Time Savings Tips for Land Investors (CFFL 529)
Time Savings Tips for Land Investors (CFFL 529)
Transcript:
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill Dewitt
Jill Dewitt: Hello (laughing)
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. In this episode – I can tell it’s going to be funny already. Jill and I talk about time saving tips for land investors or really anybody. Before we get into it let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the Landinvestors.com online community, it’s free.
Jill Dewitt: Okay, I forgot who this is but this is their code name on here Shamgod asks, “There is a subdivision I’ve got a few tentative deals in but the parcels might not have legal access. They’re not landlocked but have the possibility to be in the future. Properties are slow moving, priced at $1000 – $5000 an acre out there but those are the ones without potential access problems. What type of price would be your max? I’ve got a 5 and a 10 acre property that I’m looking at. I’m thinking $3000-ish for 5 acres, does that sound about right? Not sure if there’s a good rule of thumb.”
Jack Butala: May I?
Jill Dewitt: Yes, please.
Jack Butala: There’s two questions here: one’s to do with access and how should I price this stuff, so I’ll take the second one first. How should I price it? In general, there is a rule of thumb for vacant land like this. You want to be at about 40% or 50% of the lower echelon of the priced property, which sounds to me like $1000 an acre so that would bring it down to $500 an acres. So $500 for 5 acres is what, $2,500? Yeah, so, he says, right at the end, “I’m thinking $3000 per 500 acres question mark, does that sound about right?” Well, you answered your own question. That sounds perfectly priced to me, where you could double it and sell a 5 acre property for 6 grand, which is doubling your money, really quickly and you’re still way below what retail is so the answer is hell yes. Question number one.
Number two is: they’re not landlocked yet but they might be in the future. Well, in general Jill and I do not buy property that has no access. When you look at it on the screen from Google Earth or from ParcelFact or wherever you’re looking up your property and there is absolutely no way to get it, not even a regular trail or anything else and it’s not close to a road, we pass. At any price, we pass. If it’s showing some signs of yeah it could be platted legal access but you know you just need to lay the road in, now we’re talking so that’s a good reason sometimes to buy really undervalued property because nobody has taken the final step to just make it a great piece of property. That’s what is sounds like here, so the answer is unfortunately I don’t have a hard and fast answer but the answer is look into it. You can call an assessor and look into it in great detail because sometimes you can buy property that’s incredibly inexpensive or undervalued because nobody has taken the final step to just get a road in there.
Now’s a good time for me to bring this point up because it’s come up all week. I called the assessor and they said, “Fill in the blank,” What are they going to say Jill?
Jill Dewitt: I’m not an attorney.
Jack Butala: That is one thing. Let’s play this game right now, do you mind?
Jill Dewitt: (laughing) Sure. You interrupted my lunch.
Jack Butala: I called the assessor … Yep, go ahead, keep going, you’re on the right track. I called the assessor and they said … Call an attorney-
Jill Dewitt: It’s a bad area.
Jack Butala: It’s a bad area. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!
Jill Dewitt: Nobody’s buying anything there.
Jack Butala: Nobody buys these properties.
Jill Dewitt: Those are junk.
Jack Butala: Why would you ever want to live out there?
Jill Dewitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: I hate myself, I’m a negative person, I’m very angry-
Jill Dewitt: You interrupted my lunch.
Jack Butala: And I’m 25 pounds overweight, so I’ll call you back. I have to go smoke a cigarette.
Jill Dewitt: (laughing) Yeah-
Jack Butala: All of those things.
Jill Dewitt: Maybe that’s it. I called the assessor and I go … Yep. (laughing)
Jack Butala: (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: You know, I suck …
Jack Butala: If you smoke, you should quit. (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: Oh, that’s bad, I’m sorry.
Jack Butala: My point is this. I get this question almost once a day now, “I called the assessor and they said I’m crazy, this is awful.” Of course they’re going to say that, ’cause you’re asking them to do stuff. They’re government that don’t want to do stuff.
Jill Dewitt: Oh my gosh. You’re just … Wow.
Jack Butala: All I’m saying is this: yes, the county is … You’re a very necessary part of this [inaudible 00:04:48]. Take what they say with a grain of salt.
Jill Dewitt: Right.
Jack Butala: If you’re the kind of person who calls one county person and they say “You should never buy property in that subdivision” and that’s all it takes for you to stop, this might not be the business for you.
Jill Dewitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: If you are like Jill-
Jill Dewitt: If you really believe that …
Jack Butala: If you are like Jill, whose middle name is workaround-
Jill Dewitt: Yes!
Jack Butala: Jill Workaround Dewitt-
Jill Dewitt: That’s right. That’s me.
Jack Butala: That’s only gonna motivate you to get to the bottom of it and buy some cheap property.
Jill Dewitt: Fantastic.
Jack Butala: So that’s my whole rant.
Jill Dewitt: This assessor is scaring everyone away, now I want it that much more.
Jack Butala: That’s how I am too.
Jill Dewitt: Great, I’m the only one. Awesome, I can get it really cheap.
Jack Butala: Obviously I’m gonna buy the whole subdivision if it’s that bad.
Jill Dewitt: Apparently, it is.
Jack Butala: ‘Cause I’m here to tell you, there’s no such thing as a really bad piece of real estate.
Jill Dewitt: Wait, I have to tell you something really funny, and I know he listens to this call religiously when he’s walking his dog, hello. He knows who I’m talking about. He’s like, “Jill, you told me to stay out of this county [inaudible 00:05:45] you’re in the subdivision.” Yeah that one, it was one of those that, we’ve been there a long time ago, I don’t know if it’s really happening right now. I was trying to help him out, and he’s gonna laugh at this. And I was telling him really nicely, “Maybe look at a different area”. And he’s like, “Well, Jill, I didn’t listen and I’m killing it”.
Jack Butala: Awesome. Those are the best calls.
Jill Dewitt: That’s great.
Jack Butala: All the stuff you guys say is wrong.
Jill Dewitt: Thank you.
Jack Butala: And you know what? Good.
Jill Dewitt: Thank you, Mr. I’m out walking my dog right now and you know who you are.
Jack Butala: I did the opposite of what you said and I tripled my investment. That’s the best thing you can say to me.
Jill Dewitt: Alright, you proved me wrong and I love it. Exactly.
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.
Today’s topic: time saving tips for land investors, or really anybody. This is the meat of the show. Jill, I see you have a sticky note full of stuff, a pink sticky note.
Jill Dewitt: Alright, so before the show, I was just thinking. I tasked Jack and I to quickly come up with three time saving tips that we want to share. So I’m gonna start with mine. Jack, you can piggy-back on mine or insert yours, however you want to do it. So, here are my top time saving tips.
Number one: outsource the hard stuff of the menial tasks.
Jack Butala: Oh my God, that’s my number one!
Jill Dewitt: Is it really?
Jack Butala: Mine is: outsource the stuff you don’t like, or the stuff that you’re not good at.
Jill Dewitt: There we go. And I’m giving some examples: mail, printing …
Jack Butala: You mean printing offers to go out.
Jill Dewitt: Printing offers to go out. How about inbound phone calls? Not outbound, inbound phone calls. Those are all things that you should outsource. Some of them because it’s just not a good use of your time. That’s a lot of it. And then the other things, you have to dig deep for yourself and just find out what am I really not good at, and I’m gonna outsource that kind of thing.
Jack Butala: You know, I’m from the Midwest, and there’s this unwritten rule-slash-aura, that the person who suffers at whatever they’re doing, wins.
Jill Dewitt: (laughing)
Jack Butala: Suffering is somehow rewarded.
Jill Dewitt: Where did that come from?
Jack Butala: It comes from the Midwest rust bell-
Jill Dewitt: That’s the stupidest thing on the planet.
Jack Butala: Car company manufacturing culture.
Jill Dewitt: I worked 10 hours today …
Jack Butala: That’s it, Jill.
Jill Dewitt: No.
Jack Butala: When you get out to California, it’s like, dude-
Jill Dewitt: I worked two hours today, woo-hoo.
Jack Butala: My house tripled in value last month and I surfed all month, man.
Jill Dewitt: Totally.
Jack Butala: And that’s what I think … (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: You can take the girl out of the state, but …
Jack Butala: God, what does that say about me?
Jill Dewitt: Oh, gosh.
Jack Butala: You can take the UAW out of the boy … (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: (laughing) Right.
Jack Butala: Anyway, somewhere in the middle is good, I think. That’s my unsolicited advice.
Jill Dewitt: Right. Okay, so that’s my number one.
Number two time saving tip for anybody, land investors, any investor: review multiple deals at one time. Save them up. You’re collecting all this stuff. Maybe it’s Friday afternoon, maybe it’s Monday morning. I don’t know. Maybe it’s twice a week, ’cause you have that many coming in. But, review a bunch of deals at the same time. You’ve got your maps open, you’ve got your stuff open, and you can quickly go “Yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, no,” you know, whatever.
Jack Butala: Do stuff in batches. What Jill’s specifically saying is, you send a bunch of letters out a lot and they trickle in, right? So one comes in, then two, maybe four phone calls come in on Thursday. And so save it all up for one session. Instead of just living in the muck, so to speak.
Jill Dewitt: Right. Every time the phone rings next thing you know you’re spending an hour on it. No, don’t do that.
Jack Butala: And here’s why, because, if you review them as they come in, one by one by one. And the first one you look at is like, “Maybe I should do it”, and then you do the deal. Three days if a great property comes in, you’re like “I shouldn’t have done that”.
Jill Dewitt: “Shoot, I tied up my money over there.”
Jack Butala: Right, so-
Jill Dewitt: Line them all up and pick the best ones and do it at once.
Jack Butala: Which is my number two. My number two is stick to a schedule. Create a schedule for yourself, literally. I don’t care if it’s … Pull a calendar off the refrigerator, and write the stuff down like, “Thursday is my deal review day. Friday is my IT day. Saturday is my take my wife to dinner day.”
Jill Dewitt: Kids walk up to the fridge and it says “Thursday, spaghetti and deal reviews”.
Jack Butala: (laughing)
Spaghetti deal review.
Jill Dewitt: Spaghetti deal review night. (laughing)
Jack Butala: I like that. I’m Italian, I like that.
Jill Dewitt: That’s what Thursdays are.
Jack Butala: Spaghetti acquisitions. That’s our thing.
Jill Dewitt: Monday is, let’s see what’s Monday … Monday is day to download and dinner on the beach. (laughing)
Jack Butala: (laughing) Oh great, this is gonna be my life now. I can see where this is going.
Jill Dewitt: Exactly.
Jack Butala: We had dinner on the beach last night.
Jill Dewitt: We did have dinner on the beach last night. We had Chinese on the beach
Jack Butala: And here’s why. Jill went on Amazon, and she bought-
Jill Dewitt: Oh I bought a table.
Jack Butala: She bought a coffee for the beach.
Jill Dewitt: Yep.
Jack Butala: And I don’t think it cost $15, but I’ve never seen you more happy with a piece of furniture.
Jill Dewitt: This stupid little beach table for ourselves.
Jack Butala: She said, “This changes everything. This changes everything, we can sit comfortably at the beach and eat Chinese food.”
Jill Dewitt: We don’t have to do it off of a surfboard. And I have to bend over or try to wipe the sand off.
Jack Butala: So all the men out there, all it takes … It doesn’t take a big huge rock diamond on their finger-
Jill Dewitt: That’s true.
Jack Butala: Sometimes it just takes a $15 item off of Amazon.
Jill Dewitt: It’s an Amazon table for the beach, that folds up, it’s really cool.
Alright, number three. Let’s see if yours is the same as mine, Jack. My number three time saver, my final one here, is invest in the right tools, invest in the pro tools. Don’t … Let me give you an example-
Jack Butala: That’s exactly my number three.
Jill Dewitt: Is it? Okay, let me share mine. My example, is ParcelFact. Don’t spend two hours trying to find property to save yourself a stupid 100 dollars, or whatever it is. Don’t do that. Like Jack said, East Coast, don’t say, “I’m gonna go old school. I’m gonna go to every county individually, and I’m gonna learn and manipulate the data. And you know what? I’m gonna stay up all night inputting the data, cause it came in on a spreadsheet. I’m gonna do it this way.”
Did you really save some money? I don’t think so.
Jack Butala: No, you wasted time.
Jill Dewitt: Yeah and energy-
Jack Butala: You wasted your most valuable resource, time.
Jill Dewitt: And by the way, by 4:00 AM when you’re still inputting stuff, you might have missed a whole line of things and some data that you needed and that’s costly. So you didn’t save any money.
Jack Butala: My number three is literally use the 21st century tools available to you.
Jill Dewitt: (laughing) This is a little spooky.
Jack Butala: And leave your pride out of it. Which is really what Jill was alluding to. You’re not a bigger man or woman because you stayed up later and worked harder. You’re not. I’ll tell you what makes you a bigger man or a bigger person is using the tools that you need and spending more time with your kids or whatever else.
Use ParcelFact the way it’s intended. ParcelFact was designed … This is not a commercial for this, alright? Believe me, three people a day, at least, sign up for ParcelFact.
Jill Dewitt: Was that a necessity that we had created?
Jack Butala: We have never advertised, never.
Jill Dewitt: Except now.
Jack Butala: Well, yeah, I guess it is. I forget that it’s not just you and I talking in a room. ParcelFact is designed to massively remove the headache of locating property that doesn’t have an address. “Oh, Jack, I can do that on Google Earth.” Okay, go try.
Jill Dewitt: Yeah, go have some fun. See you in two hours. I did 30 seconds. Alright Jack, I get to say something.
I’m a little spooked out right now-
Jack Butala: I am too.
Jill Dewitt: I really just paused and looked over at your list. We really did not talk about these. And your list is so like my list that, if you and I start dressing alike, I’m gonna really flip out. (laughing)
Jack Butala: I hate that. You know when couples have the same bikes, and they have the same dogs and wear the same-
Jill Dewitt: The same jogging suits.
Jack Butala: Sweat suits. Makes me want to puke …
Jill Dewitt: It’s awful. If we start swish-swish-swish … Can you imagine? (laughing)
Jack Butala: How does it start?
Jill Dewitt: You and I? (laughing)
Jack Butala: And what kind of guy signs off on that?
Jill Dewitt: Could you imagine, if you … Actually that would be a funny little Saturday Night Live skit. If we did a little video of you and I walking down the beach with some matching poodles and swish-swish-swish suits. I think that would be funny.
Jack Butala: Jesus. Good God Jill.
Jill Dewitt: (laughing) It’s a joke.
Jack Butala: You could just remove my manhood right now.
Jill Dewitt: No, I’m saying as a joke that would be funny to do. I’m not gonna really do that. Oh my God, no no no, it would just be silly. Funny …
Jack Butala: So yeah, those are the three … There’s a lot of time saving tips and this is just a cursory scenario, but the other thing that is worth mentioning is it takes practice like everything. Everything takes practice. You can’t do everything correctly the first time. I grew up in an environment where everybody thought that the first time you did something you had to be an expert at it. Otherwise you just suck.
Here’s a stupid, silly little example.
Jill Dewitt: That’s sad.
Jack Butala: Jill and I live in a beach house.
Jill Dewitt: I’m sorry.
Jack Butala: It’s got a two car garage that was probably made for Model Ts. Right? Well our cars are not the size of Model Ts at all.
Jill Dewitt: Right. We have to park creatively, is that what you’re saying?
Jack Butala: One of us is in the habit of, ’cause they’re not used to parking in that garage yet, smashing the car up against the side of the thing every single time- (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: Oh I know. (laughing) It’s so sad. [inaudible 00:15:25] I always smash it, but …
Jack Butala: So I have a gallon of-
Jill Dewitt: There’s times I’m a little too close …
Jack Butala: Gallon of rubbing alcohol to remove … No it’s not that bad.
Jill Dewitt: It’s just-
Jack Butala: It just takes some practice, now you’re killing it.
Jill Dewitt: Yeah I know, I’m gonna repaint my car eventually, it’s okay. You can say that. There’s times that I’ve come out like “How the heck did that happen? I didn’t even hear it.” Oh man, anyway …
Jack Butala: We fixed it. Anyway, you’re an expert. And it took like 15 or 20 times and now you’re expert at parking in the garage.
Jill Dewitt: I should put like, foam on the side or something for myself. So silly.
Jack Butala: Cut yourself some slack.
Jill Dewitt: Hey, at least I didn’t hit your car.
Jack Butala: Yeah, that would suck.
Jill Dewitt: Right?
Jack Butala: Yeah, good point. You made my day just now.
Jill Dewitt: Thank you. There’s no blue paint on your black car. (laughing)
Jack Butala: Cut yourself some slack, please. And use the tools that are available to you. It’s like having a baby. You don’t get a trophy for having a drug free baby. (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: (laughing) What the … That was awful.
Jack Butala: No, sometimes they say “Don’t get an epidural.”
Jill Dewitt: Oh, that!
Jack Butala: You don’t get a trophy for not getting an epidural.
Jill Dewitt: Shoot! Yes, I thought you meant raising a kid whose not a druggie. (laughing)
Jack Butala: Oh no, you do get a trophy for that. (laughing)
Jill Dewitt: You do get … Oh my gosh. Wow. (laughing)
Jack Butala: This is the time to end the show.
Jill Dewitt: Yes, on that note …
Jack Butala: Join us for another episode where Jack and Jill confuse the hell out of each other. That’s information, that’s me.
Jill Dewitt: And Jill tries to … I don’t know.
Jack Butala: Recover.
Jill Dewitt: That’s it why I’m inspiration and needed, that’s me. (laughing)
Jack Butala: (laughing) You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill Dewitt: I need inspiration every day.
Jack Butala: It’s the end of the week. That’s what’s going on.
Jill Dewitt: It’s true. Very true.
Jack Butala: For both of us.
Jill Dewitt: I know.
Jack Butala: Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.
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