Find Your Zen Investor Inside (LA 805)
Find Your Zen Investor Inside (LA 805)
Transcript:
Steve: Steve and Jill here.
Jill: Hello
Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk, I’m Steve Jack Butala.
Jill: And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California.
Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about ‘Find Your Zen Investor Inside’ and I’m going to quote Jill right before the show.
Jill: Uh Oh.
Steve: What the heck is the topic about?
Jill: Right.
Steve: What do you mean ‘Find Your Zen Investor Inside’?
Jill: What are you talking about.
Steve: Really? What the heck does that mean. What it means is, you should be having fun and this should make sense to you. After you’re all educated and you get a few deals signed and you should just feel good about it. You should say “you know what? I love buying infill lots or rural vacant land or I love wholesaling houses.It’s easy, it’s profitable, I get to spend more time with my family. And, it’s just, I found my zen. If…
Jill: Go ahead
Steve: ..that is a huge struggle and it’s like “god, I don`t want to do this next deal”, that’s not good.
Jill: For the record, I was trying to ascertain what this means to you.
Steve: Oh, I just told you.
Jill: I know. Thank you. I appreciate that. Then thank you for also explaining to me what you think… you know what I mean. I was trying to figure out what this means to you. Any by the way, I have to just say something, you see the little asbestos flakes falling down? It’s-
Steve: Asbestos flakes?
Jill: That’s what I think I’m seeing. I wonder if it shows up on the camera, but every now and then, there’s like little fuzz from our older…where this studio is, is in an older facility and every now and then I see the little asbestos flakes. That’s what I say-
Steve: Here’s the story of this facility, of this studio-
Jill: Coming down like that over there, and I don’t know what that is.
Steve: Jill has this beautiful air conditioned office in a little beach community near our house and I went on the roof one day and I notice that there’s this open store room, there’s a bunch of shelves in it from the 80’s. So I call the landlord and I say “no one is using that store room up there. I’ll rent it from you for X” he said “that sounds like a great idea! Clean it all out” so that’s what happened. And now the asbestos is coming.
Jill: Exactly. I love it. And I love that lead based paint over there too. Just kidding.
Steve: That’s what I had for lunch
Jill: I’m sure that’s what’s going on.
Steve: Before we get into the topic, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill: Landrove asks, which I’m sure Landrove is his website.
Steve: Yeah.
Jill: I love that. “I just got the course and joined about a month ago. This is my first post.
Steve: Uh oh.
Jill: …Congrats… “I have a question about pricing. The general rule of thumb is to send offers for about a quarter of what the land is going for and sell it for about half of that. Half price. Quarter for what it’s about to sell for. Sell for about half. Quickly, one way”-
Steve: That’s true with rural vacant land only. Go ahead.
Jill: Right.
Steve: Go ahead.
Jill: And that’s what we’re talking about.
Steve: Yeah.
Jill: “One way to find what the property is worth is to check LandWatch and see how much land it’s going for per acre”… this is all good stuff Landrove.
Steve: Yeah, he’s got.
Jill: “My question is, how do I know that the land offer for sale on LandWatch is not offered by somebody like me who’s trying to sell for half price” …Hold on a moment… “This would throw off my pricing cause to me, to send offers for one eighth of what the properties worth, and that would be a waste of time. Not to mention a good way to get hate mail. The reason I ask this is I think I saw an ad on LandWatch by someone mentioned by Steve on the podcast and this person’s member of the”-
Steve: It’s true. All true.
Jill: “Land Investors or Land Academy community. Thanks in advance.” So, well first I want to point out, if you accidentally under price and get something-
Steve: Which will happen.
Jill: That’s not a bad thing. So, number one, and if you accidentally under price, and you have people calling you back to talk about that, you can still come back for that.
Steve: All true.
Jill: That’s number two. And number three, I guess don’t worry about it.
Steve: Don’t worry about it.
Jill: Number three, you can’t. There’s so many counties out there, you could spend an extra half hour looking around the community and maybe ascertain, maybe find, that’s my new word this week apparently.
Steve: Ascertain?
Jill: Ascertain. Maybe, come up with a list of areas that “no one seems to be hitting over here”, and that’s even the best. You go do that area. That’s my answer.
Steve: Here’s a real life example, go to Mohave County Arizona. I’m not advocating buying property there, selling it at all. I’m just saying, using it as an example. Go on LandWatch, or Land And Farm, either one and sort by cheapest price to highest price. Make sure those houses are out of there. LandWatch has so many houses because there’s an IDX feed… The quality has gone down recently. But Land And Farm only have land properties in there. Sort from cheapest to most expensive, and take the first ten percent, maybe twenty percent, of the properties, average that out. Now, even if there are a bunch of Land Academy people in there, which there won’t be by the way.
I understand your concern and I understand there’s a point but it’s a much less of an actual possibility than you think. We do a lot of deals but we don’t even scratch the surface of land for sale on the internet. Not even one, it’s way less than one tenth of 1%. But, do your ten percent at Mohave county your going to come out with a price breaker. And that is how you’re going to want to base it from the starting point.
Jill: Very right.
Steve: That’s 100%, you want to sell it for 50% and buy it for half of that which is your 25%. I hope that’s super clear.
Jill: That’s perfect. Thank you.
Steve: Today’s topic “Find Your Zen Investor Inside” this is the meat of the show. Now that I’ve explained it, Jill…
Jill: Cause I didn’t know!
Steve: What do you think, I mean, you’re the inspiration here, not the information.
Jill: I have some information now and then.
Steve: Can you describe what you think a zen invest… What is a zen business? What is this find out who you are?
Jill: Alright, so how I see it, are you asking how do I see this?
Steve: Yes, because you’re going to be closer to what the listener or viewer sees than me, than my crazy thing.
Jill: Thank you, well you know what? Do you know what? Well hold on a moment, the whole point of all this is, it’s whatever sings to you anyway.
Steve: Yes, yes, yes.
Jill: So, whatever your opinion is, is your opinion. Whatever my opinion is, is my opinion is my opinion. Whatever our listeners’ opinion is, is their opinion. Whatever our watchers’ opinion is, is their opinion.
Steve: This is how Jill and I argue by the way. She has a sweet little voice but she’s really telling me off. Right now, she just did.
Jill: I did not!
Steve: Yeah, you did!
Jill: I didn’t. You really see it that way?
Steve: Yeah.
Jill: That’s funny. Well I-
Steve: I really do.
Jill: Well again, that’s your opinion. And that is to how I get you and you’re right. It’s true. You know what if you’re mad, that’s your problem. So, if you see that as anything, you know whatever is negative, that’s your problem. So, okay. Anyway, back to what I was saying. So, there’s finding your zen and then being happy as an investor inside. So, I kind of see two things because you need to be happy in your life, and happy in your circumstance, and happy with your family, and happy with all of that. And then you want to be happy with your business. In a perfect world, they go together.
So, I think for me I see this topic as… A lot of our members, we have a lot of members in our community that came to Land Academy that had good jobs, good family, good income, good house. Everything is working but they just didn’t like what they were doing kind of thing. So they were looking for some changes and getting into Land Academy, and learning investing and getting good at it and everything, freed them up and it became more important. It’s almost more important than what they were doing. I mean we’re talking PhD people. CEO’s of things. And, all kinds of interesting backgrounds that our members had that they were doing just fine. It’s not like they were not doing it but it just wasn’t for them. So they came here and now they found their zen. And this is it for them. So, and then… you look like you’re gonna say something.
Steve: No, just let me know. I have a lot to say.
Jill: So, well I guess that’s where I see finding your zen investor inside is… You go ahead. Jump in. I have so much in my head too right now I can’t form it into a sentence.
Steve: Part of it is, finding your specialization. So, you might have noticed over the years that we’ve been doing this show, we talk less about rural vacant land and more about infill lots and specialization land, and now next year we’ll be talking about houses a lot.
Jill: Right.
Steve: Because we found our zen and our zen moves around. The zen for rural vacant land for us and where we are in our life and especially together, it changes, it changed. And our dollar amount. The amount of cash dollars, that we want to make per deal has gone dramatically up since we started this. We used to buy $500 property and sell it for $1,500 and we were happy with that for thousands of properties. Now we’re closer to, let’s buy it for three or four hundred thousand and sell it for $500,000. And it’s still a smoking deal for the person who buys it. That’s our zen. Some people in our group, we have one group of people in our group, they live property where there’s issues with the deceased owners. They love to undo that. That’s there zen. So find your zen. That’s my point.
Jill: I love it. I’m jut saying another way of saying, that I like is what sings to you. What comes easy to use. I’ll make it even easier. Something comes easy to you, and you get it.
Steve: It’s a-
Jill: And you know how to do this.
Steve: It’s easy.
Jill: And gosh, that’s your zen. That’s your thing like you just said. These people that love to undo it, they’re good at it and they like it and they’re solving problems for people.
Steve: They have a legal background, both of them. Well you’ve done it again, spent another ten minutes or so listening to the Land Academy Show. Join us next time where we talk about another interesting episode.
Jill: And we answer your questions posted on our own online community called landinvestors.com and it’s free.
Steve: You’re not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill: That’s good. What’s your zen property type right now, really quick?
Steve: I love, love, infill lots, that are about $10,000 purchase price that are worth probably $40,000 to $45,000 and we sell them for $20,000 to $25,000 all day long like water. And I love houses in the certain few markets that we’re in. We’re in two specific markets that it’s like day trading. You buy a property for $150,000 and you sell it for $180,000 right in the MLS inside of two or three weeks. That’s where I am right now with that.
Jill: Cool.
Steve: How about you.
Jill: I like less work. So you know what I…Seriously, those take work. Posting maybe an open house, maybe when you’re dealing with a lot of investors and giving them a key code, not that I’m doing it. But, my thing is now just larger and more dollar amount. Rural vacant land. I can’t get away from it.
Steve: Wow.
Jill: That’s my favorite thing. I would sit and buy-
Steve: You’ve never wavered from that?
Jill: No. It’s just too easy. And I don’t worry about it. It’s so nice. I love it. I love… even when I would deal with the buyers from that, I identify with those people. That’s my zen. Maybe I really… What’s funny is where we live is not anywhere off the grid.
Steve: We should never live-
Jill: And it’s so populated, but I love being out there, and I love dealing with those properties.
Steve: Yeah, where you live should never be where you invest. I mean that block.
Jill: Understood. Exactly. Share the fun by subscribing on iTunes or YouTube wherever you’re listening or watching and while you’re at it, please rate us there. We’re Steve and Jill
Steve: We’re Steve and Jill. Information.
Jill: And inspiration
Steve: To buy undervalued property.
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