In-Person vs Online Trolling for Counties to send blind offers to Buy Land (LA 1858)

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 DeWit, broadcasting from the cherry capital of the world.
I have to say, I love it. I love cherries. I love cherries so much that over my shoulder here, let me just show you. I even picked up some cherry flavored whiskey from the Grand Traverse Distillery, and boy is it delicious. We are actually coming to you from Traverse City, Michigan right now.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, if you don’t already know from last week we’ve been on the road for at least two weeks, maybe a little bit more. Our destination-

Jill K DeWit:
Shucks, three tomorrow.

Steven Jack Butala:
Our destination was our niece’s wedding here in Traverse City. We’ve got that behind us and apparently everybody else does too, because you know how weddings are, although we did have a blast and we’re going to continue traveling, buying and selling, or taking a look at real estate. Jill just signed a deal today. We had a notary come over.

Jill K DeWit:
Here to the rig.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re effectively, seriously full-time testing doing this from the road and it’s working out great.
Today, Jill and I talk about in-person versus online trolling for counties to figure out where to send blind offers to send mail.
The entire time that we’re out here, I’m like, “Wow, this is a fantastic county or zip code, potentially, to check it out.” Make sure it passes all the red, green, yellow tests to see if we should send land here, so we’ll talk about that in just a few minutes here.
Before we get into it though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free, and I hope you know that Jill and I instruct a handful of people every quarter on a 10 week session called Career Path. I think the next one is starting in October.

Jill K DeWit:
October 12th, it’s coming up fast. If you’re interested, I still do have slots. Go to landacademy.com/careerpath, and read all about it and then send my team questions if you have them at support@landacademy.com, and we will fill you in.
Kevin wrote, “Hello. I’m not sure about the concept of title insurance.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Boy, you’re not alone.

Jill K DeWit:
What did you say?
Oh, I didn’t know. I thought you said, “Oy.” I’m like where did oy come from?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, Kevin, you’re not alone. Jill’s going to explain.

Jill K DeWit:
Boy, you’re not alone, okay.
Am I left or right? I’m going to have to find out right now. Am I left or right? I’m left. Sorry. Okay, cool.
Number one, when buying properties, should you always get title insurance and why? Number two, when selling properties, why would some buyers not want title insurance? You want to go first?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I’ll go first and try to make it simple. Title insurance ensures theoretically any errors in the chain of title, and the chain of title is quite simply all the chain of people that have owned it since it was homesteaded, let’s say in the 1800s, and so maybe 10 people have owned it since its inception, maybe one or two people have owned it because it’s stayed in the family or it’s stayed in some type of trust. That title insurance is supposed to ensure that chain of title.
To directly answer your question, should you always get it? No, I don’t think so. When should you not? The vast majority of time you should get it. When you should not get it is when you’re buying a property for $500 or a thousand dollars that’s really in the desert. You’re going to go sell it on eBay or online or really just sell it for a thousand dollars more to somebody who’s going to kind of just own it, maybe not use it, just say they own a piece of California, for example. The cost of getting title insurance and going through escrow ranges from let’s say $800 or $900, maybe a thousand dollars to $2,500, so you got to work that in. If you’re buying a thousand dollars property and it costs $1,500 to close, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
That’s a very small percentage of the transactions out there where you don’t need it. The vast majority of the time when you go to buy a house or you buy usually the types of properties that we get, you go through escrow and get title insurance and Jill tell you why.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, they check for other things, as well too. They make sure the taxes are current. Good title companies will go check for liens. They will check access, all kinds of other things. They might uncover something which is not nuts. Some of the times that I would say I would definitely get title insurance if you’re on the fence is maybe you’re not sure you’re transferring title the right way. Maybe someone passed on, maybe it isn’t a trust. Maybe it’s a company. Maybe there’s some weird things going on. You’re like, I’m not sure I’m doing it right and just to make sure that it goes through the correct way and I have enough money that it’s built baked in to afford title insurance, I’m going to have a title agent close this and then I just don’t have to worry about it. I don’t have to figure out getting which documents for the fill in the blank company or whatever the probate situation may have been, something like that.
If it’s kind of cooky, then I would use title insurance for sure or if someone’s going to build. Usually my rule of thumb is if they’re going to build there, they’re going to want title insurance.

Steven Jack Butala:
The right question is how are you going to use it? If you’re buying a $25,000 piece of property and you’re selling it for 50, it’s probably worth 80. You should really get title insurance.

Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes it’s not needed, but just makes everybody feel better. That’s it, it’s warm and cozy.

Steven Jack Butala:
If I was a lawyer, I would say, oh my gosh, why would you ever consider buying property without title insurance? Are you crazy? You’re going to die.

Jill K DeWit:
If you were a lawyer? That’s funny. What else would you say if you were a lawyer?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, be careful what type of air you breathe and when because you could die.

Jill K DeWit:
Would you say always get a prenup?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill K DeWit:
Hey, make it an iron clad one. That’s awesome.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s not make fun of lawyer week, but I wish-

Jill K DeWit:
No-

Steven Jack Butala:
We can make it that way.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, come on. We have several friends that are lawyers and we make fun of them and they make fun of us, so it’s totally fine. It’s all good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, in person versus road trip trolling for counties to send blind offers through the mail. This is the meat of the show. Jill’s sick of it by now, but every probably 15 minutes or so when we’re driving around in our rig and I’m like, wow, this might be a good place to send out mail. Are you sick of it?

Jill K DeWit:
Not yet, but it’s getting there. Now, because I get it too, I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
And sometimes she says it, so I started to think last week, well wait a minute, we’re always talking about trolling online, so I really sat down with a pad and a pen and wrote out what I was thinking. There’s no way that you can improve on the efficiency of trolling online. It’s fun to go take a look. It might confirm a bunch of things for you. But in the end I tested about five or eight immediate areas that came to mind while we were driving around having fun, looking for places to send mail and none of them, almost none of them passed the red, green, yellow test.

Jill K DeWit:
Can I jump in? Here’s what happens, one of the biggest surprises we found was, wow, look at these small… Let me give you a real example… These small towns in Colorado, like the one I’m wearing on my shirt here, you think, wow, this is great. Then we picked up as we were driving all over Colorado, we spent so much time in Colorado because we loved it… It was so pretty…. We found that the more I get away from the big cities like Denver, the more we like them. It gives a different homey vibe. Boy, do you guys kill it as far as bike trails and outdoor sports. I mean you guys are so far the best of everywhere we’ve been, including Michigan. The trails and stuff here, there’s not as many miles of trails as you in Colorado know. Sorry, I’m letting the cat out of the bag. I won’t name any other than the one I’m wearing, but I won’t name any other small town, sweet towns in Colorado so not everybody goes there.
But anyway, so that was one of the things that we discovered. Look at these small towns and how great they are. Then we were like, ah, but when you get closer to Denver, it changes the vibe. It changes a whole bunch and it changes the money. It changes the property values, all kinds of things change when you get closer to the city. But like you said, then you have to go back. They sound great and they’re beautiful, right?

Steven Jack Butala:
Fun to be there.

Jill K DeWit:
In your head, you’re like, this is going to be it. This is where we’re sending our mail. Then you sit down and you do the real red, green, yellow test, and thank you for creating that a couple years ago because that’s the best. Then you go, shucks, darn, it’s not what I thought it was. The data really is what you need to go by, as pretty as it is.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hey, if you want to buy a super cool piece of land and build yourself or drop a modular cabin on it or whatever, which we talk about all the time, then going and scoping it out yourself, you have to do that. You meet the people. You have to go to the local brewery or the local bar or whatever. In some cases, the church is the only thing that they have going on. We have yet to do that, but I feel like that might be coming here.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s not nuts. If it’s for primary, your own personal primary thing like we’ve been looking at, then this is perfect what we’re doing. But to make money on, then you need to trust the red, green, yellow test more than your gut.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s emotion and then there’s money. You didn’t join Land Academy and I didn’t create Land Academy to perpetuate how I feel about something. I did it to get rich. Hopefully you did, too. That’s working out for Jill and I. When you pass these red, green, yellow tests, usually the places where we’re sending mail, there’s something going on. People are buying and selling property. There’s a velocity there that’s creating relatively low days on market. If you’re a Land Academy member, you already know all this stuff, what the red green, yellow test is. These really, really cool places while I truly believe because of Starlink, which is what we’re using right now, we’re on Starlink right now recording this, I can’t say enough good positive stuff about Starlink. I feel like I’m going to jinx myself, like it’s all going to turn around.

Jill K DeWit:
I know, stop it. You know what? I have another surprise. I’m going to ask you too about some of your surprises on the road. One of the surprises I thought is like, because we’re talking about in person trolling, if you will. Here we are crossing the middle of the country going through Nebraska and Iowa and Wisconsin. I saw a ton. I was blown away by the volume of ag land. I know there’s a bit of ag land, but I didn’t realize how much ag land and I was blown away by maybe it was where we were going. As you’re watching this on YouTube and you’re in these places, I’m sure you’re typing this right now into the comments section at the bottom on YouTube. But I did not see the cattle and the livestock that I thought I would see. I saw way more ag farming.

Steven Jack Butala:
We took the Lincoln highway from Colorado to Madison, Wisconsin with a few exceptions. We only got on the freeway-

Jill K DeWit:
When we had to.

Steven Jack Butala:
When they forced us to because right there was construction, so that’s stopping into town or slowing down to 35 miles an hour, every 10 or 15 minutes or miles or so. The further east you get, the closer the towns get. I researched that and it turns out that’s because in the original days of steam engine, it’s all in a rail line, they didn’t have tenders and so they had to fill up every 10 miles for steam water. They didn’t have coal or wood to generate the steam. That’s how that got created. What I think is that agriculture itself, not livestock, needs to be or needed to be closer to a rail line. But yeah, I mean, if you read on what those states produce specifically Iowa, Nebraska, cattle and livestock is a pretty significant portion of what they produce. We just didn’t see it. If you know why, and somebody does, please let us know.

Jill K DeWit:
Saw all the corn.

Steven Jack Butala:
Corn and beans.

Jill K DeWit:
Beans, exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
All kinds of government programs and reasons for that too, but that’s not what the show is about.

Jill K DeWit:
No, but it’s interesting, just little surprises.

Steven Jack Butala:
Buying agricultural land is one of the greatest ideas ever. You just have to do some research about where they allow you to send mail. It’s usually a local authority that’s passed some type of rule about, hey, if you’re from LA, we don’t really want to sell you our land or agricultural land.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s in a statute somewhere?

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t know if it’s statute, it may be not-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s unwritten. It’s a little bit of an unwritten thing maybe.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or maybe written. It’s not a statute.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, that’s funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
Anyway, we’re having a blast looking at all this dirt and that’s what it comes down to. But when it comes down to choosing a place to send mail, you’ve got to troll, just like we talk about in Career Path and in the Land Academy programs. You have to take what you find as rational ways, places to send it and run it through the test, red, green, yellow test. You can do that with a hundred markets in an afternoon and drive in your car around, this is going to take a few months. But maybe that’s what you want. Right now, that’s what Jill and I want. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still, when it’s over, sitting in the back of the rig while Jill’s driving and trolling for real estate online.

Jill K DeWit:
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, “Land Academy as a legacy business.” You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Did you talk to somebody recently that really wants to teach your kids how to do this?

Jill K DeWit:
It’s a couple times a month it seems like I’m talking to people and that’s why they’re here. They’re coming here to say, I’m not only doing this for me. I’m doing it for my kids. I want to make sure that my kids will always have a way to provide for their families. As a side note, it could be a family business. I’m like, brilliant. That is awesome.
Thanks for tuning in, and by the way, don’t forget, it’s still new for 2022 and I have a feeling there’s a new one coming in 2024, 2025, we’ll see. But everything that we do right now today, the changes we have made over the years and even since initially launching Land Academy, are in our latest program, “Land Academy 3.0, Catching up with Land Academy,” which again, we launched in 2022. Check it out, go to landacademy.com. If you have any questions, please send a note to support@landacademy.com.

Both:
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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