically in the urban areas, they’re not priced similarly in any way.
Jill DeWit: It’s all over the place.
Jack Butala: Now, I can pattern it out on a price per square foot, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Once you get real advanced at this, you really can see patterns of where they’re not. Where they’re not obvious. But step one is to find an area that seems to be relatively consistent in pricing. Could be a county. It could be part of a county. It could be a subdivision. Might be on Redfin. If you look through our education material, it’s really obvious. Number two, price them. And, how do we price it? The whole point here is to send blind offers. People who, not to property that’s for sale, but, somebody already got there. You want to send an offer to people who own real estate. And you want to, just like, surprise ’em.
Jill DeWit: I want to hit that point home. Just, so, let’s pause. This is like Sesame Street. We’re going to repeat this. All together now.
Jack Butala: The Sesame Street of real estate.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, this is what we’re doing. [crosstalk 00:08:43] That’s good.
Jack Butala: I love it.
Jill DeWit: Here’s, we’re going to repeat this together, everybody. Not, don’t send offers to property already for sale, that’s not what we’re doing. I mean, if it is for sale, who cares? You’re not gonna scrub ’em out. You’re not going to spend any time on it. But you’re not looking for that. This is not download the MLS and send them all a cheap offer.
Jack Butala: Or, a list of HUD houses.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: I’ve heard somebody do that too.
Jill DeWit: It’s not. Oh, a new listing on the MLS. I’m going to quickly get a letter in the mail and buy it.
Jack Butala: That’s absolutely the wrong way to do it.
Jill DeWit: Yep! Thank you! [crosstalk 00:09:16] I just wanted to repeat that. Thank you.
Jack Butala: So, anyway, you find. So then you gotta price it. So, this is what we suggest. We don’t tell you to do this but we suggest that, you take a look at like-kind property. You look at properties that are listed for sale, forget about completed sales. I could write a dissertation on completed sales and value and what it means. Is it easy to get that stuff? No. Is it super meaningful? Yeah. But were just talking about the basic stuff here. So what we do, even to this day, is we look at property that’s listed for sale. Well, Jack, how does that, if it’s listed, we don’t know what it sold for? Trust me on this, so you look at properties listed for sale and you cut it down by at least half, your offer amount and then some. So, at least 50% and then kick it down a little bit more and here’s why. Because you’re not going to sell it to the end-user. That’s too much of a pain in the butt, most of the time. It is for us anyway. You want it to sell it to guy who’s going to sell it for retail because he keeps coming back. He keeps coming back, over and over and over again because he’s making a bunch of money and you’re doing all the work. That’s the whole business model here.
Jill DeWit: And now and then, the end-user will sneak in and they’re just thrilled because they found it so cheap.
Jack Butala: And then they become the [crosstalk 00:10:33] wholesaler.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, and the next thing you know, they’re buying more.
Jack Butala: A whole list of people like that.
Jill DeWit: Remember that guy that did that? This guy bought this property. He was so, [inaudible 00:10:41] he went to, [inaudible 00:10:41] he bought this piece of property. It was just for him. He was all excited. And he started telling his buddy at work and his buddy, [inaudible 00:10:47] bought it. He’s like, his buddy’s wanted to buy it, so he marked it up a little bit. Sold it to his buddy, came back to me for more, so he accidentally, fell into this business. He’s like, I need more of those. I’m selling this to my friends. That’s great.
Jack Butala: Right. So. So, that’s for pricing. And then you have to get the stuff in the mail and that is a massive bottleneck for a lot of people. We’ve solved that with a tool called Offers To Owners. It involves choosing your data set, usually in Real Quest Pro. Manipulating the data and pricing it and getting it to a printer. So, if all that is confusing as heck, we’ve solved it for you. You just go to Offers2Owners.com, pick up the phone, dial the 800 number, pick up, and we’ll work through it with you. Our staff, Jill and I put a specific staff to do this. To work through that and get it in the mail. Alright, great, so it’s in the mail, that’s step two. Step one is locate an area where you want to do it and pricing. Step two is get the stuff in the mail. Now bear in mind, if you’ve made it this far, you’re passed 90% of the people whoever started this because people just don’t have the patience to get through it for some reason. They don’t have the patience to be multi-millionaires. Really? Like us.
Jill DeWit: That’s so true. Isn’t that funny. That’s funny how often that happens. You had a call the other day. The guy’s like, killing it and he didn’t see it.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Wait a minute.
Jack Butala: Exactly. Step three is then, to field the calls and get the deals done. Easier than it sounds. It really is easier, not harder. And it sounds, it’s a very mechanical process. If you line this business model up, next to renovating a house because every single one is different. You’re gonna make way more money and have a lot more time on your hands because every single deal’s the same with the exception of the actual piece of property, which no one really cares about.
Jill DeWit: Well, I was going to say, imagine this for people out there who are still trying to wrap their heads around this concept. Cuz it is new to the general real estate population. You know, Jack and I were just talking about that. Even though, Jack, Jack’s been doing this since the 90’s. I came in, in the 2000’s. So, you know, it’s different. But imagine, here’s my thing too. Instead of going out looking for properties and taking your business cards and you know the quote, unquote, driving for dollars, imagine just waking up to email and mail and your phone ringing. I mean, that’s what this is [crosstalk 00:13:14]. You wake up to people coming to you with deals and you’ve already sourced out that your offer’s in their price range or they wouldn’t be calling you back.
Jack Butala: Well said.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Get the people to come to you. You don’t want to go out and try to find people who are interested in selling.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Get the interested sellers to come to you. You know, leverage the value, the value of computers and data and everything else. So, those are the simple three steps. Look, locate a, find a location, manipulate the data and price it correctly, and get it in the mail, step two. And then step three is get the deal done when they come back. Analyze the deals as they come in and then get the deal done. So, the reason, again, the reason I did this show is because we’re getting so many detailed questions, which is good about the details of those three steps. But, it’s important, so important, to remember that, how special and unique this is. This came up like I was started to say during the question in the beginning, a very seasoned, very wealthy real estate person, I was speaking with them in a social environment and their jaw was on the ground about how much value, he, the light bulb went off, off, over this guy’s head. This is a guy that owns buildings. Huge buildings. And he said, why doesn’t, why didn’t we do this, you know, he’s a lot older than me. Why did we do this? Why doesn’t everybody do this in the real estate industry? And my answer was, I really don’t know because it really works.
Jill DeWit: Isn’t it funny, I was just gonna say, what other industry has, has held firm to the old fashioned, you know what I mean? Way of doing things and not using data. Could you imagine if like, trading and stock market never took on the computers? And we’re still doing it the old fashioned way, like, you know picking up the phone and [crosstalk 00:14:56], not using, or, you know, exactly. Could you? It would be a mess.
Jack Butala: Yeah. I bet it was back then. Nobody knew it.
Jill DeWit: It was hard. I, well, because my brother’s business and stuff. I remember, some of the stuff he was even doing was revolutionary in the day trading. You know, community. So with the computers and the speed, and the programs that he was designing [crosstalk 00:15:19] and stuff is amazing. So, it’s, I’ve just, I’m trying to think of other, other areas like that, that, that we had still been doing it the old fashioned way, oh my goodness.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: You know. Like, like, I’m trying to, oh cars. Well, let me see about computers. Can you imagine all of our cars? All of our cars have computers in ’em nowadays, except for yours Jack. And, and, I mean how much better things are. You know. It’s, it’s, it’s 2017, everyone.
Jack Butala: Yeah, let’s take advantage of the fact. I think what you’re saying is let’s take advantage of and manipulate the technology that’s right in front of us.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: To make things better for ourselves.
Jill DeWit: Instead of holding firm, saying if it worked for my parents, it’s gonna work for me. No it’s a lot better now, I promise.
Jack Butala: Right. Join us for another episode where Jack and Jill bore you to death and discuss how to use information. That’s me.
Jill DeWit: I don’t think it was that bad. Inspiration, that’s me.
Jack Butala: It’s 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. I clearly had to get that out of my system.
Jill DeWit: You did. I was over here, I’d have to touch you, go hello, hello, can I say something? Just kidding. I understand those times you just gotta get it out.
Jack Butala: Sometimes you get, in this whole process, at least I did when I started. You just, you follow one rabbit hole down and you forget the big picture. And you come back out two weeks later and you’re not any better for it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: And it’s just cuz you, you just didn’t develop or use the right tool. Which in this case is Offers2Owners, really solves a lot of problems, for most people. There’s a bottleneck in every one of these deals. You just have to get over it. It’s different for every people, every person. So, I hope that helps. Silence.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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