We Now Site Visit on Our Own Properties (LA 1648)
We Now Site Visit on Our Own Properties (LA 1648)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack 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.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about, we now visit all of our properties.
Jill DeWit:
The ones we can get to. Wait, wait, I want to call this AK… What’d you call this week?
Steven Jack Butala:
I called it breaking our own rules.
Jill DeWit:
I call it eating our words week.
Steven Jack Butala:
This week we’re going to talk all about how really, what we’re talking about is how our business model has evolved.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Jack Butala:
But yeah, I mean, stuff that we talked about on the show like a thousand episodes ago. Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
Don’t listen to that. This is better.
Jill DeWit:
It’s funny. We started land academy seven years ago now. I don’t even… Going on seven years, I think, ago. But you started this business model in the nineties.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
So, there’s been several changes over the decades-
Steven Jack Butala:
Lot of changes last week.
Jill DeWit:
… that we’ve been in this business. Exactly. Just like parenting, I got used to saying, “Not my kid,” and then of course, it’s my kid. I’m now saying that to you. “Oh, we don’t do that,” and I’m saying, “Yeah, now we do.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
Our staff is famous for saying, “Three weeks of ago you guys said we were supposed to do this, this, this and this.”
Jill DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, that was three weeks ago.
Jill DeWit:
That’s true. That changed.
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 DeWit:
[Yuri 00:01:42] wrote, “Got an accepted offer for a really weird parcel. It’s 4.5 acres. It’s a 4.5 acre island in the middle of a river. I was wondering if anyone had any experience dealing with properties like this.” These are great. I have. Yeah. We have. Go for it.
Steven Jack Butala:
A lot of people, including me, had a lot to say on discord about this. And I said, “I love these types of properties,” but here’s the thing. They’re almost never buildable.
Jill DeWit:
Sure.
Steven Jack Butala:
They have no access. All the things that we say… Again, this falls under all the stuff we… We say, “Never buy property that doesn’t have access,” and all of that. Yeah. This is never buildable. It’s not going to be buildable, that it doesn’t have access, but it’s so unique that people love these types of-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
I love to fish, and for five grand, I’d pick up a property like this just to say, “I own it.” As long as the taxes aren’t too small.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Maybe I use it two or three times-
Jill DeWit:
A year.
Steven Jack Butala:
… a year. And maybe I print the plat map up, frame it, put it in my office, and say, “I own an island.”
Jill DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the thing with these properties. They have to be crazy cheap, and you need to really disclose that, as my research shows, no access, super cool property, no access or boat access only, you’re never going to develop on it.
Jill DeWit:
And half of it floods-
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
… twice a year.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
You know, something like that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Completely. All the way over. Right?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
This case, this property was in Missouri, and it freezes.
Jill DeWit:
Oh. There you go.
Steven Jack Butala:
Honestly, if the river freezes over, it’s one of those situations, and you can walk to it. You’ve got a great property there.
Jill DeWit:
That’s [inaudible 00:03:22]. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Steven Jack Butala:
I asked him, and I said, “And would you do the steal in the section in discord?” And he did, and pricing just didn’t work.
Jill DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
Islands are cool.
Jill DeWit:
That’s awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
He also said in great detail, “The seller’s very willing to go down on the…” He signed the offer and sent it back.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
The seller did.
Jill DeWit:
And the seller said, “I’m very open to whatever. I just want to get rid of it.”
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. He might still get it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
It’s good.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, we now site visit all of our own properties. This is the meat of the show.
Jill DeWit:
Well, I would like to preface and say, I haven’t seen one in Idaho. I haven’t seen one in a couple places. It’s the current transactions we’re working on, we will track. It’s [inaudible 00:04:08] we have an RV. Think I’m kidding?
Steven Jack Butala:
No, I’m-
Jill DeWit:
I’m like, “Wait. Why are you laughing at me?” Do you want to go first, or you want me to go first?
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll go first.
Jill DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Look, how you site visit a property is directly associated to where you send mail.
Jill DeWit:
Right?
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a lot of properties all over the country that Jill and I buy… I shouldn’t have said all of our own properties, that we buy and sell without ever leaving our desk. And not too long ago I said, “Hey, if you’re leaving your desk, you’re losing money.” In general, if you’re starting out, that’s true. But I’ve started, not Jill, a subsection of the business where there’s certain little pockets of properties near us-
Jill DeWit:
Not Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, really, over my weekend, idiocy-
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
… on the internet, and research found pockets of properties that are undervalued, and so we go down and see them.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steven Jack Butala:
Or up and see them, or east or west.
Jill DeWit:
I do get to go on that part.
Steven Jack Butala:
We site visit a lot of property, and allows me to spend more. In the end, I spend more on them, because I know we can make more. That’s really why I’m going out there. I want to see, can you drive right up to it? And can I spend more?
Jill DeWit:
Tell me when it’s my turn?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, go ahead.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. Here are my turns. I have three points. One is, yeah, we do this when it’s local, relatively local, or on a path of a trip that we might be taking, or we might even detour to do this stuff, because it’s worth it. And it’s fun, by the way. And why are we doing this for me? I love to see what’s possible nearby. I can look at neighboring properties, and see what other builders are doing. It’s stuff that you cannot get from Google Earth, even though as current as the pictures are, it’s not going to show the bulldozer on there right now that you just rolled up on on the lot next door, and you’re going, “Whoa, this is what’s really going on in this area. Now I’ve got to have a better feel.”
Jill DeWit:
For me, my third point is, it’s also for me a great opportunity to either put a sign in the ground myself, take a picture of me standing there, which I have one for you and I the other day I haven’t posted yet, but I will, standing on the property, basically, and talk about a great sales thing for your buyers to see you standing there. Then you can really say, “I know what the access is like. I just did it on Tuesday,” or collect realtors. You can drive around and see who’s got good showings. Every time we get in the car, this is true, our… Frank, you know what I’m talking about? Because Frank just had to do this with us. We’re in the car, whoever’s not driving is shouting out values. Okay. This is what that just sold for. This is what this is listed for. Look what’s over here, and I’m talking all property types, not just land. I’m looking at SFRs, because you may or may not have been on one of our Thursday shows. If you’re not a member, you are welcome to join us any week on one of our Thursday-
Steven Jack Butala:
Webinars.
Jill DeWit:
… webinars with our members. Sometimes if I don’t have enough data for land, we will look at houses. I’m like, “All right. Well, what are the houses selling for?” Because if the houses sells for $65,000, probably not going to buy a piece of dirt for 50 kind of thing. But if the houses are selling for $300,000, now 50 or a higher number is going to make more sense. I can justify it. That’s one of the things too. It’s great that we can really drive around and get a whole feel for the whole area, and make decisions about what we’re going to do next. Because that’s really what this is about.
Jill DeWit:
The most recent time we went driving around, there were three of us in the car, we came back with, “Huh. I might now look at infill lots. Huh. Look at what this multifamily thing went…” Because one of the guys that was with us in the car saw a multi-tenant unit kind of thing. For him to see this area, he was trying to see what we see with the land, and then for him to get some information about the values of what a fourplex, or an eightplex, and that kind of thing goes for was really great information that you wouldn’t necessarily think of. It’s just so great when you’re looking it on your phone, and you’re staring at it out the window.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
You can go, “People will pay this for that? Got it.”
Steven Jack Butala:
A lot of times on the Thursday webinar we do, would you do the steel? I always say, “Wow, this is…” When we review a deal, at times, I’m like, “This is The Land Academy Model.” The model is buy for 15 and sell for 30, buy for 30, sell for 60, and you know 60 is less than retail, way less, and you want to just keep moving it, and moving it, and moving it. For those types of properties, you don’t have to go there.
Jill DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
You just need to do all The Land Academy, how we direct or in the education, how we direct you to find these incredible deals and then resell them. Not for retail. What we’re talking about is a different model, and it’s not The Land Academy Model. We’ll call it the local model, where you really know the local market incredibly well.
Jill DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
And you have a super lock on how fast property sells and what it sells for, because you know real estate agents, you know escrow people, you’ve Jill-ified the whole area. They know who you are. They know what you do. They have no interest, which still baffles me, in sending mail out and never will. They just can’t figure it out or why, so it allows you to pay not 15 or 20%, which is what The Land Academy Model is, in the mailers. It’s closer to 60%, 60 or 70% in some cases, because you know the next day it’s going to sell for more than that.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And local to you. Depending on where you are, it may not be in your backyard, but local to you might be a day’s drive, and it might be worth it. You might do a day’s drive, spend the night.
Steven Jack Butala:
I still think that’s local.
Jill DeWit:
I do too. A day’s drive, spend the night, you spend the whole next day out in the field and getting to know the town and the locals, and then you spend that next night, and then you come back. I think that still makes a whole lot of sense, so don’t think that, “Well, shucks. Thanks Jack and Jill, I live in downtown Boston. That’s not going to work here for here,” but there’s going to be some places that are a day’s drive from wherever you are-
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
… that makes sense. 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 We Now Price Above 60%. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
Now I know where you were going with that comment. I’m like, “Where is he going with this one?” Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s just another niche.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
We still do the regular Land Academy Model all over the place. We still deal fund all over the place.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). True, and don’t go there. And I don’t see them.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
But we’re expanding.
Jill DeWit:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, and with your 60% model, this is going to tie into House Academy and stuff too.
Steven Jack Butala:
House Academy and mobile homes.
Jill DeWit:
Uh-huh (affirmative). [inaudible 00:11:26] lot. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable, and we appreciate your support. Don’t forget, if you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel, and hit the subscribe button.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We’re Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information-
Jill DeWit:
… and inspiration-
Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.
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