Land Investing From the Road: Update Number 3 (LA 1863)

Transcript:

Speaker 1:
Steven, Jill here.

Speaker 2:
Hello.

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Speaker 2:
And I’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from Hall, the MotorCity from Detroit.

Speaker 1:
Today Jill and I talk about land investing from the road and this is update number three. We started in Arizona, we worked our way across the country. Spent way too much time because we were having a blast in Colorado. Didn’t spend too much time, but had a blast in Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Speaker 2:
So last week when we were recording, we were coming to you from Traverse City, Michigan. As you can see, we didn’t make it that far. We have a lot of family to see and we’re actually having a good time. You know what? We have a lot of family to see and the weather has been cooperative. And those of you who know Michigan, especially know the northern parts, it’s so pretty with your lakes. It’s just awesome. My favorite’s been Harbor Springs now. Now I moved, I keep changing my favorite places.

Speaker 1:
There’s a huge, huge gap between the sale prices for houses and sale prices for land, which is great for us.

Speaker 2:
It’s true.

Speaker 1:
So the whole time that we’ve been doing this, Jill and I have been researching land, land values, all the way, every time we get in a car. So I’ve come up personally with a bunch of places I want to send mail throughout.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? So wait, let me just go… I want to continue that thought for just a minute. We’re on the north west side of Lake-

Speaker 1:
St. Clair.

Speaker 2:
St. Clair, okay. And I’ve noticed homes around here. You can get a home for $200 000 to $300,000 and then there’s lots for $200 000 to $300,000. So you’re right, these numbers being all over the map are good for us.

Speaker 1:
It is great for us. Where we’re sitting is not a place you want to buy land at all. But there have been places on the way here where you got 5, 6, 7 and mostly upstate Michigan, we call it up north here, $800,000 houses. And then lots are on the MLS for $20,000 in the same vicinity. So those are great places to send mail.

Speaker 2:
Well the Michigan started to come out there for a second.

Speaker 1:
Oh yeah?

Speaker 2:
Yeah. I like it.

Speaker 1:
I’m not happy about it.

Speaker 2:
It’s good.

Speaker 1:
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 hope by now Jill and I instruct a handful of new and existing Land Academy members in a one on one class called Career Path. So it’s for people who, this is already your career or you want it to be career called Career Path. I think Jill, you got a class coming up, right?

Speaker 2:
And by the way, October 12th, as this launches we are 10 days out. I may still have slots for recording, I do. As of, when this is releasing, I’m not sure. But if this is something that you really think about, please schedule a call with me and you could actually schedule a call with me. Just go to landacademy.com/careerpath, scroll down and there’s a spot to click on and schedule a call and I’ll call you. If you think, “Ah, shoot. You know what Jill? I think this is the direction we’re going. I think I’m ready for it or I just don’t want to wait that long to get ramped up. I got this. How fast can I get to your level?” That’s who Career Path is for and I will happily have a chat with you and even Jack too.

Speaker 1:
Or, “Haha, we passed you guys a long time ago, but we could use your advice.”

Speaker 2:
Oh, not usually that, but that’s okay. Anyway, just to click on that, schedule a call and I’ll have a chat with you and we’ll figure it out. So, thank you. All right, so back to the question Kim wrote, “I have a purchase agreement signed and there are three owners. The seller I’m talking has stated he has talked with many others and they are on board to sell… or has talked with the others, the other owners, and everyone’s on board to sell.” Got it. “Before moving forward with Escrow, should I get all three owners to sign a purchase agreement? I know the title company will resolve signatures on the deed but I’m a little nervous about investing mine and others’ time without a more firm agreement.” I wouldn’t.

Speaker 1:
I wouldn’t either.

Speaker 2:
I wouldn’t care. No, it’s fine.

Speaker 1:
But I’ll tell you, this question came from Discord like all the other questions on the show. And there are varying opinions on this.

Speaker 2:
Oh, what do they think?

Speaker 1:
About half of them say, “Yeah, I probably would. I would get the other three just to make sure.” Honestly, I think what I would do is ask the Escrow agent, ask the title agent what they think.

Speaker 2:
Okay. Again, I still wouldn’t do that.

Speaker 1:
Just no?

Speaker 2:
No.

Speaker 1:
Just like jam it through?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, let’s back up. This is not a big deal, this is a document to get Escrow rolling and they’re going to work it all out. So I would have one person sign on the behalf of the three, kind of thing. And you could even write on there, “On behalf of…” whatever it is, it doesn’t even matter. And when you’re opening Escrow and telling them, “By the way, this is signed by Sally Smith, there’s also Joe Smith and Bob Smith and I’m including all of their contact information in here for you,” and then she’s going to take it from there. So it’s going to be fine. And if anybody needs anything more, if they come back and go, “I’d like all three sign,” say the Escrow agent would, great, do a DocuSign. Make it easy for yourself.

Speaker 1:
Really fast.

Speaker 2:
To say, call seller A back and say, “Hey, can I have seller B and C’s email addresses and tell them I’m going to send a quick DocuSign.” It’s so silly easy. She’ll be like, “Oh gosh, sure.” And then that means in the 15 minutes that you talk to Escrow agent, you could send that back to them and say, “Here you go and everybody’s done it.” They’d be like, “Okay fine.”

Speaker 1:
Along these lines and over time with a lot of deals, the more deals you do, hopefully the more relaxed you’re going to be about these little details.

Speaker 2:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
This a very good question, it’s a great question I think. Hopefully a lot of people get out it. We’re doing some deals right now with a couple of people where they really have to just read everything and look at it and make a big deal out of it than it is.

Speaker 2:
It shouldn’t be that.

Speaker 1:
And we want to try to make this easier not harder and faster, not slower.

Speaker 2:
That’s the point. You want to make this easy on you and easy on the seller.

Speaker 1:
Right. Which goes along with our topic today. Today’s topic, Land investing from the road. This is an update number three, this is the meat of the show. So we’ve been on the road for… I can’t keep it straight. About three weeks?

Speaker 2:
As we’re recording, it has been 27 days. It just feels like minute, doesn’t it? It feels like 27 minutes.

Speaker 1:
As Jill said last week, “If you live in 200 square feet with somebody else, you better like that person.”

Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, exactly. So here’s what I want to say, I want to give you the update on today where we are, how it’s going. And I also want to give you some tips because here’s the deal, even in our circle of friends they don’t do any land investing, they don’t get it, they don’t care to do it, but they know that it works out great for us, kind of thing but they have a lot of questions about, “How do you do this from the road and how you do it from the road together. And how are you guys working?”

Speaker 1:
These are all good questions.

Speaker 2:
“How are you handling this?” Right? So, that’s their questions. So I thought I wanted us each to come up with three tips and if they’re having those questions, I’m sure you are having those questions too and I know that. I know there’s a lot of you in Land Academy on our Thursday call they’re like, “I’m going to do that, I can’t wait. I just need to… When this kid’s…” Usually it’s kids in school, that’s what even held us back. Kids in school was the one reason that we couldn’t leave sooner. And that’s why we waited a whole week after we sent him off to school to leave. So yeah, he started class on Monday and wheels up on Friday.

Speaker 1:
Wonder why we waited that long.

Speaker 2:
Right? Because we had to breathe and enjoy our house bar to ourselves for a few days, that’s why. But I wanted see to come up with three tips to help you. Because I know you’re probably thinking about doing this too. I think a lot of you are. So I’ll give you my three tips and I’m going to ask you your three tips.

Speaker 1:
Sounds good.

Speaker 2:
All right. My first one is… And this is for whether or not you’re in Land Academy, whether or not you’re doing investor, this is whatever you do. Because maybe you’re the investor and your spouse has a job, but they can do some remote time. So what do you guys do to make this work? One is, create dedicated work time. Not the space, the time. Because as you can see, you can cram whatever you have to do in not a lot of space.
If I had to sit in the passenger seat right now with my laptop on my lap, I could and I could do all of my work, no problem. But I do need to have iced out time and I know that’s very hard for some people because all they want to do is play. And you would think it would be me, that all they want to do is play, “Screw this work thing. Oh the deals? They’ll just happen by themselves. We’ve got some people that work for us. They’ll just figure it out.”

Speaker 1:
This is more like a meeting between the two of us now.

Speaker 2:
Well it kind of is. Whether you’re a Jack or a Jill, you do need to have some dedicated work time because you’re not going to… Because if you don’t… Again, this is update number three for us of being on… And we’re going to do once a week, our Monday show will be where we are and updates and to help you.

Speaker 1:
Maybe update number six is, “Yeah, you shouldn’t do it at all.”

Speaker 2:
And update number seven is, “I don’t know where Jack is. I left him in Toledo.” But if you don’t have dedicated… And this is every time too, think about this, you know as an investor you have to carve out time and get stuff done or it doesn’t get done. You have to have a schedule, it’s the same if as you’re on the road and have dedicated time. Because if you don’t, the mail doesn’t go out, the calls don’t get returned, the deals don’t get done and the bank balance won’t grow. So that’s why you have to do that. And it doesn’t have to be a lot, but you have to have it.

Speaker 1:
What’s your number one?

Speaker 2:
That’s number one. Create dedicated work time. My number two is, whatever equipment you think you need, go small. Again, this is not for everybody.

Speaker 1:
Somebody thinks that we can do all of this just on an iPhone.

Speaker 2:
Sure.

Speaker 1:
Without electricity and no internet connection.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. “I need a cell phone and a flashlight. That’s all I need.” This show is pretty much with a cell phone and a flashlight.

Speaker 1:
Next week we’re going to do that. We’re going to do it Jill’s way.

Speaker 2:
Cell phone-

Speaker 1:
Flashlight and Jill’s cell phone.

Speaker 2:
And we’re going to share an earbud in his ear and earbud in my ear.

Speaker 1:
We’re going to use the microphone on the cell phone.

Speaker 2:
Yeah, we’ll plug in my other thing. It’s going to be great.

Speaker 1:
You’re in charge of that.

Speaker 2:
Anyway. No, but it is true. Don’t overspend, don’t over buy. Don’t over outfit yourself. Actually you did a really good job, I have to say. I’m serious. And if you find you need things on the road, you can get them. There’s a lot of best buys. Trust me, we’ve been in many of them. And wherever you’re staying, you can often have Amazon packages shipped, it’s not nuts. And I’d rather you not be hauling around a bunch of stuff going, “Well this is stupid.” Someone even said something to us. “Oh, I guess…” Because we had to plan. We’re in various tight quarters. We had to plan everything from summer shorts wear and our bicycles to a wedding and all the seasons in between.

Speaker 1:
This is one of my numbers.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. So the woman last night, a friend of our said, “Oh, so then you just shipped things home?” I’m like, “No, we got it. It fits in fine.” All right, then my number three and I’ll let you go. My number three is, be flexible. Because that comes up a lot.

Speaker 1:
For sure.

Speaker 2:
Every-

Speaker 1:
Minute.

Speaker 2:
Yeah, I was going to say multiple times a day things are going to change. And the way we roll, we don’t know where we’re sleeping. Now we’ve learned to not hit the road and go, “Where do you want to sleep tonight?” Because that’s a nightmare usually for me, because I’m the one that’s booking it. And you’ll pick out places and I get to put the pieces together. But we usually know a couple nights out, where we’re… Have that plan. But things change.

Speaker 1:
Number one for me.

Speaker 2:
Right. Okay. You’ve been dying to do this.

Speaker 1:
You should not… No, I was just moving along here. Number one, all getting aside, nothing should change. So if you’re successfully doing this at a desk somewhere, wherever, at home, and you want to go out on the road and do it, it shouldn’t change. The net effect of what you’re accomplishing should not have changed. So you start with that. “Well, I’m doing six deals a month, or I need to do six deals a month from the road. I don’t want that to change. But I’m not going to have a consistent internet connection. I may or may not be able to, depending on who I go with or don’t go with, be able to answer my phone the way that I am.” So you need to step by, step by step, deconstruct exactly why you’re successful or what you’re doing at home. Look at every element of it and then address those things. And it shouldn’t be too hard, list should be pretty short.
Having someone answer your phone, we personally have an employee that does that and a business partner, depending on where the deals go. And we all work through Airtable and we batch out the stuff. Just like Jill said, we batch out the time so we’re all probably looking at it on a Wednesday or Thursday and when we make comments and make decisions at that time. So nothing should change, but you’d have to change a few things to make sure it doesn’t change. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:
Little bit. Your schedule can change.

Speaker 1:
Schedule should dramatically change. That’s actually my-

Speaker 2:
Yeah. When you accomplish it, that’s why you’re doing this. Should change.

Speaker 1:
So here’s the thing, you don’t want to… Being successful in this business, once you get your feet wet and understand it and for certain personality types, it’s not that hard. You don’t want to do this, in my opinion, right out of the box. You don’t want to join Land Academy, watch all the education, quit your job, buy an RV and go be like Jack and Jill.” That’s exactly how to fail.

Speaker 2:
That’d be awesome.

Speaker 1:
If you do that, please film it all.

Speaker 2:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
Because it’ll all make us feel a lot better about ourselves.

Speaker 2:
Yes, that’s good.

Speaker 1:
This is the culmination of how many years?

Speaker 2:
What would you say? 13 and a half?

Speaker 1:
Yeah. 14 years for us doing this together successfully and getting our children out of our house so that we can go do this.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. 14 and about three months ago we figured it out.

Speaker 1:
Well, we’ll let you know. update number seven could be, “We’re on different parts of the country.” We had dinner with my best friends from high school last night and all we talked about was not buying, selling land or any of that, just our relationships with the person that we’re married to and how can you guys work with each other, but we can’t.

Speaker 2:
Yeah, that was comical.

Speaker 1:
That’s a whole show.

Speaker 2:
True. That’s a whole thing.

Speaker 1:
My actual number three is, I wouldn’t recommend doing this alone because it’s always more fun, I think, to share with somebody. But you need to have some rules, some serious, serious rules about just… Especially when you’re working, not so much when you’re playing, because that’s all fun anyway. But when you’re working… We calculated today, we’re in lesson 200 square feet here and inside. And we’ve had to change the rules a little bit about how we deal with each other.

Speaker 2:
Wait a minute. 20 something. What do we say?

Speaker 1:
20 by 10.

Speaker 2:
20 by 10? All right. Okay, sorry. Thank you. Continue.

Speaker 1:
This is a perfect example because I don’t remember what I was talking about. But Jill had to go through something in her head out loud by saying words. She got it, she resolved it and I was a victim.

Speaker 2:
Well, thank you for being flexible.

Speaker 1:
Boy am I happy you could join us today.

Speaker 2:
Oh yes, five days a week. Because you, for now, can find us here on the Land Academy.

Speaker 1:
Tomorrow the episode on the Land Academy show is called Real Estate Lesson Learned from Detroit’s Apparent Comeback. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Speaker 2:
You got to share a snippet about what we’re going to talk about tomorrow and how blown away we were.

Speaker 1:
So I grew up in Detroit in a suburb of Detroit. And the written rule, not unwritten, was, “You never go downtown. It’s too rough of a neighborhood and has run forever.” So again, Jill and I are with my best high school friends. Some of them I haven’t seen in multiple decades. And so they said, “Yeah, let’s all get together and we’ll take you to this restaurant downtown Detroit.” And I’m like, “What?”

Speaker 2:
Are we taking bodyguards or-

Speaker 1:
Yes.

Speaker 2:
Like, “What are we doing?”

Speaker 1:
So I’ll talk about it tomorrow, but I was blown away in a positive way. So I got to the bottom of it, we found out why it’s doing so well. It was one person that changed it all.

Speaker 2:
Cool. Thank you for tuning in. By the way, it’s still new for 2022. It’s our latest and greatest Land Academy program called Land Academy. Well it’s really catching up with Land Academy. It’s the version 3.0 and you can find out more on landacademy.com or always send a note to my team at support@landacademy.com. We are Jack and Jill.

Speaker 1:
Information.

Speaker 2:
And inspiration.

Speaker 1:
To buy undervalued property.

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