The Basics of the Land Business (LA 1579)
The Basics of the Land Business (LA 1579)
Transcript:
Steven J Butala:
Steve and Jill, here.
Jill DeWit:
Hi.
Steven J 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona.
Steven J Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the basics of the land business. This whole topic came from a discussion on Discord, which I just thought was brilliant and so we’ll talk all about … Every business comes down to a few simple things.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
Like when you think about Amazon or Walmart, there’s one or two sentences you can describe the whole thing.
Jill DeWit:
Cheap.
Steven J Butala:
Cheap, fast.
Jill DeWit:
Fast.
Steven J Butala:
Easy.
Jill DeWit:
Let’s see. Costco …
Steven J Butala:
Abundant.
Jill DeWit:
… is quality.
Steven J Butala:
Quality. Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Nordstrom is customer service.
Steven J Butala:
Is it?
Jill DeWit:
I think so. It is for me.
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 and if you’re already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
I like to add … We’re going to rewrite our things here, too. Even though I’m interrupting all this to insert one more thing, I’m going to insert one more thing because our team asked me to and I need to fix this. We mentioned the Discord. Have I mentioned Clubhouse lately? Every Thursday at one o’clock Pacific Time you can find us on Clubhouse. Check it out. Go to the group or the club called Land … Shoot, I think it’s called Land Investors. How funny is that? Get to know your own stuff. I don’t know. And by the way, too, don’t forget you can also find us all over the heck on YouTube on Land Academy. Thank you.
Jill DeWit:
So, Chuck wrote, “I’m finding huge differences for properties on the market between LandWatch, Redfin, Zillow and Realtor. For example, in one county I’m looking at LandWatch and it shows 1,883 properties. Redfin shows 334 properties.” These are all for sale, I’m assuming. “Realtor shows 959 and Zillow 346. Zillow’s six months old shows 651. Redfin shows 389. The Zillow for sale/sold ratio is good but the others not so much. This makes it weird trying to evaluate what’s really going on. Using the largest for sale, which is LandWatch and the most six month sales, which is Zillow, results in an undesirable ratio. This contradicts the fair ratio in Zillow for sale/sold. I’m coming to the conclusion that I should find another county.” This is hilarious. “But …”
Steven J Butala:
I’m coming to that conclusion, too.
Jill DeWit:
“… I want to see if anyone else has this issue and how it’s dealt with. Thank you.”
Steven J Butala:
Here’s …
Jill DeWit:
That’s a tough one. You got to do apples to apples, not apples to oranges and oranges to pineapple, which is, it sounds like, what’s going on.
Steven J Butala:
Jill’s exactly right. Whatever you do for the red, green, yellow test you need to do it if you’re going to look at Zillow active versus sold … You need to look Zillow/Zillow.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
Redfin/Redfin. Here’s the deal. Realtor.com only lists properties that are listed with an active real estate agent. Period. It’s the national MLS. Redfin has a very vested interest in listing properties that are with their agents or agents that comply with their business model, and so if you need to learn more about Redfin, which I’m pretty impressed with … Redfin’s kind of taking an … This is an off-shoot comment/opinion of mine. Redfin has taken a terrible …
Jill DeWit:
Alert, alert.
Steven J Butala:
… A terrible situation, which is this damn MLS, and made something good out of it. And so, they’re only in certain places, in urban areas, not rural. But we’re in the business of rural land so Redfin, we don’t use it that much.
Steven J Butala:
Zillow is a lot of for sale by owner property and it’s in addition to, most of the time, listed properties by real estate agents, so there’s a lot of mish mash of stuff in there. I like Zillow for what we do a lot. What was the fourth one? LandWatch. LandWatch is the bastard …
Jill DeWit:
A lot of investors.
Steven J Butala:
… Step-child of the real estate listings.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
There’s many, many, many Land Academy members or people in business are on LandWatch and the properties selling, they don’t mark it. They just don’t mark it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
For advertising reasons, which I don’t necessarily disagree with. So it’s got to be what Jill said. Apples to Apples.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven J Butala:
Today’s topic: The basics of the land business. This is the meat of the show. We talked about Costco, we talked about …
Jill DeWit:
Walmart, Nordstrom.
Steven J Butala:
Walmart’s all about available … tons of available inventory at the cheapest possible price.
Jill DeWit:
And cheap inventory.
Steven J Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Not just cheap pricings. Kind of like the qualities a little bit different. But we won’t go there.
Steven J Butala:
Yeah. And everybody knows their customer. As most Land Academy members probably are, we’re huge fans of Costco, especially now because it all gets delivered and it’s the best stuff you can get for a really reasonable price, I think.
Jill DeWit:
What you’re saying is the Walmarts, the Costcos, whatever, there’s a couple things that are the basics of them that we all know what they are and they keep the stores in business. Like Walmart has almost everything. They try to have something of everything you could possibly need from tea towels to tooth picks, as cheap as possible. We all know what a Walmart Supercenter is. It’s like, “Hold on to your hat.” It’s 100,000 square feet or something. I don’t even know.
Steven J Butala:
There’s no membership cost.
Jill DeWit:
True.
Steven J Butala:
There’s no discount for members or any of that. Like every single grocery store’s adopted that now.
Jill DeWit:
Right. It’s really, really basics and inexpensive. What are the basics for us?
Steven J Butala:
I was watching a Discord conversation about Land Academy and buying and selling land and here’s what I think. It’s two components to this business. That’s it. That’s all you need to understand. You need to send out 10s of 1000s of mailers often.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven J Butala:
And then you need to do what Jill does, which is turn those responses into transactions.
Jill DeWit:
Work the deals.
Steven J Butala:
It’s those two simple things.
Jill DeWit:
Answer the phone.
Steven J Butala:
Without either one of them, it won’t work.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Isn’t that funny? If you don’t send out the mail, it doesn’t matter how great you price it or how crappy you price it. Just get the mail out.
Steven J Butala:
Yep.
Jill DeWit:
Those are the basics. And as you go on, you’re going to get really good at it.
Steven J Butala:
We had a very detailed conversation about this in Career Path yesterday and Brandon Coon, who’s kind of our co-host in it, he’s not a Career Path member, he helps us.
Jill DeWit:
He was in Career Path 001.
Steven J Butala:
And we liked him so much we just keep bringing him back now.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, he’s fun.
Steven J Butala:
And he said that he bought … He screwed up a mailer, priced it way too low, bought a couple of properties for $9,000 and sold each of them for $135,000. You just have to get the mail out. And then you got to answer the phone.
Jill DeWit:
You got to work the deals. That’s it. The basics. Don’t overthink it. I guess that’s what the point is, too. People walk in and they sit down, they try to dissect it and make this really a big deal. Part of it’s true; there are a lot of moving parts. But the basics are if you don’t get the mail out, like I said, you’re not going to do anything. And then if you don’t answer the phone and do your due diligence and buy something and post it for sale, hello, so you can sell something, it’s not going to happen, too. You’ve got to do two parts. Get it out there and buy it and sell it. Seems basic but it’s funny people just … I just think people get so hung up on doing it perfect.
Steven J Butala:
Here’s the truth. If I had to do Jill’s job I would probably go find something else to do.
Jill DeWit:
You do fine.
Steven J Butala:
I’ve done it. I did it for years and years and years.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
And I did it very successfully. But I didn’t enjoy it. And didn’t until Jill joined the whole thing.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven J Butala:
It wasn’t really Land Academy. It wasn’t really what it could be.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you very much.
Steven J Butala:
So, if you’re a Jack, find a Jill. If you’re a Jill, find a Jack.
Jill DeWit:
What are some more basics? Let’s think about this. You got to answer the phone. Really. You got to do your due diligence. Good, bad or otherwise, make the best decisions that you can. When you’re new, by the way, I want you to have all five A’s and maybe add a few more. We joked about that.
Steven J Butala:
That’s what you have …
Jill DeWit:
Make your own six and seven A’s. You make sure you’re like, “Ohh …”
Steven J Butala:
And that’s what you have Land Academy for.
Jill DeWit:
I almost missed that it had an HOA. Okay, got it. I’m going to make that.
Steven J Butala:
I truly mean this. If you’re in this group and you’re not on Discord, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Everything. And people … It’s a constant flow of, “Hey, should I do this deal or not?” “Hey, should I … This guy called me back, this and this and this happened. What should I do?”
Jill DeWit:
Real feedback.
Steven J Butala:
And all of us are in there, including me often saying, “Yeah, you should not do this deal,” or “Yes, you should do it and you should call this guy back and this is good and this is bad or this is a red flag.”
Jill DeWit:
And back to the basics of the show here on the thing. You do the due diligence. What’s next? Buying. It’s great. You have a great deal lined up, now you got to buy it. And if you don’t have the money, you know where to go. Speaking of which, the LandFunding.com website is available to you now.
Steven J Butala:
It’s live.
Jill DeWit:
It’s live, available. Go look on it. You can apply for … Not really apply. You just fill out that, “Hey, here’s a deal. Here’s a deal, I need the cash.” That’s really about it. There’s a number to call. Phone number. It’s really good. So, you need to buy it or get someone like me to give you the money … us … to buy it. And then now you own it and for people listening like, “Oh, you guys really put your names on the deeds?” Yeah, our names are on the deeds so you own it. Now, I want you to turn and sell it. Now, whether you’re selling it on your website, all over social media, you’re putting it on the MLS as a flat rate listing, yourself, it doesn’t matter. Maybe you have a a broker involved and they’re going to do that work for you. Awesome. And then answer those calls, by the way. These are the basics.
Jill DeWit:
Now you’ve got it posted for sale.
Steven J Butala:
These are the basics?
Jill DeWit:
It really is. People drop the ball. Like, “I’m just waiting for somebody to check out and I don’t nave to talk to anybody.” That may not be the case. Please let’s work the transaction and then you sell it. What’s going to happen, though? You’re going to collect the money, do another deed or go through escrow. There’s all personal preference stuff, here. And then you sell it, you own it, now … Or you’ve sold it, you got the money, now you’re done. That’s really kind of the basics in a nutshell. So it’s like eight things, if that.
Steven J Butala:
It’s two.
Jill DeWit:
And then once you do one …
Steven J Butala:
It’s two things.
Jill DeWit:
… You can do more. Well, okay. We see it differently.
Steven J Butala:
So much for making this simple, Jill.
Jill DeWit:
I did make it simple. I didn’t get into the … Those are just the basics, man.
Steven J Butala:
Get the mail out, answer the phone.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven J Butala:
That’s what this show’s about.
Jill DeWit:
All right.
Steven J Butala:
And you will do real estate deals and make a bunch of money.
Jill DeWit:
It’s good. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us right here on The Land Academy Show.
Steven J Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on The Land Academy Show is called The Top Five Habits of Successful Millionaires. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I’m fascinated by this survey that Credit Suisse did of 10,000 millionaires … US millionaires … self-made millionaires. I’m going to share the results with you tomorrow.
Jill DeWit:
That’s so cool. You know what? We understand. It’s not easy getting started, sending out offers, and every area is different. That’s how we have introduced concierge pricing and concierge consulting to help you navigated the complicated process behind getting your mailer out and out the door. I love this. We can cover every step from helping choose what kind of mail to, how to navigate data pulling criteria, what to look for when scrubbing your data, how to find accurate market values and get started with pricing your offers and how to build a perfect mailer and everything in between. By the way, check out our 30-minute consulting, go to OffersToOwners.com. Pretty cool. This is really awesome.
Steven J Butala:
We’re Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We’re Steve and Jill.
Steven J Butala:
Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven J Butala:
To by undervalued property.
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