DataTree vs TitlePro vs RealQuest Pro (LA 1422)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Howdy.

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 amazing, arid Arizona. I’m trying to think quickly, “What can I do that all starts with As?”

Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about DataTree versus TitlePro versus RealQuest Pro. Those are the three best professional sources of data. We’re licensed providers for all three of them, Jill and I are. And every member with us has access to all of them. And again, this, like all week this week, this topic came from our customer service department because they’re getting a lot of questions on this.

Jill DeWit:
This topic is the very best way to get out of a conversation if you’re approached by somebody boring in a bar environment. [inaudible 00:00:53]

Steven Butala:
Well, I think that if you say, “We’re licensed providers of data,” and then fill in the blank, you’ve already lost most of the people.

Jill DeWit:
There we go.

Steven Butala:
Just licensed providers. It’s like, “Nope.”

Jill DeWit:
“How was your day?” “Well here, thank you for asking. Here’s what I did.” And watch their eyes go, “And we’re done.”

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. And additionally, if you’re a member, join us on Discord.

Jill DeWit:
Tiffany asks, “I’m wondering has anyone experienced longer and longer lead times on getting deals closed through an attorney or title in the last several months? Or do I just need to get a new attorney? Laughing. Ha ha. Though this is the second one. And they have both been just swamped. I’m guessing it’s across the board.”
I have, but it’s not catastrophic. I seriously have. What I used to do in 10 days, might take… If I used to do it in 10 days, it maybe takes 15 or 20. But a 30 day escrow is not a 90 day escrow.

Steven Butala:
Here’s why. Whether you’re closing a deal through an attorney or you close it through escrow, they both have to get a, depending on the state, a preliminary title report back that says, “Okay, green lights. Everything’s passed. We’re now putting together the actual title insurance policy, or a title plant done in some cases. State to state is different. And sometimes the property is, there’s issues. So we need to get plant work done.” That’s the holdup.
There’s a lot of escrow agents and a lot of lawyers that’ll take your deal. And the best lawyers in the world can get deals done in days. They still are held out, this, right now. And this is a sign of the times in whatever it is, January of 2021. Because it’s so busy, they’re held up by title people.

Jill DeWit:
It’s just volume. It’s just the amount of deals getting done right now.

Steven Butala:
Title companies and escrow companies are different. Sometimes they have a title division, but they’re usually just escrow companies. Lawyers never have a title component. They always go out to a title company. And title companies, they have a huge problem staffing. Because the title plant people don’t get paid that much and they need to be really smart.
So that’s the real answer, Tiffany. That’s really what’s happening. There’s a huge shortage of title people, not escrow people.

Jill DeWit:
Right. So anything you can do? Help them, always be available. Like the things that I would do to be different, check in with them. Don’t wait for them to check in with you. I would call them a couple of times a week. Maybe twice a week is probably a good number. Because they’re busy. And just say, “Where are you in the process? And what do you need from me?”
I mean, this is what I do and I have my team do. I always make sure you’re not waiting for me. If you’re waiting on me, I’m on it kind of thing.
Call, find out ahead of time before you open escrow, find out how backed up they are and how long they think it’s going to take. And try to get a date with them that everybody agrees upon. And then make sure every email and every correspondence includes that date. So we’re all reminding everybody, “Hey, we all said the 5th of February. We all said the 5th of February, what do you need from me?” Kind of thing.
And then I guess lastly, just be cool. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be mean. Don’t get mad. If anything, send them treats. “I know you guys are swamped and I really appreciate you’re doing this for me. Here’s…” Not a lot of them are in the office, but maybe if they’re in the office a couple of days a week, you can find out when and have some cookies or something nice delivered. Because that’s what we do.

Steven Butala:
You know what always helps when talking to the county or to title people or lawyers? If they know that on the other end of whoever they’re talking to, because they have to answer the phone and talk to idiots all day long. If you separate yourself by saying words like title plan and escrow times and fees and HUD-1s. And they really know that they’re dealing with somebody who knows what they’re talking about. They’re going to remember, especially in Jill’s case, they’re going to remember her.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
And then the next time, especially if you send them like thing of cake or something like that.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
So, if you can set your… It’s the same way you sell land. You set yourself apart or set the land apart from everything in the sea of other stuff that’s out there. They’re going to want to do your deal and they’re going to want to deal with you again.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
I just had a real estate agent say this to Jill and I. We had to kill a deal. And we were both upset about it, Hill and I, because we want to do the deal. And the real estate agent said, “Eh, it’s no big deal. I’m in the people business, not the real estate business.”

Jill DeWit:
It was really nice.

Steven Butala:
And that really matters.

Jill DeWit:
It does.

Steven Butala:
It really sunk into me that that’s really what we’re all doing here.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
How do you feel about your bangs today, Jill?

Jill DeWit:
Okay. Why?

Steven Butala:
I don’t know.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay.

Steven Butala:
I know you had some concerns about it earlier.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Now they’re okay, but one side still looks longer than the other. But we’ll work on that.

Steven Butala:
Before we start recording the show-

Jill DeWit:
How do you feel about your hair?

Steven Butala:
I don’t have any feelings about my hair. Before we sit down and record these shows, it takes a good 30 minutes for Jill to kind of-

Jill DeWit:
Not to record.

Steven Butala:
For Jill to get comfortable where she’s like, “Okay, I look-“

Jill DeWit:
30 minutes?

Steven Butala:
“I look good enough.”

Jill DeWit:
Be honest.

Steven Butala:
“No, I look acceptable. It’s never good enough. I look acceptable to actually record.”

Jill DeWit:
30 minutes. 30 minutes sitting here in the seat before you can start.

Steven Butala:
No, no. It’s putting lipstick on and going in the bathroom.

Jill DeWit:
That’s normal, getting out the door, girl stuff. It’s three minutes to sit here and just go, “Okay, ready. Go.”

Steven Butala:
Okay.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic: DataTree versus TitlePro versus RealQuest Pro.

Jill DeWit:
Throw Jill under the bus day.

Steven Butala:
This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:
Why are we talking about this stuff?

Steven Butala:
Because we’re supposed to make these topics fun.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, but this, not a fan.

Steven Butala:
I didn’t throw you under the bus.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. Thank you.

Steven Butala:
I think you look beautiful all the time.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Butala:
Like I don’t see any difference.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Butala:
I think most guys are like that.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. All right. You want to explain? You want me to explain? How do you want this to go?

Steven Butala:
Here’s the deal.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
In around the late ’90s, RealQuest decided to provide or start to collect data. Each county has an assessor department and they’ve been collecting data since as long as there’s been real estate. To make sure that they can get that data to their department’s treasurer-

Jill DeWit:
To tax.

Steven Butala:
So they can send off property tax bills accurately. Or so they think. So all that data was already there anyway. What it needed, and computers allowed this to happen in the late ’90s, was a way to make all those data files usable. Because they were, quite honestly, a mess.
I used to order stuff directly in the ’90s from the County Assessor. And you need a PhD in data management to just figure it out.
So RealQuest put it all in a one national format. And so they still receive data files from all the counties. And they did it for the oil and gas industry that never occurred to them in the very beginning that it might be good to have, title companies might need that data.
Or now on the internet, we just all take it for granted. So you go look up a house and you can see the whole history of the thing and all of it.

Jill DeWit:
I want to add, because I find it interesting, back then they were owned by First American Title.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, I don’t know how to say this correctly because it’s very convoluted, corporate thing that happened.

Jill DeWit:
That is true.

Steven Butala:
RealQuest was started by First American Title. They separated themselves because it was such a money pit. And First American went on its way and RealQuest Pro went public.

Jill DeWit:
CoreLogic.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. CoreLogic is… The product is named RealQuest Pro. I don’t want to confuse the hell out of everybody.

Jill DeWit:
I know.

Steven Butala:
It’s interesting because then First American was without a data company for 10, 15 years.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:
And then they just recently started DataTree.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Or just recently launched it, I guess, to the public. I think it was in some version of it was available to their agents.

Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that funny? You should have hung on to the other thing. It’s so funny.

Steven Butala:
Well, I mean, that’s actually a perfect segue into this. RealQuest Pro is a fantastic dataset and it’s managed very well. The interface that we all use and depend on is terrible. It’s very clunky. You can’t really look at data the way that you should be able to look at it before you spend the money to download it. But it’s worth it because, in the end-

Jill DeWit:
It’s great.

Steven Butala:
All three of these serve the exact same purpose. You download the data, you’ve got some records, you scrub it, you get offers in the mail, you buy some property real cheap. It’s all about how you skin the cat or how you get there and what your personality type is like. Because these datasets are good.
All three of them are… Or we wouldn’t… We’re licensed providers for these datasets and there’s other datasets that we’re not licensed providers for, for a reason.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I was going to say there’s a reason why we have all three too, not just one.

Steven Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWit:
There are special nuances to each one, and it’s valuable to have.

Steven Butala:
So RealQuest Pro, again, great datasets, super clunky to use. It’s got a mapping function, but it’s so hard to use. So honestly, I don’t use RealQuest Pro that much anymore.
DataTree is the 21st century answer. So pulling land and house data, really any type of real estate data, and then visually seeing it. They had a visual component where it’s all mapped. They have some really cool features. They have all the documents. Document numbers for the book and page so you can see deeds and lien reports and all that in there. And they charge for it, but it’s a really great service.
TitlePro, which Jill has more experience than I do.

Jill DeWit:
Well, all three of these have documents too. That’s interesting too. TitlePro came along in the middle when we originally only had, we had just RealQuest. We were using CoreLogic and using RealQuest Pro. It was perfect for land data.

Steven Butala:
You know what, that’s great to say.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
I don’t mean to interrupt you Jill. But Jill and I survive just fine. For what?

Jill DeWit:
Years.

Steven Butala:
15 years. Just using RealQuest.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:
And put food on the table with no problem.

Jill DeWit:
And one of the things I still argue with, and everybody confirms, is it’s the best for land. You can get a little more detail in there for whatever reason. I don’t know why. And the other thing is, it’s always delivered in the same format.
DataTree doesn’t necessarily do that. Now and then you’ll download a spreadsheet and your columns will be a little bit different depending on the county. And that’s a nightmare when you’re doing multi-zip or multi-county mailers like he’s doing. He’s a pro at it, but if you’re not at his level you got to kind of watch for that. And you might actually have some lines off.

Steven Butala:
I wouldn’t call it a nightmare, but-

Jill DeWit:
Okay, not a nightmare. But it’s a little extra work. [crosstalk 00:11:42]

Steven Butala:
It just needs to be addressed. Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Extra work, let’s just say. Yeah. But it’s great for houses. So, that’s a you thing. So I would just say, we started with RealQuest Pro. And they used to only have, back in the day when I started, only the vesting deed. They only kept that one most recent deed. The vesting deed is the last recorded deed. And that was great.
But what if the vesting deed was a year ago? I need to go back further than that. I need to know who owned it two years ago or 10 years ago. Because I’m doing my due diligence on this property. That’s where TitlePro came in, which is Black Knight Financial Services.
The other thing we got out of them was, this was before we had NeighborScoop, a GPS coordinate. If you’ve been in the business as long as we have, or you know now, you can’t find a property these times. There’s not an address. It’s a clunky legal description. And if it’s a older one it might be metes and bounds. You can’t pop that in your cell phone in Google Earth and have it go to it.

Steven Butala:
Right.

Jill DeWit:
And nor will it have the outline. So we were trying to find properties and we got ahold of… Back then we had heard about AgentPro. It was providing this GPS coordinate and some more documents. I’m like, “Done. We’re getting it.” So we went down the path and after talking to them, they said, “You know, that’s not the end all be all product. We have this other thing that’s really intense. It sounds more like you’d want. It’s really kind of for title agents so it’s called TitlePro. Do you want that?” Of course.

Steven Butala:
Hell yes.

Jill DeWit:
That’s what we said.

Steven Butala:
Of course we want that.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. So that’s what we did. And these are all things that we provide to our members too, by the way. It’s awesome. So we had that and then, do you want me to keep going?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. Then along came DataTree.

Steven Butala:
Jill’s the TitlePro. Everybody thinks I’m the data person, and I am.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
But Jill is a TitlePro expert between the two of us.

Jill DeWit:
I dig in there for documents and lien stuff. And what I need to know about the property. I’m good at that. Zoning and finding different things.
So then along comes DataTree. And so we said, “All right, we’re going to go that path too.” And we found it was really good. Jack was using it for houses. And now it’s kind of a race to the finish line for all three of them. They’ve all decided, “Oh yeah, we don’t just need to do the most recent deed, the vesting deed. We need to get our hands on every document you can.”
So now between the three of them, I can get deeds going back decades. I can get mortgage information. I can get all kinds of documents. It’s almost like divorce papers are going to start being in there. I’m not kidding. It’s shocking. When you go into-

Steven Butala:
Financials, FICO scores, and everything.

Jill DeWit:
All kinds of stuff’s in there that we can get access on. And it’s really, it’s in the spirit of, I just want to make sure that I’m dealing with the right person. I’m dealing with that the property is what I think it is. It was all conveyed the right way. I can see it all. And it’s wonderful.

Steven Butala:
So now you have the background of the three companies and you kind of know that each of their specialization. But let me tell you really, like on a day-to-day basis, really why this is important. There’s a relationship in every deal. There’s a relationship with paper, with the real estate itself. There’s all this associated paper, and the owners.
And what these companies are doing, specifically Black Knight with TitlePro. Black Knight has said publicly, “We are on a warpath to connect those three things so that every single piece of property, regardless of commercial, residential, or land or whatever, every document that’s associated with that property and the owner who owns it at the time are all in one nifty little place where you can just get it from us and download it at your fingertips.” And they started in California West because that’s where the best data was available on what we’re talking about. And then rapidly moving their way East.
So you could think about a property that’s got a house on it. Or just a piece of land. There might be mortgage. There is a whole tax history. Some of the taxes may have been paid, some not. Some of the former owners may have died. There’s all this stuff going on.
And when you look, it’s obviously used mostly in houses. So houses, almost always 50% of the time, have mortgages. Usually some people are married when they buy a house. Maybe they got unmarried while they own the house and on and on and on. So you can see, I don’t want to, if you’re new at this, I don’t want to complicate this. I don’t want to make this sound like it’s complicated because it’s not.
That’s why we have title agents and escrow agents. And that’s why we deal in land too, because there’s usually almost never any liens on land.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
The point to these companies is that they’re trying to make this easier for us, not harder. So that we can just, in a trustful way, in a reliable, honest way, look up an assessor’s parcel number and APM and get everything there.

Jill DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Butala:
This is a wonderful time to be in real estate.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Butala:
I’ve never would have guessed this 15 or 20 years ago that it would be all… There’d be such a demand and it would be so user-friendly and it just gets better every week.

Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I just have the funniest side note. For the first time ever, I had a broker tell me, “Hey, look’s like you’re doing pretty good. I see you paid X for this property.” And, he did.

Steven Butala:
That’s great.

Jill DeWit:
He looked it up. My reply was, “Yep. And it’s priced well.” Because we all know it’s priced way below what it’s worth right now. And there’s nothing he could say to that. But yeah. Having data at your fingertips, it’s amazing. So I never say that to anybody, but I sure look it up when I know it.

Steven Butala:
I do too.

Jill DeWit:
I know what they spent. I just have it in my head. I don’t let them know that I know.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
But I know. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on The Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on The Land Academy Show is called: Introducing Land Academy Classroom. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
I’m excited. That launches February. February?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
March.

Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jill DeWit:
I can’t remember. I know it’s 10 weeks from whatever.

Steven Butala:
I was going to ask you.

Jill DeWit:
Okay, well, we’ll tell everybody where to get the answers and it’s clearly not us.

Steven Butala:
We have about 15 minutes to figure out the answers before we turn off the camera and the microphone.

Jill DeWit:
Nah, let’s just wing it. We’re good at that. Need to send out a few thousand offers to property owners like us? Checkout offers, and the number two, owners.com, offers2owners. No setup fees, free mail merge, and exceptional service. We should know because it’s our company. Give offers2owners a call today.

Steven & Jill:
We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

—————————————-

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

https://BuWit.com

Homepage

LandInvestors.com

Start Your Land Flipping Business with Land Academy

Home

https://parcelfact.com

CountyWise.com

DeedPerfect

https://ownersdata.com

Home

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.