Creating an Easement by Being Nice to your Neighbors (LA 1586)
Creating an Easement by Being Nice to your Neighbors (LA 1586)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hi.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to the land academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill Dewitt broadcasting from the valley of the sun today.
Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about creating an easement by simply being nice to your neighbors.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. This is confusing. An easement means I have access, preferably legal and physical, to go somewhere. An easement means it’s the legal paperwork, as necessary, to access a property.
Steven Butala:
So I’ll give a full-blown examples in the mid of the show, but this solves a landlocked property.
Jill DeWit:
I just have to ask. I’m so confused. I’m not confused. I’m just saying that-
Steven Butala:
Oh, you’re asking for everybody-
Jill DeWit:
No. Yeah.
Steven Butala:
If you have a landlocked piece of property and there’s a neighbor’s property on the road, on a county road, let’s say, and some of your [inaudible 00:01:00] sends it back to you and says, “Heck yes, I will sell you my incredibly valuable property for a tiny small amount of money, because I know there’s no access.”
Steven Butala:
And I’ll explain how you can get access by baking a cake and showing up at somebody’s store. 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. Don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill DeWit:
Aaron wrote, “Has anyone figured out how to integrate their website with an e-signature service to automate purchase agreement signing? Use case looks like receive letter. He puts like the little terminology in there without-
Steven Butala:
This is a code-
Jill DeWit:
Website URL.
Steven Butala:
His case looks like receive letter. Go to website URL in letter, enter reference number, digitally sign their PA, just trying to think about how to reduce the friction of signing and sending back a purchase agreement.
Jill DeWit:
This is kind of cool. This is a really good idea.
Steven Butala:
Well, I think it’s a brilliant idea. It’ll never work.
Jill DeWit:
Why?
Steven Butala:
So let’s talk about this for a second. I want to make a kind of a big deal about this. There’s a lot of technical people in our group, me included. I’m a very technical person and I’m hugely interested in making things easier and faster and more profitable. And one of the ways that you do that now, maybe the way, is through tech and technology improvements in databases and all this. And so Aaron obviously has a tech background or just knows about it. And so there’s a lot of ways you can automate this and make this easy. And there’s a lot of people who have come and gone in our group from a tech background, there’s a lot of people in our group right now that have a core tech background in their W2 jobs, very successful, walking into this environment saying, “Oh no, we’re going to make this whole thing an app. We’re going to automate the entire system and we’re going to take control over US land.”
Steven Butala:
And so that’s the extreme and Aaron, I’m not picking on you at all. I think this is a brilliant idea. I’m serious. But what you’re missing here and what I think a lot of tech people miss, again, it’s not a criticism at all. It’s not like I’m talking about California right now. This is not a criticism. It’s a backwards compliment. I’m not sure that you understand this customer. Do you think that most of the people that you sell property to, or buy property from, I’m sorry, are going to go onto a website, click on some stuff and sign it that way?
Jill DeWit:
No, that’s true.
Steven Butala:
So Jill’s right. They’re not tech savvy. They’re not set up for that. They want you to do it for them. They’re asking you-
Jill DeWit:
kind of the point-
Steven Butala:
is to just kind of really customer service your way through their real estate transaction, and they get a check.
Jill DeWit:
That’s kind of why we’re getting it at the prices that we are because we’re doing the work for them. We’re making it so easy for them, kind of thing. So there might be a very small percentage that this works for, you get some letters laying on the right desk for a guy who inherited this, and he’s a very busy man and he’s like, “Great and get this off my plate”. And he tells his assistance, “Tell this guy, yes. And get it done.” Now there’s a percentage of that. But the majority of them, no, it’s kind of an experience. And they need to talk to-
Steven Butala:
They need digital experience.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. That’s-
Steven Butala:
And so-
Jill DeWit:
That’s the majority of that.
Steven Butala:
Automating that, that’s going to put a real bad taste in their mouth. “Hey, go here, click-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
On this-
Jill DeWit:
And do some work-
Steven Butala:
do this-
Jill DeWit:
Now you do some more work for me. I want to buy your property at this price. And by the way, I’m going to put the work on you. Hold on a moment.
Steven Butala:
This reminds me of a shark tank episode, where a couple of guys stood up in front of that shark tank panel and described this app that they created. And they said, “You do this, click on this, you go over here, you sign up, go to this website, sign up for it. And then you click through here, put in your information.” And Mark Cuban stood up and said, “This is a brilliant idea. You guys are the biggest idiots there ever was. Do you have any idea that your customer’s not going to do seven things-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
to get anything done? And so, again, Aaron, I’m going to say this 50 times, I’m not picking on you at all. I chose this for a reason. I think this is a great idea. I just think the customer-
Jill DeWit:
Me too.
Steven Butala:
It doesn’t play to the customer at all. And so it’s not just this particular thing that Aaron’s talking about. This represents… I get caught communication weekly, more than weekly, multiple times a week from tech people saying there’s a much easier way to do this, to which I say, there’s an absolute easier way to do this. And the customer will never go for it on the buy side or the south side.
Jill DeWit:
There’s some that we can do. And we have. There are ways that you can streamline and make it easier. It’s not everything, but especially your stuff behind the scenes. If you’re using simple file or whatever, do online recording, all those things that are needed, DocuSign to speed things up, once you guys have that conversation I love things like that. But there’s a little bit of personality and personal touch that’s appropriate here. And here’s a reason why you’re going to miss something. If this becomes the only way that you do this, like you revert to a company where we don’t talk to anybody, we just sit back and let them fill out the form. And then we only buy those properties. You’re going to miss a lot.
Steven Butala:
Probably 80%.
Jill DeWit:
That’s-
Steven Butala:
No, I bet. 90%.
Jill DeWit:
That’s the point here. And I will be capturing those deals.
Steven Butala:
My natural state in this partnership that Jill and I have, my natural state is to do-
Jill DeWit:
Is this-
Steven Butala:
exactly what you’re describing-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah [crosstalk 00:07:03] –
Steven Butala:
is to somehow do away with-
Jill DeWit:
A phone number-
Steven Butala:
having a phone number at all. And fortunately, for me, I learned very close soon after joining forces with Jill, that her way is way better.
Jill DeWit:
Just get more deals.
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
And get great deals.
Steven Butala:
You want personal attention and it’s not an age thing. I just don’t think… There’s a lot of stuff that goes on, I see it on TV. It’s like input your house… If you own a house and you want to sell it fast input all your stuff, we’ll give you an offer. How many deals are they missing?
Jill DeWit:
Right. Exactly.
Steven Butala:
And what’s the profile of that person is actually entering the scenario, they don’t know. So the people who create an app like that, they don’t know their profile. What they’re doing is the mortgage model. They’re saying [crosstalk 00:07:48]
Jill DeWit:
I have a story, go ahead. Finish your thing. And I’m going to give you my- [crosstalk 00:07:53]
Steven Butala:
It’s just a numbers thing for them, like 6800 people are going to enter their information and we’re going to buy three houses. And so it ends up being a Pepsi commercial more than anything else. And that’s just not what we do here.
Jill DeWit:
Here’s what I… You said, “Who does that?” So my head fast forwarded to, “What would be a scenario? Oh, I got one.” It’s a Saturday night they’ve been drinking or in bed. They just had a spat with their spouse. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, watch me. I’m going to get an offer on this house tomorrow. You said, you’re done? Oh I’ll show you done.”
Steven Butala:
That’s exactly. That’s their customer [crosstalk 00:08:33]
Jill DeWit:
And then they wake up on Sunday morning and the offer’s there-
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
And someone’s on their porch with a clipboard. And the other person is answering the door going. “Who the heck are you?”
Steven Butala:
Jill you sound [crosstalk 00:08:48].
Jill DeWit:
And then-
Steven Butala:
Is this a personal experience-
Jill DeWit:
And then the person goes, “Oh, I forgot. I did that. Sorry sweetheart.”
Jill DeWit:
Don’t answer the door. Duck.
Steven Butala:
Again Aaron I’m not picking on you. I can’t say it enough. This is a great example, but automation, things like neighbor scoop that really help us internally, that’s a great automation device. Automating a mailer, not the pricing of a mailer, but automating the steps that you go through or picking a county to internal stuff to automate is great. I think all that’s a great idea, but automating any interaction with a buyer or seller, in my opinion, at least right now is a bad idea. People over 40, over 45, let’s say, they’re not going to do any… They’re not going to have any part of this. And that’s our customer.
Jill DeWit:
I understand.
Steven Butala:
Did he stop it? Creating an easement by being nice to your neighbors. This is the meat of the show. You know what? This is named another example of what I’m talking about. Here’s why you would even need an easement. What is an easement? An easement is the right of way on someone else’s property to get to your property. So you can come home from work and have a happy life.
Jill DeWit:
And get to it without a helicopter.
Steven Butala:
Right.
Steven Butala:
So if you’re in this group or maybe if you’re not, you know that this world, this country, is packed full of inaccessible property. That’s incredibly inexpensive. So if you can somehow buy super inexpensive property, way under its value and then get access to it. There’s a huge business model there. It’s a huge financial opportunity. There’s two ways to do this, get an easement to your property.
Steven Butala:
Number one; you can take the legal route and you can hire a lawyer, and there’re all kinds of ways that you… It takes years and there’s terrible, awful lawsuits and all kinds of stuff, not lawsuits, but legal actions against the person that is between you and the road. Their parcel is between your parcel and the road. And that’s the tech way or the that’s the angry way.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
The nice way is to knock on their door, send them a nice note and say, look for a thousand bucks… I know that there’s a driveway there anyway, or whatever, the circumstances, the custom circumstance to that situation, I just brought the property behind you, and I’m happy to compensate you, but I’d love to do… I’ve got a lawyer over here and we can do the legal work. You don’t have to do anything else. Happy to send you a couple thousand dollars check when we’re done. And then I’m probably going to blade in a road with your permission.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And so material-
Jill DeWit:
Where would you like it to go even?
Steven Butala:
Yeah. You want to right side of your property, less side, you have 40 acres.
Jill DeWit:
How can we make this work together?
Steven Butala:
It’s 40 acres. You’re never going to know-
Jill DeWit:
I’ll pay for it [crosstalk 00:11:38].
Steven Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
So material percentage of the time, in my opinion, we haven’t done this often, but we have done it material percentage of the time, especially if we go in with Jill’s attitude, we’re just your neighbor and we’re happy about it and we both can win here. Then material percentage of people are going to say, “Okay, I am going to be a citizen about this.”
Steven Butala:
There’s always that people that… And these are the stories we hear, unfortunately. We never hear the good stories.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
That good story I just told would never see the light of day.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
That we always hear the shotgun on the porch story so.
Jill DeWit:
And then you have to go the other way. It’s most states and counties I’m going to loosely say most, do have laws about this, that there has to be some sort of an accessing, but, like you said, it’s a battle and you have to legally go about that. You put your head down, like you don’t agree with me.
Steven Butala:
No I-
Jill DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Butala:
I’m waiting to tell some stories.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay.
Jill DeWit:
I know in Arizona, it’s statewide, isn’t it? It’s not just the county-
Steven Butala:
It’s most states-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, most states that you can’t, you can’t withhold access [crosstalk 00:12:46]
Steven Butala:
That’s an actual [crosstalk 00:12:47].
Jill DeWit:
Legally.
Steven Butala:
You can’t unreasonably withhold-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
Access to someone’s property across your property.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
And young people love to argue that. It’s just an interesting young people just want to-
Jill DeWit:
They like to argue.
Steven Butala:
You can’t withhold access to my… So in reality it stops right there. You’ve got to be nice.
Jill DeWit:
It’s just, there’s two ways to do it is the point for today. That you could go the legal battle, and we just want to tell you, you could dive right in and go the legal battle and give everybody a paper and get that going, and that’s just not going to sit well versus reach out to them, and one of the beautiful things by the way, is in neighbors group, you have phone numbers, you could pick up the phone and go, “Hi, you don’t know me, but here’s what’s going on. I’m buying the property behind you. And I’d love to see if we work out something where it looks like you’ve got five acres. Where can I stick a little something in here? You tell me where, and I’ll make it happen and I’ll pay you.” And that’s the best.
Steven Butala:
It’s feasible and possible. But throwing a book at somebody and saying, you can’t unreasonably withheld, well it says here and pointing to the book-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
I’m going to slam the door in your face if you do that [crosstalk 00:13:59]. But if you approach it the other way; like, yeah, I get it.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Butala:
You need to get to your property so let’s work something out.
Jill DeWit:
Perfect. Happy to 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 “Well, it’s Jack Thursday” and I am going to kick off Land Investor dictionary 1-0-1. We’re going to talk about equity. One of my favorite things. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
I’m curious about tomorrow.
Steven Butala:
About the definition of equity?
Jill DeWit:
No. About the debt… This dictionary, because this is the second time I’m hearing it. And I didn’t know where this came from, but I think it’s cool.
Steven Butala:
It’s a customer service, several people who knows why, I don’t know. There’s trends that go on I guess-
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Butala:
In discord, and a lot of new people are saying, “Can you just give us a good kickoff start? Can you tell us this is what an easement is. This is what equity is. This is what a property lines or setbacks are. This is what access is, legal acts. What’s the difference between legal access and physical access.” So, every Thursday we’re going to talk about this and hopefully laugh a little bit.
Jill DeWit:
This is going to last for years then? [crosstalk 00:15:17] Come up with a lot of things. No seriously.
Steven Butala:
Plus it makes my job a little bit easier when I write this stuff.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, good. Thank you for tuning in. Hey, we would love to connect with you tomorrow on Clubhouse, by the way. Join me, and usually Jack also, every Thursday at one o’clock Pacific time in the Land Investing Club.
Speaker 3:
We are Steve and Jill-
Steven Butala:
information.
Jill DeWit:
and inspiration.
Steven Butala:
to buy undervalued property.
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