Free Property Data Sources You Should Know About (LA 812)
Free Property Data Sources You Should Know About (LA 812)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, Entertaining Land Investment Talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about free property data sources you should know about. Jill came up with this topic and I’m proud of her.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: I love free stuff, like everyone and I love free data sources. We live in a day and age now in the internet where there’s just a tremendous amount of data out there and a tremendous amount of free stuff.
Jill DeWit: It’s shocking.
Steven Butala: It’s awesome. In a true sense of the word.
Jill DeWit: It is. You know what-
Steven Butala: This topic makes me happy.
Jill DeWit: Well, you know what I think about? I think it’s like us and I know we’re gonna talk about it more in the show, but what we’re finding other people are providing for free mirrors what we’re doing for free. It’s like the show and it’s so darn cool.
Steven Butala: Yeah. It’s amazing the whole world should have been set up like this right from the beginning.
Jill DeWit: We should all be helping each other.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: There should be free stuff in the beginning and if you’re really into it and you like it-
Jill DeWit: Then you buy the book.
Steven Butala: Yes. Yes. I can give … And I will give several examples of free stuff that’s out there that doesn’t interest me.
Jill DeWit: Right. And then, you know what? The bottom line is that you buy the book, you feel good about buying the book, you want to sponsor this person’s efforts so they could afford to write another book.
Steven Butala: Yep.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit: Michael asks, “Hello, friends. I just found you guys and have always had a passion for land. This seems so complicated, how can I catch up? Where have you been my whole life? How do I start? How can I ramp up? I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.”
I love it.
Steven Butala: That’s a good question.
Jill DeWit: I know. Do you want to start?
Steven Butala: No. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit: This is so good. “Do you want to start?” Hint, hint. Please start.
Steven Butala: Oh.
Jill DeWit: That’s my way of-
Steven Butala: Where do I start?
Jill DeWit: … kind of elbowing you.
Steven Butala: I’ve been charged with skipping to the PHD level of everything in my past and in the present, and just making-
Jill DeWit: And in the present.
Steven Butala: … making stuff to … Making it unreachable. This is a very good question. Where do I start? You can start by going to LandAcademy.com and clicking, “start here.” There’s a big button on the top, and download the free ebook … We’ve made that incredibly simple. Read it.
The ebook contains … This is not a commercial for the ebook, I’m truly just trying to help this person.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: I think their name was Michael. The ebook contains a tiny little bit in the beginning of my story. There’s an exercise you go through very quickly to see if you’re interested in this at all-
Jill DeWit: To prove it works.
Steven Butala: Yeah. And then, it really describes what this is all about. Which, is this. Assess your data, which is real simple from a data subscription that Jill and I provide. The best data. We’re licensed providers, by the way of all this data.
Organizing yourself, sending mail out to people who own property, sending blind offers out, and generating some interest in … Generating an acquisition pipeline for yourself so you can buy the property at a much reduced rate and resell it.
That paragraph that I just said, sending offers out, generating interest, the acquisition pipeline, and then reselling property. I have to be really straight with listeners and the question asker. If that just sounds like mumbo jumbo crazy to you, then-
Jill DeWit: This isn’t for you.
Steven Butala: Yeah. Don’t download the ebook.
Jill DeWit: Maybe you should be a dancer or [crosstalk 00:03:50]-
Steven Butala: A dancer?
Jill DeWit: I don’t know. I’m just saying, but you’re right. To add to what you just said, our online community.
I’d say the next phase is start talking to some people, and start asking some questions, and learning even more, and watching other people’s transactions and seeing the deals that they’re doing.
Where do you do that? That’s our online community. Go there, it’s totally free, Michael. You could hang out there for a while and gain a lot of information.
Steven Butala: We have two forms of competitors, to take this just to the final point here. We have been thrown into … Not by our choice, this guru genre of real estate teaching, which I don’t see us as that at all.
Jill DeWit: Not at all.
Steven Butala: We also have academic … That’s not even a competition. We choose to academically teach this topic and here’s the big difference. We could throw out very expensive cars and go on the internet and stand in front of expensive cars and say, “You too-”
Jill DeWit: Jump up and down.
Steven Butala: ” … can be like this.” And probably sell a lot more stuff. A lot more property and a lot more education. That’s just not what we choose to do.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Steven Butala: We choose to tell the truth. This is the perfect topic today about free data sources.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: A lot of people come to us and want to just get rich. The way that a lot of people think they can act, because they just want to be famous. They’re not really interested in acting.
If you just want to get rich and find a shortcut, this is not it. That’s-
Jill DeWit: Got it. There’s work involved.
Steven Butala: Yeah. That’s my whole point and there’s planning and all that.
Jill DeWit: Perfect.
Steven Butala: Today’s topic, free data sources you should know about. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit: I love this.
Steven Butala: If you are pressed for time, here they are. Realtor.com does … It’s not what you think. There’s amazing data there. And, Redfin.com both make available … In Redfin’s case they opensource their data. It’s truly, truly amazing what is provided.
Days on market, month over month, year over year data on … Per zip code by the way. A couple shows-
Jill DeWit: Amazing.
Steven Butala: … from now we’ll talk about how to red, green, and yellow light a given zip code based on this data. But, the free property sources that you want to … This is exactly what you do. You go to Google and type in Redfin … That word. And data.
What will pop us is … It’s easier, believe it or not to do it that way than to actually go not the site and look for it.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: And then, either go on YouTube or wherever and … It’s not gonna happen in three seconds, but you will find the zip code. Let’s say, try the one … everybody tries the one where they live first to see what the days on market are.
Really, the whole point is to relatively look at a zip code against other zip codes in the same MSA or the same city, and pit them against each other, and pick the best one where there is to send offers.
The one that you think that you can resell the fastest or the one that the data says. That’s what Redfin’s good for and Realtor.com, believe it or not has this just tremendous amount of data for free.
They have this statistic called, “market hotness.”
Jill DeWit: I remember this. That was my thing from the other day, I don’t have the … Something of market DOM. The-
Steven Butala: Days on market?
Jill DeWit: No. It was not DOM, it was just something of hotness. Discussion of hotness? It’s okay.
Steven Butala: It’s market hotness.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Steven Butala: It’s amazing when you go in there … You can download all this stuff into Excel and manipulate it for yourself, which is what we teach in Land Academy 2.0. How to download all this stuff and manipulate it and use it to your benefit to buy and sell property.
Those are my two top free data sources on the internet.
Jill DeWit: I love that.
Steven Butala: They are worth, if you’re into this … Forget about land, but if you’re into real estate or into data we live in a great age where you can really truly find out what’s going on from a real estate perspective very quickly and for no money.
Jill DeWit: Why are more people not doing this? Here’s my whole point, it’s not cheating. You don’t have to do this hard way and you don’t get an award for doing it the hard way. I don’t understand … Even If … I know in one of our shows [inaudible 00:08:20] speak to is, “What if I’m afraid of data?”
Even if you are afraid of data, get somebody who isn’t. Seriously. Find a partner or someone you could work with that can help you decipher this and put it into-
Steven Butala: Jill did.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Like I did. But, into layman’s terms so you know, “Oh. That’s the zip code I need to be reaching out to. This is the group that will want to sell their home. That’s the group that … Look over here why the … ” We joke … We don’t joke, but we talk about the Seattle market.
We talked about that one day last week, but within the Seattle market there are going to be different zip codes that do different things. That’s what you need to know. Say you’re a flipper, you want to go find these homes.
You’re an investor, your wholesale like we are. You need to know where the zip codes are, you need to know the days of market, you need to know how to price the offers. This is all … I don’t mean to be stealing your thunder. This is all your stuff, but my point is if you dig, that information is there and it’s not cheating if you use it.
I think that you are missing it if you don’t. It’s like, we told our kid … One of our children is doing a school project and he needed to use us to have access to a professional. Not an investor, but a different kind of professional for our school thing.
I don’t know why he was holding back. We’re like, “Why are you not … Why would you not use us to have access to this person whose gonna get you an A in your class by the way?” I told him, “Nepotism is alive and well and if you don’t take advantage of it you’re silly.”
Steven Butala: Well said.
Jill DeWit: Thank you. Kind of, for me with this free data, that’s kind of the same thing for me. If you don’t take advantage of it you’re nuts, but the flip side is what you’re saying. You know how to take advantage of it.
That’s a whole nother thing, but you can also teach how to take advantage of it and that’s why I love you.
Steven Butala: Oh. That’s nice. I didn’t expect that. If you’re brand new, you should be saying something like this to yourself, “What is it with you guys and data?”
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Steven Butala: What are you talking about? All I have to do is log onto the MLS and I can find … There’s thousands of properties for sale in the MLS, thousands and thousands of properties of houses for sale. “What is it with data? Why would I go through all of that, send a bunch of … Pay for postage and send letters out?”
“I already know there’s a bunch of properties for sale.” Here’s the thing, and I hope you’re saying some version of that, because it’s not cheap enough. If you’re serious about this, the way that you create equity is by getting their first.
All the MLS postings … They already got there first. They’re people that … The sellers who have property posted in the MLS did some version of this. They called a real estate agent and they spent weeks talking to a real estate agent, looking at market prices, and priced their property for sale. Packed a lunch, made a pot of coffee, and they’re gonna wait.
You don’t want any part of that, you want to buy property for half of what it’s priced for in the MLS.
Jill DeWit: Quickly.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Easily.
Steven Butala: And resell it quick. The only way to do that is to send out blind offers and … Not the only way. The most intelligent way is to send out in an organized methodical fashion … Send out blind offers based on assessor data and all this information that we have access to.
Even 10 years ago we didn’t have access to data like we do now. Make it work for you, because you’re smart. You’re not a feeding frenzy on three properties that got posted in the MLS, which is what happens.
Jill DeWit: Every time someone calls me and goes, “Hey. We have a property you might be interested in.” I’m like, “No. Actually, no I’m not.”
Steven Butala: We stop the conversation right there.
Jill DeWit: I don’t even want to … You already know about it before me, so I don’t want any part of it.
Steven Butala: You want yo use data to instigate the first conversation with the seller. When the seller calls you back and says, “I got your letter. Well, I know this … ” They never say this, but what they’re thinking is, “Man, I know this property’s worth more, but I just want to get rid of it.”
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: And fill in the blank. There’s a thousand reasons. Go back and listen to our other shows, we talk all about that. They just want to get rid of it.
Jill DeWit: Totally.
Steven Butala: So, yes. Please. On Thursday I would like 15 thousand dollars for my 30 thousand dollar lot. Thank you.
Jill DeWit: Yep.
Steven Butala: “I looked you guys up on the internet and you seem like credible, normal people, because I can see your faces there on the website-”
Jill DeWit: You’ve done this before. Obviously.
Steven Butala: “What do you say we get on with it? Where’s my 15 grand?”
Jill DeWit: “This is your thing, you sent me an offer. You said Tuesday, I’d like it on Tuesday.”
Steven Butala: That’s what data’s for. I hope that answers the question.
Jill DeWit: It’s perfect.
Steven Butala: Well, you’ve done it agan. You’ve spent another 15 minutes or so listening to the Land Academy Show. Join us next time where we cover data quality, then and now.
Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community, LandInvestors.com. It is free.
Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
I love talking about data.
Jill DeWit: I know. I was gonna ask in the show, so I’m gonna ask now. What if I’m a … Say on a scale of one to 10, I’m about a six. I understand data, I understand how to look at it-
Steven Butala: Then you’re a shoe-in.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: You’re gonna knock it out of the park. This is a good question, go ahead.
Jill DeWit: How much time should I expect to spend learning only one of those sites that you just mentioned? Redfin or Realtor in digging in the data?
Steven Butala: Well, the first thing you should do is go in there and see if it actually makes sense to you.
When I do it, when I go into Realtor.com and I’ve been in the backend of that thing in the data part of it … Not just the MLS part, but the data part. Or, Redfin. I lose three hours of my life, because it’s just …
I know that-
Jill DeWit: It’s fun for you.
Steven Butala: … on scale it one to 10. I am a 10 when it comes to … Or one. Depending on how you look at it.
Jill DeWit: You’re a 12.
Steven Butala: Yeah. If you’re a six and your jaw’s on your desk the whole time going, “I can’t believe this is free and I can’t believe how much this just completely removes the risk out of separating good markets, middle markets, and bad markets. Red, green, yellow.”
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Steven Butala: If that’s your reaction to that, then I wouldn’t even rate it on a one to 10. It’s either false or true.
Jill DeWit: Well, how much time should I … I just want to give someone … Plan a weekend. Give yourself a weekend, let’s be honest.
Steven Butala: If you forget to go to the bathroom or forget to eat, you’re gonna make a fortune.
Jill DeWit: All right. You should be feeling that.
Steven Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: If you get in there and say, “I’d really rather just … I can’t wait until Monday to just go back to my regular job, because I don’t want to do this anymore.” This is not for you.
Jill DeWit: Share in the fun by subscribing on iTunes or YouTube and 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.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. My staff and I read each and every one.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
The BuWit Family of Companies include:
I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.
And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes.
