The Story of Two Broker Opinions (LA 1485)
The Story of Two Broker Opinions (LA 1485)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, Scottsdale, Arizona.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the story of two broker opinions. In life, sometimes brokers don’t agree.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s funny. It’s funny how you reach out- [crosstalk 00:00:20]-
Steven Jack Butala:
Sometimes couples don’t agree.
Jill K DeWit:
Not us, other couples.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, it’s peaches and cream with Jill and I, every minute.
Jill K DeWit:
Steven, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. The way you just cheerily jump out of bed every morning and are always just smiling and never serious, just giddy.
Steven Jack Butala:
Especially during the COVID.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Oh, that was my favorite time, I love that quality time we got to spend together.
Steven Jack Butala:
Nobody, nobody likes work Steve, especially Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. I get to see it all.
Steven Jack Butala:
Everybody loves drinking Steve.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
But not work, Steve.
Jill K DeWit:
And spending Steve and rewarding Steve and like, sure, why not? Buy it Steve. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into today, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s completely free and if you’re already a member, please join us on Discord, it’s a blast.
Jill K DeWit:
Austin wrote, flood pocalypse.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is the title of his question, flood pocalypse.
Jill K DeWit:
Flood pocalypse, I love it. “What do you folks do regarding your due diligence for flood plains? I found some info for the following designations. Holy moly. A, AE, A1-A30, AH, AO, AR, A99, V, VE, V1-V30. It’s Greek to me…
Steven Jack Butala:
Me too. Not really.
Jill K DeWit:
… If there’s anything floody that comes up, do you pass or does it depend? Also, please share what tools you use. Thanks, Austin.” This is very sweet. So, Laurie very nicely wrote, “hey Austin. As a rule of thumb, regulatory flood plains are unusable…
Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.
Jill K DeWit:
… Other designations have varied implications depending on the place. I do a quick check using the FEMA flood map overlay, which you can find in neighborscoop.com and it’s available on the fema.gov site, to see what others have done with land in the same flood designation areas. Is there a house? Is there a barn? Mobile? Crops? Boat tied up to a fence? If I want a purpose or I want to pursue the property, I’ll call the county and find out what the requirements are, if any, to build in the flood plain. He didn’t mention wetlands, there’s still a hope, if the properties in the floodplain, wetlands hopeless. Best, Laurie.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Couldn’t have said it better myself. All of it.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep. Now, Kevin says don’t mess with it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Kevin the moderator says, one short sentence, “don’t mess with it.”
Jill K DeWit:
So I guess- [crosstalk 00:03:16].
Steven Jack Butala:
They’re both completely right.
Jill K DeWit:
So, it depends on what it is, for me. So for example, I use neighborscoop.com, I have it open all day, every day. So, property comes in, I pull up my NeighborScoop and that’s one of the things that I go through, my quick, little, five minute, phase one due diligence and I’ll see if it falls under flood plain. And then, I’ll start on, say it’s a light purple and so I’m like, “all right, what else has been built in light purple? And when was it built?” Because that’s the beauty of NeighborScoop, I can click on it and go, “all right, this isn’t a flood pipe. Look, here’s a house that was just built or a barn or something, in 2010, I can see it on there, I pulled up the property history, so it’s no big deal. And they solved it. Maybe they had to build up a couple inches. Maybe they had to do a certain type of foundation.”
Jill K DeWit:
Usually, it’s something like that, if you can find a situation like I just noted. If you find a bunch of houses built in 1921 and they’re falling down or maybe they’re not even existing anymore, then I’ve got some concerns. But then, either way, to solve it all together and you can see on NeighborScoop, I can see what designation it is, I can see what the purple area is and the blue areas and the green areas, I can see all that. So, I could call the county and just say, “hey, I’ve got this information with the FEMA flood map overlay, what do I need to know to build here?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the whole key to flood plain issues it’s, what are your neighbors doing? The entire city of Phoenix is in a flood plain, I mean the entire city. Does it ever flood? No. No, it never floods. Do Jill and I own houses, right smack in the middle of the Phoenix flood plain? Heck yes. And if you get a lender, there’s a whole large section that you have to sign off on. It’s silly.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny? It’s not much different than… I was just thinking about our beach house. So, the place at the beach is in a tsunami zone, believe it or not, there’s tsunami signs everywhere. And I remember, when we first lived there, I’m like, “that’s kind of weird.” And I sure enough, we did nothing special but I had to get special insurance. West of the PCH in the tsunami zone. We had to have a different kind of insurance for the house, that was it. Isn’t that funny? No building… There might be. This house was also built in the 90s, there’s probably new and current building tweaks, if you will, but we’re all still building there and we’re all still living there.
Steven Jack Butala:
Relativity is the whole key to the flood plain issues. Today’s topic, the story of two broker opinions. This is why you’re listening. I’m going to set Jill up in the form of a question here. You have a piece of property, you love it. You love the price, the seller loves you. This is a typical work day in Jill’s world and you’re buying it for 30,000 and you think it’s, probably, easily worth 60 to 80, maybe 100 but you want to sleep well at night, so you call a broker and the broker says… You call two brokers, the first broker says, “oh yeah, I love that area. We just sold the property there. I can easily get you about 80,000 bucks for this property in two weeks, probably worth 100.” You’re still not satisfied because you’re Jill, then you call a completely different broker, in a completely different brokerage, because you saw her picture on the side of a bus.
Jill K DeWit:
She looked nice.
Steven Jack Butala:
She has a beehive haircut, beehive hairdo and little cat eyeglasses and she’s got a Chanel suit from the 70s, it’s in the picture because that’s what she chose for the photo shoot. And she says- [crosstalk 00:07:06]
Jill K DeWit:
I hope it’s… what’s that blue? Seersucker. I hope it’s seersucker.
Steven Jack Butala:
And she says, “I’m a housewife and a realtor on the side. Therefore, I know everything. Why are you even calling me asking me these silly questions? No one goes out there. Why would you ever buy a piece of property? Absolutely not. I hate that county.” Who do you believe?
Jill K DeWit:
Oh my God. Look, here’s the whole point of this. I need to answer it this way because I was thinking about this. This came up the other day on one of our calls because we had a member that said, “I don’t know what to do. I called this guy, he said it’s awesome, it’s great. Let’s list it for 49, I’m sure it’s going to move fast.” The other guy got back to me, he says, “oh, I hate it. Maybe 19, 20, I think that’s all you’re going to get for it.” And he’s like, “well what’s the heck? Who do I believe?” So, my response is, number one, if you don’t know the area, call a third guy, we need a tiebreaker. And also, doing your homework. So, I’m going to argue this point and I’ve been correct on this point.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m doing my due diligence. I’m really looking hard at the area. I can really get in there and you can too and we do this every week on our calls with showing people how to do this, showing you how to do this. To dig in and really try to find, like property for sale right now, today and hopefully some sold comps too, really super close to that property. And what’s so great about land now, more than ever in the past, we’re getting more and more up to date information. And maybe because too, I remember years ago, good luck finding a land broker, I didn’t really know any land brokers, I couldn’t find any. And now, they’re popping up all over the place and it’s a thing, used to be, it was a real estate person that would do houses and then maybe they dabble in land, they never really got excited about it and that could be parceled too, in this situation. Are you talking to a land person? That’s my first thought.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you go to landwatch.com or landonfarm.com, either one is fine, I would start with LandWatch. And you pull up the county or even the zip code, where the property is that you’re considering buying, you’re going to see a guy on there who’s advertising. It’s going to pop up, before any of the comparison values, either sold or active. He’s going to have a cowboy hat on and he’s going to say, “I am the resident area land expert. I’ve done 35 deals this year already.” And then, you’re going to see right below him, 12 listings that are hopefully, like kind property like yours. That guy’s qualified to answer your question.
Jill K DeWit:
I look for sold. Look and see what’s really he’s done in sold. Even in Zillow, you can find these people. You have to dig to make sure that they’re land specific sometimes but you’ll find them. I totally agree. So, what do I do? Let’s just go back to the whole story. What do you do? I honestly, I’m usually calling. I kind of know… I’m usually reaching out to a broker, either at the very, very, very beginning of a transaction because I don’t know the area at all or I’m at the very, very end of the transaction, I’m about to close and I’m trying to maybe find someone to market the property for me and make sure we’re on the same page and get one last pair of eyes on it because I’m not there. So, I’m having a conversation. You need to have a conversation with these people, that’s the best way around this and find out who really knows what we’re talking about.
Jill K DeWit:
And I do believe, get a third one. If you reach out to at least three people, one or two is going to get back to you and then, of those two, one will rise to the top, that you’re going to connect with often. If you’re really seeking out land specific focused brokers, that’s what I want.
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve, what do you have against Housewives? Nothing.
Jill K DeWit:
Or Chanel. I don’t know what you have against Chanel.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t have anything against Housewives. They may not be the most qualified person to give you an opinion about rural vacant land. That’s it.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Maybe they are though, maybe they live right next door. I don’t know, they could be. Guys, we don’t like real estate agents in general.
Jill K DeWit:
Funny way of sourcing who’s legit and who knows what they’re doing, which I understand. The guy with cowboy boots, walk at the property and has an ATV in the back of his truck because he needs to get out and see all 10 acres. And he’s going to really try to get eyes on it, is a little bit different than the lady who was reviewing it from her cellphone while she’s getting her nails done.
Steven Jack Butala:
Amen sister.
Jill K DeWit:
Sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I’ll tell you what, that guy with the ATV in his F-150, he didn’t choose that career, it chose him. He’s got land in his soul and that’s who you want on your team.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s true. I understand. And those guys exist, by the way. They’re awesome. They show up with ATVs or horses and they take people out and look at it, sometimes, it’s really, really cool. And those are my favorite guys because, not only do they love the land and love what they do and they really get into it but they get these buyers falling in love with the property and they move property because of all those reasons. It’s really cool.
Jill K DeWit:
Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy show is called, Land Academy Members, overall deal quality is now amazing. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I am shocked and amazed every Thursday, when we review our members deals, we have a closed Zoom call with all the members who want to attend. And it’s three hours, almost three hours every week now. It started, it was a half hour and it’s just jam packed with, would you do this deal? That somebody coined that phrase quite a few years ago. And so, Jill and I and some other people, senior members in the group, give our opinions and I… Every single… Now it’s like, specifically this year, I don’t know what, something changed for the better that- [crosstalk 00:13:36].
Jill K DeWit:
Is it the cream rising to the top? The people.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll tell you what I think, let’s save it for the show tomorrow.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay, cool. All right. If you’re interested in learning more about us or what we do, check out landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. We provide the education tools and support you need to be flipping property like the pros.
Steven Jack Butala:
[crosstalk 00:13:59] We are Steve and Jill information-
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration-
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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