Coaching Real Estate Agents about Our Land Business (LA 1755)
Coaching Real Estate Agents about Our Land Business (LA 1755)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Howdy.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show entertaining real estate 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 coaching real estate agents about our land business.
Jill K DeWit:
How about coaching real estate agents about the land business?
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not real excited to talking about real estate agents. I’m not really excited about talking about coaching real estate agents and teaching them about our land business, because almost none of them understand it. But Jill is. Jill told me she’s really excited to talk about this today.
Jill K DeWit:
All right. We’ll get there.
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 I’ll tell you last year, a ton of land academy members came to Jill and I needing extra help getting blind offer campaigns in the mail. In a very short, descriptive way, Jill and I made a company out of it. We made a service out of it for land academy members called Concierge Data. If you go to offers2owners.com, ask them about outsourcing your entire mail process because that’s what it’s set up for. That’s what I do. Concierge Data.
Jill K DeWit:
You give them your order. You tell them the property size, and you give them the zip codes or the county. And they pull the data. They do the scrubbing all under your direction, but they do the work.
Steven Jack Butala:
Same exact people that I have do my mailers and have done long before that whole entity had a name.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep. Exactly. Steven wrote, we have a seller that wants the purchase of the property to be contingent on us installing a fence around it. Who flipping cares if he’s selling it?
Steven Jack Butala:
I love your reaction to this.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s hilarious.
Steven Jack Butala:
Because this imploded on discord.
Jill K DeWit:
What the heck? Well, I’ll sell it to you, but you got to pay for a fence. What?
Steven Jack Butala:
And why do you need fence if you’re selling it?
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Jack Butala:
So, anyway, go ahead.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. The property would require about one mile of fencing, and it’s not a cheap endeavor. Of course not. Has anyone had to sell or make a strange request like this? Nope. Is this something that can be written in and dealt with through escrow and can be done after the close on the deal? I don’t want to spend money on installing a fence just to have the sellers back out. Yeah, this is the weirdest thing on the planet. He could put in a deed restriction or something, but that doesn’t make any sense. What? He must live next door, and say I want a line.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what everybody said online.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. He’s got to live next door. And I want everyone to know this is my dance area. This is your dance area.
Steven Jack Butala:
The only logical reason. And I’m not saying logic applies here. It might just be…
Jill K DeWit:
No logic applies.
Steven Jack Butala:
Just be wackos. Is that they don’t want to pay for… They have an adjacent property, and they don’t want to pay for a fence.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s got to be it.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what I would think.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s the only way.
Steven Jack Butala:
I would never do this by the way.
Jill K DeWit:
Nope.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is the biggest red flag ever. I would just say no. And if you’re neighbors and you want to split the cost, now we can talk about that. But this just doesn’t… The person’s either messing with you or they don’t understand.
Jill K DeWit:
A mile fence. That’s a lot. Oh, my. Could you imagine? How long would that take? That’s a long time.
Steven Jack Butala:
It depends. If it’s barbed wire, it’s not that long, and that would be the cheapest way. But a cyclone fence, that would take with footings and everything that’s cost.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, coaching real estate agents about our land business. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
So I was mentioned this yesterday, and it’s still going on where I have multiple very good land-focused, motivated real estate agents that I work with. That part’s great. But in the last few months I’ve had a little bit of a shift. So I kind of wanted to bring it up here. And I wanted to just see if you had any experience like this as well. Please comment, by the way. We get those comments, get to us on the YouTube and wherever you find this show here. I’m finding some people that are like, no, I don’t want to do that one. Or they’re coming up some obstacles and that are not obstacles. So here’s an example. So I’ve had this great property in a state that starts with a T. I’ll just say it at that. Actually, Tennessee, it doesn’t matter.
Jill K DeWit:
Great property. And I had this agent go check it out. It’s gorgeous. It’s on a hill. It’s a pretty view. It’s nice size. I wouldn’t have bought it if it’s not a great property. So what’s come up is that the agent went out, looked at it and came back complaining about two things. Number one, they said, HOA seems to be defunct. They don’t exist. And then their second thing was yeah, I could get access. And I’m like, hold on right there. I’m like, well, number one, if the HOA is defunct or never even got started, I can’t remember which one it was, that’s something to celebrate.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m serious. If there’s, oops, we thought there’s an HOA, and now there is none. That’s when you jump up and down. Like great, I don’t have to worry about dues or restrictions or whatever else is going on.
Steven Jack Butala:
What else do you celebrate when it gets dissolved or dismantled?
Jill K DeWit:
No, hold on a moment. We’ll get to that in a minute. But this is a celebration. I’m like, why is this agent think that’s a bad thing, number one. And then the second thing about the access, she said, yeah, I could get to the property. There was an access issues. I’m like, wait a minute. Correct me if I’m wrong. There’s a house across the street. Yep. Could you get to the house? Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, she…
Jill K DeWit:
She’s, apparently no, the access was, I couldn’t drive the whole perimeter.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, because her 1989 Coupe DeVille…
Jill K DeWit:
But she could get there.
Steven Jack Butala:
Cadillac Coupe DeVille wasn’t the perfect vehicle to drive right up to it and celebrate it.
Jill K DeWit:
No, and I think she could. No, but there maybe not… So here’s the whole point. I said, something else was going on here.
Steven Jack Butala:
Maybe it was windy that day too. She was uncomfortable.
Jill K DeWit:
Something else. She just doesn’t want to sell this property. There’s something about this property.
Steven Jack Butala:
She doesn’t buy into it.
Jill K DeWit:
Maybe it’s too far.
Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.
Jill K DeWit:
Or maybe who knows what?
Steven Jack Butala:
She’s not a land person.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. Well, she was a land person, but maybe the spread wasn’t as much. I don’t know. There’s some underlying reason. So I thought, so what’s funny is I said here… So I wrote back. I’m like, all right. This all goes through my transaction corner. And then the notes get to me, and I write back. And then, my transaction corner makes it looks pretty, not my exact notes. My exact notes and how I word them are softened and made nice before they get to the agent. So the whole gist was I’m like, are they nuts? I’m like, Jan, I don’t think this person really wants to sell this property. Can you find out? If they don’t, do they want out of this? Not five hours pass and here come the DocuSign to get out of the deal, to not market the property.
Jill K DeWit:
For me, I’m like, what was this person’s problem? So I don’t know what it was. So the point today is, sometimes you have to coach them. And I still have a lot of great agents that I give them little tweaks and they go, oh, thank you. And it’s kind of sucks that it happens. And I find things like, you know what? You’re showing up, you go on Zillow, you’re accidentally showing up over here. You’re not showing up over here. Sometimes they don’t have land checked. They might have, and maybe it’s mobile friendly. I’m like, could you check the mobile box too? That’s a nice little tip. They’re like, oh yeah, that’s a great idea. I said, so then it shows up with a mobile feed and a land feed, because it should. Because by the way, it has a well, and there used to be a mobile on it.
Jill K DeWit:
Someone great looking for a mobile land might need to know that it’s mobile ready, and that’s why it should be there. They’re like, that’s brilliant. And can you add a few more sentences about this, this and this and this and even so much as not the best lead photo, but boy, number three knocked my socks off. If you could change the order. I hate to have to do this much but sometimes you do so. And the right agents are coachable, and they want to know. And once you get to know and you know why? Here’s the whole point too. They want to sell the property fast also because they get paid faster.
Steven Jack Butala:
And they want to get sell cheap.
Jill K DeWit:
Right, and so you helping them.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s the good news.
Jill K DeWit:
Get it sold faster. And they get their commission, and they get paid out, it makes them want to work with you and do more deals.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a misconception that real estate agents want to sell properties for more money because their commission’s higher. And I’ve never met a real estate agent where that’s the case. They want to sell it fast. They want you…
Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes too cheap.
Steven Jack Butala:
The seller to be helpful. And they want you to sell it cheap. They just want to get in and out of it, just like you do.
Jill K DeWit:
So, yeah. So sometimes you have to help them. I had one the other day, they came up with a number like I think I could sell for 20,000, whatever. I said, how about we call it 19,700? I said, let’s get some funky numbers in there because it does get people’s attention. Like our offers, when we send out our offers, I’m not offering to buy your property for 10,000. I’m offering to buy your property for 9,368 and 42 cents. That gets people’s attention. So be creative.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have long said that. And unwaveringly said, including today, staffing is the most challenging part of this business. It was from day one, and it continues to be now. The prevalence of 1099 subcontractors and things like Upwork and VAs and all that has never been stronger than today. A great example of that is hiring a real estate agent, and they should be treated the same way. So when I get a VA in the Philippines, in our case to do work for us, I create a little video. I tell them how or what I want. I want it… And I show them, this is what I want when you send it back. And I put some time into it. It’s the same thing with a real estate agent. If you take some time to find the product that you are going to believe as a business owner works for you and find an example out there in the internet so that you can send it to the real estate agent and say right out of the box, this is what I expect.
Steven Jack Butala:
I know this listing is not in Tennessee. This listing’s in Kentucky or Michigan or wherever, but I love how it’s listed. I love that there’s 32 pictures. I love these drone shots. I love the drive right up to it video. I love the long, long, long, long, long description that tells me a story about how the rest of my life is going to go if I buy that lot and put my dream cabin on it. And so no agents know this stuff, the tiny, tiny, very small percentage of real estate agents understand what’s required to really productively sell a property quickly, especially land. You have to tell them.
Jill K DeWit:
You know that’s a good…
Steven Jack Butala:
And especially in this hot market, it’s worse and worse and worse because it’s so easy to sell property doing nothing and being lazy right now as a real estate agent.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. We have sat through the courses and gone all the way and taken and passed the test and not pulled the trigger on our licenses but I wanted to know what they knew. Nowhere in there is there anything that… We talk about filling out the MLS listing paperwork. That’s covered. So you know how to do that, but no one talks about writing a good description and what photos to get and putting the toilet seat down and staging it and turning on the lights, things like that. It’s not talked about. So you can’t expect them to know that out of the gate. And let me back up too. When I choose these guys, this is one of my criteria when I choose an agent, I’m sitting on Zillow or Realtor and looking at land listing agents, and I pick them based on their beautiful descriptions and the number of sold properties that I can see online and things like that.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ll give you a great example, and we’ll end on this. Jill and I buy properties in certain specific areas, and we minor split them. So we’ll take one APN and make it five, in certain cases. Not all the time, it’s not that often. But when it’s zoned correctly and the acreage size is right and the planets are all aligned, we go through the paperwork process of converting one APN into five. And then we resell it for a very specific use. In our cases it’s usually because it’s now very conducive to put a mobile home on it. And we went to list a property recently with the person who just felt like it was better if we just sold it all as one.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so I went to, this is after it got listed and I wasn’t involved in it and all, and looked at my own listing and fell out of my chair. And there’s steam coming out of my ears because nowhere… We bought a survey. Nowhere is there an overlay beautiful survey that tells the description.
Jill K DeWit:
It just looks like one property.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tells the whole story and the description about how this is a small mobile home park waiting to be developed. It’s pre zone. It’s got great act. That’s why I bought it. I bought it to do this.
Jill K DeWit:
We do the APNs. That’s all done ready to go.
Steven Jack Butala:
Instead, there’s four or five Google earth shots on there. One was a outline, and it said in maybe two sentences, it said… I lost it. I’ll be honest. Two or three sentences, I hope he doesn’t work for us anymore.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s okay. No, no, no, it does. It’s okay. This is a coaching moment. It’s a coaching moment, babe.
Steven Jack Butala:
Okay. Exactly.
Jill K DeWit:
And right now for me, this is a coaching moment.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not as coachable as I used to be.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, you’d be surprised. I can work with you. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on our Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow is Jack Thursday. I’m going to talk about minimum value product, our MVP, and how it applies to land investing. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
I look forward to that.
Steven Jack Butala:
I bet.
Jill K DeWit:
This is good, because I’m curious exactly where you’re going to go. And I like when I can just sit back, and let you drive.
Steven Jack Butala:
Jack Thursday, MVP.
Jill K DeWit:
There you go. Hey, thanks for tuning in. By the way, don’t forget. Tomorrow is Thursday, and on Thursdays on the first and third, Thursday of every month, you can find us on Clubhouse. So go check out Clubhouse, follow us, join the Land Investing Club, and you’ll get notified and you’ll see our schedule, but it’s the first and third Thursdays of the month. I want to say noon Pacific time.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s all free.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, yeah. It’s totally free. And check it out. It’s really cool. It’s like you could talk to us like we’re on the radio. It’s awesome.
Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Jack and Jill. Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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