We Now Use Real Estate Agents or Fixed Price MLS on Every Deal (HA 1650)
We Now Use Real Estate Agents or Fixed Price MLS on Every Deal (HA 1650)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show. I’m sorry, the House Academy Show today. Entertaining real estate investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit. And we’re putting up with his allergies again. Broadcasting from the valley of sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how we now use real estate agents or fixed price MLS on every deal.
Jill DeWit:
I’m going to do that every time. There’s something oh, sorry. Allergies.
Steven Jack Butala:
Nobody knows what you mean now though.
Jill DeWit:
Well, if you listened Monday and Tuesday, you do.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. So you have to go back and listen. It’s funny.
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:
Amy T wrote, “Just starting out in Land Academy and in the process of watching all the wonderful videos. Would the more experienced members suggest starting out with an inexpensive land and make some mistakes before moving to infill lots?” What did they say?
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, I want you to answer please.
Jill DeWit:
Oh, what do I think?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. What would you do? If you’re brand new? You’re into it, she’s into it. What do you do? You buy little properties and just see what happens or do you buy bigger properties and kind of go for it?
Jill DeWit:
Comfort zone. I think it’s your comfort zone. Because some people walk into, this is how I roll, I’m going to walk in saying, “Oh, I got this. Good, bad or otherwise, I’m going to make it happen.” My head might be a little too big in some situations but I walk in with a lot of confidence in a lot of situations, most and say, “All right, what’s the fastest way for me to take what I know right now and make some real money?” So if that’s my attitude, I’m going to go right away, start following the steps and I’m going to mail out and go for some bigger properties, knowing that doesn’t matter how much money I have, because there’s plenty of people on this group that is going to fund it. I’m going to find a rocking deal. I’m going to use somebody else’s money. I’m going to make 50 grand on my first deal and split it with the guy and now I got 25, then I’m going to do it again and again. Now I got a hundred thousand. I’m going to go, “All right. Now, what do I want to do? How do I want to do this? Do I want to fund somebody else?” That’s how I want to go.
Jill DeWit:
But not everyone has that confidence. They’re like, “I don’t know. I’m nervous. I do want to make sure I like it. I do want to make sure that this is for me, because there’s a lot of moving parts. I like your idea, the way you guys did it. I’ve got $10,000 set aside. I’m going to buy 10 $1,000 properties. I’m going to double those and then I’m going to get all the kinks out and now I’m going to go do what that guy did or what Jill did kind of thing, whatever.” So I don’t think there’s a wrong way, it’s just whatever you’re comfortable with.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve never in my life accomplished anything worthwhile within my comfort zone. I’m going through this right now, because I’m recording Land Academy 3.0 for release in January and I’m breezing through it, quite honestly. And here’s why, because when we did the first one, the Cashflow from Land Program in 2015, we had a very, very low budget. If you watch it, you can see that. And I had to-
Jill DeWit:
I’m sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
I had to at my age.
Jill DeWit:
I’m so sorry. No, it was not recorded on our cell phones.
Steven Jack Butala:
Not that this is real high budget, but.
Jill DeWit:
This is true. Yeah. What’s changed?
Steven Jack Butala:
I had to learn from scratch at my age, Adobe Premier, Adobe Audition.
Jill DeWit:
I’m pretty proud of you, by the way.
Steven Jack Butala:
And Photoshop. So thank you. So that took months and months itself.
Jill DeWit:
Oh yes. That was fun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Now we have a template. We’ve got House Academy 1.0, Land Academy 1.0.
Jill DeWit:
We have people that can do this.
Steven Jack Butala:
Land Academy 2.0. We have a bunch of post editing people. I’m just breezing through it. And the raw video and audio files, you can hear them and see them. And we actually use lights now.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. There’s no landscaper walking behind you with a window so we’re back lit.
Steven Jack Butala:
So believe me, and we didn’t need do this. It was all, we were already doing fine buying and selling land.
Jill DeWit:
Exactly. You asked, you got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
So get out of your comfort zone. Not just you Amy, but everybody. Just pull yourself, it’s almost January. This is the time of year where it’s like, you know what? If I’m going to make some changes in my life, I’m going to make some changes.
Jill DeWit:
Uh-oh. Now I’m nervous.
Steven Jack Butala:
Again, I keep coming back to this member recently who joined probably six months ago and sent out 50,000 letters, with no real estate experience at all, with amazing success and they’re doing tons of deals.
Jill DeWit:
First initial start with an H?
Steven Jack Butala:
It doesn’t matter, but.
Jill DeWit:
Okay. All right.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not picking on you, Amy at all. I’m kind of picking on Jill, just whatever your comfort zone is, get out of it.
Jill DeWit:
Get out of it and get over it. Great advice, babe.
Steven Jack Butala:
Again we just had a bunch of houseful of people and they stayed here, some of them stayed here for a week over the, because Jill had, this is a new house for us this year and Jill had to get that Norman Rockwell holiday experience out of her system.
Jill DeWit:
I did.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so everybody, of course in that house has got a different personal body temperature. And so everyone was, I should have filmed it. Everyone was out of their comfort zone in their personal body temperature. This is Arizona, we should have the doors open. It’s not like Michigan where it really is cold or it really is hot.
Jill DeWit:
Oh my God. That’s so flipping funny. Oh gosh. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic. How we use real estate agents in a fixed or a fixed price listing or MLS on every deal. This is the meat of the show. Meat of Jill’s show.
Jill DeWit:
I feel bad saying this, but you don’t know this, it’s not every deal.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh really?
Jill DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Darn.
Jill DeWit:
So he comes in this week with all these things. This is a new way, so you know what happened? What happened when he wrote the topic and we sit down, it’s changed.
Steven Jack Butala:
It changes in 18 minutes.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Pretty much. Exactly. It has changed. Because you know why, here’s one of them. Here’s one reason why. Truth time and then I’ll tell you more about this topic. But truth time, I have an agent right now that I thought we connected, but we’re not on the same page it turns out. I told her what I want. And she’s kind of pushing back a little bit on my numbers and what I want to list it at and she’s dragging her feet. And now she’s asking me to do some work. And the first thing she said out of her mouth, you’re going to love this. And we never signed a list agreement, because it took her three days to get it to me. I’m like, well now I’m not excited kind of thing. Like the closet lady. Anyway.
Steven Jack Butala:
That could mean so many things. Like the lady that lives in Jill’s closet, she’s unhappy today.
Jill DeWit:
The lady was going to design my closet who dragged her feet too long and now I lost interest. So it’s the same like that. So this agent, well, here’s what she said. We’re talking about it and like, “So what are your plans? What are you thinking?” She’s like, “Well, the first thing I’m going to do is get some neighbor letters out.” So I’m like, “All right, dah, dah, dah.” And then I realized she took three days to get this to me. How long is going to take her to get some neighbor letters out? And last time I checked, I can do neighbor letters. So actually that’s, oh, that’s today. Speaking of which, I’m writing myself a note because one of our team members is going to have me that thing ready to review.
Jill DeWit:
So I did my own little thing. The other day we were on a long call that didn’t need my participation and while we’re sitting there, I made my own little map of the area and put the property on there. This is cool. And I put for my neighbor letter, so I’m going to include this, all the other properties around there, what they’re listed for and showing how great this property is and the view and things like that. It’s going to go in with my letter. So the point, that was one example of I’m going to try to sell this thing myself. I don’t need no stinking agent, especially in this area. It’s a very small, it’s a suburb of a bigger area, which is beautiful. And I want to get someone really local.
Steven Jack Butala:
That town is one of the, I’m helping you on your, this is a please don’t listen to audience, Jill and I are going to have a meeting here.
Jill DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
That town is one of the destinations in Arizona for fly fishing. So that should be in the title maybe.
Jill DeWit:
Okay, good to know. Thank you. So, where was I going with that?
Steven Jack Butala:
Which is why maybe-
Jill DeWit:
Oh, so it was hard to find an agent. I wanted make sure I got an agent who really was local to the area, not one that drives an hour and a half, because everybody else drives an hour and a half to that area. I don’t want to do that. So back to the topic, are we using real estate agents? Yeah. And you know what, I’m going into markets, knowing that, I’m going into markets before the mail goes out even, and having conversation with agents and lining them up and making sure that we’re on the same page.
Jill DeWit:
So how do you find a good real estate agent? There’s three things I want you to know. What I want you to do is you’re thinking about this new market. You’re doing your, what do you call it?
Steven Jack Butala:
Murder test.
Jill DeWit:
Not murder test. No. And your new way of trolling.
Steven Jack Butala:
Trolling.
Jill DeWit:
Trolling. Okay. As you’re trolling and looking at areas to send mail, look around at listings, because you’re doing that, you’re getting a feel for the market. You’re on Zillow or Realtor, whatever. You’re going to find some agents that go, “Wow, that’s a beautiful listing. Look at that lead photo. Holy cow. They have have 20 photos in here. This person’s great. Oh my gosh.”
Steven Jack Butala:
And 20 listings.
Jill DeWit:
And a drone shot. This person’s doing drones. All right. I’m writing down this agent’s name. Do it when you’re at this moment so you don’t have to go back and repeat all this. That’s number one, they have beautiful listings. You like them. They have a lot of listings and click to the sell tab and see they’re selling stuff. And they’re land people. This is great.
Jill DeWit:
Number two, pick up the phone and call them. How responsive are they? That’s huge. Do they answer the phone? Do they take three days to call you back or they never call you back? That happens too.
Jill DeWit:
And then number three is connection. Do they connect with you? Are you on the same page?
Steven Jack Butala:
Man, that’s huge.
Jill DeWit:
That’s the hardest one. I talked a couple days ago about one that we’re not on the same page about the price, but she’s doing what I ask and I appreciate that. I might and if this works out, like we think it’s going to work out, she’s going to be kissing and hugging me when she gets double the commission that she thought she was going to get. I’m having to teach her to raise your standards. This property’s worth more than this and you can sell it.
Steven Jack Butala:
You make a good point. When you hire a real estate agent, they need to be managed. Micromanaged in a lot of cases, unless you’ve done a bunch of deals with them. Jill’s got a agent right now where the guy just, he flies on his own and he brings back offers for her to look at and he doesn’t need any help. His marketing’s great. And so that’s a great scenario, we’re actually building a little company around him. He doesn’t know it, but we are. But just because you hire a real estate agent, it doesn’t mean you haven’t, you can’t, you don’t just, you didn’t outsource it and walk away.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah, you don’t just do hands off. Yay. Let me know when you need me to sign something.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so in a lot of these cases, she’ll never use these agents again and they don’t know that. It’s too bad.
Jill DeWit:
It is too bad. 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, well it’s Jack Thursday and I’m going to talk about breaking my own rules and how it equals personal growth. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit:
I’m excited for this. This is going to be good.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what you do. You grow, you adapt and overcome like the Marines.
Jill DeWit:
I like that.
Steven Jack Butala:
The kids don’t understand that. The kids are like last week this is what, yeah, but everything changed since last week and it’s going to change next week.
Jill DeWit:
And that’s okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so there are some people in this world, a lot of them, I may or may not have had relationships with them in the past, that are inflexible, where it’s just one way and that’s it and change makes them uncomfortable. And we’re all about change, you and I. Constantly adapting and changing to whatever the market tells us to do.
Jill DeWit:
Thank goodness. That’s what Land Academy is about now. That’s how we’re doing 3.0. There are some changes. There’s some things you need to know.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s why these programs are updated every one or two years, which I’m going through right now with 3.0 because a lot’s changed.
Jill DeWit:
I’m excited. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, we would love to connect with you tomorrow on Clubhouse. So join me and usually you too, the first and third Thursday of the month at 10:00 AM Pacific time. If you’re not sure where and when or how, log in on Clubhouse, find the Land Investing Club. Join that. Follow me, follow Steven and you’ll get notified when we go live.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.
Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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