Jill Friday – How Much Land Research is Appropriate (LA 1737)
Jill Friday – How Much Land Research is Appropriate (LA 1737)
Transcript:
Jill K DeWit:
Steve and Jill here.
Steven Jack Butala:
Hello.
Jill K DeWit:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Stephen Jack Butala.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I’m Jill Dewitt. Happy Friday. Broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Jill K DeWit:
Today is Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about how much land research is appropriate.
Steven Jack Butala:
This came up because of a phone call, a phone call I had the other day with a really nice gentleman, who was doing a lot of research in what I think is not the right areas, and not enough research in the areas he should be thinking about and wanting to get into land investing, like what we’re doing. That’s what I want to cover today.
Jill K DeWit:
Are you going to tell us about his story?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Before we get into it-
Steven Jack Butala:
Nope. That’s it.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s the end of the show. I talked to a guy and he was.[crosstalk 00:00:45]
Steven Jack Butala:
I had a great call, it was awesome. It was great.
Jill K DeWit:
Talked to a guy and he was working on the wrong stuff.
Steven Jack Butala:
I got so much out of it. And so, anyway, that’s all I wanted share. No.
Jill K DeWit:
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. Back in the day, it was nearly impossible to find land without a mailing address, which is almost all the properties that we deal with. To solve this, we can now access a product that I developed, access all properties by assessor’s parcel number, even if they don’t have a mailing address. Like all of our products, we developed it for our own use and then released it to the public on a website when we cleaned it all up. In this case, we call it neighborscoop.com. If you want to find out more about this, go to neighborscoop.com or email us at support@landacademy.com.
Steven Jack Butala:
Greg wrote, “I have a deal which would possibly include four parcels and three different neighbors who all want to sell.” This is hilarious. Apparently it’s a very tight community. “Does anyone know if I’d be able to include all of them on one purchase agreement and close as one, or whether it’d be better off with separate purchase agreements for each owner? Also, one owner was wondering if he may be able to have the other neighbors’ quitclaim deed their properties over to him, so I can directly purchase all four properties from him under one transaction. I’m not sure if that would be complicated or drag things out even longer, though.” I wouldn’t do that. I’d have four different things and going on.
Jill K DeWit:
You’re breaking the chain of title, so let’s take a couple steps back. This is a huge opportunity.
Steven Jack Butala:
Good question.
Jill K DeWit:
This is a great opportunity to buy four properties. Four properties are better than one. As long as you’re very confident that all of these properties are super profitable and that they can support the costs to close these properties correctly.
Steven Jack Butala:
Are you saying that because all four of them want to sell, that sends up a red flag?
Jill K DeWit:
Yes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Thank you, because I was just now thinking about that too. Good observation. What’s going on in that area that they all want out?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s a little weird.
Jill K DeWit:
But you know, hey, it’s happened to us where it’s like, wow, these four, we got them for a great price. Again, listen to the show last Wednesday with Brandon where he’s, buy for 8,000, sell for 120 times two. Two properties next to each other. Let’s just assume that’s, that’s one of these deals. I would separately close.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’d get title policy through four separate transactions.
Jill K DeWit:
I would do for four purchase agreements, and I’m like, come on, I want to make them special, feel good and special private, and I might get a better deal with this guy than I do with that guy, because there’s some different stuff going on. I would do that. I don’t need them all-
Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.
Jill K DeWit:
Getting involved, then it’s just going to be a mess, too.
Steven Jack Butala:
Quitclaim deeds are… It’s hard to go back in time and fix that, if they’re real valuable property. You need a chain of title and that breaks the chain.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jill Friday, and she’s going to talk about how much land research is appropriate. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
I had a really nice phone call with a gentleman last week, and he’s thinking about joining Land Academy and he just had found us and only has a week’s worth of research in. He had not touched on our show yet. He hadn’t found the podcast yet, hadn.t really dove in. He was deciding between doing this. I don’t even know how he got on his radar, which is really interesting, or doing house flipping. I’m like, so first thing I’m going to say is, that was not enough education for me. Even if he’s like, I want to do Land Academy, I’m like, you know what? I need you to spend more time on this. I really want you to get in, and that’s what I told him. I said, “Please join our Thursday call. Please spend the next days, weeks reading, devouring everything you can get on our online website, landinvestors.com, get involved with the community and see this as the right people and the right thing and stuff.
Do a little more homework before you dive in. I really think that’s really important. Education, that’s one level of research you need to be thinking about in our world. The second, I have three different ones here. The second one is land research. That’s the stuff that we do every day. We’re in it. You know it, this is our business. We love it. We’re weird. It just some people they’re very weird. Because we just talk about this stuff like it’s the greatest thing. They’re like, what are you? It’s a piece of dirt. You do know you’re talking about a piece of dirt? I’m like, I know, isn’t it great? How pretty it is? They’re like, well where’s the cabin? Who cares? Look what’s possible. That’s how we see it.
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought but, here’s why it’s weird.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Because, the vast majority of people that believe that they’re in the real estate business are not.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
They’re in the interior design business.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
And then they’re decorators.
Jill K DeWit:
Maybe.
Steven Jack Butala:
Specifically with houses.
Jill K DeWit:
Got it. They don’t get it like we do.
Steven Jack Butala:
Right.
Jill K DeWit:
But there’s a lot of research and that’s the stuff that we do every day, all day, whether we realize it or not. I mean, Jack’s fun time is doing this, is doing research on new areas or new things we could be doing or ways to increase our yield, with our offers or something. I don’t know. Ways to run our businesses better.
Steven Jack Butala:
Where to send mail that’s different.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Why mobile homes in Southwestern part of the state are better than Northeastern part of the state. I’m obsessed with it.
Jill K DeWit:
Stuff like that. All kinds of weird things. I use the word weird a lot, but all times are good things. That’s what we’re doing. That’s a good research area that you… And I don’t want you to spend a lot of time on. What was so interesting to me was, this person, again, what sparked this conversation was, he was spending the majority of his research, right now, figuring out how to structure his company. I’m like, that’s the last thing I think about. He’s worrying about accountants. I know. This is where I’m going with this. He’s worried about, well, how do I… Do you have an LLC? Are you an S Corp? Are you this, is this? I’m like, hold on a moment. Before we even get there, that’s really pretty-
Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s do a deal.
Jill K DeWit:
I know, that’s what I’m saying. We’re putting the cart ahead of the horse. Let’s get some money coming in, make sure you like this, make sure you know what you’re doing. You can afford that, too. You don’t need to worry about structuring your business and your retirement, whatever that is. I’m not kidding. I’m like, wow. It was so interesting because it was all jumbled. I wanted to just have a light discussion about that today. Number one, research is good and I really do believe there’s no such thing as too much education. But make sure you’re working on the right thing at the right time. That’s my point. What would you like to add?
Steven Jack Butala:
No, we all have read up on successful businesses, successful people and all of that. One thing that keeps coming up, over and over and over again, that a lot of what people say is that, and we’re finding this in some of our companies too, not necessarily the land companies at all, but I’m finding myself more and more, as the companies get bigger, with more employees, I mean, what are you working on?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
And, and I think successful people all really say, we work on the right stuff. We used to not work on the right stuff.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
It-
Jill K DeWit:
And it goes sideways sometimes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. You have to work on the right stuff and spend a lot of time on what really matters. Again, I keep coming back to, all this week, come back to that Wednesday, talk with Brandon, because he really, really spends the right amount of time on stuff that really matters, and outsources the crap. Whether or not you should have an LLC or with S corp election or not, is the last thing that we should ever talk about with any of this at all.
Jill K DeWit:
It was the funniest thing that came up, and I’m like, where did that come from? So yeah, let’s think about if this is right for you, first of all, and let’s spend the time learning the process, learning the business and moving forward and making some money.
Steven Jack Butala:
We had a person-
Jill K DeWit:
The rest falls into place.
Steven Jack Butala:
A real good example is this, and I know this is a Jill show, but in the last career path, we had a person who came to us, who had a pretty good degree of success buying and selling land through cold calling, which is not something we advocate in any way, not even to a small percentage, to which I said immediately, “If you’ve had success buying and selling land by hiring people to do cold calls and doing cold calls yourself, this is going to blow your mind.”
Jill K DeWit:
Mm.
Steven Jack Butala:
That takes all that… That’s working on the wrong stuff.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
But you get it. You get that buying and selling land’s a great thing. So, that’s 80% of it. Now let’s just get you into a mail cycle, so you can remove the cold calling out of your life and just spend your time doing deals.
Jill K DeWit:
I have one more last little point. It just came to my mind. The other thing that he brought up that threw me for a loop was, I’m working on cleaning up my credit so I can borrow money.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m not kidding.I’m like, okay. I said, stop the train right there. I don’t want you borrowing a dollar. He has money to get started, so that wasn’t the problem, but he thinks he’s going to need big money. I’m like, nope, and let me tell you how we can solve that. Please don’t do that. It was a good conversation. Again, please don’t … Your brand new to this. You’re don’t be spending time researching on your taxes. And don’t be spending a lot of time researching on, like I said, your credit scores. You can borrow this and taking out a mortgage or a second, whatever. Don’t think about any of that stuff. Put your head down, get educated, get some good deals, get some stuff flowing, and you’re not going to need that stuff. Or like, again, you’ll get there.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a big string of topics just like what we’re talking about in Discord recently. Somebody said, all right, everyone, stop. Discord is where all Land Academy members, it’s a closed group, where we all talk to each other about the deals we’re doing. This guy said, stop, stop, stop. I have a sticky note that I wrote when I joined Land Academy, and it’s been on my computer monitor since day one. And it says this, “You’re here to buy land and sell it for more.” And that’s it.
Jill K DeWit:
We’re going to end it on that. Happy to join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next week for another interesting episode. You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. Great.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a great topic, Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
Research is a real integral part of this.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Researching where to send mail. Super good idea. Researching how much mail you should send and what’s really going on that market before you do it. Awesome idea. Researching stuff like, who’s going to answer the phone. Is Pat live better? Is Jill live better? Or how am I going to actually do that? Lots of research and all those things.
Jill K DeWit:
Researching good title companies, researching good brokers to work with. All of that stuff. Bad [inaudible 00:11:29]-
Steven Jack Butala:
Research prices in the area.
Jill K DeWit:
Good.
Steven Jack Butala:
Get a feel for how to price it.
Jill K DeWit:
Good. Accountant, not yet not. You’ll get there. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, we’re working on it. It’s coming. I don’t have all the answers yet, but Land Academy is working on an online notary closing service, that we could do your documents for your seller, for you and you won’t have to leave your desk and you can do it from your cell phone. It doesn’t have a name yet. You know what? I might even do a contest. Heads up, when we’re ready. I think I’m going to do a Land Academy contest and we’re going to have a come up with a good name for it. If you need help with anything, any tools, support, whatever, hit up my team at support@landacademy.com.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Jack and Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
We’re Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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