Jack Thursday – Land Academy Word Association Test (LA 1656)
Jack Thursday – Land Academy Word Association Test (LA 1656)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
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 is Jack Thursday. And I’m going to talk about this little game that I devised called land academy word association test.
Jill K DeWit:
Can I ask what the outcome is supposed to be of this?
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, okay. I mean, since you brought it up, you should take this question real quick and then I’ll get all into it. But here’s a little prelude.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
If I say customer, and you say no. If I say, not you necessarily, Jill, because you won’t. But if I say, I don’t know, 10 or 15 of these words, like customer $50,000 a month. Ranch land. Nope, nope, nope, nope .
Jill K DeWit:
Is this to help you decide if you’re a land person or not?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Ah, Change. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Ferrari.
Jill K DeWit:
Nope.
Steven Jack Butala:
Calendar.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know? Exactly.
Jill K DeWit:
Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the land investors.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:
Tony wrote. I have a signed agreement from an individual who bought a property on a Sheriff’s Tax resale deed in Texas. What issues could I come across if I buy this?
Steven Jack Butala:
All right, this is a very common thing. Full disclosure. I’ve done thousands and thousands and thousands of transactions like this with almost no incident at all, but like everything, you just need to know the facts. So what happens is people stop paying their taxes or they die or both. This is property taxes now. This is not income tax. These are property taxes, and they’re associated with the land, not the person. Income taxes are associated with a person. Debt on property is associated with a person in the form of a personal guarantee. So this gets very misunderstood. If Jill has a piece of property, she’s owned it for 10 years. She stopped paying taxes a lot of years ago. I purchase it from her, and she says, great. Here’s the deed. Congratulations. Thanks for the check. Good luck.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I inherit the taxes that our associated with that property stay with the property. So now she’s done, and she wipes her hands on the whole thing. Now it’s my job to make good on the property taxes as a new owner. So what happened here is somebody stopped paying the taxes altogether. There was no purchaser sale. It went all the way back to the taxing authority, according to state statutes, sometimes local statutes, but mostly state. And the sheriff in Texas literally stood on the court steps. Maybe the sheriff themselves did it, or maybe they hired a company. Sometime lawyers do it in Texas. And they sold the property. Well, Tony here’s buying it from somebody who bought it at that sale. And he’s wondering what the problem is. So here’s the issue. It all comes down to chain of title. In the eyes of the chain of title, this property has a break in the chain of title. And meaning that it didn’t convey over its life with the title insurance policy, a title insurance policy, a title insurance policy.
Jill K DeWit:
Because they had to take it back, like forcefully take it back.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Got foreclosed on is what happened for property taxes, tax lien. So now he’s buying the property, and he wants to, as much as he can, Tony here wants to, as much as he can.
Jill K DeWit:
Protect himself.
Steven Jack Butala:
Market the property with marketable title. That’s the whole key here. And so there’s all kinds of debates about whether this is valid or not, but like everything, there’s an app for that. So there’s a company in California called Tax Title indeed.
Jill K DeWit:
Tax Title service.com. I think our services.
Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s not cheap and not fast, but they will rectify this and issue a title insurance policy. So you can list it just like you would list your primary residence.
Jill K DeWit:
What’s funny about this, I have a deal right now in escrow where there’s a broker involved, and it came up, and they’re like, “Oh oh, we can’t get tile insurance. So here’s what the escrow company’s doing.” And they’re like, “They’re going to write, they’re going to give all the information that they can. And then the buyer can decide if he wants to move forward.” I’m like, “What are you guys talking about?” I literally had to educate everyone and go, “What are you guys all worried about? These guys can do it.” Will you guys tell. I said, I told Art, because there’s a broker on both ends. I said, “Our broker needs to tell that guy their broker, problem solved. Just do it after the fact. Here’s who you call. Let’s move on and get this done.” And they’re like, oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
So you did their job.
Jill K DeWit:
I did their job.
Steven Jack Butala:
Like always.
Jill K DeWit:
Like always.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today is Jack Thursday. And we’re going to play the land academy word association game/test. This is why you’re listening. I’m going to say a word. And you’re going to in your head say yes or no.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Well, do you want me to say it out loud or no?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, no, no, no.
Jill K DeWit:
In my head say yes or no. And I’m just…
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a radio show. So just be as silent as you can. Okay?
Jill K DeWit:
All right, in your head. All right. You’re going to ask me a word, and I’m going to say yes or no, based on the first thing that comes into my head.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well just, spinach no.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know?
Jill K DeWit:
All right. Ready.
Steven Jack Butala:
Ranch land.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Absolutely. Farming.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Freedom.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Ferraris.
Jill K DeWit:
No.
Steven Jack Butala:
Data.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Title insurance.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Escrow.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Real estate agents.
Jill K DeWit:
No. Well, yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Necessary.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Subdivisions.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Minor splits.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tax lien.
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Congratulations. You passed.
Jill K DeWit:
What do I win?
Steven Jack Butala:
If you said on the other end of this, a listener or a watcher.
Jill K DeWit:
I get the same sitting in this seat.
Steven Jack Butala:
And you’re like, no, I don’t ever want to deal with a tax lien in my entire life.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, that’s fine. No big deal.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll give you an example. We used to have a bunch of people over that stayed with us from California, a bunch of our friends. And so like any group of people, they’re not all exactly the same. And so one day…
Jill K DeWit:
Do you mean…
Steven Jack Butala:
They have different preferences and choices. Thank God.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. And they drink different drinks.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s one point where they’re spilling drinks on each other on accident.
Jill K DeWit:
There is that.
Steven Jack Butala:
But so at the end of the stay, we all had a blast. At end of the stay, there’s a guy that we’ve been doing deals with for a while. We’ve been involved with him, and so I wanted to take him, drive a couple hours out, show him some basically trailer parks, and why I think they actually, we could add some value and make some money. And she really wanted to come.
Jill K DeWit:
Me.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, not you. You needed to come but another person in our group really wanted to come.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I had to sit her down and say, we’re going to look at maybe some of the worst trailer parks there ever was, and so she ultimately decided not to come. And so if I did this test with her and started saying, tax liens, escrow, calendars, organization.
Steven Jack Butala:
Nope, nope, nope, nope, no. No freaking way is that’s how that would’ve gone.
Jill K DeWit:
I understand.
Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s what this test is designed for. I love all that stuff. I love being organized. I love getting up early and pounding stuff out. I love being Jill’s partner. I love doing mailers and data, and I love making a tours of money. I got in this debate because it’s a holiday season. I’m talking to my friends about all this stuff, and there’s cocktails there right now at this time of year.
Jill K DeWit:
Really?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. And we were talking about the stock market. And this guy, he’s at least 20 years older than me, and he’s just been on my case about investing in the stock market for as long as I can remember. I’ve known him for more than 25 years.
Steven Jack Butala:
So I finally said this. When I go to buy a piece of land, and I gave him a real recent example of a property that we purchased for, I think $40,000. We actually did a few simple improvements to it and made it one APN into five APS and put it back on the market for about $380,000 total. I know it’s going to happen. I know I have with all the soft costs and everything about 50 grand into this, I know I’m going to sell it for north of 300. I just know it’s going to happen. I don’t care what goes on in the stock market. I can’t say that.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, I understand.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a huge appeal to the stock, and he doesn’t want to hear that especially guys that are older like that. And I include myself in that. The older you get for whatever reason, your mind starts to close. You have a very open mind when you’re young, as you should.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what’s funny about that? This comes very easily to women. Do you know why?
Steven Jack Butala:
Why?
Jill K DeWit:
Because we naturally do not like risk.
Steven Jack Butala:
I can’t stand risk.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. Well, I’m just saying risk.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know risk is a word on the test.
Jill K DeWit:
I think of stock market, and that’s risk. It is kind of legalized gambling. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. So I don’t. We women make different decisions. I argue we’re better in a lot of these decisions. Hence, the book I’m reading right now. To going into a deep dive about it, we just avoid that stuff. So the stuff that we do… We are off topic, the word association game.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think we are at all. I think this is totally on topic.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
The word association game is supposed to separate. It’s supposed to be an indicator, not the only indicator, but an indicator about whether you are innately, interested in buying, selling land.
Jill K DeWit:
We were going to do this one time, but we didn’t. In the beginning of our ebook, we talked about having, or I did, I talked about having like 20 questions there. And then you could do take the little quiz and then find out if you’ve got what it takes to do this. And that’s one of them. And one of the things that you’ve got to have what it takes, I think, and it’s kind of to do a lot of things, but I love challenges. And I think it separates the men from the boys or the women from the girls. When things come up and I go, all right, I know how to get around this. I know it’s going to take an extra week. I know I have to do this, this and this.
Jill K DeWit:
Like the stuff that we’re doing right now. We’re doing some things with the county and these splits that are taking normally four months. Now it’s taking like nine months, and people don’t have the stomach for it. And sometimes they don’t have the money for it. We know we paid cash for it. We know what’s going to happen. We planned for this. I don’t care how long it takes. It’s going to be fine. But anyway, it’s things like that, that I love those challenges. And I know that makes us great at what we do. And I know that keeps a lot of people out of this.
Steven Jack Butala:
It always changes too. So I say that when you get older, your mind starts to close. That’s only about certain stuff. My mind is constantly getting, and I welcome this.
Jill K DeWit:
Me too.
Steven Jack Butala:
Reopened and relearning things about buying and and selling land. And data and tech tools, I mean, that should be one thing. If you’re not in into computers…
Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t care how hard you try. We’ve had people. I remember at the live event… This is a big topic. This is years and years and years ago right when we started. There were some people that were not and never had any hope of being sitting in front of the keyboard and naturally working for eight hours a day for a lot of reasons. One of them’s tech challenged. One of them’s that’s just not what they’re going to do. They’ve never done that their entire life so. I will put this whole test together, and I’ll maybe make it like 50 yes or no’s.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, you know what it is? A lot of it too, it’s change. You have to embrace change and be ready for it because even right now, what the county wants and how they’re going to let you do this and zoning. Things change, and you have to be… Technology changes, rules change, laws change. Dream it up.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve done this. I do this in many counties. We go in and buy properties that are conducive for whatever reason to minor splits. Or you can do some stuff that’s on paper, usually not on site at all, just with paper, and you can create some pretty serious value there. Well, the first thing I ask them is… First thing I ever ask any county long before I send mail out is, is it possible to do a minor split? And see how they respond. Not just to one person, but several. If they say something like, oh yeah, we do this all the time especially down in one section. Actually special section on our website’s so popular. And all you got to do is this, this and this. And by the way, this is the survey company we love to work with.
Steven Jack Butala:
That is an open armed welcome to me to come in, work with everybody, laugh. Jill sends some streets, get to know everyone, start doing minor splits, making some money. And so their business is happy about that. That’s not been the experience with many, many counties. They can’t stand it. The people that work there have some agenda about, who knows what it is. It might be…
Jill K DeWit:
Work.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, it might be work. It might be preserving the environment. In their eyes, splitting properties is a bad thing and not a good thing or anti-establishment. That could be all kinds of stuff this day and age where the board of supervisors at that county, the people that work there don’t necessarily reflect the long term vision of the board of supervisors or the people that got elected to run the place.
Jill K DeWit:
Makes me think of the Yellowstone speech that he gave the other night that John Dutton gave. There are people like that. Those of you watch Yellowstone know what I’m talking about.
Steven Jack Butala:
What’s the speech? You share with us, please.
Jill K DeWit:
The speech is he gets up and says… Because he is going to run for an office. I don’t want to blow it for people who haven’t watched this week’s episode. But the speech he says was, “Look, if you’re all about progress, don’t vote for me.” It was kind of funny. So I want to do some more of the word association before we wrap this up. Do you have anything else you want to?
Steven Jack Butala:
No. No, that was it. Sure.
Jill K DeWit:
Let me think about a word associate. I’m going to give a couple for you, and let you say, agree, don’t agree, like, don’t like, yes, no, however you want to answer. Let’s just see. Mexican food.
Steven Jack Butala:
Nope.
Jill K DeWit:
Mexico.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. I love Mexico. I do.
Jill K DeWit:
Spinach.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.
Jill K DeWit:
Italian food.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.
Jill K DeWit:
Calendars.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.
Jill K DeWit:
Spreadsheets.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.
Jill K DeWit:
Shopping.
Steven Jack Butala:
Nope.
Jill K DeWit:
Holidays.
Steven Jack Butala:
Nope.
Jill K DeWit:
Children.
Steven Jack Butala:
Such is life.
Jill K DeWit:
We’ll end it on that. You had to think about that.
Steven Jack Butala:
I love children who are just about to no longer be minors. I love that window right there, 17 and a half to 24.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, then they’re not minors at 18.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I mean. They’re just about not to be minors.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. That’s hilarious. This was good. Happy you could join us today.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, that’s it?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Are you ready?
Steven Jack Butala:
No, I think we could do a whole… This is supposed to be a whole show on this.
Jill K DeWit:
Do you want to go more?
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s fun to be the recipient of it and not the… But it needs to be more land based, so. No, it’s okay. I mean, we made our point.
Jill K DeWit:
Happy you joined us today. Five days a week, you could find us here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow is Jill Friday. And she’s going to talk about quitting like Prince Harry. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
So I made this comment. I was just like, do you know what’s going on in the press? I don’t know why I was just reading on my phone. Like what the heck, you see this? I think this is what happened. I’m on my phone. I go, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”And I have this look on my face and you’re like, what? I’m like, “Listen to this one.” And I tell you. And you’re like, “That’s a show.” So that’s exactly how this happened. And I will explain it tomorrow. And thank you for tuning in. We hope you find our content valuable. We really appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, like we say it a lot. We’re almost going to hit 10,000.
Steven Jack Butala:
We hit it already.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, we did?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, nobody told me. Well, now I want…
Steven Jack Butala:
Actually, you know what? I was going to make a big, huge deal out of it right after this with our whole staff because they really worked hard at that.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I didn’t know we hit it. Well anyway, we still want you to check out our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button. And now we’re going for 20,000. We’re Steve and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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