How Much Data We Actually Consume in Our Land Business (LA 1337)
How Much Data We Actually Consume in Our Land Business (LA 1337)
Transcript:
Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Good day.
Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California.
Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how much data we actually consume in our land business.
Jill DeWit:
How about our lives?
Jack Butala:
Yeah, here’s a hint. It’s like every decision single decision that we make is data-driven. Every single one.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
Seasoned professionals in real estate that I talked to are actually pretty amazed.
Jill DeWit:
I know you do too, I just want to share how much data nuts we are, I look at data to help me to make a decision buying a car. I look at data help my decision, I know you do with schools and education for the kids.
Jack Butala:
That’s all I do.
Jill DeWit:
I know. It’s like, I can’t think of things, anything that we do even, honestly, I even think of data and resell value on jewelry. Not kidding. It’s like everything’s data-driven.
Jack Butala:
The next time you’re in Best Buy or Costco or any of that and someone’s standing, looking at something with the phone in front of themselves, look at what that person looks like.
Jill DeWit:
Why, do they look like us?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Oh because they’re on there checking the rating. Yeah.
Jack Butala:
They look like a bunch of geeks. They’re looking at the ratings. They’re looking at the price. They’re doing research.
Jill DeWit:
Can I get it better on Amazon?
Jack Butala:
They’re looking at data. They’re looking at data, yeah, looking at data to make a decision. And often in Costco, specifically with electronic, Costco has very high quality electronics for very good price, some of the time, not all the time.
Jill DeWit:
You know what it is, I believe that to be true. The other thing about Costco it’s sometime limiting. They’re only have so much. That’s the thing.
Jack Butala:
Selection is very limited.
Jill DeWit:
You can’t always go there and get the video camera that you want or need.
Jack Butala:
And so, but the vast majority of everybody else, they’re all kind of squandering through there, going up and down every aisle, checking to see what the product in front of them and how it makes them feel.
Jill DeWit:
Do you know what I think is really going on?
Jack Butala:
I’m serious. It’s data versus feelings.
Jill DeWit:
I think they’re going up and down every aisle missing the days when there was a sample at the end of every aisle.
Jack Butala:
Oh, because of the COVID. That didn’t even cross my mind. I guess you can’t hand people food like that.
Jill DeWit:
Not right now you can’t.
Jack Butala:
Which is kind of silly because they do it at McDonald’s. So I don’t know what the difference is.
Jill DeWit:
It’s very interesting. I guess it’s open food. Remember the old days, go pick up the, throw a cracker in your mouth.
Jack Butala:
That’s my question of the day. What’s the difference between handing, making some samples in Costco at the end of the aisle and the person who’s handing you stuff at McDonald’s?
Jill DeWit:
It’s true because it has been proven that you can’t catch it from food. Anyway.
Jack Butala:
Watch the comments blow up at the end of the YouTube.
Jill DeWit:
Sorry. I’m confused too.
Jack 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:
Austin wrote, hello, I recently fielded a call from an owner that yielded three small contiguous lots, possibly one acre per parcel. The lots weren’t part of my original mailer, but it’s property that the owner also owned. Unfortunately, this county stumped parcel fact and neighbor scoop him. And I couldn’t find much info about the area, not even a GIS. That says something too. Okay. I did find a little bit of info on the assessor’s website. It’s X county.
Jack Butala:
No, you can say it.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay.
Jack Butala:
I think you should.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Socorro County, New Mexico. Additionally, I found another land seller that has a handful of parcels. I got that. And I got a handful of parcels in the specific subdivision of, can I say RG?
Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Rio Grande Estates. Any thoughts on how to proceed? Austin. Got it. Okay. So, the problem is said on a mailer. Can I answer this please?
Jack Butala:
Sure.
Jill DeWit:
Austin sent out a mailer. The guy calls back. Austin did everything right. One of the questions I have on my inbound call seller checklist is by the way, do you have anything else? Because sometimes there’s gold there. He might say, “Yeah, I’ve got two more over here. I thought you only wanted to buy this one. I actually own all these other parcels.” So yay, yippie ki yay, this could be awesome. So Austin uncovered a few and it’s in a county that he obviously didn’t pick and it’s obviously one that’s difficult to get information on. Even they don’t have a GIS. So that makes a lot of sense. So he’s like, okay, this other guy is doing it. Should I do it too?
So my question is, hold on a moment, first of all. I would put them aside. I don’t want you to go down a rabbit hole and start learning an area that you’re not familiar with because you could spend hours and days and have it not work out. So I don’t necessarily, just because someone else has figured it out, they may have set out to do that and put the time in to do that. And that’s great. My personal advice to you, Austin, is this, take the information, maybe spend an hour or two on it if you want, if the guy’s dying to sell them too, or it’s part of the package kind of thing then I would, but don’t spend days on it kind of thing, because I don’t want to pull away from the deals that … you don’t like my thing. You don’t like my answer.
Jack Butala:
No, it’s okay. I think there’s a way to solve this.
Jill DeWit:
Because I don’t want you to … it’s something shiny and I don’t want you to get too distracted by it. That’s the bottom line. It’s not like you can’t ever do this or do it. I’m going to push it down on my list and get back to it after I go through all my other really good ones and then decide. You have different thoughts.
Jack Butala:
The coverage, I’m going to take it up a few thousand, 20,000 feet here.
Jill DeWit:
That’s because you go high and I go low.
Jack Butala:
Right. The coverage for parcel fact and neighbor scoop, which Jill and I own by the way and developed, is fueled by an API that’s driven by CoreLogic, it’s originally for oil and gas. And Joe went to Irvine one time and convinced these oil and gas people to allow us access to the API. So we create these tools. These tools are only as good as the data that we receive from the county. And it’s not the data that we received from the county, it’s CoreLogic. And so there’s just like anything in life. There’s 3,144 counties in this country. There’s about 10 of them, maybe 15 that are so far behind from a computer standpoint, who cares why, they just are, that they can’t feed the data. Socorro County, New Mexico is one of them. If you want a list of these counties, go to the top of either one of those sites and find coverage. And there’s a map.
These are not wise states in my opinion, counties, to send mail. If your county that you’re interested in, for whatever reason is on there, you’re going to have a tough time finding property in real time. It’s not impossible. There’s a bunch of counties in North, I’ll just list them through and help everybody quickly. There’s a bunch of counties in North Dakota and a few in South Dakota that are very difficult, if not impossible to find property in. There’s certain counties in Oklahoma that are very, very tough to find property in. There’s about four or five, which is a lot as a percentage in northern New Mexico. There’s a bunch in Arkansas. East coast, not so much. It’s actually pretty good. So you want to make this part of your county mailing decision process. Socorro is not so much hard to find property, it’s just that it’s a mess internally. So you’ll get an APN and you’ll have a legal description and there’s 10 properties in there, but they’re not delineated out because the county just chose not to do it.
So I kind of spaced out a little bit while Jill was talking, but did you cover like just moving on, you want to move on in this situation?
Jill DeWit:
That’s good because I spaced out too.
Jack Butala:
What I was just saying?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Jack Butala:
Do you want to move on? You can’t find the property.
Jill DeWit:
That’s part of the problem.
Jack Butala:
Then neither can your buyer.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. So that’s the thing. I just don’t want you to waste too much time and energy. Look Austin, I’ve been in your shoes.
Jack Butala:
Yeah, me too. And it sucks.
Jill DeWit:
And I said, dog gone it. Why did I waste two full days on this stupid thing I couldn’t find. And then it ended up being a mess because somebody has dead anyway. And I forgot to ask that question, kind of thing. Like what was I thinking? It was not what I was mailing for. It was not in my property type. It’s not an area I know. And I should have focused my energy on this because I would’ve made $5,000 yesterday if I just knocked this off. That’s what I just want to caution you about.
Jack Butala:
Let me add one more point and we’ll end on a positive note here. This disgust for not being able to find property fueled why we created parcel fact and neighbor scope.
Jill DeWit:
True.
Jack Butala:
Why Joe went to Irvine and begged and pleaded to get the access to this API and why I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, which we will probably never get back the product, developing these products so that we could find property quickly and easily. And we eventually made it, released it to the public. So I want you to imagine what Austin’s going through on this one deal, which he’s going to pass on because he can’t find it, multiply that times every day of our life, trying to go find property on a county GIS site for decades and being disappointed.
Jill DeWit:
It was hard. I love this. I love this topic because when I talk to new people, come in, they’re like, “Oh, did I miss the boat?” I’m like, “Oh my God, no.” Coming in now that we’ve developed all this stuff is such a good time. You didn’t have to learn how to push start a car, something like that.
Jack Butala:
Crank it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You just get in the car now and push a button. You’re welcome.
Jack Butala:
Well said. That’s a great analogy. Today’s topic, how much data we actually consume in our land business. This is why you’re listening.
What’s the first thing you do when you’re starting your land business and you’re getting ready to send out a mailer. You try to pick a county. How do you do that? With data. You’ve got horsing around the internet. You take a look at some statistics. If you go through our education, I show you exactly what the red, green, yellow test is. Whether you’re going to buy houses or land. And you line all this stuff, this data up, and these counties or these zip codes and you match them up against each other. You match the data. You pit the data against itself. And the data tells you where to send them mail. That’s great.
Now I’ve got two zip codes or counties that I want to send mail in. How do I do it? Well, I’d go to CoreLogic or Real Quest or I go to DataTree or TitlePro, we’re licensed providers for all three. You choose, you pull down the ownership records data. There’s a huge data set in there, hundreds of millions of properties. You pull the records down data, sift through the data. You scrub the data and get a data set, ready to go, price it. How do you price it? Well, you look at data with completed sales and current sales. Get it to, 020, they take the data, put it into a mailer. The mailer goes out. The mailers come back. The people who want to sell their property. It all comes back. How do you decide whether or not you’re going to buy it? Well, you look at the data on the internet about whether or not you actually want to do that deal.
Does it have access? You look at all the data that’s provided in Real Quest, on Neighbor Scoop and Parcel Fact and wherever else. You run through your due diligence and you decide to buy it or not. Let’s say you buy it. You buy a predictable percentage of them. Probably 50 to 60% of the stuff that comes back you buy. You go to sell it. How do you do that? You pull all the neighbor’s records. You look at the data for everybody who owns property in a mile radius that’s data. Pull that data, send them a neighbor letter. 50% of the time you do that, you’re going to sell the property right then.
Jill DeWit:
Price it too.
Jack Butala:
Every single step of the way.
Jill DeWit:
There was one little piece too, like what sales price do I set? Data. The data tells you that too.
Jack Butala:
I’ll tell ya. That’s great guys. What doesn’t involve data? I’ll tell you exactly what.
Jill DeWit:
Hiring.
Jack Butala:
A crappy piece of real estate.
Jill DeWit:
Oh. Oh wait. Say it again. A crappy.
Jack Butala:
We talk about data. 98% of the time it can be overwhelming for certain people. There are times, this happens a lot with houses, but it also happens with land where all the data points to this is a bad ass acquisition and resale. And when you actually look at the piece of property, this is where being experienced or being in a group like this is really helpful, you look at the actual asset, the actual house that you’re going to buy, or the actual piece of property and you realized it’s a pile of crap. And you can’t resell it. There’s no data that’s going to tell you, when you standing in front of a house, it just sucks. It’s going to tell you a price per square foot. It’s a great idea. It’s going to tell you what the algorithms all say. And you can analyze and crunch this very consistently. And if you do enough deals, it’ll get absorbed. If it doesn’t work, it’ll get absorbed in that. But in the end, if you walked through a house and it smells like something you can’t get the smell out.
Jill DeWit:
Or like fatal flaw, like a cracked foundation.
Jack Butala:
Or it’s great, it’s not in a flood plain, but it’s flooded when I get there. So the data says, it’s fine, but not when I get there or whoever you send out there to look at it. Or the picture, the current drone pictures look nothing like the pulled up on Google Earth. That’s the only part of this that doesn’t involve absolute data.
Jill DeWit:
You know what’s funny about that, I was listening on someone else’s podcast a couple of weeks ago and this exactly happened to them. So like they had bought, they had auction bought a house, thinking they killed it. And they went in and it was wet everywhere. But here’s what they found out. The good news was it was … they of course panicked because like, oh no, what did I buy? But the reality was the place was so trashed and so poorly kept that whoever was there last, their way of trying to clean it up was hose the whole thing out, carpet and everything.
Jack Butala:
That’s like a single guy’s dream.
Jill DeWit:
They hosed off the whole house inside and of course it just stuck there. All the water was still there. So they could recover from it. But they were just like, Oh no, what did I buy? But you’re right. You can’t find that in the data.
Jack Butala:
When’s the last time you watched HGTV and they talked about data? Never.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true.
Jack Butala:
Never because people and flash back to Costco again, there’s one or two weirdo guys leaning up against the wall and standing in front of some pots and pans or a bottle of vodka and looking through their phone saying, you know what? They’re going to make a decision based on data, not so much on a price or whatever. Hold on a second. Vast majority of the whole planet has no idea what the show is about. That’s why this group that we have of people are so special. That’s why if you’re going to go buy and sell real estate, there’s a lot of places you can learn. There’s a lot of different types of real estate that you can buy and sell. That’s what makes this so unique. We consume data in our land business on a minute by minute basis. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
You just shared a very beautiful, personal moment with all of us. I personally do not let data choose my alcohol or my pots and pans, but some of us do.
Jack Butala:
I do.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. How are these rated? Why would I spend $150 on this? I’m not saying your way is wrong.
Jack Butala:
I know.
Jill DeWit:
I just think it’s kind of funny.
Jack Butala:
I think it’s funny too.
Jill DeWit:
I know. Thank you for sharing that. That was beautiful.
Jack Butala:
It’s not so much that it’s going to change my mind on the brand. I’ve chosen a brand. It’s like the pricing and the shipping. And does it ever, I’ve been running a little Excel list or a table in my head about whether or not it makes sense to ever go to a store again. And I think in the end, the answer is no. I did a technical paper a lot of years ago about, is it cheaper to go out to eat or is it cheaper to eat at home? I sampled all kinds of stuff. I spent a lot of time on it.
Jill DeWit:
What’s the data say?
Jack Butala:
And the conclusion is this.
Jill DeWit:
I think I know what it is.
Jack Butala:
It’s the same.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, I thought it was going to be eating out is cheaper. For two.
Jack Butala:
It about the same.
Jill DeWit:
Does it depend on the number of people?
Jack Butala:
Not really. I think if you’re feeding 25. For one or two people, it’s the same. For 25 you better, right.
Jill DeWit:
Better to eat in. That’s what I thought. Okay.
Jack Butala:
But here’s where everyone fails. And this is the whole point of the paper. No one has an empty refrigerator. No one. People still go to the grocery store and buy stuff. Even though you say, you know what, it makes more sense to go out to eat. plus the added non data benefits of, I don’t have to cook. There’s still some stuff about people who are not going to follow their own rules, or they’re going to look at that data and they’re going to say, yeah, the data says I should be mailing this county in Florida but when I was a kid, I used to go to this other county in Florida and it was a lot of fun, I’m going to mail that county. I have a feeling. I’m going to go walk into the casino today. I feel lucky. People don’t listen to the data. So knowing that it exists is the only part of it.
Jill DeWit:
Is that a poke at me?
Jack Butala:
No.
Jill DeWit:
Am I doing it wrong?
Jack Butala:
No. There was a time, and at the net effect of this was when I was done with that technical paper, I took everything out of my refrigerator and unplugged it for a couple of years.
Jill DeWit:
Look, this comes back to one thing and one thing only, this is actually a little bit off topic. I’m going to wrap it up on this. You’ve heard me say this before. It’s no secret. You’re either going to win emotionally or financially, which would you like on this time? That’s it, that’s it.
Jack Butala:
When I win financially I do win emotionally.
Jill DeWit:
That works for you. Okay. And you know what? And I feel the same way. I just bought a new car and I feel great financially and emotionally also. I picked what I wanted. I picked what I wanted emotionally, and then I got the best price financially.
Jack Butala:
So you go out on the internet and you’ve flipped through a dating site. And you’re looking at the guys and I like this guy sort of, this guy, this guy, no way, no way, no way. You’re looking at data. You’re making a data choice.
Jill DeWit:
You’re not looking at data, you’re looking at a picture. That’s emotional.
Jack Butala:
You don’t read it?
Jill DeWit:
No. Not the way you just said.
Jack Butala:
Well, no, hang on a second. Jill, hold on a second, okay? Just hold on, let me set this up.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. All right. Okay. Go ahead.
Jack Butala:
However you are trying to find a man, you’re pulling a dataset somewhere on the online. Part of it is a picture, part of it’s like, I don’t know, maybe whatever’s important to you. Whether or not they’ve been married before, whether or not they have children, how old their children are. It’s a huge data set of variables and something, hopefully it’s not just emotion, a picture that they used 13 months ago or 13 years ago. And you’re going to say, I want to go out to dinner with this guy. Men are idiots. They’re going to say, yes. They’re not even going to look you up really and consider it, most of them. You’re going to get there and you’re either going to feel great about this immediately or you’re not. Tell me where I’m wrong in any of this.
Jill DeWit:
I disagree a hundred percent.
Jack Butala:
Oh my gosh. Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
Yep. Nope. That’s not how girls are.
Jack Butala:
This is good for men.
Jill DeWit:
No, no. We look at the picture first, come on. And then we’ll figure the other things out. Because you know why, every woman thinks they can solve it and fix it. So he doesn’t have the best job now, he will, when I’m done with him. Seriously.
Jack Butala:
Hey, how’d that go for you?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, I know.
Jack Butala:
How’d that go?
Jill DeWit:
Seriously you.
Jack Butala:
That’s hilarious.
Jill DeWit:
That’s why I tell girls, the guy you marry or whatever it is, the guy you choose to be with, who gets the day is who’s going to be forever. You better love it, you’re not going to change him. But my point is that we don’t sit, I wish my friends looked at that, but they don’t.
Jack Butala:
That is sad.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, come on. We have a good friend right now who has often and on dated a neighbor of ours and on paper is everything wrong, but guess what? Oh, he’s hot. And they have fun together in other ways. You know I’m true. You know that’s right. You know exactly who I’m talking about. She’s blinded by body. And I’m sure men do it too. Right? I’m sure men do it too. The difference is men go, “Eh, I can deal with it. Let me go. Oh, I can fix it.”
Jack Butala:
Yeah. We’re talking about two separate things. So there’s still a data piece involved.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Happy you could joining us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Jack Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called planning your land business for post-election. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Men and women are so different.
Jill DeWit:
Very. Actually I kind of find it sweet. I find it sweet when you guys think you know what’s going on, but you don’t really know what’s going on. And I’m sure we do the same thing. Although men are much more simple. You agree with that too, don’t you?
Jack Butala:
Oh yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Thank you.
Jack Butala:
Who can debate that?
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please get on over to our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button.
Jack Butala:
And your comments and suggestions help us to create the type of content that you’re here for. Hitting the like button on your favorite episodes helps to support our channels algorithm engage your interest for future shows. We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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