The Right Kind of Seller to Buy From (LA 1449)
Transcripts:
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 awesome… Where am I?
Steven Butala:
Central-
Jill DeWit:
Arizona.
Steven Butala:
No, sunny Scottsdale. Southern Scottsdale, actually.
Jill DeWit:
Well, do we say southern… Okay, there we go. From sunny Southern Scottsdale. Okay. Here we go.
Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about the right kind of buyer to sell from, and we don’t talk about ending a sentence with a preposition.
Jill DeWit:
I was going to say. Oh, look cute it is, our bikes are in the back of the frame. I like that. There’s my new bike and your new bike. That’s so cute.
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:
Jack, I think it’s okay. I’m not… I’m pretty sure your English teacher is not listening.
Steven Butala:
I bet she’s not either.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
You know what my English teacher told me?
Jill DeWit:
What? Uh-oh.
Steven Butala:
“Why are you going to go to college? That’s just… Just so you can beat your head against the wall and when you stop, it makes you feel better?”
Jill DeWit:
No.
Steven Butala:
I swear.
Jill DeWit:
Who told you that?
Steven Butala:
My high school English teacher said that.
Jill DeWit:
Why?
Steven Butala:
She’s just an old, cranky lady and she didn’t think I was smart. We all have stories like this.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. I never had that. That’s kind of interesting. I’m sorry.
Steven Butala:
Well, you’re a happy, nice person, and you were probably a good student.
Jill DeWit:
Maybe it’s all true. Okay. Got it.
Steven Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the online community. It’s free.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Mike wrote, “Hi guys. I’m getting a great response from my first mailer. One of the responses is a lady who has 23 acres and willing to sell. However, it turns out that she has another 84 acres that is connected to the 23 acres that she also wants to sell.” Good problem to have Mike. “The only thing is there are three homes… ” Wow “… included.” Again, not seeing a problem. This is great. “Two houses and one mobile home. There are three other family members on the deeds.” Here it comes. “All of which are willing to sell also.” Okay, doing great. “On top of this, the total of 107 acres and divided into nine different parcels, three of which have one of the homes included. Leaving six vacant parcels. I needed advice. Does all this strike you as a huge mess or huge opportunity? Thanks in advance for the input.”
Steven Butala:
You go first.
Jill DeWit:
Opportunity.
Steven Butala:
Massive opportunity.
Jill DeWit:
Holy moly.
Steven Butala:
Here’s what’s funny about this. I chose this question in part because there are two members of the advanced group that answered this question in Land Investors, and also our moderator who is a very active land seller. And all three of them said, “This is a huge mess.”
Jill DeWit:
They did?
Steven Butala:
“It’s complicated.” This person isn’t a member.
Jill DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Butala:
They’re just part of the [crosstalk 00:02:55].
Jill DeWit:
Mike’s not a member?
Steven Butala:
Mm-mm (negative).
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Got it.
Steven Butala:
And so they said, “No, you’re too new and this is too complicated. Don’t do the deal.” I’m like-
Jill DeWit:
Or bring somebody on like us and we can do it with you.
Steven Butala:
I would immediately get with… One of the members is Lori Phillips and she didn’t say don’t do it, she just said, “This is too complicated for you in the beginning.”
Jill DeWit:
True.
Steven Butala:
What I want you to do is reach out to her or somebody in the advanced group.
Jill DeWit:
Seasoned.
Steven Butala:
Or us.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
And say, “Here’s the deal. I’m brand new and I don’t want this deal to go to waste.” How many times have we said this on the show? You never let a good real estate deal go to waste.
Jill DeWit:
Correct.
Steven Butala:
So it just comes down to price. I love these deals, don’t you?
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), I do. I would start by getting all the details, Mike. Make a nice spreadsheet, put in each individual parcel, the APNs, what’s going on. Figure out what’s the bottom number that they’re willing to accept. I would even… because before you go to anybody, we need to know the numbers. I need to know the details. So get all the input there. This one has a house, this and this, and the price, what they’re willing to accept for all of it.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Number one. And then you should go in and do some of your homework and look around and see what you think you can sell them for fast. Not retail a year from now, like 30 days, like, “Boy, if we priced it like this, it would sell overnight,” and then put all that in there.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
And then when you can hand that to someone who is more advanced like us, I can easily make a decision and go, “Oh yeah.”
Steven Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
“Let’s roll.”
Steven Butala:
If you were super brand new, and you might not be, just because you’re not a member, doesn’t mean you’re new.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
I wouldn’t expect you to price this and say, “Go back to this woman and say, ‘I’ll give you X.'”
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
But we will, but we need to know what it’s going to sell for.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
That’s real easy to find out.
Jill DeWit:
Right. Cool.
Steven Butala:
Good luck. Let us know.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I’m excited.
Steven Butala:
If we get a response, I’ll talk about it on the show as soon as we do.
Jill DeWit:
That’s cool.
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, the right kind of seller to buy from, the ones who don’t have a preposition at the end.
Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh.
Steven Butala:
This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
I just like to start by saying that this week I was not really involved in the topics or writing the titles. This was really kind of you. Okay.
Steven Butala:
Oh gosh, threw me under the bus.
Jill DeWit:
No, but you do a great job. It’s okay.
Steven Butala:
My alternative way to… The correct way to do this is to say…
Jill DeWit:
It’s the right kind of seller.
Steven Butala:
From whom to buy.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
The right kind of seller from whom to buy. But then I sound like an idiot.
Jill DeWit:
How about just the right kind of seller?
Steven Butala:
More than usual.
Jill DeWit:
That’s what I put. I put the right kind of seller, and then I put in parentheses the rest. So, here’s the deal, there are good sellers and there are not nice sellers and not good sellers. So there’s the real stuff, the hard stuff, and then the don’t want to take too much time stuff. This is how I broke this topic out.
Jill DeWit:
So the right kind of seller, the real stuff, the deal is an easy transaction. It’s not like this one Mike just presented. It’s like he and his wife own it, they’re both alive, they love your offer price, they are ready to go, there’s nothing… they’ve owned it for 35 years, there’s no liens, there’s nothing. It’s a very easy, smooth transaction. So that’s the real stuff and easy to see right seller/wrong seller with that information. Okay. The transaction and the transferring it. Now we get to talk about the person. Are they communicative? Communicative, is that the right word?
Steven Butala:
I think it is.
Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh.
Steven Butala:
I don’t know.
Jill DeWit:
We’re just destroying the English language today.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
All over the place. Okay.
Steven Butala:
This is not my best English moment.
Jill DeWit:
Are they responsive? Are they easy to work with? Do they answer your phone? Do they know if you’re going through escrow? Are they going to be available when escrow calls and provide what information the escrow agent asks for? That kind of a thing. So that’s the hard stuff. And part of it is too, and this is going to get into really the attitude, this doesn’t come up very often, sincerely, I cannot remember, it’s been more than five or eight years since I had a seller that I said, “I don’t want to buy from you, period. I don’t want to work with you, period.”
Jill DeWit:
But now and then, you have prickly people for whatever reason. They say they want to sell, but I’m not even sure they really do want to sell because I don’t know if they’d be that prickly about it. And I will hang in there. I will work with them, work with them, my team will work with them, work with them. Until there’s a point where we’re like, “Now it’s just too much.” And it’s because usually it’s, they’re so prickly, they’re withholding information and it’s hard to get the deal done. And I’m not going about to get in my car and drive over there and stand on their porch and say, “Look, we’re almost done. All you got to do is sign this. It’s called a deed. And then you’re going to get your money,” kind of thing.
Jill DeWit:
But there are some prickly people, and you have to have a conversation with yourself and say, “How much time am I going to spend on this? Is this guy going to eat? Is he going to… ” We’ve talked about this, you share this, having sellers that will call you every day, “Are we done yet? Are we done yet?” Because they’re so excited, “We’re going to get the money.” And it’s just like, oh, I can’t take it. And I can’t spend… I don’t have enough time to spend 20 minutes every day on the phone with you talking you down and telling you, “Yeah, the money’s moved in. We’re waiting for escrow.” Usually that’s it. It’s not us. It’s something else that’s holding the transaction back. And you have to say… God, I had one, I said, I wish I would’ve called it earlier, like a month earlier. What do you want to add?
Steven Butala:
The right kind of seller.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Butala:
Very simply, doesn’t care about price. They call back and they say, “Oh my gosh, your timing is so amazing. I just had got transferred to Massachusetts. I don’t want this property anyway. I don’t care. Yeah, please. Tell me what to do. I just want to check this off my list because my moving van’s coming tomorrow.” So they’re not… Jill and I play this game. I mean, just about every time we’re in the car together, wherever we are, I’m like, “What do you think these houses are worth right here, right where we are?” And she guesses, and it blows my mind how accurate it is. And she doesn’t obsess on real estate online like I do. Every time I’m not working or sitting in front of camera or something, I’m out on Zillow looking for little spots and errors that need to be corrected by us going to buy a bunch of real estate and reselling it. That’s obsessive. We’re both obsessed with real estate.
Jill DeWit:
True.
Steven Butala:
Long before we ever met each other this was the case. But these sellers have no idea what their houses are worth, what their land’s worth, and they don’t care. They’re off doing other… They have a different career. Who knows what they are? They could be… We buy a lot of property from churches because of this. They just don’t care. They just want to get it out of there. They want to convert it to cash. That’s the seller you want. If the seller calls back and says, “Properties are going for XYZ. My neighbor sold his property for this,” that person’s not going to sell to you. They’re really concerned about price, and that’s fine.
Jill DeWit:
I agree. I love you have a different take on it. I’m kind of about the person, the transaction, but you’re about… which is true. It’s then, maybe your part comes into the… yours is in the beginning.
Steven Butala:
Jill’s all people and I’m all money and dirt.
Jill DeWit:
Right. Isn’t that funny? That’s why we’re a good team.
Steven Butala:
That’s good. We’re good partners.
Jill DeWit:
We really are. I was sharing this with someone the other day. I said, “Guys, how many years have we been doing this?” And it just like is even more and more, I don’t know why I’m surprised, but there’s a numbers component and then there’s a relationship component. And you need to establish a relationship with these people to get these deals done. And if you do establish a relationship with them, that will even sometimes overcome the money part. They’ll want to work with you over somebody else who is paying them a thousand dollars more because of you.
Steven Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
It’s so interesting. So that just ties into what you just said, how you look at the things and I look at things. So that was really cool. I love it. I’m trying to think of some things like, what kind of sellers have used… Have you had sellers that… Paint the story about the guy that would call you back and every time you wanted to change your price. You used to say, “Okay, now if you call me again, I’m going to drop it.”
Steven Butala:
This is a true story.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, yeah.
Steven Butala:
I think this is right when we started working together or just-
Jill DeWit:
Before.
Steven Butala:
…right before that.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
This guy had a small portfolio of property in Oklahoma. And I’d purchased properties from him before that he buys. He would go around, at the time Oklahoma had in-person tax sales, and so he would go around Oklahoma to each county for these tax sales, buy a lot of property and then mark it up and sell it to me, which was a great for me because I didn’t have to go there, and it was still really cheap. And then we’d go sell it and make a lot more.
Steven Butala:
For whatever reason, the last time we did a transaction, he called me and said, “I’ve got these properties. Here they are. Here’s a price.” And I said, “That’s awesome.” I mean, great. It’s a self-close situation. We didn’t go through escrow, so you know how fast that can go.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And he said, “When can we close?” And I said, “It’s probably going to take three or four days. I’ll get you the deed. We’ll do the whole thing.” And so this guy then proceeded to call me four or five or eight times a day, like in every hour, “When are we going to close?” He must’ve needed money.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
So I got really upset. Looking back on it, I got too upset. I said, “Look, if you call me again, I’m going to cut the price in half because I can’t stand taking this call anymore. You’re annoying.” And I went off on the guy. So he did. And so I said, “Great, the price is this now, it’s half.” And I said, “If you call me again, it’s going to be half of that.” Now we’re at like, whatever, 25% of the original price. He called me again. I said, “Man, I’m not buying it.” I said, “Just don’t call me.”
Jill DeWit:
You did. Isn’t that interesting?
Steven Butala:
So, what did I just say? That right person doesn’t care about price. So this guy is all price.
Jill DeWit:
Well, it was about speed. There was something else going on.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, [crosstalk 00:13:01].
Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:13:01] you. So that’s a hard thing, you got the deal, but then there’s just some people, I…
Steven Butala:
We’re spending too much time on the wrong sellers instead of the right sellers.
Jill DeWit:
Right. That’s it.
Steven Butala:
So the right sellers… And in life, you should just if you have a bad seller, just forget it. That’s the beauty of sending out a lot of mail because there’s going to be deals tomorrow.
Jill DeWit:
Right. You know what? This is how I’m going to end this. This is perfect. No matter what, you should never be chasing someone. You will lose if you’re chasing someone.
Steven Butala:
They should be chasing you.
Jill DeWit:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
And not too hard like the guy I just described.
Jill DeWit:
Uh-huh (affirmative). And you’re just connecting. You’re on the same page. That’s the best.
Steven Butala:
If somebody calls you, if you send a mailer out and they call you in your intake, however you have that, whether it’s PATLive or whatever. We have a staff. We use a combination of both. After the third call and they’re wondering what’s going on with the deal, they’re going to sell to you. That’s a huge indication that you should put them to the top of the list and say…
Jill DeWit:
These guys are hot.
Steven Butala:
They want to sell this property bad.
Jill DeWit:
They want to cash out.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
That’s the right kind of seller.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
A life event happened and so they want to liquidate, that’s the seller you want. You don’t want someone in the real estate business. We get a lot of people on a Thursday call, “Would you do this deal,” that give us deals. We just had one. Actually, it was in the accountability group. We just had one that we looked at and it was clearly somebody that was, in Las Vegas, Nevada, clearly a professional real estate like we are.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). An investor?
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Oh yeah.
Steven Butala:
You want to get their first.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. They bought it cheap. They’re marking it up to sell it to you. No.
Steven Butala:
And that’s okay as long as they don’t mark it up too much.
Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:14:47] to send out the mail though. That’s why you’re here. I think that’s the best way. 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 Land Academy Show is called How to take full advantage of this membership thing called Land Academy. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Steven Butala:
Believe it or not there are people still out there, these topics were not written by me, by the way. They’re written by our staff that are not… Our staff’s like, “These people aren’t… Some of our members are asking us questions about these things, these products, and these services that we provide to regular members. They don’t know this stuff exists. Please talk about it on the show.” So that’s what we’ll do tomorrow.
Jill DeWit:
That sounds good. Hey, if you need access to any sort of ownership or property details, including phone numbers and FEMA flood map overlays, check out neighborscoop.com created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you. 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 have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
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