How to Handle Multiple Land Buyers at Once (LA 1749)
How to Handle Multiple Land Buyers at Once (LA 1749)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Jack 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 DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about how to handle multiple land buyers at once.
Jill K DeWit:
This is coming up more and more right now, and I love this. I was watching-
Steven Jack Butala:
A good problem to have.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. Several conversations in our closed environments on Discord and Landinvestors.com where people are going, “What do I do? I got this guy, and then I got this other guy. And I don’t know how to juggle all this.” So we can help you with that.
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 did you know that we have a full blown operational commercial printing company called Offers2owners.com. Jill and I set this up a lot of years ago. We’ve always had it for ourselves, but we set it up for the public to address this specific and customized needs. So, if you need to get offers out to owners to buy real state, this is the only dedicated place that I know of on the internet to get this done. We do about 700,000 offers a month. Email support@offers2owners.com and see if it works for you.
Jill K DeWit:
Cool. G-throat, “What do you do when you get…” Oh, we’re just going to talk about it right now and then I’m going to answer it in the thing. So this is one of the questions that prompted this today. So Geeth said, “What do you do when you have two people wanting to buy your land after you’ve sent out purchase agreement to a different person 24 hours ago? The other two contacted me within an hour of each other and had wanted a PA sent to them now. I haven’t received the PA from the first lady yet. She said she was having transportation issues and would do it tomorrow. Her purchase agreement has a hard number on it and has a hard date for the funds to be posted in escrow by. It’s also worth noting that there’s a place for me to sign on the document after she signs, and then I sent it off to the office who’s closing it. Do I wait until tomorrow and see if the potential buyer sends it back and just tell them the two people it’s pending? How could I better prepare for these situations in the future? Do you do backup offers on pending but accepting offers?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Before Jill answers, I’m going to just paraphrase this. This person Geeth in our group inadvertently and unwillingly set off a bidding war for his property, for his land. And he is asking what we do, if it happens often and what do we do?
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. So you need to have you… I hate… This is a tough situation.
Steven Jack Butala:
I love this situation.
Jill K DeWit:
No, I love this situation, but you’re like, you don’t want to be a jerk to the first person, but there’s a little bit of an element of she might fall through, this little old lady, and you don’t want to lose these two people that are hot and excited and ready to go. So we could take… You know how real estate agents say, “Now accepting backup offers”? You could do a version of that and let people know that you’re in number two position or number three position honestly and truthfully and say, “I’m giving this person,” and I would call and set hard deadlines for the lady. If you don’t know how to do this, walk over to your next door neighbor’s house, help them take a picture of it with your signature and whatever some money we could get this done in 12 hours. I’ve walked people through this, not kidding, if they really, really want it. And, if they don’t want it, just say, “Look, I’ve got two other people. I need to know now. And it’s okay. We don’t have time to waste. What do you…” Sometimes you give me this look like, are you drunk?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, you read my look correctly. Now’s the time not to be a nice guy. Now’s the time where you, and if there’s a real estate agent on the sell side involved representing you-
Jill K DeWit:
I’m assuming there’s no agent because we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Steven Jack Butala:
Good. Good, that makes it easier. You need to have a conversation with your partner or yourself in the mirror that goes like this, “I’m going to maximize… I clearly mispriced this.” I’m asking-
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, you’re going a different way.
Steven Jack Butala:
“I’m asking too little for this because in minute one it generated three or four offers. So I have a couple choices,” and Jill and I have done this recently. “I’m going to pull the property off the market and I’m going to increase the price by a hundred thousand dollars or some number.”
Jill K DeWit:
This is not the direction I was going to go.
Steven Jack Butala:
We just did this. Or I can take a burden to hand and I can look at each one of these three people for plausibility or, let’s say-
Jill K DeWit:
We could do highest or best offer and a deadline for all three of them.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, viability for closing. I personally like people that strongly come in and say, “Here’s my offer. I’ll put the cash in escrow. I’ll put all of it in escrow or a lot of it. I’m good for it. Here’s my proof of funds. I’m not horsing around. I live down the street. My wife’s always wanted this property.” I would take less money for if somebody that I know is going to close like that-
Jill K DeWit:
And follow through.
Steven Jack Butala:
… much faster. But you got to decide. We have people… Just in Career Path we had this conversation in great detail and they opted to take some crazy funky offer with a bunch of money down and payments and all that because it was like three times the purchase price for the cash offer. You got to make these decisions yourself. Yes, in this market it happens often.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, you know the main thing I’ve got to say is yeah, sometimes you have to be tough. You have a lot of options, what you’re saying too. And I want you to be honest and clear with everybody. So when calls number two and three come in, here’s what I would.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is the topic. Let me let get through this real quick.
Jill K DeWit:
Let’s get through the thing. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, how to handle multiple land buyers at once. We’re already answering the question. This is why you’re listening.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. So I have a different situation that typically happens to me. So I’m going to address this one. I’m going to address mine and give you a couple ideas here, because there’s no one way to do this and there’s no wrong way to do this other than don’t wait too long. While people are hot and excited, you need to kind of act on it and you want to get the best ones like Jack was saying here. What’s so funny?
Steven Jack Butala:
I just apply everything to dating and I think that applies to dating also.
Jill K DeWit:
When everybody’s hot and excited, you want to jump on them.
Steven Jack Butala:
Well, you want to pick the best one.
Jill K DeWit:
All right. Thank you. Okay, so back to this-
Steven Jack Butala:
On behalf of all women, pick the best one.
Jill K DeWit:
So the first thing I would do though is with my initial person I set the purchase agreement out, the phone call I… This is how I would personally handle it. There needs to be a hard firm phone call to this sweet little lady. Situation’s changed. I have two more people that are ready to buy this property. I know I said I can give you to tomorrow, not anymore. I need to hear back from you in the next, I don’t know, one hour. Give them some deadline.
Steven Jack Butala:
Five minutes.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Something like that. Or I’m going to have to move on. I’m really, really sorry. I appreciate that, but-
Steven Jack Butala:
I understand your point Jill, but I have to disagree with you. I would say I’ve moved on.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, give me a second. Let me finish. So whatever it is. That’s one way to do this. Number two, situation’s changed. I have two more people. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to let everybody submit their offers. I need to have it in writing by everybody by six o’clock tonight. Whatever you want to do, an email is fine. It doesn’t have to be a formal anything. Again, this whole situation is… The only reason Geeth’s in this situation is because he’s selling his own property. If he was going through an agent, the agent would be handling this whole thing and they would be talking about it, but probably still discussing these things. But go back with… I’m going to do highest and best offer and at this time, and then I’m going to pick one kind of thing. And then the main thing is too being upfront, honest and giving them a call-to-action.
Jill K DeWit:
So before I read this question, I was thinking about this topic and I wrote down a situation that has happened to me many times and how I handled it. It’s a little bit different spin, but on the same thing. So situation, someone calls me, they love it. It’s so pretty. They’re going to drive out and look at it this weekend. Three days go by, someone else calls me and loves it and they’re going to go out. I’m like, “All right, hold on a moment. You need to know this is first come-”
Steven Jack Butala:
Come good job on your marketing, Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. “This is first come first serve and I already have someone going out there. So here’s what I suggest you do. If you see it still on this website, my website, and it still shows active, it doesn’t show pending, it’s available.” That’s one way to do it. Or, “Hey, you want to call me before you head out? I recommend that because this is Tuesday and you want to go out on Friday or Saturday morning. Hey, just in case, I would recommend calling me. I don’t want you to drive out there if I’ve already got it under contract. So let me know.”
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s so nice of you.
Jill K DeWit:
I do that and this is what I do. And then, like I said, I’m honestly sharing this situation. Don’t make this stuff up if it’s not true because it usually doesn’t end well. You don’t need to be that person. You know? I think some people do that. Like, “Oh I got a bunch of people going out there.” Don’t do that. If it’s true, it’s true and I share it. And then I always say, “Here’s how we’re going to handle this,” and give them some easy way to lock it in. A lot of people on their websites have a place that you can click a button and put a $500 deposit down and that’ll lock it in. So create some kind of tangible thing that they can do quickly while they’re out there, standing there. If it’s even calling you and Venmoing you, I don’t care. There’s so many creative ways that you could do this and lock in a property with people and Venmo you $500, $1,000, whatever makes sense to you based on the cost of the property to lock it in and then they know it’s theirs. That is what often happens to me. So what do you want to add?
Steven Jack Butala:
Nothing nice.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I don’t want to wreck your thing. You know what? The truth is, how Jill handles this is very long term, long sighted. It’s not shortsighted, probably how I would do it. And I honestly don’t have anything to add that I think would add really any value. But I think this is a circumstance where nice guys to finish last. So I’ll just leave it at that.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, but on-
Steven Jack Butala:
And I don’t think that’s often. I think most of the time nice guys do finish first, but not in this situation.
Jill K DeWit:
What you don’t want to do-
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s why. Just let me… Give me one second here. How much time have you put into this? How much time did you put into a mailer? How much time have you spent deciding where you’re going to send mail, going through the Land Academy process to get to this point? How much money have you spent? And this is only deal number, fill in the blank, of all the deals that you’re ever going to do because now you realize it works and it works for you. So you do not at the last minute here want to sit down with three people and be the nicest person in the world. You want to take the person… And even again, I’m going to say this again. I said it earlier.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m saying be firm.
Steven Jack Butala:
And this was in this situation, if this is a real situation that would happen in our, I would pull the property off the market, because it would happen with a real estate agent with us, and relist it for a lot more and wait in this market. That’s not what I would’ve done two years ago before COVID. I would’ve said, “All right, let’s figure this out. Who wants it?” In this market I would say, “There’s clearly some demand that I missed and I mispriced it on the sell side,” which is yippy fit for me. But I’m going to soak the other 50 or 80,000 bucks out of this.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, that’s a whole different show. Thank you very much.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not-
Jill K DeWit:
This show is just how to handle multiple land buyers because I want to sell it and I got more than one person that’s interested.
Steven Jack Butala:
Got it.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m very happy.
Steven Jack Butala:
I disclaimed it.
Jill K DeWit:
And maybe [crosstalk 00:11:56].
Steven Jack Butala:
I said I didn’t have anything nice to say.
Jill K DeWit:
Maybe this person too already is tripling their money and they’re like, “Yippy ki-yay.” You know? And that’s the thing, I just want to pick the best person, handle them the right way and make sure it’s going to close. Thank you. And I think we covered that. 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 to Overcome Buying Land That You Have Never Visited. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. I don’t mean to undercut you there, but…
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, no. It’s good.
Steven Jack Butala:
Honestly, this is a situation where you got to roll with the market. And geez, two years ago if three people came up and said, “I want to buy your property,” I would go, “The fastest one that can write the check.”
Jill K DeWit:
That’s that sounds like you got to have a call-to-action. And that’s my thing. It’s first come first serve and you need to put some money where your mouth is if you’re really going to do it. I’m not going to pull it off the market. I’m not going to do this just because you think you want it. And that’s, you need to be committed, do all your homework and then let me know. That’s the second part of this is making sure people don’t make a… You don’t want someone to make a knee jerk decision and say, “Oh, okay, I’ll give you a thousand dollars now.” and then they go look at it and they go, “Oh, it’s not what I thought.”
Steven Jack Butala:
See, get this, then it’s not a land deal for them, it’s a bidding situation or an auction and they’re all emotional and it’s in a frenzy and that’s just not how you want to do this.
Jill K DeWit:
And then they’re going to undo it and you’re wiring their money back. And it’s just a mess.
Steven Jack Butala:
I like, “My wife’s always loved this property. How do we close?”
Jill K DeWit:
Well, and you have to listen for those things and find that it’s right. That’s what I said, they they’ve done their homework and you’ll know who they are like that.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you for tuning in. By the way, Jack and I are very aware that not everyone has a hundred grand lying around to buy this stuff, this land. So you know what? We do. And we fund many Land Academy members land deals every week and it’s called on our site, we have a site on it now, landfunding.com. And not to mention, in addition to us, we’ve got a lot of people behind us within Land Academy with millions and millions-
Steven Jack Butala:
Tens of millions
Jill K DeWit:
… of dollars available to lend. So if you want to learn more, go to support@landacademy.com or call (833)522-5545. We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information-
Jill K DeWit:
… and inspiration-
Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.
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