Good Investors Will Make Fortunes in the Next 24 Months (LA 1239)
Good Investors Will Make Fortunes in the Next 24 Months (LA 1239)
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’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how good investors will make fortunes in the next 24 months.
Jill DeWit:
What else should you be doing? I’d be like this. That’s like a drop everything and run title. You know what I mean?
Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now is the time. There may never be another time in our, certainly in our lifetime, but if you’re real young you might get another shot at it, and I’m not saying you can’t make money during great times, but now it’s just kind of a perfect storm. I have some indications about why. Before we get into it, though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit:
Roland asks, “My partner and I have a beautiful 2.5 acre property in Twentynine Palms, California, near Palm Springs, that we have listed on eBay. This is the first time we have listed on eBay. We have had two bidders so far. One seems legit based on his buyer’s history. The other, who is leading right now, has no buyer history. We’re kind of concerned. So, the question is, what scams should we look out for? Thanks, Roland.”
Jill DeWit:
I was going to add one thing too. You are not wrong in your concerns, because sometimes that happens. People do, unfortunately, are not legitimate. With a buyer’s history, they may or may not be a great buyer. They could be good but you don’t know. We have a lot of experience in this, and I’ll tell you truthfully, I have gone… and when you go into the settings and you’re setting up your eBay account, you can even restrict it ahead of time so people that have less than X amount of transactions can’t even bid, or people who have less amount of dings on their account, things like an unpaid history or they’ve already had some negative feedback, you can also restrict those buyers from your account. You have a lot of control. There’s a lot that you can choose from.
Jill DeWit:
It’s a tough one, because you don’t know who could be good, who could be bad, until you really get rolling. You don’t have a lot of history too, by the way, so let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Is that okay-
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Is that the right kind of a-
Steven Butala:
You’re answering the question for me.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Total two-way street.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. As a buyer, I don’t really know you too, Roland, so you want to give… I’d say give him a chance. What you could do, because you’re starting out, they’re starting out. If you see two guys going for it and you do like we do. It’s one dollar, no reserve, 30-day auction, going to close on a Sunday around dinner time. Those are things that we’ve learned over the years that worked the best. I would start having a dialogue with these guys. Make sure that you say, “Hey, you’re one of the top bidders. Don’t forget when it closes. I’m going to send you an invoice. This is how the process goes just to give you an idea. Do you have any questions for me now,” things like that. Then maybe too, if you have some interaction with these buyers, both of them, it’s going to help you feel good and know that they’re real and legit.
Steven Butala:
EBay’s a double-edged sword. Jill and I have sold tens of millions of dollars of real estate on eBay. It’s only conducive for really one product type when land is concerned, so the people that buy stuff on eBay are the absolute biggest bottom fishers there ever was, ever. It’s not just for land. It’s for cars and anything else that you can find on there. It’s way, way lower, from a price standpoint and an acceptable behavior standpoint, than a lot of other venues on the internet like, let’s say, Amazon, Craigslist or offer upper… Choose one.
Jill DeWit:
This is all true.
Steven Butala:
You need to go in with an expectation that you’re dealing with maybe the worst customer there ever was, number one. Number two, they’re not going to buy a real nice [info lot 00:04:10] that you spent five grand on for [chen 00:04:12]. They’re going to buy very, very inexpensive rural vacant land. They’re going to expect an amazing customer service experience. They’re going to expect zero fees associated with the transaction.
Jill DeWit:
A crazy price, yeah.
Steven Butala:
I’m talking about 500 bucks. Five hundred to a thousand sales price is where you want to be for eBay. So, that means you have to buy it for 2- or $300 to make any real money consistently. That’s not inconceivable, especially if you buy huge bulks of property in multiple locations all at once, which is what… We’ve done this for years and years.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
The big problem with eBay is it turns a lot of people who are really intelligent off. That’s the problem… or Land Academy people. When people hear the word eBay, very intelligent people, and they say, “What? That’s what this is about, buying real cheap property for a few hundred dollars and selling it for 700 or 800 on eBay 10 or 15 times a week,” no, that’s not what this is about at all. It’s a tiny little part of it.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Ninety-eight percent of the time we talk about data and smart stuff. This is not one of those times. This is just the eBay little portion of it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, if you’ve got a good property, I wouldn’t put it on eBay. If you’ve got something that’s in your inventory you just want to get rid of and you don’t care about it and maybe drive traffic to your website, then I would use eBay. Use it as a marketing tool.
Steven Butala:
I want to go out on a limb here and say, I bet you and I have sold more real estate on eBay than anyone.
Jill DeWit:
I bet that’s true. I’m sure-
Steven Butala:
I bet we’re the most qualified people to talk about this little tiny subject.
Jill DeWit:
I’m sure of that.
Steven Butala:
We don’t sell very much, if any, at all anymore for a reason. If us, we’re saying, there’s just better ways to do it, I feel very confident that that’s the case.
Jill DeWit:
You know, Roland, I would rather you have this on Facebook and doing maybe even some paid ads and getting in front of the right people.
Steven Butala:
Me too.
Jill DeWit:
Then you’re going to get a lot more Instagram. Dream it up.
Steven Butala:
Fifty percent of the people that buy property on eBay and the auction closes, and you either send them a bill or there’s automatic checkout, will pay. Fifty percent won’t. It costs 100 bucks to run an auction, so there’s a lot of stuff that goes on. There’s a lot of moving parts to it. You have to have an incredible amount of patience, so you can remove me in that. But it’s very profitable. People who do well on eBay, I’ve been to these eBay conferences, national conferences, not necessarily with real estate, but anything, have figured it out. They’ve figured out a way to create a machine.
Steven Butala:
I met a couple guys at a conference that, they sold packaging, like cardboard boxes and stuff, for other eBay sellers on eBay, and they were just printing money. I don’t want to knock it, but really what it is is you’re an online retailer who happens to sell… fill in the blank. For us, it was land. For them it was boxes. For some people it’s Beanie Babies. For some people it’s Corvettes.
Jill DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, good investors will make fortunes in the next 24 months. This is the meat of the show.
Steven Butala:
I was inspired to write this title by an article/video that Suze Orman did where she kind of just yelled at everybody. That’s what she does. She’s a branded financial planner, and she just got in front of this camera like she always does, and famously just started yelling at us saying-
Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that funny?
Steven Butala:
I’m applying it to real estate here. She said, “Now everybody’s kind of at home. We didn’t request it, but we have this chill period, let’s say-”
Jill DeWit:
Chill period.
Steven Butala:
It’s like a cooling off period.
Jill DeWit:
Paid time off. You know what it is? What do you call it when it’s your… a career decision. I worked at a company, and before they fired you, you would get a career decision day. Not kidding. It’d be a day off with pay. This is like at the very, very bitter end of the whole thing.
Steven Butala:
After you already got all the black marks on your record.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah. You’re like, it’s just not improving. We’ve coached and counseled you to the fullest extent. Then this last one time, do you really want to work here, because then they could say we did everything we could. So, this is a career decision 90 days or 260 days for a lot of people.
Steven Butala:
Now is the time to make a fortune. If you’re a Land Academy member or a House Academy member already and you’re just in the middle range of, “I’m lukewarm about it, we’ve done a couple of deals,” now’s the time to do 100 deals.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
I couldn’t be more serious. We joke around a lot on the show just to try to make it bearable to listen to or watch. I am not joking around about this. Now is the time. There may never be, like I said earlier, another time in our life that is so conducive to this. We have record unemployment. We will have record unemployment. We will probably have record… Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
Well, we have record an audience. The audience is huge right now too, by the way. What a great time. If everybody was doing great and it was Superbowl time, where everybody’s stuck on Superbowl, I’d say this is not the time, but right now everybody’s home, and a lot of people have money.
Steven Butala:
This virus has created an environment of fear of big cities, so any kind of heat map you look at, that’s fantastic for rural vacant land or mobile homes or any property. It’s just a universal real estate rule. The further you go out, the cheaper it is.
Jill DeWit:
Drive till you qualify.
Steven Butala:
Now everybody wants to go further out.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
Number three, this is like a perfect storm. Number three, there are more people now than ever that are successfully working at home. I don’t think a lot of that’s going to change, because it’s so much more affordable for employers. We’re employers in many, many companies, and we have a lot of people working for us. I never would have signed off voluntarily to send… All my greatest assets as a business owner all just went home. I don’t know what they’re doing. It scared the heck out of me, and I think probably 95% of them just passed with flying colors. They’re doing great. Their numbers are great. They’re probably happier, which means I’m happier. I see that trend continuing.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Butala:
And it’s more affordable. So, all of this is a perfect storm of buying rural, vacant land, or if you’re into houses, buying houses that are further out, for really inexpensive amounts of money. Then finally, and I alluded to it with recessionary unemployment, we will have… I think we do now have the largest amount of unemployment.
Jill DeWit:
Isn’t it one in five? I think I read one in five.
Steven Butala:
The Great Depression in 1929 wasn’t, not that high. We’re in the middle of it. What is it? We’re recording this on May 7th. It will air I guess next week. All those things add up to a huge, huge opportunity. Why? People need money too. So, this mail campaign scenario that we’ve developed in the Land Academy, House Academy members know all about, your yield, your mailer yield should dramatically increase. It should double at least because people just want money. Go ahead, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
And the old buyers are coming back. The old sellers, I should say, the people that told you to go jump in a lake six months ago are coming back. Now they’re like, “Ooh, maybe I should call that guy again.”
Steven Butala:
If you don’t have a specialization, you should find one and get serious about it. Put it as schedule, get the mail out, pick a location that you think make sense. If you’re in Texas and you like Texas, getting the outskirts of some of the bigger cities. I just used Texas as an example. Now’s the time to really, really specialize and really do it.
Jill DeWit:
I was going to add what we talked about the other day at the kitchen table, which is if you’re not working on something right now, you’re nuts. If you’re not using this time off opportunity to really come up with another way to put food on the table, what better use of your time?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
For a lot of people, they have the ideas, they have the knowledge, it’s all in their hands, they just can’t act on it.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I’m just going to say you’re going to have to do whatever it takes to act on it. We were all there once. We were all afraid of making that first decision about buying that first property. So, my answer to that is buy a great property. Don’t make a wishy-washy decision. Don’t have any doubts in your head. Make sure it’s a fantastic property. How do you do that? You have a lot to choose from. Like Steven said, get the mail out there. I see a lot of people doing this right now, by the way.
Steven Butala:
So do I.
Jill DeWit:
Even in the last week, I was blown away at our-
Steven Butala:
Me too.
Jill DeWit:
We have a direct mail company called Offers 2 Owners. It’s offers and the number two owners.com, and I’m looking at the numbers of the mail that’s going out, not individually, but as a whole. I’m like, “Holy cow.” People are like, and they’re listening and they’re doing it and they’re getting properties, and that’s the best way and the easiest way to do this right.
Steven Butala:
Yep. I don’t have anything else to say. You said it the nicest way you could possibly say it. I had an old boss tell me one time, “This either happens to you by the time you’re 40 or not.” It was a guy-to-guy. I was young, really young. I don’t think that it’s by 40 by any stretch. I think now you can be 60 because of the way the internet is, but I do think that this is the sentiment from what he said applies here. You’re either going to do this right now or you’re not, and if you don’t do it right now, you’re making excuses for yourself. Jill’s just said it the nice way. I’m not going to be that nice.
Jill DeWit:
In other words, get off your rear and do it.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, get the mail out. As Luke Smith, one of our advanced members who has a show on YouTube, constantly says, “Just get the mail out. Then everything else falls into place,” because you don’t have a choice. If your phone’s blowing up, you’re going to have to pick some deals and do them.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Happy you could join us today. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we are right here on the Land Academy Show. Tuesdays and Thursdays you can find us on the House Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the House Academy Show is called We Will Never Know the Very Bitter Bottom of This Recession. Why does that matter? It’s just another reason to sit around and wait to pull the trigger on something. You don’t need to know where the bottom is. It’s going down. Let’s just say that. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
Cool.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
That was good. We got our point across. I hope we got our point across.
Steven Butala:
You know what’s going on in our life right now? We’re doing a lot of real estate deals, and so that leaves a little less time and energy for Land Academy.
Jill DeWit:
Everybody should have that, to be like, “I’m doing so many deals, that leaves a little less time for family.” Just kidding. “Or eating.”
Steven Butala:
Yep, exactly.
Jill DeWit:
“Or binge-watching.” There we go. That’s good.
Jill DeWit:
The Land Academy Show remains commercial free for you, our loyal listener. So, wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information-
Jill DeWit:
And Inspiration.
Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. 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 Apple Podcasts.
