Jill Friday – How to Get a Land Deal Done with a Mediocre Partner (LA 1847)
Jill Friday – How to Get a Land Deal Done with a Mediocre Partner (LA 1847)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steven 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 DeWit broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today is Jill Friday. And she’s going to talk about how to get a land deal done with a mediocre partner.
Jill K DeWit:
And I don’t mean Jack.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you did, I would sit and listen. Maybe we can fix it and maybe we can’t, probably not.
Jill K DeWit:
What? Wait, let’s just hold. Let’s take a little time out for a second. Let me think, I’m going to try to think of one way that I’m mediocre and you try to think of one way that you think you’re mediocre and we’re going to present them and then we’ll see if we agree or not, okay? So let me think about this here. It’s kind of hard for me to come up with one. Just kidding. Totally kidding. Mediocre. Okay. I think I know one, I think because I’m bored of it, I’m so bored that I’ve gotten mediocre. I can make a sandwich, but outside of that, if I put my heart into meal, I’ll make a good meal. But I think…
Steven Jack Butala:
I never thought about that.
Jill K DeWit:
Most of my meals are probably mediocre. I don’t care.
Steven Jack Butala:
You’re a mediocre cook, you’re right.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Because I don’t care anymore. I did. But wait a minute on Thanksgiving, I’ll pull out all the stops. [inaudible 00:01:27] See, I know what’s possible.
Steven Jack Butala:
You can do it.
Jill K DeWit:
I choose to be mediocre.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the truth of it. I’m a mediocre eater. So it all works out great.
Jill K DeWit:
That works out. So what’s your thing that you think?
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m probably a mediocre handyman.
Jill K DeWit:
I would agree with that. You’re so good at data, baby, stick to data. I’m sorry. I was going to build you up here, but I have to agree with that one.
Steven Jack Butala:
Isn’t it funny when you just self describe anything. Everyone can handle it, but if someone walks up to you and says, you know what, I’ve been meaning to tell, you’re a mediocre handyman. It’s like, “what? What are you talking about? I changed the light bulb three weeks ago and it went great.”
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s good. Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
The truth is I can’t change light bulbs in our house because no one can reach them and I’m not going to go buy a ladder. And we have to go call somebody.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, exactly.
We have a couple of handymen on retainer.
Steven Jack Butala:
Even if I bought a ladder, it would be a four story ladder, so I’m just not going to do it.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That’s good.
Steven Jack Butala:
And Jill’s accepted that.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah, I’m fine with that. Because you were so good at data, baby, and research and a lot of other things. We’ll leave it at that. All right, thank you. I had to get that out of the way. I thought that that was important. We needed to share. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. That could have gone way different. What if we just announced to the world that we were all mediocre at things that really matter in an interpersonal relationship.
Jill K DeWit:
I’ll [inaudible 00:03:22], no we won’t share anymore. Let’s move on.
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. Back in the day, it was nearly impossible to find land without a mailing address, like 123 Main Street. To solve this, jill and I created parcelfact.com. You can find any property in the country, just about any property by using the state, the county and the assessor’s parcel number, which all properties have, because that’s how counties send out real estate taxes. Check out parcelfact.com. We spent a ton of time, money and energy to create it and make it what it is today.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s awesome. Thank you. Ty wrote, “I just received a call from potential seller. They have three parcels with separate APN’s in…” Do you want me to say this statement?
Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. “…in California. I sent them three letters. They want to sell two and keep the third. Someone told them that was not possible. What the heck?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Go for it Jill. This is Jill Friday, let it out.
Jill K DeWit:
What the heck? Why would, maybe because they’re all on one deed? That’s stupid. “All three are relatively large parcels, 33 acres, 43 acres and 50 acres. And there’s other smaller properties in the area. Good access as a road runs along through all the properties. Am I missing something?” No, no, no. You’re right.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, your seller is.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s like, oh you bought these three cars at the same time? Oh you can’t can’t break them up like that. You got to sell them… You bought a pair of earrings. You can’t sell just one. I mean that’s just…
Steven Jack Butala:
No Ty. So I don’t want to want you to be intimidated. I’m so glad you asked this question on behalf of everyone. Because new people questions, this is the place to ask and talk about it. Here’s how it works. Jill and I, one time, bought 1200 properties on one deed, one single deed. It took two reams of paper.
Jill K DeWit:
From a county.
Steven Jack Butala:
And we walked out there and then we proceeded to sell them individually by deeding each of them out as we sold them on the internet. It’s a lot of years ago. That was the deal that I prompted Jill to actually quit her job, by the way. I said, look at this now. We paid…
Jill K DeWit:
Needed your help.
Steven Jack Butala:
We literally paid $11 a lot for all these properties. And we sold them for four or $500 each. So do the math on that, anyway. And I needed Jill to, that was the day we really joined forces. Anyway, my point is, if somebody’s got a deed with three properties on it and it’s in the same county, that’s the key thing. You can peel it off. If these are properties like two in one county and one’s in something, you can still sell them all separately. It just…
Jill K DeWit:
Doesn’t matter.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a different level of paperwork, that’s it. You could always sell properties individually if they have a separate APN. That’s the key.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. And you just said that so you’re good.
Steven Jack Butala:
I did.
Jill K DeWit:
No. He just said that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about how to get a land deal done with a mediocre partner. This is the meat of the show.
Jill K DeWit:
I have two examples of a mediocre partner. One was a partner that made a bad decision. He paid too much for a property. I didn’t catch it. And we hung onto that property way too long. It was like throwing me the keys and saying, “oops, sorry, I’ll be over here. I made a mistake and it’s your money.” So that can happen. I don’t like it, obviously. And I didn’t catch it. So did I make some changes on that afterwards? Heck yeah. The problem with the partner, I called him a mediocre partner, was he didn’t do enough due diligence before it got to me. I trust you. I trust that you’re going to present a deal to me that if I don’t want to do it, you’re going to call your grandma right now and say, grandma, how much money you got in the bank?
We should be doing this deal because you love it and did everything you could. And I don’t think this person did that. And that’s why I’m labeling him as mediocre. He was just kind of, eh, let’s just see if Jill likes it kind of thing. And that’s not really [inaudible 00:07:37] shouldn’t be coming to me.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you have five deals and you’re like, these four are fantastic. I’m going to go do all these. This one I’m not so sure about it. Let’s throw it to Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.
Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s just throw [inaudible 00:07:46].
Jill K DeWit:
She signs off then great.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. If she doesn’t, she does, she does, she doesn’t, whatever. I’m not going to do anything. It’s their problem.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. Now my other one was really even funnier, that it was not the property necessarily. It was the manager of the property, AKA, my partner, who was mediocre, who then in turn hired an additional problem broker because they obviously connected. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.
Steven Jack Butala:
[inaudible 00:08:15] connect sometimes.
Jill K DeWit:
That can happen. Exactly. I don’t know much about it and you don’t know much about it so we should do this. That’s great. And then it went a step further. The broker found an even weirder buyer. It all smelled slimy in the end.
Steven Jack Butala:
They’re all lying.
Jill K DeWit:
So yeah. So we bought the property with this partner. Well I’m going to take the high road here, please. I’m just going to say we weren’t a good fit for each other and that’s okay. But the deal was good. Initially the deal was good. The broker started off okay, then it wasn’t really me dealing with them. It was unfortunately my transaction coordinator and the manager. And then it got to the point where the broker found a buyer and the terms kept changing on this deal and the manager was letting it go, like “okay, well this is what we’re doing now.” And I’m like, “Nope.” I put the brakes on. I’m, “I am not changing this. And I’m not changing that. If he wants it. Great. If he doesn’t, I’ll move on. I’ll hang onto this property for another six months if I have to. I’m not going to just roll over because this person.” I think he wanted to change the purchase price. I know he wanted to change a purchase price.
I wasn’t doing it. So then it comes down to now the buyer has all these demands about how they want to close the deal. And then the buyer was really funny. The buyer came to the broker who came to the manager, who came to my transaction coordinator, wanted to do a self close and was explaining to us what that is. I’m like, “oh this is even funnier.” And then the way he was trying to do it was just slimy. So here’s what ended up happening. My head lead transaction coordinator, she put her foot on the brakes and said, “uh uh, I’m not feeling it. This is not how we’re doing it.” So she got with the broker, we just removed the manager because he was mediocre, not helping out, at all, individual. So she got with the broker and said, “we’re doing it different. We’re doing it my way. We are not going to do a close like that.” We ended going through an attorney to make sure somebody else was handling the money and overseeing everything. And then everybody gets paid. So that’s how it ended up.
Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s really what happened. Jill’s being nice.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh no.
Steven Jack Butala:
Somewhere along the line, first of all, Jill should never know that much about a deal.
Jill K DeWit:
Correct.
Steven Jack Butala:
So we have hundreds of deals going on and she could never give you that level of detail on the vast majority, if not all the other deals.
Jill K DeWit:
Correct.
Steven Jack Butala:
She knows a lot about it because this manager, mediocre is the nicest way I could describe this manager. In fact, if I have my way, when this episode’s done and we turn the cameras off and stop, we’re going to decide whether or not he’s going to be a member anymore. Because on top of that, he was an ass to Jill.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.
Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s why I know about this deal because she comes to me and says, “look, this is what’s going on.” What really happened in this transaction, in my opinion, is that it was for sale for a long time, way too long.
It was a great piece of property. I immediately signed off on it. It was an agricultural piece of property, which we all know if you’re in the group, you know how much we love those on a Thursday call. And it was grossly under priced on the acquisition and grossly under priced for sale. And so along the way, somebody came along, found this gem of a property and all of a sudden the broker and the manager got together in their little huddle because apparently Jill doesn’t have the deal experience or the intelligence to buy and sell land the way they do, this is his first deal, by the way, his first deal. Decided to do a really quick close probably because somebody after them was going to pay a lot more or whatever. And they got together and they just stepped over Jill’s face to get a deal done. So she’s saying it’s mediocre. I think that’s malicious intent. And so we’ll see what happens.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you for saving me.
Steven Jack Butala:
How’s that for the high road. I did everything. except name is name.
Jill K DeWit:
I know it’s all good. No it’s called sticking up for your woman. No, I appreciate that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Every once in a while I have to kick somebody out of land academy for this kind of stuff. This guy’s next.
Jill K DeWit:
Happy to join us today. I don’t know what to say about now. You know what? It is just, let me go back to the whole thing. How do I get a deal done with a mediocre partner? Sometimes you just suck it up and here’s the thing. Here’s the conclusion. That was the whole story and how it all went down. So what do you do if this happens to you? Well, number one, this is why you do a deal, one deal with one person and make sure you guys all are all on the same page, right? Don’t say we’re going to take down Texas together. Let’s do a deal or two, make sure we all connect and we all communicate well…
Steven Jack Butala:
And we didn’t connect.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. So am I going to do another deal with this guy? What do you think? I think my transaction coordinator will kill the deal before it gets to me.
So that’s why you do a deal, one deal first, make sure you connect. And then number two, if you’re in a situation like I was in and you clearly don’t connect, I would do my best to get out of it as quickly as possible and as easily as possible. So in the end, I’m not sure that was the right buyer and I’m not sure that was the right price, but you know what? I had to have a chat with my team and we agreed that let’s just get this one done and let’s all get out of this situation because it’s not worth it. The money, I could have held out for $20,000 more, but it wasn’t worth it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. I don’t want this to discourage anyone from submitting deals, some deal funding or other people on Discord. There’s tons of people in our group who fund deals besides us. And that’s not a main source of income from us. We just do it because we want to make a little money and we hope you make money too. And honestly this is set up to be kind of a stepping stone for you. If you get, because you don’t have a bunch of dough lined up in the beginning, these deal funding scenarios are set up for you to do a bunch of deals, maybe five or 10 deals with a partner. Maybe it’s us, maybe it’s somebody else in Discord. And then until the point you have a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank and then you can go start funding your own deals and making all of it, instead of half the equity or whatever ends up being. So please utilize it that way. Just don’t be an ass about it.
Jill K DeWit:
Well, I was going to say, I mentioned two. For every two, I have 102 that went wonderful.
Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.
Jill K DeWit:
And they did everything great. And I’m so happy and proud of them. And I’m telling at the end, I write notes that go to my team and my team passes them on to the manager and my notes will be like, “good job, do you have anymore?” kind of thing. And I don’t bother you. I don’t do anything. I trust you, that you’re out there doing your best. I trust if you need help with anything, you’re going to reach out. Like, “Hey, does Jill have any ideas about selling this thing? Because I don’t know what we’re doing wrong here,” kind of thing. And I’m happy to help. That’s 99.9% of how it really goes.
I just want you to be ready because they’re not always that easy. And when you do find a partner, like the other 99 or a hundred and whatever that I worked with that are awesome. I want to do a lot of deals with you and then we have a good time together. So thank you. Happy you joined us today. I want to leave on a good note, happy. 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 are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill K DeWit:
Because it really is true. There’s not many that…
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, there’s always somebody.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s always one always. There’s always going to be one. I don’t care what kind of business you have or where you, think about it. I mean you go to the bank, you always know that one. teller’s kind of a stinker, fill in the blank.
Steven Jack Butala:
If there’s more than three people involved in anything one of them’s a problem, including your family and you know exactly who it is in your family.
Jill K DeWit:
Think about the checkout line at the grocery store. There’s 10 of you. There’s going to be one person that’s a problem. That’s okay. We deal with it. We get through it. When we move on, we try minimal contact to get done with it.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Get out of there.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. And then next time you go home and you use Instacart.
Steven Jack Butala:
This I’ll give you the advice that I gave our children. Get out of there before it becomes a felony.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh great. Lovely. Is that your freshman college advice?
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s been my advice since they’re in third grade. All of them.
Jill K DeWit:
Wonderful. Oh goodness. All right.
Steven Jack Butala:
Hey, next week, by the way, this show will be recorded and distributed from the road. So we’ll be in our RV. We’re traveling somewhere right now as you’re listening to this across the country.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m excited to.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’m excited to, I bet you are too, excited to see a little bit of a shake up content wise and back scenery wise.
Jill K DeWit:
I am. And maybe, not our attitude, but our demeanor. Maybe we won’t be so mediocre.
Steven Jack Butala:
Excellent.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s right.
Steven Jack Butala:
What are you doing? you’re listening to a mediocre podcast.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Wait a minute. What if we’re the mediocre ones?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
What if we’re the mediocre partners?
Jill K DeWit:
Here we go.
Steven Jack Butala:
Everybody else is extraordinary.
Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. That’s probably what’s going on. Well welcome to Land Academy.
Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack…
Jill K DeWit:
And Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information.
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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