Why are We Still Talking about a Secret County List-There is No Such Thing (LA 1489)
Why are We Still Talking about a Secret County List-There is No Such Thing (LA 1489)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Good day.
Steven J 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 J Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about why are we still talking about the Secret County List?
Jill K DeWit:
Really?
Steven J Butala:
There’s no such thing.
Jill K DeWit:
Really. Thank you for listening. I had to push this forward as a podcast topic because I can’t believe it’s still coming up.
Steven J Butala:
There is no such thing as a Secret County List to send mail to buy property.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. We’re going to explain where this came from, why it’s popular, what it is, and what you should do to save yourself.
Steven J Butala:
It’s frustrating a lot of people, and we don’t want to see that.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven J Butala:
We want you to succeed.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven J Butala:
Before we get into it let’s take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It’s free. If you’re already with us as a Land Academy member, join us on Discord.
Jill K DeWit:
Mike wrote, “I have been using the purchase agreement from Land Academy. I’ve recently had a seller call back and want to back out of the contract because he now wants to sell it to his daughter instead.” If I had a nickel…
Steven J Butala:
Yeah, this is very common.
Jill K DeWit:
Uh-huh (affirmative). My brother, my mom, whatever. “I sent the contract to a lawyer here in Oregon, and this is his response below. I have the purchase agreement and it was signed by the seller and dated on July 15th.” It’s like valid until July 15, 2021. That’s it. Okay. So I guess he copied and pasted there. Great. And then he goes on to say, “Has anyone else ever been in something like this? I could make a lot of money in this deal and I want to make sure it’s worth it. I have seen Steve talk about how the PA is fine and sufficient enough to hold a seller to a contract. Any advice would be great.” I would love to go first if I may.
Steven J Butala:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I really shortened this.
Jill K DeWit:
Obviously.
Steven J Butala:
Out of respect for my co-host cause last week.
Jill K DeWit:
There were a mile long.
Steven J Butala:
She said they’re too long.
Jill K DeWit:
Will you give me a real quick two seconds? What did the lawyer say?
Steven J Butala:
Well, there’s a lot of money involved. He was going to make a bunch of money.
Jill K DeWit:
But did the lawyer have a comment?
Steven J Butala:
Yeah. The lawyer said you’re out of luck.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven J Butala:
And so did our moderator, Kevin. And so do I. That’s what I say.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So here’s the point. Here’s what I was going to say. Even if the lawyer says a version of this: “Oh, absolutely binding. Here’s what we do. You could expect these fees. It’s going to take this long and you’re going to get this deal.” I don’t want to be that guy. So I kind of don’t really care what the lawyer says. And this came up, was it on a Thursday? It came up recently. Somebody asked me this exact question basically like, “What do you do?” You know, do you push it? Like, no, do you want to be that guy. Do you want to spend your time, your money, your energy chasing somebody down for a dumb deal.
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t even care. I do not care if this stands up in court. Do you want to go to court over this? No, you don’t want to do that. Yeah. My exact answer was, “I let karma work these things out.” Totally fine.
Steven J Butala:
I could not agree more with everything single thing you said. We live in a world now where it’s very popular on television, in the media, and even like in fictitious stories now where there’s just a victim, and it ends up in a courtroom, and “I know my rights and I’m going to scream.” And just, we’re not those kinds of people here in Land Academy. It’s not worth it. Just move on to the next deal. If you’re sending out mail consistently and doing what you’re supposed to do and what we teach, there’s going to be a deal in the mail tomorrow, or somebody is going to call tomorrow on a mailer that you sent out and say, “You know what? I did talk to my wife and I do want to sell a property.”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. And if you roll this way, like stuff happens. Hey, I’ve had deals that I feel bad, but I’ve gotten in escrow and backed out because something came up at the end that nobody could account for. We’re like, “Whoa, I didn’t know this was going on out there.” And then you very honestly and truthfully tell the seller that, “Hey, did you know about this? And how can we solve it together? And if we can’t, I got to go up separate ways.” And if you’re honest and truthful, a person, they’ll respect you and go, “I get it,” kind of thing.
Steven J Butala:
Remember this. There’s always another real estate deal right around the corner.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Jill and I just purchased a primary residence. We haven’t moved into it yet. It’s being cleaned up. There were two properties under contract before that, that we were in love with and ultimately decided not to buy for a bunch of reasons. And both of us were sitting there in a puddle saying, “What are we going to do? It’s a craziest market out there. We’re never going to find the house we want.” And then up comes the perfect house that’s under-priced at $2 million and we buy it. So there’s just always another real estate deal always. That’s why the system works.
Steven J Butala:
Today’s topic. Why are we still talking about the secret county list? There’s no such thing. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
I mean, if you just say, “Go, Jill. Go Jill, go.”
Steven J Butala:
I can set you up if you want.
Jill K DeWit:
All right. Sure. You want to do this and then I’m going to explain what’s really going on?
Steven J Butala:
There’s a few competitors, original competitors, to Land Academy. And suddenly, they’re not even competitors. They’re other people that teach how to buy and sell land their own way. And Mark Podolsky is one of them. Mark and I have had a long, long history together.
Jill K DeWit:
We all worked together in one office at the same time.
Steven J Butala:
Right. Decades actually ago. And he devised this thing called the Secret County List. And it’s got counties on it like Costilla County, Colorado, San Bernardino County, Inyo County, California. There’s like eight of them. These are all lists, and most of the state of Nevada. That’s not a comprehensive look but that’s about it. And I can’t encourage you enough not to send mail there. It’s overwrought with extremely inexpensive property, 50 to a hundred dollar acquisition prices, $150 sale prices.
Steven J Butala:
There’s a ton of property for sale and what it’s designed for, what those counties are, and I don’t know if he explains it this way or not. But if you want to be a real estate owner and you’re brand new, new to real estate, new to mail, new to all of this, they’re like practice counties to buy property for a few hundred dollars and say, you own it.
Jill K DeWit:
And sell them on terms for $50 a month and get yourself going, get your feet wet.
Steven J Butala:
So that’s not the Land Academy model. The Land Academy model is if you want to make a career out of this, and make a few million dollars a month, this is the place to be. So that’s just not what we do. And it confuses the hell out of people. And Jill’s going to tell us about it.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. So yeah, there’s this list floating around, and people think, “Maybe I should mail this list. Maybe I shouldn’t mail this list.” And so I think you did a great job. Thank you for explaining what the list is. And I’ve heard him describe it as a list of places that are warmed up, if you will, that people have already sent a bunch of letters. I don’t really want a warmed up area. I’m want an area that no one’s been. So the point of this today, the topic is the Secret County List to me is places I don’t want to mail.
Jill K DeWit:
One of the things we do when we’re testing for reason and looking at properties.
Steven J Butala:
Oh that’s beautiful. What a brilliant idea.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you. When we’re looking at properties and testing for reason and going, “Should I send offers here?” One of the things that we commonly do, separately and together, we’ll go on Zillow and go, “All right, what’s for sale? I’m looking at buying. I’m sending a bunch of offers out for five acre properties in this area. Let me go right now on Zillow and just see how many pieces of land are out there.” Or LandWatch, or Land and Farm. Pick one place. It doesn’t matter. And to see how much is available there for sale, especially in LandWatch, something like that, where those are where other investors are really showcasing some of their properties. If you pull that up and you see 342 five acre properties for sale in that county, don’t mail it. Do you really want to be number 343 five acre properties for sale? No. How are you going to stand out and not any of you say, “Well, price.” I hate to tell you this. It’s got to be more than that.
Jill K DeWit:
You just don’t want to do that. No one’s going to scroll through. And then if you’re really under priced too, because we’ve had this come up, people go, “What’s wrong with it?” You just don’t want to compete with that. It’s nuts. So the Secret County list, like I said, we understand where it came from. And I understand now the purpose. We know why people have said that.
Jill K DeWit:
But the very, very, very best thing we could do is listen to this guy and learn what are the indicators that this is a good area? What things should I be looking for? What shows that property is moving? What shows that people might be warmed up to it? What shows there’s a healthy balance of for sale property and sold property? I mean, these are the characteristics and the things that you should be looking for. What are the prices of these properties? What’s happening over here?
Jill K DeWit:
So these are all things that we teach right here, right now, on this podcast for free. But if you want to speed it up, join Land Academy. We really dissect and show you not only how to pick a county, but how to price the offers, and get them out there, and get them in the right hand so people want to sell to you.
Steven J Butala:
What’s really frustrating about this, and I’m sure you can hear it in our voices, is that I have a personal issue with when people get taught stuff incorrectly or without all the information and they, rightfully so, go execute on what they’re being taught, and it fails. It destroys their whole possibility for an amazing longterm, lifelong career. And this is one of those topics now, and it’s stuck around.
Steven J Butala:
The Land Academy itself, Jill and I are very hands-on in teaching everybody in Land Academy, extremely hands-on. A material percentage of people come from other groups because they’re trying to basically complete their education because all the gaps aren’t being filled. And it starts with this. If I had a nickel for every person that came to us from another group that said, “I mailed the Costilla County, Colorado, and it just didn’t work out the way I wanted to. And what they’re really saying is, “I’m really serious about this. I want to learn the right way. I was told to mail all the back tax property in Costilla County,” which you never, ever want to do. That’s a-
Jill K DeWit:
Waste of time.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah, and money. And so that’s what this show’s about. It’s not the most fun show. We’re not in the best mood about it. These secret counties, it’s just got to stop. It comes up all the time now. It comes up daily.
Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what really is a secret county? A secret county. One I’ve never heard of.
Steven J Butala:
A secret county is something that is in your head that you’ve tested. It’s passed the red, green, yellow test. Because you’re a Land Academy member, you know all about that. And it’s like, this county makes sense to me because I might live there, or I understand it really well.
Jill K DeWit:
I’ve been studying for six months. How about that one?
Steven J Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’ve driven around it, or whatever. It’s secret to you. Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
I watch the numbers. So we talk about that too. Watch the trends. You should really be diving in and paying attention and pitting them with each other, and all the things that we talk about. Is that overkill?
Steven J Butala:
Yeah. No, it’s over. Let’s move on. Tomorrow-
Jill K DeWit:
It’s not overkill, it’s over. All right. Happy you joined us today. Five days a week, you can find this right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven J Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy Show is called When To Perform Due Diligence, you are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah.
Steven J Butala:
Here’s some good news.
Jill K DeWit:
Was that me? Did I wear you out?
Steven J Butala:
It’s this topic. Here’s some great news. Jill and I are in the middle. We launched a new product called Career Path for people that want to make this their career. We’re running our Career Path class 001 right now. We’re about one-third of the way through it, and the results are amazing. It’s a step by step by step way to do this through our methodology. This is how some of these topics come up, because people are coming through Career Path saying, “Okay, so I’m ready to mail San Bernardino County, California. Let’s go.” We’re like, “Okay, hold on. We’re going to solve this together.”
Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make a posting. I should do that. Here’s Jill Secret County list. I’m going to list all the counties and I’m going to cross them off. That’s going to be my new Facebook post. I’m doing it. Watch me.
Steven J Butala:
The good news is we’ve solved it. And the good news now is that you know, once and for all-
Jill K DeWit:
Don’t do it.
Steven J Butala:
That these silly counties that are on this list.
Jill K DeWit:
If someone says, “The Secret County List,” you giggle.
Steven J Butala:
Just go the other way.
Jill K DeWit:
Giggle. Like mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven J Butala:
There’s no such thing.
Jill K DeWit:
You tell them, “Knock yourself out. I’ll be over here making money.”
Steven J Butala:
Perfect, Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
By the way, if you need access to any sort of ownership or property details, including owner phone numbers and FEMA flood map overlays, check out neighborscoop.com created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you.
Steve and Jill:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
Information to buy undervalued property.
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