So You Have Completed 1000 Deals Now What (LA 746)
So You Have Completed 1000 Deals Now What (LA 746)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: And I am Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about “So You’ve Completed 1,000 Deals, Now What?” In fact, that’s the theme for this week. You’ve completed 1,000 deals, now what.
Jill DeWit: You know-
Steven Butala: Here’s the truth of the matter, Jill. If you’ve completed 1,000 deals, and we have a lot of people in our group who have, we certainly have, you’re probably not listening to this.
Jill DeWit: Ha.
Steven Butala: You’re done.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: You’re done with us.
Jill DeWit: You’re done with us.
Steven Butala: All you do is you maintain your membership with us probably because … well for sure because you need-
Jill DeWit: You need the tools.
Steven Butala: You need the tools, and specifically, access to the cheapest, best data on the planet-
Jill DeWit: And you’re sending mail.
Steven Butala: And printing. Yeah.
Jill DeWit: And you’re doing your due diligence, or at least your team is.
Steven Butala: And you know more than we do.
Jill DeWit: Ha.
Steven Butala: And you’re smart enough not to have your own show.
Jill DeWit: I would like to say one of the things that I want to talk about when we get into the meat of the show is the 1,000 deals, it’s sneaks up on you. Like, this show.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Today’s show is 746.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: That sneaks up on you.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: You know?
Steven Butala: A lot of stuff sneaks up on you, you know?
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: Like, this big belly I have snuck on me.
Jill DeWit: I was just going to … that’s not funny. I was going to say like a saggy butt. Okay. Got it.
Steven Butala: Before we get into our failing bodies, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on our Land Academy online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Matt asks, “I’m getting a very good response on my infill lot mailer in Middle, Tennessee-“
Steven Butala: So were we, actually.
Jill DeWit: “And have closed on one-“
Steven Butala: A huge response.
Jill DeWit: “I have one other option: I have three currently in the title process about the close. I’m buying between $3,000.00 and $5,000.00 with county assess values more than four times that purchase price. I don’t put much stock in those, though they too tend to be on the conservative side,” of course.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: “Comps are between $15,000.00 and $30,000.00 for these lots,” boy that’s pretty easy to double your money and get out quick then.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: “Thoughts on how to creatively market these lots outside of Zillow, Craigslist, Facebook and Flat Fee MLS? No responses yet from local builders that I’ve emailed/called-“
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: “My phone was ringing in the first few weeks, but not nearly as much as with my rural vacant land listings.” Isn’t that funny? “Steve has discussed having a buyer lined up before purchasing info lots, but these seem-“
Steven Butala: Steve is … Steve is disgusted. That’s what it sounded like.
Jill DeWit: It says discussed.
Steven Butala: Go ahead, sorry.
Jill DeWit: “Steven has discussed having a buyer line up before purchasing info lots, but these seem to be really good buys with full utilities available that I should jump on quickly and then find a buyer after. Anyone have good experience selling info lots? Would love to hear selling strategies if you’re not buying for someone lined up ahead of time, which is obviously the best way to go. I have a feeling these could sit in the inventory longer than rural vacant land-“
Steven Butala: No, no, no.
Jill DeWit: “Because it’s a different type of buyer.”
Steven Butala: Nope.
Jill DeWit: Nope?
Steven Butala: Okay, Matt. You have put yourself in a fantastic situation. I love info lots. Jill and I differ a little bit on this, but I love info lots. They’re totally usable most of the time, their utilities are all there, and I’ll tell you what, the single place to sell these properties is in the MLS.
Get yourself a good Flat Fee MLS posting, and do a good workup on it. Real estate agents are famous, especially for these low end properties, famous for just taking out their iPhone and not even turning it horizontal and taking a picture with the toilet seat up kind of thing. So, do a great posting-
Jill DeWit: What was that?
Steven Butala: And get a Flat Fee MLS, through the Flat Fee MLS company, and micromanage it.
Jill DeWit: Which you can do for usually about $300.00.
Steven Butala: The other thing, too, is that what you want to do is you want to go out on the Internet and purchase the email database for registered … you didn’t hear this from me, of licensed real estate agents and send them a friendly note, which depending on who you talk to, it may or may not be legal or ethical, or any of that stuff.
You also want to go onto Land & Farm and Land Watch, and anywhere else that there’re properties posted for sale, and contact people who have similar listings or for sale by owner properties in that zip code or county. You’ll get it sold. These are great mechanical … great ways to make $10,000.00 day in and day out. Once you find one or two people in that area, then that’s over. Then you’ll stop … your sales effort will go to zero because they will buy everything.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I love these purchases, too, actually because it’s usually … I feel like I make a higher margin on these, and there’s less work. No one has to discuss anything about, like you just said, like the utilities and all that stuff. It’s a no-brainer. It really is a certain-
Steven Butala: They sell themselves.
Jill DeWit: A certain type of person. People are not going to retire out on an infill lot, no. I think these are easier and more fun, honestly.
Steven Butala: And the person whose going to buy this property knows more about the area than you do-
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: And they’re professional, probably home builders, in the end. They’re not the end user, so there’s just so much … it takes all, really, the difficulty out of selling it.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: You’re headed down a path … this will be your career, because we are buying tons of infill lots right now. Every week we’re buying infill lots and selling them immediately. The other thing is, too, you have to buy these and sell them with an escrow agent. So establish a good relationship where you’re buying these, and then just keep throwing them at the title person.
Jill DeWit: And then tips on that is definitely ask for the investor rate, because they do offer that. People don’t know that you can ask for this stuff, and you can pay a little money as you’re in the process to keep it open-
Steven Butala: Yes.
Jill DeWit: Because you know you’re going to close it right away.
Steven Butala: Right, Jill.
Jill DeWit: Then, that’s a beautiful thing. Imagine this, we had one where I paid an extra $100.00 -big deal- to keep the title open, because what it meant was when we closed it, the total cost to close it was like $500.00, which I split with the buyer-
Steven Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: And when you tell people, “Not only do I have this infill lot at this price, and it’s going to cost you $250.00 to close it. That’s it.” They’re like, “Well how did you do that. You are my best friend.”
Steven Butala: Take a couple steps back and think about what you’ve created. You’ve created a situation where you really only have to sell the first few because then you’re going to have a buyer forever, number one. Number two, you take all the work for yourself out of the sales process entirely, and the closing process, because you’re [inaudible 00:06:52] it on title.
Now you have a situation where you can truly be a one man operation, maybe with an assistant, and close tons, and tons, and tons of deals from your kitchen table. It’s dirt. It’s still dirt. That’s the beauty. It’s not a house, so you don’t have to worry about inspections or any of that stuff.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: You’re just printing $10,000.00. Let’s say you do one a week, 10 grand. You make 10 grand, one a week. That’s a half a million dollars. How long does it take to do one deal?
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: I mean, a deal a week … maybe three hours? I don’t know if you could spend three hours.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Steven Butala: So-
Jill DeWit: Good gig.
Steven Butala: If you figured it out, congratulations.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic: “So You’ve Completed 1,000 Deals, Now What Do You Do Next?” This is actually the theme of the whole week. You’ve got 1,000 deals, what’s up now? What’s after that? This is the meat of the show. You were feverishly scribbling stuff down before the show, which makes me think, Jill, that you’re so enthusiastic to cohost this topic and this episode, so why don’t you just-
Jill DeWit: I’m just being sarcastic.
Steven Butala: Here’s what happens-
Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh.
Steven Butala: So, when Jill doesn’t put any makeup on, we record all of the week’s shows all at once early in the morning. When Jill shows up with no makeup on-
Jill DeWit: Glasses.
Steven Butala: Yeah, and not … she’s not real happy.
Jill DeWit: Well, in my defense-
Steven Butala: There’s no real enthusiasm.
Jill DeWit: Hold on a little bit. In my defense, it’s summer time-
Steven Butala: I know.
Jill DeWit: The weather’s beautiful. There’re some events. There’s people in town, the town’s busy. There’s so much going on. It’s pretty hard to lay low the night before you have to record, and call it a school night. We apparently do not know how to do that.
Steven Butala: I looked at our social calendar on the refrigerator, and we’ve got stuff-
Jill DeWit: It’s so scary.
Steven Butala: It’s jam-packed.
Jill DeWit: I know. It’s a little scary. You know I love how you-
Steven Butala: You over-scheduled us.
Jill DeWit: I did not. We just thought … I don’t want to miss anything fun.
Steven Butala: You’re the right girl for me, by the way.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. So, back to the show. Here is what I have to say about my … about this topic, and it’s such a great topic. It’s hard for some people, I know, to imagine … gosh, man … some of them are like, “I can’t wait to do one deal.” Then they can’t wait to do 20 deals. And boy, 50, that seems so far away. 1,000, oh you must be smoking something.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: No, once you get going-
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: It kind of sneaks up on you like your bank balance. It makes me think of this guy, we had him on our show a while back, and he just popped up again because he’s still in our community, still in our world, he’s been quietly doing tons of deal. His name is Michel in Florida.
It was so great because I remember before we did the show with Michel, like a year ago I think it was, he was like, “You know, I hadn’t really stopped for a moment because I was so busy. I added up all the transactions I had done, and all the money I had made,” he said, “I was kind of blown away when I did that. I didn’t know it was that much.” I think transaction-wise and bank account-wise.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: He’s like, “I didn’t know I made that much.” It was so darn funny. I’m like this is the same thing. Once you get going, you don’t look back. You’re just busy. You’ve got this machine in place, and it gets better and easier and faster. You look up and you go, “How’d that happen? I just did 200 deals. I didn’t even know I did 200 deals.”
So it’s the greatest thing. By 1,000 deals that’s where you should be. You should hopefully have … all your systems are smooth and running easily, you’ve gone through your fifth assistant, and the fifth and final … you’re on your final hopefully, you know-
Steven Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: Because let’s be honest, that’s what happens.
Steven Butala: Maybe really, 11.
Jill DeWit: It’s hard.
Steven Butala: Yeah, we’re 11 for one right now.
Jill DeWit: It’s something like that, but maybe for your assistants. Just kidding. So, you’re there. That’s what I had to say about this. What do you want to add, Steven?
Steven Butala: Here’s a bunch of bullet points because again, if you’ve done 1,000 deals, you’re not listening to this. But you’ve done maybe eight or zero, and you’re thinking about what … so my job here in this episode really this week is to let you in on this thing looks like on the other [inaudible 00:11:08] side of it.
1. You’ve figured everything out except acquisitions.
That’s all you work on is acquisitions. You really have figured out acquisitions, but you’re kind of walking around thinking that is this too good to be true? Maybe I just got this lucky. Maybe next year is not going to be as good as last year. That’s wrong. I still think that. I still, to this day, wonder … and when I send a mailer out, I’m like maybe I did something wrong.
Jill DeWit: You are so good.
Steven Butala: I know, and you let-
Jill DeWit: It’s so silly.
Steven Butala: Every single time you’re like, “What are you talking about?”
Jill DeWit: I know. You know what, we do the classic thing that our members do, like oh no, the phone’s not ringing and the next thing you know-
Steven Butala: Every time.
Jill DeWit: It’s ringing off the hook. You did the same thing just recently, Steven. You kind of forgot your goal.
Steven Butala: And that day we bought two properties-
Jill DeWit: It’s so silly.
Steven Butala: Two properties that we will make six digits on.
Jill DeWit: It’s so silly.
Steven Butala: So stop doubting yourself. You figured it out. The other thing that you’ve also figured out is what your niche is. Maybe it’s infill lots like Matt earlier with the question, maybe it’s rural vacant acreage, large acreage, that people turn to ranches, maybe it’s property that is zoned for apartments or some crazy thing, and a weekly webinar.
We’ve got a group of people that have specialized in adverse possession [inaudible 00:12:26], that’s their deal, and they will never run out of deals. It’s a little complicated for this venue, but they figured it out. So you know, you’ve solved all the problems.
Jill DeWit: I think that a lot of the people who have done over 1,000 deals are actually listening because they know that what we’re talking about, and how we’re transitioning to bigger and better things. Let’s be honest.
Steven Butala: Okay.
Jill DeWit: You keep saying that they’re not listening to the show. Yeah they are, because we keep … there’s always-
Steven Butala: One of the eight people who listen to this show.
Jill DeWit: Well come on. There’s … even at 1,000 deals, you’re not going to cover every single possible scenario. Things just often creep up, number one.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Number two, like I said, we’re starting to transition and talk about bigger things. Land Academy is going to be House Academy. Those are the … They are here because they’re waiting for that.
Steven Butala: That was my final point. You now understand that whatever your niche is, that it’s profitable, you need to kind of replace yourself to run that and start another one. Start a new venue, and I would highly recommend houses. After that, start another one because you have what it takes.
It’s very hard for people who have succeeded at this, to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey, I have what it takes to do a startup,” because that’s what you’ve done. You’ve successfully done a startup against all odds. The numbers are staggering. The odds are against you to do a startup.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: It’s way easier to just buy a franchise, a pizza franchise, but you didn’t take the easy way out. You did your own startup, and you are past 1,000 deals. By the way, how much money do you have?
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: So there’s a delicate balance in this business between … I call it balancing the balance sheet. So you have … at any given time you have lots of property in your inventory, and lots of money. In a perfect, ideal scenario, all other [inaudible 00:14:19] are lined up, you own no property and tons of money. But it just doesn’t work that way because you’re constantly buying and selling it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: You never want to have … Later this week we’re going to do a show about the inevitable real estate recession, and I’ll cover it in great detail then. But, you never want to just have tons and tons and tons of property-
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: And no money.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: You’ve got to turn the acquisition machine off, if that happens, and really concentrate on sales or whatever it takes.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala: But you’ve done 1,000 deals so you know this already.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: Well you’ve done it again. You spent 15 minutes or so listening to The Land Academy Show. Join us tomorrow for another interesting episode where we discuss, “Why Should We Really Be Working On Acquisitions Only.” I touched on it earlier, but we’re really get into it in depth tomorrow.
Jill DeWit: Cool. And we’re going to answer your questions posted on our free online community found off of LandAcademy.com.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit: Am I awake enough?
Steven Butala: You are now.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: And you look beautiful without makeup, by the way. I’m not joking.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: It’s my favorite look on you.
Jill DeWit: Thank you, I appreciate that.
Steven Butala: I’m awake, too, now I think.
Jill DeWit: Please don’t expand on that.
Steven Butala: This is … I mean, I love this topic because it’s always hard to really … when you have someone whose brand spanking new at this, it’s harder for me. When you have somebody whose done 100 deals, 10 deals, and they’re like, “Well, what do you do about this? How do you structure LLC? What do you do when you get a deal that goes like this?” Like, the basics are already there. When you don’t have to convince somebody that this works, which stopped doing that a long time ago-
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: It’s a lot more fun.
Jill DeWit: It’s true. That’s very true. I have taken that [inaudible 00:16:10]. It’s not worth it-
Steven Butala: It’s not.
Jill DeWit: If they don’t get it, they don’t get it, and I feel bad for them and that’s all right. You guys can keep driving for dollars. Have fun.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: So, spend your eight hour days. I’m going to spend one hour getting a lot more done, and I’m going to have my feet up for seven.
Steven Butala: Keep driving for dollars, and keep buying back tax property.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: And you will be miserable.
Jill DeWit: Share the fun by subscribing on iTunes or wherever you’re listening. While you’re at it, please rate us there.
Both: We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala: Information.
Jill DeWit: And inspiration.
Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.
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