Problems We Solve for Certain Seller Types (LA 1348)
Problems We Solve for Certain Seller Types (LA 1348)
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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today. Jill and I are here to talk about the problems we solve for certain seller types. If you’ve been listening to our show all week, we had an interview, a great interview, with one of our members, [Tiffany Carter 00:00:25]. She shared her why she’s successful and we made four or five shows out of it. Real important topics, I got out of the interview. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about her, her success, and I think she speaks for, in a lot of ways, our membership group.
Jill DeWit:
A lot of people. Mm-hmm (affirmative). I really do-
Steven Butala:
Yeah. And maybe not just our membership group, but a lot of people who are out there buying and selling land or real estate or whatever.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s true.
Steven Butala:
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:
Don’t worry, I have a lot more to say. I was just saving it for the show.
Steven Butala:
Oh, I’m not worried.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Good. All right. Matthew wrote, “So I got a mailer response last week, and a couple in X County agreed to sell me their four parcels of land…
Steven Butala:
Awesome.
Jill DeWit:
… 15 acres total for $35000. Anticipated sale price is $80000. During due diligence, everything checked out except for the land use. Under land use, one of them is marked down as residential waste.” That’s kind of funny. “Then further down it says the zoning is RR2-
Steven Butala:
Rural residential, two acres.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), minimum lot. And then the others are marked down as land using agricultural livestock raising-
Steven Butala:
Excellent.
Jill DeWit:
… which is also zone RR2.
Steven Butala:
Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.
Jill DeWit:
So here’s what the county database says.” Want me keep going here?
Steven Butala:
You don’t need to read this.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. “So basically wondering if this type of land is marketable. I spoke with the assessor. She told me basically, when they planned out the subdivision, these were given these designations, because they didn’t know what to mark it as. I will send specifics to other members if you’re interested. Thanks ahead of time, is really hoping to get this first deal going.”
Steven Butala:
And I actually answered this in Land Investors, which I don’t usually do. And here’s my answer.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
You need to price this deal. There’s a lot of money in here. And I really appreciate him giving the economics, buy for 35, sell for 80. You’ve got to price this transaction as if that residential waste property is going to give you zero. Do I think you’re going to sell the residential waste property for probably really some good amount of money? Yeah, I do. I think that it was old civic planning, let’s just call it. And unless it’s underwater, which you can really tell on Neighbor Scoop, or there a lot of different resources, you can see what’s going on. Then I think you’re going to be in great shape. The other thing you can do is whatever property it’s adjacent to, sell it with it. So you have extra land to do stuff on, but maybe it necessarily can’t be built on.
The planning and zoning person was very helpful.
Jill DeWit:
That was really nice, to share that. And I believe that to be true.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
There’s all kinds of stuff. Some times that I’ve talked to the County and everybody’s scratching their heads. I’m like, how does that make sense? They’re like, yeah, I know I just work here though. I didn’t get to pick it.
Steven Butala:
So I’d go back to the dataset for that County. I’d go into DataTree, which you have a subscription to as a member. And I would look for that use. I would just search for any property that’s got, I’ve never heard of this before, residential waste.
Jill DeWit:
I agree.
Steven Butala:
These assessors and these planning and zoning people, most of them are elected. And so they have terms, just like every politician, and they make these sweeping changes. And then, they leave. And nobody’s like, what the hell was that? And that’s probably what’s going on here.
Jill DeWit:
True. Super true. Good question.
Steven Butala:
That’s Master’s Degree level stuff. I love it. [crosstalk 00:04:01] And I love when it turns out okay. So please let us know how it goes, actually.
Jill DeWit:
Totally.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, Problems We Solve for Certain Seller types. This is the meat of the show. I’m going to tell you a quick story. Jill and I bought a bunch of large acreage in northern Arizona, early on in our career together. And I think it was before… Jill was still, I use the word green, but she was never green. She just didn’t have a lot… like a 10000 property experience., like I did. We got a deal in, and the person on the deed was in a nursing home. And she was terminally ill. And the kids called and said, “Look, we got your offer.” Or it was either we got the offer. It was an offer from a lot of years ago. “We accept. We want to sell the property.” And so, Jill, it wasn’t her first deal by any stretch, went through the motions, they happened to be local, of buying this property. And we did. And we met them at a coffee shop, and the woman’s just in tears. Do you remember this? You want me to finish the story?
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Is this the college one?
Steven Butala:
No.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, it is a different one.
Steven Butala:
It was the story with you.
Jill DeWit:
This was a different… go ahead.
Steven Butala:
And so, the woman and her son, I think, came to the coffee shop to sign all this stuff in person, which we never do. We’ve maybe done this five times in our entire lives, maybe three actually. And she was just in tears the whole time. She’s like, “You solved 10 problems for us. We didn’t know what to do. My mom’s in a nursing home. She’s not going to live very long. We had to sell it. She has to sign this thing before she passes away. Otherwise, we’ve got to deal with these lawyers, and it’s not an estate.” We just solved legal problems and social problems for her and everything else.
So I have a lot of stories like this. Certainly not meeting in person, but a lot of thank you notes. We used to have a board in the office with all the thank you notes that we got from people saying, “Thank you for buying this property. We stopped paying the taxes or whatever.” I used to didn’t think… we take it for granted about how much about real estate in our group, we all know. For a lot of people, they don’t understand this stuff.
Jill DeWit:
So here’s the situation. Let me queue this up here. And then, I have some other examples too, that are really sweet. What happens is, our offer letters go out. And there’s a large percentage of people that either are in a situation, or they file those letters away, should there be a situation. And then, something does happen. Somebody gets sick, somebody passes on, somebody loses a job, something happens. And what’s one of the first things that they want to get… they want to get rid of stuff. We need to get rid of things that we’re not using to make money, or to get some money in. And this piece of land over here that we thought we’re going to build a cabin on, that we still haven’t done anything in 20 years, it’s got to go. So they either have got our letter, or now they’re digging, they’re digging for our letter. They’re in some kind of a cash crunch. They need this.
So here we come and we follow through. We give them a fair price, everybody’s happy. And we really do solve their problems. They’re so excited. And we’re good people. It’s just a wonderful feeling. And so, that was part of the things that we talked about at the end of the show with Tiffany, on Monday, Tiffany Carter. It was so fun. Like the love that we get. I feel so good about what I do because I am not here to talk anybody into anything. I’m not here to negotiate. I’m not going to hound a guy 10 times until he accepts my offer, because I just won’t go away. No, that’s not it at all. I send out my offers, if you want to sell, great call me. If you don’t, that’s fine. I don’t mind.
But there’s just so many people that are like, “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I do want to sell this. I’ve been staring at this. My husband and I have been fighting about it for six months. Tax bill just showed up. I can’t wait to get rid of this. I need the money,” kind of thing. I’ve had people, they’re so sweet… I have literally gotten hugs. I’ve been told, this just paid for my daughter’s Master’s Degree. That’s the one I can think of at that one Starbucks. Starbucks signing, that she came, and she was a sweetest woman and just said, “Thank you so much.” I’ve got, “Hey, when you’re in town, we’re taking you to dinner or cooking you dinner. Please, how can I pay you back?” And I’ve been told, “I hope you make a lot of money on this.” I’ve actually been told this, “It’s not my thing. I don’t even want to do it. I’m so happy right now that I can not even… I don’t have to list it with a realtor, try to do this or try to do that. Wait, six months, hope something’s going to happen. I’m so happy to get the cash right now and just be done with it.”
Steven Butala:
That’s the personal side. Corporate side, I got a call, this is before Jill, from a guy in Grants, New Mexico. He was developing some property downtown. It’s a small town in New Mexico, on the northwestern part of the state. And he said, “I’m developing this thing, short of cash. I’ve got all this dirt that I bought.” What he’d say? “I got your letter.” What he’d say? “How’s $150,000 sound?” This is for like $2 million worth of property, which is what we sold it for. I said, “Don, we can get it as fast… ” He had an escrow person because he’s in the real estate business. She’s like, “She’s got it all teed up.” And we closed the deal in like two weeks. And I went off and made a million bucks on it. And he thanked me the whole time. He knew what it was worth. He just didn’t have the time or the energy or the interest in maximizing the price. And he went off and finished the development. And I still talk to that guy actually. I still talk to him because I’m like, Hey, do you have any more land? And he says, “If you call me again, I’m going to call the police. And by the way, thank you.” That was the last conversation we had. He’s just like, “Stop calling me. I don’t have any more dirt.” It was a great deal for us. That’s why.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, It’s so funny.
Steven Butala:
So if you do this right, there’s not going to be a lot of conflict. If there’s a lot of negotiation and a lot of back and forth with sellers and they’re angry, just walk away. [crosstalk 00:10:19] Send out more mail, this doesn’t have to be crazy.
Jill DeWit:
That’s it because if you’re doing this right too, you don’t have time for that. That’s how we operate. That’s how I train my staff to operate. It’s a quick, “Hey, here we are. We’re good people. Are you in? Are you out?” And then, all we got to do is agree on a price. That’s it.
Steven Butala:
Right.
Jill DeWit:
And there’s times that we don’t agree on a price. And I say, “Shucks, darn. That’s more than I’m willing to spend. I wish you well. By the way, if you change your mind, let me know. I’ll still be here,” kind of thing. And a lot of those come back. It’s so interesting. You’re not here to beat people up. You’re not here to… Whatever. I really see it like that. And if you go about it like that, and that’s how you run your business, then you will enjoy this. It will be profitable. You will have a great time. And you will buy plenty of property from all the easy, wonderful people that you want.
Steven Butala:
Well said.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Join us tomorrow for another… next week, actually, for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
I could talk for a long time about this subject.
Steven Butala:
Go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
No, it’s okay.
Steven Butala:
We’re okay with it.
Jill DeWit:
Oh no, it’s I think I got my point across. It’s just, the stories sometimes are so many, I forget them. I can’t remember… I’m like, you were so good at… Sorry, I didn’t mean interrupt you.
Steven Butala:
Okay.
Jill DeWit:
You were so good at remembering properties. I remember situations and even then, now, I have so many. It’s hard for me to recall them, which is a great problem to have.
Steven Butala:
I remember a lot of deals. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Well, some of them by [APN 00:12:16]. I don’t remember anything I say on the show. I don’t know why.
Jill DeWit:
That’s hilarious. That’s funny. Do you remember what we did last weekend?
Steven Butala:
No.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you. I have to think about that too. Oh, wait. I do. I do, Dave’s birthday.
Steven Butala:
Oh, that’s right.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, I do remember that. You know what? If it wasn’t such a big event, I wouldn’t remember it. I’d have to really sit and think about it. So it’s funny.
Steven Butala:
Very early on, I did a lot of nonprofit deals, where some churches, local churches in Arizona, or, let’s just say, religious organizations in Arizona, received over the years donations for… it was in their will to donate a piece of property to XYZ religious organization. And so, they ended up with a lot of property. And if you talk to a board on any church or a religious organization, they don’t know, they’re not there for that. And it’s not their fault. They just don’t have any interest in it. And so, they get an offer from me, and they’re like, “Well, we could use $75000 for 7 million acres. They didn’t know what to do with it anyway, and they’re calling and thanking us. And we’re going to mention you for months at our Sunday sermon and all this stuff. So if you do it right, it doesn’t have to be all this hate.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-mm (negative). And that’s what I started to say, if you do it right, you’re too busy to… you should not have time to negotiate. You need to quickly make decisions, find out if they’re serious, they really want to sell. And get an escrow and move on to the next one.
Steven Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
That’s my goal. And that should be your goal too.
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Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill..
Steven Butala:
Information…
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Steven Butala:
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