Who Exactly are You Doing Business With (LA 1628)
Who Exactly are You Doing Business With (LA 1628)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steven and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hi.
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 DeWitt broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about who exactly are you doing business with?
Jill K DeWit:
I know who I’m doing business with. Do you?
Steven Jack Butala:
I know who my partners are.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay, got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Very much who my partner, singular, is.
Jill K DeWit:
Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
I honestly … After this whole incident went down in Discord, which I’ll explain in a second here.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Got me thinking, you know what? I actually, we have all these members, I have no idea.
Jill K DeWit:
Uh-oh. I’m a little worried.
Steven Jack Butala:
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 K DeWit:
James wrote, okay. This in quotes [crosstalk 00:00:55]
Steven Jack Butala:
This is in the rant section of discord.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. “I was on the phone today for over an hour and a half trying to cancel contract with an agent for two parcels of land that I have listed with him. The longest periods of silence was over 12 minutes.” Are you kidding me? I’ve never had these…
Steven Jack Butala:
This sparked a…
Jill K DeWit:
This is hilarious.
Steven Jack Butala:
… Very valuable discussion, I think, in discord, obviously worth an episode.
Jill K DeWit:
This is hilarious. Okay.
Jill K DeWit:
“As I waited for him to be the first to respond at the end of it, he wouldn’t agree to cancel the contract. We will try again tomorrow night. The total commission to him for both parcels would be $9,000 when he is actually able to sell them. There is a large perspective gap between us. I want to take less time and I’m happy with less profit. And he wants to take as much time as needed and maximize his end. Very, very frustrating. And one of hours of my life spent on something I didn’t want to. However, I learned a lot. So it may ultimately be worth it and learning the lesson of who not to list with is priceless. Thank you for reading really just needed a sympathetic and understanding audience. Now to go meditate.” This is funny.
Steven Jack Butala:
Since when does a freaking real estate agent have anything to say about how much you list your property for? This goes on.
Jill K DeWit:
Wow.
Steven Jack Butala:
In this scope of this episode. And believe me, I got involved and told stories and I’m going to tell my story here in a minute.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a non-exclusive agreement. So it’s not an exclusive contract. Okay? So if, if the meaning, which is very unusual, meaning the agent has to bring the buyer, so to get paid, to get paid, right? So if he goes, if land academy member goes up and sells a property by somebody, he generates, he doesn’t have to get paid.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s amazing.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is just an example of there’s just a lot of people you need to know who you’re doing business with before you start signing stuff and he didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve been in this situation before too. Again, I’m going to tell a story.
Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes you don’t know, people can, don’t say I had a whole marriage like this…
Steven Jack Butala:
That didn’t cross my mind until now.
Jill K DeWit:
I’ve been waiting for you to say…
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah get to know who you’re married to.
Jill K DeWit:
But some people go into it and lead you to believe that there’s something that they’re not. And when there’s a ring on the finger or the paper signed, maybe then the truth comes out.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m glad, I’m not saying this though. [crosstalk 00:03:30].
Jill K DeWit:
because if I didn’t say it, you would. So no, but the point is I would argue for, you probably didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, because you may do your best to vet this person. And then they are kind of sneaky and because I’m not like I’m going to spend a week with a person and go camping before I list a property to really like see how they travel and see how they roll. Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s some helpful hints. You know, if this person has 50 listings in the area, they’re probably not the dingbat that this person is. So there’s a few things that are, I’m not blaming. I don’t, I forgot the, the person’s name. I’m not blaming you…
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. James,
Steven Jack Butala:
James at all. I don’t think he did anything wrong. I think that there’s all kinds of stuff that can go on with people. That’s fine. But there’s some ways that ways to, I think maybe reduce the risk. That’s all.
Jill K DeWit:
Are we going to talk about that now or on the show?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah let’s do the show.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic. Who exactly are you doing business with? This is the meat of the show, is that better?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I would call it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Listen to little miss stickler today about timeframes and marriage and stuff. It’s total role reversal. Is it like this in your house? Sometimes there’s just a total role reversal of stuff that goes on.
Jill K DeWit:
Like just keep to the script buddy. Let’s just keep on time here today. Just kidding. No. Okay. Back to James though. Cause this all applies, who you’re doing business with when you’re doing business with agents. That’s what I look for. I look for someone who’s nosy area has many completed sales in the area for like kind properties and similar prices that I would gather that I would like to have. So that’s how I start and I’ll pick out three and then I have a phone conversation with them.
Steven Jack Butala:
So in every state and a lot of municipalities, but for every state, for sure, there’s a governing authority over real estate agents. It’s called the Department of Real Estate and they keep a very tight lid on complaint driven stuff. And so one of my comments in here was all it would take is filling off one form on a website. Saying this guy is not [crosstalk 00:05:44] ethically practicing, representing me.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
And boy, that would put the brakes on that. In fact, what I actually suggested before you go do that before you go rat this guy out, which I’m not a big fan of it’s just is give him an out, say if you can cancel this or I’m going to escalate it.
Jill K DeWit:
We’re going to get on the same page, or we’re going to cancel this. You pick.
Steven Jack Butala:
By the way, there is no same page. It’s my page. I own land.
Jill K DeWit:
True.
Steven Jack Butala:
You just go do what I tell you to do. And so this day and age, these real estate agents, a lot of them have gotten they’re they’re beating their chest because there’s, they’re making too much money. it’s always been that way. But particularly now because everything sells. So my point about the department of real estate is that you can check on real estate agents or anybody in the real estate business who has any type of license very quickly. It’s all public information that you can look up within minutes on the internet. Same thing, the governing authority. I can’t remember the name for people who write mortgages and all that. You can find out whether or not they’re crooks really, really quickly.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, this is not the main story, but Jill and I have been, we’ve been a guest on a person’s show who I won’t name and he’s very prevalent out there. And so before it used to be, when we got asked to be on someone else’s show someone else’s podcast, we would check him out. And so I did, this was a lot, few years ago, three years ago. And I checked out this person and it’s like, well felony number one, he was convicted of this felony number two. Did it stop us from going on the guy’s show? No, and actually we got a lot of notoriety out of it and nobody signed any contracts or not going [crosstalk 00:07:19].
Jill K DeWit:
Afterwards, I like the guy he’s really a nice person.
Steven Jack Butala:
Take the extra step to get to know who you’re actually doing. If you’re going to, especially all you funders out there that are in our group, there’s a lot of people who do deal funding see who you’re writing checks for. Not necessarily in the Land Academy group, but just take one extra step. Who is this person?
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s my story. And I’ll try to be brief and make it entertaining, although it’s very sad and tragic. A lot of years ago, many, many years ago, way, way before I had a business partner, I was just a one person show in a back condo bedroom. I bought a ton of pop after doing probably two years of driving around the country, buying and selling tax deeds and then selling them on the internet, namely eBay. I got the bright idea to contact real estate agents and see if they had any property that they bought and it worked.
Steven Jack Butala:
I sent everybody note and I bought a ton of property in Northern Arizona for $175, I think a property ish, something like that. Some number 275, there was a lot of them several hundred and sold them on the internet. I bought them for like two or $300 and sold them for $3,000 each. In the end it was half a million dollars that I actually generated in profit. And so back then buying something on eBay was very inefficient. This is way before PayPal, or really even the prevalence of credit card processing online. We were sending checks. I would, I would close an auction that would send a check, you know how that went. So I found a credit card processor that was dialed into this and I signed a deal. Didn’t really read it. Do you know this story?
Jill K DeWit:
I remember is this, I think I know where you’re going with this.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, this person started collecting all my money and just keeping it.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep, I remember this.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I would call just like this. That’s what this story reminded me of that I would call this person enraged and they would just laugh on the phone at me and they’re like, read your contract there’s nothing you can do. I’m keeping your money.
Jill K DeWit:
They get to hold it for X amount of time because we want to make sure nothing’s going to come back, it was months and months.
Steven Jack Butala:
We never got it back in the end. Well the second time it happened, Joe was involved. So in the end he kept a 100,000 dollars. And I generated between I think probably four, $500,000 and I could have kept a lot more. I could have [crosstalk 00:09:47] Yeah. Made a lot more. So even now this gets me heated up. So you just need to know who you’re doing business with. And it’s now easier than ever to find out, especially when you’re signing your name not so much with your business partner here. Not so much with, I don’t know, but I think if you’re lending people money or your partner shipping on people’s deals, it might be good to find out if they’re career money raisers instead of career land investors.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. Well the nice thing too is it’s if you are lending money back to that situation, you just mentioned. If you’re lending money on a property, I feel good as long as I’m not a percentage of it. If you’re you’re tied in, if like you and I split the property, oh, we’re locked in.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
And you decide, no, I don’t think that’s a good price. I don’t want to sign. I’m not selling. I’m like great. But if my name’s all on the property, which it usually is, I’m usually funding a hundred percent. So my name’s on the deed anyway, I still get to call the shots.
Steven Jack Butala:
Right.
Jill K DeWit:
Which is nice. So you have, you have that as a cushion, if you’re a funder. And then how about the flip side? What if you’re the person that’s not the funder and you’re the deal manager. You found the deal and then your funder decides, no, this is not how I want it to go. And you did all the work. You need to vet them and make sure they’re good and legit. And you’re on the same team. You know, even though you have a contract, hopefully you sign the con…What’s so funny?
Steven Jack Butala:
Just trying to make this positive.
Jill K DeWit:
I am [crosstalk 00:11:20] but I want you to make sure you guys have a contract together, do one deal. That’s why I also too [crosstalk 00:11:26] say don’t do 10, do one deal together. See how it goes. Make sure you guys work well together. And then go do more don’t start out of the gate with a, Hey let’s go get an LLC together and do all that. Get all embedded with each other and then find out that we don’t agree. That’s not good.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Being on an LLC with a partner that you don’t know a lot about, is like getting out of a messed up marriage. You’re going to pay.
Jill K DeWit:
I knew that was going to come up.
Steven Jack Butala:
I mean there’s all kinds of stuff that that’s. So you’re so tied into versus doing a land deal where it’s like, I’ll put up the money. You do the work, that’s the end of it.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
And if you screw it all up, I get the land cause I paid for it. And so good luck. And believe me, [crosstalk 00:12:15] we’ve been on outside of that side of that.
Jill K DeWit:
And here’s how long we all agreed on that it should take to sell it. Here’s the price that we’re all agreeing on done. It’s good. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week. You can find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called how improving your mailer yield is fiction. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
Improving your mailer yield is fiction. I’m a little curious.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m teaching a class right now. It’s called, Get Your Mailer Out. And it falls under the phrase intensive. It’s an intensive class for people who want step by step instruction from me live to get their mail out…
Jill K DeWit:
Deep dive.
Steven Jack Butala:
To get their mailer out. And so with every new person, especially that on the technical side, the Jack side of this there’s a floods and floods and floods of questions like this. Well, you explain it this way, Jack. You do this, this, and this. This is how you find a good location to buy a property. And then this is how you scrub the data down. But even if you did it this way, wouldn’t it be better to which I say maybe. And I’ll talk about it tomorrow.
Jill K DeWit:
You’re cracking me up to today. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you found our content valuable and we appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button.
Steve and Jill Together:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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