Jill Friday – Nowhere in the World (LA 1588)
Jill Friday – Nowhere in the World (LA 1588)
Transcript:
Jill DeWit:
Not me.
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 am Jill Dewit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Butala:
Today is Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about nowhere in the world is it possible to do what we do. 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. And don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill DeWit:
Charlie wrote a response to this sentence. I’m going to mix in a failure and success just to keep things in perspective. This is cute. So here we go, hashtag fail. “I was going through Irritable and saw a call from a mailer that had kept getting pushed down and pushed down on my list. So I was going through the deal again. I offered $30,000. He accepted. And the comps were around $90,000, which is a great deal if I hadn’t seen it. But life happened and I checked out the land business while we had a kid and stuff.” Oh, I checked out of the land business. Got it. “While looking into the property on Redfin, I see that after this guy got my letter and called, the property was listed and sold twice, once for $39,000 and then for $95,000. It made me sick to know that there were $60,000 sitting in my computer that I didn’t act on. Shucks!”
Steven Butala:
Darn.
Jill DeWit:
You know what? That happens.
Steven Butala:
This is a great life experience.
Jill DeWit:
Totally. What was happening is the offer came in. He didn’t act on it. Life got in the way. He went back and said, “Oh, maybe I’ll do this deal,” and found out somebody else did the deal.
Steven Butala:
They had a baby. That happens.
Jill DeWit:
It’s okay. But hashtag win. He’s got something. “But also during that time, I bought a lot for a hundred dollars in a subdivision with a terrible dirt road and no utilities. I started to list it on eBay multiple times. Never got all the way through it. I finally, decided Saturday,” excuse me, “I finally decided it sat in my inventory long enough. So I called a realtor I’ve worked with before in the area and got it listed. He went and looked at it and told me what I already know, dirt road, no utilities, hard to sell, et cetera, and asked what I wanted to get out of it. There’s only one for sale in that subdivision and it’s at $6,000. So I told him I just wanted it gone. But 3,000 looks right to me.”
Jill DeWit:
“What I didn’t take into account was that the subdivision, once you read over, has blown up in the last year. So he suggested we list it for $15,000. Normally, I would dial him back a bit, but we worked together and he knows that I’m shooting for speed here, not top dollar. And by the way, I have a hundred dollars into this property, so I don’t really care if it sits for a month before a buyer comes along. This business is great and can forever change your family’s lives if you put in the work.” That’s great. Oh, I wonder what he did sell it for.
Steven Butala:
What’s the moral of the story here? I have a takeaway. What do you think you should really take away from this?
Jill DeWit:
Well, there’s a couple of things. If you can keep from stopping and keep going, that’s my first choice. But pick up where you left off and just move on. That’s the moral of my story, because we all make mistakes. We start diets. We don’t follow through. We join gyms. We don’t follow through. It doesn’t mean you never go back. You say, “Well, I tried that workout thing to me once when I was 20, and again when I was 30, and one more time when I was 50. It’s not my thing. I am never doing it. Ship has sailed.” That’s not true. You can always start it and just pick up where you left off. That’s my moral.
Steven Butala:
This person’s kicking themselves a little bit, but I’ll tell you, they got the mail out. They created some transactions for themselves. And so that last piece, yeah, so you had a baby. It happens to a lot of people. I think you knocked it out of the park by all aspects. Just get some more mail out and do what you’re doing. If those two properties were in the same geographic location, hit it again.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’d like to add, if you had a baby, it doesn’t just happen. Usually, there’s things that lead up to it. You might have an indication that a baby’s coming. Hopefully, you planned for this. Mister, have a plan. If you had a baby, whoops! It’s like a car accident. They happen.
Steven Butala:
There’s some basic differences in men and women.
Jill DeWit:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Steven Butala:
Today’s topic is, it’s Jill Friday, nowhere in the world is this possible. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
This topic came about because of a show that we were watching on Point Roberts. This show’s a little hard to get through. It’s called Off the Cuff, that Jack found for us on Amazon?
Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jill DeWit:
I think it was on Amazon Prime. It’s kids running around doing these interesting shows and making their own documentaries. I’m going to warn you, it’s a little hard to watch, because I don’t think they know what a stabilizer is, but that’s-
Steven Butala:
A camera stabilizer.
Jill DeWit:
Yes. They’re not sure what that is, but they’ve got the other stuff. It’s fun and they do some interesting things. It’s okay. Anyway, they came across this area, very, very northwest in the United States called Point Roberts, which is off the edge of Canada. It’s technically, go and get there by water or you have to go through Canada.
Steven Butala:
It’s U.S. It’s Washington State. It’s in a Washington Sate county, but it dips. It’s a peninsula. It’s entirely locked in with Canada. So like Jill says, you only can get through Canada to get there.
Jill DeWit:
The kids that have to go to school, have to get up in the morning. Brush their teeth. Get dressed. Get in the car. Drive through the border to Canada. Hang a right and come back through the border, into the United States to go to school. And then they do that again to come home.
Steven Butala:
To get any healthcare, it’s this way. I mean, it’s interesting.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, grocery shopping, shopping, a lot of the things they have to do. What’s interesting is a lot of people, a lot of Canadians, came down and have used it as a beautiful vacation spot, because it’s cheaper and easier to get things done in the United States. One woman, they have a bed and breakfast, they’ve two businesses now. They came down. Bought this beautiful property. They love it. They’re so happy. They said they were living in Vancouver. And she made the comment, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, having dessert, saying, “I can’t do this in Canada. I came down here. We started our bed and breakfast. And I have my own little yoga studio. If I try to do a yoga studio in Canada, I need a million dollars to start this company and get it up and running.”
Jill DeWit:
We both looked at each other and, that came up, that is the reason behind this topic, nowhere in the world can you do this stuff. We are so fortunate, to quote you, that we were born and/or living here now in the United States that we can start these businesses and have these lives that we do. We complain about taxes and other things like that. Hold on, everyone, we need to take a step back and realize, again, how fortunate we are that we can do what we do, all have our own companies, run around like entrepreneurs, create cashflowing websites in days. People can’t do that in parts of the world. My second little point is, because I know you have a lot to share, too-
Steven Butala:
No, it’s Jill Friday.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay. Thank you.
Steven Butala:
Seriously.
Jill DeWit:
All right. One is about businesses. And my other one is about property ownership. There’s so many other countries and that’s one of the things that people are, if you haven’t noticed within Land Academy, we have a healthy community of international people in Land Academy buying and selling U.S. land. Why? Because it’s so much easier and/or possible. In some countries, it’s darn near impossible to buy and sell land, especially if you’re not a citizen. That’s one of the things that was really interesting, when we first started Land Academy, I came across a lot of international people that said, “Don’t I have to be a citizen to own land in the United States?” And then I would inform them, “No, you don’t. You don’t have to be a citizen to buy and sell land in the United States.” Whoa, light bulb! Talk about a light bulb moment for these individuals. And they’re killing it. What do you want to add?
Steven Butala:
Every time I think about this, it’s very positive. Nowhere in the world can you get data to send out a mailer to buy land. They just don’t have an open data set like that. Nowhere in the world.
Jill DeWit:
Perfect example.
Steven Butala:
There’s a few other places. There’s a few places that lean toward it, but it’s almost purely open source statutory that those databases are open to the public, the tax rolls. Nowhere in the world. You’re 50 or $60 away from having your own company by forming an LLC, paying the filing fees at the state, and getting the documents back. It takes thousands of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in most countries, and years to get permission from whatever the government is to start X. And I don’t know about you, but it took me two years to start a company. By the time that two years is, I was uninterested in starting that company any longer. I’m onto something else. Really, two minutes. So there’s that.
Steven Butala:
I tried to close a deal in Costa Rica. It was going to take a year. And we complain that it takes 30 days to close a real estate deal here. Oh, tax situation? There is no better tax situation than there is in this country. I really mean that. We all complain about it. We have a huge amount of control as business owners to control our taxes. This is your show, but I just think, I feel lucky, incredibly lucky, even with all the crap that’s going on in politics and everybody’s barking about stuff and taxes and revenue and deficits. We just try to put our heads down, get through it and have a happy life. And it’s working out so well. And I hope it is for you.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Butala:
Join us next week for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. It’s a good way to end the week.
Jill DeWit:
I was just thinking that, too. This is a happy topic for Friday, to just remind everyone how fortunate we are. That’s it. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content of value and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button.
Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Butala:
Information…
Jill DeWit:
And Inspiration…
Steven Butala:
… To buy undervalued property.
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