Key Components of a Perfect Land Listing (LA 1013)
Key Components of a Perfect Land Listing (LA 1013)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Happy Friday.
Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala-
Jill DeWit: And I Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the key components of a perfect land listing online.
Jill DeWit: That’s a mouthful.
Steven Butala: Here’s the good news.
Jill DeWit: It’s good.
Steven Butala: Of all the stuff that you think you need to learn, this is maybe one of the easiest things. Why? You just go copy it. Go copy it from us. We have 25 years of experience. That land posting that we have is not by accident. It contains all the stuff that a seller needs to know to either buy it or [crosstalk 00:00:42]-
Jill DeWit: Make a decision [crosstalk 00:00:42]-
Steven Butala: Make an offer. Yeah, make a decision.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. This whole week, by the way, I hope you’ve been taking a lot of notes. I was just thinking about it. Really tried to sit down and come up with some topics about sales because we don’t talk about sales because it’s just natural for us, but this whole week has been why it comes natural for us. I hope you are taking notes and you got it. Today is one more day that you might want to jot a few things down, I hope.
Steven Butala: 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 DeWit: Aiden asked, “Hello, Land Academy members. I’m glad to say my first mailer is out and I already got seller responses.”
Steven Butala: Excellent.
Jill DeWit: “Can anyone recommend a good title person in the Eastern Desert area of San Diego County? I’m trying to see if it would be a good idea to flip or wholesale a couple of deals that have already come back after a lot of hate. Wanting to move forward. Thanks.”
Steven Butala: This is a great… one of the many, many questions we get and comments every day that we get on the forum, and I included it here because I know that it has been answered on the forum-
Jill DeWit: Oh, good.
Steven Butala: And I’m not going to announce the best title agent, but if you want to find out who’s buying and selling property let’s say in the San Diego area, go check it out. Go check it out on landinvestors.com and they’ll figure it out. There’s a guy there named Luke Smith, you may have heard of him, with ruralvacantland.com. I’m not plugging anything, he’s just a really [crosstalk 00:02:14]-
Jill DeWit: One of our members.
Steven Butala: Active, good members. He’s got San Diego all locked down, so-
Jill DeWit: He’s got-
Steven Butala: Reach out to him on ruralvacantland.com. Today’s topic, the key components of a perfect land listing. This is the meat of the show.
Steven Butala: You can go first if you want. I can reel off mine.
Jill DeWit: A perfect land listing, this is something that you’re putting on your website and then you’re pretty much copying it everywhere else that you’re promoting your property. Before you go and copy and paste and share and link everything to the planet to your posting, you want to make sure you have every little detail in there so people can when they find your property easily see everything they need to know about the property so they can make a decision and ideally without needing to call you or email you.
Jill DeWit: That’s one thing I want to say, too. If you find as you’re starting, you put your posting out there, based on the questions you’re getting back and the calls that you’re getting, you’re going to probably go update your listing like, “Oh, shoot”, that’s the best way, by the way, how you go, “Oh, I guess I forgot to put some text information in there.” Or, “Oh, I guess I forgot to put X, Y, Z in there.” That’s how you’re going to know, and then you’re going to remember this and copy your posting for the next one.
Jill DeWit: Like Steven said, where’s the best best way to start? Copy us. That’s like our members.
Steven Butala: Or other successful members here.
Jill DeWit: Copy our postings. We have all the basics in there. Make them your own, and then share it all over. What are the basics? What am I talking about? Well, number one, you want to have all of the facts. Not only facts, I want state, county, APN, I want taxes, I want anything you know utilities, access, I want GPS coordinates, I want acreage. Dream it up. Any of the facts, I want them in there. Is there a street address? I want the legal description. Everything.
Jill DeWit: Next, I want to make sure I have images and maps, and I want good ones, man, not just random. Some of the properties, if you’re spending money on a property, say that you’re spending 5 or $10,000 or more on a property, it’s so worthwhile to spend 50 or $75 if you’re not in the area and get a photographer to go out there and shoot the property for you. Maps, I want good ones. I want a variety of maps, not just one Google Earth image, I want maps. Different, like a plat map versus just a terrain map, all of those things.
Jill DeWit: You want to interrupt me? You want to jump in yet?
Steven Butala: No, I’ll wait till the end.
Jill DeWit: I also want a video, and it’s too easy now, even on the most inexpensive properties to make a three, five minute video from your computer showing the property, showing the area, what’s around there, access, what the neighbors are doing so they can see, “Wow, okay, there’s a ranch right there, oh, look, there’s a railroad”, and what’s possible with the property. It’s just too easy, and talk about making you stand out from other postings. I’ll get to that in a second.
Jill DeWit: I want any pertinent documents on there. Did you buy this with title insurance? I want you to upload and link the title insurance policy right there so I don’t have to call you and ask you about it. I can see it and talk about powerful, letting me know that, “Boy, you bought this the right way. I didn’t even have to think about that.”
Jill DeWit: Then, my next one is contact information. This sounds like it’s a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people have forgot to put, “Oh, shucks, my phone number or my email. How can they reach me if they have questions about this?” Put up multiple ways for them to reach you and please follow up with these guys.
Jill DeWit: Finally, I want you to put some background about you. Tell them who you are, why you’re selling this, how long you’ve been in the business, how many transactions you’ve done, why they should buy from you, how the process is going to go, how easy you’re going to make it. I want all of that included on there.
Steven Butala: There’s an old saying in sales a long, long time ago when I was a commercial real estate broker in the late ’90s and early… or late ’80s, sorry, and early ’90s and one of my coworkers said, “If you don’t get excited about the property that you’re selling, no one else is going to get excited. No one is going to buy it.” You need to present this online. Jill did a fantastic job of describing what the title is, Components of a Perfect Land Listing-
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Steven Butala: But you have to between the lines get excited about the property and get excited about [crosstalk 00:07:15]-
Jill DeWit: It’ll come out.
Steven Butala: The fact that… yeah, it’ll absolutely come out. You need a lead video that is you preferably with a couple of shots of you talking into the camera like I am right now, and then cutting to the screen and have you kind of going around the property and Google Earth, travel through it. Look at nearby towns, talk about it, and really respect it. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to sell an old car. You go and clean it all up and now it’s all perfect and you sit down in the car and you’re ready to post it and you’re like, “Man, maybe I should keep this.” That’s the same feeling that you need when you post something online, a land listing.
Steven Butala: In this business, marketing is everything and there’s about I would say, I don’t know, 98% of the people that I know who sell property online, real estate agents included, fail at this. Jill and I just went and leased a new office building specifically to do our shows and they did a whole movie-
Jill DeWit: They did.
Steven Butala: And it’s great [crosstalk 00:08:16] because this is a very expensive piece of property on the ocean. It sold us immediately.
Jill DeWit: It’s true.
Steven Butala: Between that and the price of what we paid, we were… We just went to look at a property as part of the motion of getting a contract to close a deal. You have to present your property as if you totally respect and as if you are a buyer and then you were going to buy it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: There’s a lot that goes on between the lines and I say it on the show all the time and make fun and poke fun at sales and stuff, but this is incredibly important. If you do it right, you’ll never have to talk to anybody. They’ll just click on it and buy it.
Jill DeWit: You had a good comment. I love your car example, and I see people doing this wrong all the time. Maybe say you’re on eBay or Craigslist or somewhere looking for a used vehicle. There’s people that put up a stock photo or no photo at all of a car that they’re selling and then they might put the year and the color and [crosstalk 00:09:24]-
Steven Butala: Just don’t care [crosstalk 00:09:25]-
Jill DeWit: A price and they call me.
Steven Butala: They don’t care.
Jill DeWit: Well, no one is going to do that versus the guy that has photos of the interior, exterior, hood up, the tires. Even if there’s a scratch or two, he shows a scratch or two, so when you show up there’s no surprises and he has all the specs and maybe even an image of the sticker when he first got the car and he bought it new. That’s what’s going to sell that car and make him stand out and the same thing is going to sell your land.
Steven Butala: This is not optional. This is not an option in your land or in real estate or house or apartment building investment career. This is mandatory.
Jill DeWit: You got it.
Steven Butala: It is absolutely mandatory, and in like everything, if you don’t like doing it or if you’re a middle-aged guy like me and you hate sales and you think that part of it’s… you can just buy cheap property and people are going to… if you build it they will come, you’re wrong.
Jill DeWit: That’s true.
Steven Butala: What you need to do, instead of fighting it, is find somebody like Jill or find a professional marketing team or company to represent these properties and in the latest and greatest way to do it, and a video is mandatory. The worst thing that can happen is you get away with selling a few pieces of property like on Craigslist really quickly without doing any of this and then you just think your whole career is going to be like that.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: This is way more important than I think we’re making it. I don’t [crosstalk 00:10:45]-
Jill DeWit: I think we are [crosstalk 00:10:45]-
Steven Butala: We’ll probably describe it pretty well.
Jill DeWit: I think we are. I think we covered it [crosstalk 00:10:48]-
Steven Butala: Like I said in the beginning, the good news is that there’s so many great examples out there-
Jill DeWit: There are.
Steven Butala: And you know it. If you just [crosstalk 00:10:54]-
Jill DeWit: There are.
Steven Butala: Go scroll down LandWatch or Land and Farm, you can see who’s posted stuff and who they think [crosstalk 00:10:58]-
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Steven Butala: Cares about it and who doesn’t.
Jill DeWit: That’s where it’s so funny, is for me I get a kick out of it. I look at things and I’m like, “There’s no photos.” It’s been listed for two months and it says, “Image coming soon”-
Steven Butala: I’ve seen-
Jill DeWit: And you’re wondering why it’s not selling. It’s hilarious [crosstalk 00:11:12]-
Steven Butala: I’ve seen people just say, “40 acres in Mojave County. Here’s the APN.”
Jill DeWit: A stock photo maybe.
Steven Butala: No, there’s no picture at all.
Jill DeWit: There you go. They’re like, “We wonder why it’s not selling?” Then, here we come. Yep, because we know how to do it.
Steven Butala: Hey, we know your time is valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today anyway. Join us next time for another interesting episode.
Jill DeWit: 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.
Jill DeWit: Here’s a funny thing. I’m finding we have several people that are watching our two shows, so just in case you didn’t know, if you can’t quite get enough of us…
Steven Butala: Geez, I can’t imagine that.
Jill DeWit: Could you… it’s true. Hang on, hold please. Excuse me. Me, just kidding. Steven, too.
Steven Butala: Exactly.
Jill DeWit: You know what, Steven? You have a very unique attitude about things and I mean that, and I’m saying that in a positive way. I really do think that. If you really want to get more of us, you can. Check it out. Go to House Academy, the podcast show. It is live and up there and happening now and there’s several [crosstalk 00:12:25] waiting for you.
Steven Butala: We got a lot of good comments, a lot of good reviews on the House Academy part of this. Land people… us land people are kind of a tight-knit, strange… there’s something a little bit off for us to completely just gravitate towards land as an investment vehicle, but house people seem to be a little bit more dynamic and, I don’t know, like… I don’t know. There’s some differences. I’m-
Jill DeWit: True.
Steven Butala: A land person my whole life and [crosstalk 00:13:00] I’m a house person, too, but-
Jill DeWit: I love what you said, though. The reason I’m talking about right now real quickly is because you land people, land people get houses, but it’s not as many house people get land.
Steven Butala: That’s for sure.
Jill DeWit: It’s very interesting [crosstalk 00:13:13]-
Steven Butala: That’s important.
Jill DeWit: And it’s fun.
Jill DeWit: Wherever you’re watching or wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We’re Steve and Jill [crosstalk 00:13:19]-
Steven Butala: We’re Steve and Jill. 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.
