How to Buy Land the Right and Wrong Way (LA 1865)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hi.

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

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, coming to you from the coolest city right now, I think, where we are sitting in just north of Detroit. I’m having a ball.

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
This has been so much fun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Absolute opposite of what I thought was going to happen.

Jill DeWit:
Let me tell you what I accidentally did, and then we’ll start this show. I didn’t realize until the other day that I’ve accidentally put you back in 1980… fill in the blank. So 1985 or four or something.

Steven Jack Butala:
Probably ’83, but yes.

Jill DeWit:
’83. Okay. Here’s what I’ve done. We are sitting in Steven’s hometown having multiple fun evenings of dinner and shenanigans with all is high school buddies driving around in a version of his original high school Jeep. The only thing that’s different is the color. Yours was red, this is silver. This is cracking me up.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re having a blast.

Jill DeWit:
And then I wonder, why is he behaving like a 17 year old? Gee. So you have to think about that one.

Steven Jack Butala:
You know what the difference is, you. It’s because you’re here. We’re having a blast.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I’m keeping the wheels on the bus.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill DeWit:
Here we go. Well, thanks for that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about the right way to buy land and the wrong way. The root of this episode came from several conversations that Jill’s been having with people who are being interviewed for-

Jill DeWit:
Interviewing us.

Steven Jack Butala:
… for Career Path.

Jill DeWit:
Well, yeah, and even people that are thinking about coming to Land Academy and learning what they’re doing. It’s interesting. And then all it does is make me say, “Oh, you’re going to love this, and I’ll tell you more in a minute.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our investors on a land…

Jill DeWit:
How you doing there?

Steven Jack Butala:
How many times have I said this?

Jill DeWit:
I know.

Steven Jack Butala:
I can’t say it right. One of our members on the Land Investors online community, it’s free. Last year a ton of Land Academy members came to Jill and I needing extra help to get their offer campaigns in the mail, so we decided to launch a product called Concierge Data using the exact same employees that we’ve been using to do our mailers. It’s called Concierge Data. They’ll help you get your campaign in the mail. Whether you’ve done a hundred campaigns or zero, we’re all set up for it. Take a look at offers2owners.com and give them a shout.

Jill DeWit:
Cool. All right. Aaron wrote, “I’ve got a $17,000 cash offer, no contingencies, nine day close, along with proof that this guy has $35,000 in his bank account last week for a five acre property on an Indian reservation, which also happens to be near some pretty nice non-reservation lakes. The same five acres not on the reservation would be worth $40,000. This one’s a $17,000 offer.
“I get an email that the buyer’s asking me to sign a cancellation agreement because he found out through one of the neighbors that one of the other neighbors is a drug dealer. Are they actually a drug dealer? Who knows? Maybe. The first neighbor just might not want someone to buy the property, which is true.
“Would you, A, sign it and elicit ASAP, B, spend $100 to get an attorney to write them a letter explaining how I agreed to buy it, but that I’ll let them off the hook, but I’m keeping $1,000 earnest money, three, engage my small town attorney and try to make him buy it or, D, something else? My inclination is number one, A, but it pisses me off how this has happened. Plus now everyone’s going to wonder why it went back on the market.”
You know what, you wanted to go first, or you want me to go first?

Steven Jack Butala:
All of these things have happened to me and Jill multiple times.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I can tell you with serious history behind us that number one’s the best.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You’re going to end up at number one anyway.

Steven Jack Butala:
Just walk away.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, unless you do have some earnest money and the person’s a good guy because I’ve done that. I’ve had to enter earnest money. We have gone into contracts and backed out on our end and done the right thing, as much as it hurts. You do get to keep the 2,000 bucks or whatever it is. It’s kind of right. For me, it’s cost of doing business.
I didn’t make a good decision there, but me giving this person $2,000 is better than me spending this much money and buying something bad kind of thing or something I’m not happy with in the end. Like I said, you’re going to end there anyway.

Steven Jack Butala:
Calling a lawyer-

Jill DeWit:
It’s not worth fighting him.

Steven Jack Butala:
… about anything should be a last resort.

Jill DeWit:
It’s going to cost you more money. It’s going to cost you more money and time tying this up while you’re trying to chase this person. They’re going to go dark.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then number one’s going to happen after you call a lawyer anyway.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. It’s the same thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Hey, this business about buying real estate on a Native American reservation is fictional. As a private land owner, buyer acquisition person, or salesperson, you don’t buy Indian reservation. You just don’t. This is often confused. This person’s not buying or selling land on a reservation. What they’re doing is probably buying it very near to or adjacent to. So the name of the subdivision or whoever subdivided it is called Cherokee Indian Hills or something like that.

Jill DeWit:
Understood.

Steven Jack Butala:
So please don’t-

Jill DeWit:
Don’t get confused with that.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re going to get all kinds of emails and mail about this, so I want to be super clear about that.

Jill DeWit:
Thanks.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re not here to buy or sell Indian reservation.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, how to buy land the right way and how to buy it the wrong way. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:
My team and I often talk to people who are thinking about joining Land Academy and/or Career Path and/or both. It’s interesting when I get to talk to people that have been following us, A, following us or someone else, and they’ve kind of taped together their own process, and it’s been sort of working. But it’s also they’ve sort of hit a wall, and that’s why they’re talking to me kind of thing.
It’s fun for me to go, “Well, what have you been doing so far? What kind of deals and how are you finding?” It’s great because usually it ends with a version of me saying, “Oh my goodness, you’re going to love this because I’m not going to work that hard. I’m going to give you just as much volume and more and I’m working half as hard as you because I’m not doing these things.”
I wrote down kind of my top three things, so you can go, “What the heck are you talking about, Jill?” I’m going to tell you. These are three things, three examples of what the wrong way people have been doing and the right way that they should be done. Actually, I’m going to give you the right way first, then I’m going to give you the wrong way, because the right way you’re going to go, “Oh, that makes so much sense.” But then when you hear the wrong way, you’re going to go, “Oh wow, people do that?” I’m going to sit here to say yes.
The right way to pick an area to send mail is to use data to troll and confirm the best areas to send offers, data. Pick zip codes, do our regular green tests. It’s all data, it’s all stuff that we teach you. The wrong way is to drive around, manually pick out lots that you think are good, and then go home and skip trace and send these people an offer one by one by one. That’s the wrong way. And people do this.
B, my number two, the right way is to use a service to print, get envelopes stuff, and mail out to sellers by the thousands. The wrong way is to use your family around the dinner table to print and stuff and put stamps on and get offers in the mail.
And then my third one is the right way is to push yourself and keep your pipeline flowing with deals coming in by not holding back on getting offers out there. The wrong way is waiting until you’re all caught up and all your deals are done and you’re at a happy point here to restart and now send out your next mailer. Those are my top three that I come across.

Steven Jack Butala:
What really happens in the big picture is that people learn about real estate from all different places, starting with, in my case, probably Jill’s case too, is our parents when we’re young watching their parents buy and sell a house. Maybe the right way, maybe the wrong way, but whatever they did, our personality types retain that.

Jill DeWit:
We only heard the numbers. We were like, “Oh, my dad made 50,000.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Your dad didn’t make anything. I can tell you, if he had a mortgage and all kinds of other stuff and improvements, he possibly lost money. What’s up?

Jill DeWit:
Oh, you’re tapping.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sorry. We learn all this stuff and you finally land at Land Academy through learning through your parents, learning through other places on the internet. Maybe you were a licensed real estate agent for a lot of years. Maybe you had a few rental houses. People come from all different places, and we accumulate these perceptions or habits.
A lot of them, in my opinion, need to be undone, speaking quite plainly. A lot of times nothing needs to be undone, but most of the time it’s driving for dollars. Forget it. That’s just not the way to do it. We solve a lot of problems for people who have been in real estate in some way or another, and then they want to come to us and learn the right way to do it. Maybe just kind of call it finishing school.

Jill DeWit:
I kind of like that. Land Academy finishing school. We’ll tell you which fork to use and how to send out mail.

Steven Jack Butala:
We were at dinner with my high school friends last night, and they were like, “Wait, what do you do?” I said, “Yeah, we buy piece of land and we sell it for more.” They’re like-

Jill DeWit:
They laughed.

Steven Jack Butala:
They said, “Well, why doesn’t everybody do that?”

Jill DeWit:
Well, that’s duh.

Steven Jack Butala:
I said, “I guess because they don’t buy it cheap enough.” These are real simple answers. So, how do you buy it cheap enough? Send thousands of people offers. Somebody’s going to sign it and send it back. These are very successful people with their jaws on the dinner table saying, “This seems too easy.” It is.

Jill DeWit:
That’s kind of funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
It is this easy.

Jill DeWit:
Do you have any other funny things you want to throw in there about right way, wrong way that you’ve seen?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. I think the world is used to buying property that’s listed on the internet. I’m telling you now, there’s no angle, no real angle-

Jill DeWit:
That’s good.

Steven Jack Butala:
… unless you buy property on the internet and prove it somehow and resell it. Now that’s possible, unlikely but possible. You want to get there first. You need to send a ton of blind offers. That is the best way to jam pack your acquisition pipeline full.

Jill DeWit:
Ding ding.

Steven Jack Butala:
So you put yourself in a position where you’ve got nine deals you’re reviewing because you sent out several thousand offers, you’re looking at nine or 10 deals, you’re going to pick the best one or two or three that are right in front of you. Go do them and flip them. And then put yourself in that position again-

Jill DeWit:
Ding ding.

Steven Jack Butala:
… and again and again. You don’t want to look at one deal and try to make it work. It doesn’t end well most of the time. That’s the biggest one that I see. It’s hard for people. Really, really positive professional and successful people in real estate still shake their head and say, “What do you mean you send out all these offers? How does that work?” Yeah, it works. That’s the biggest story for me.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. That’s good. That’s excellent. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Browse Jack Thursday, and I’m going to talk about why I’m never satisfied in business and chances are neither are you. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
All I hear is why I’m never satisfied. That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s just not the case.

Jill DeWit:
That’s all I heard.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t ever want to go out with another girl the rest of my life.

Jill DeWit:
Aw.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I’m satisfied. I’m happy.

Jill DeWit:
I’m like, “Am I supposed to feel really good?” All right. That’s-

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m done. It’s huge compliment.

Jill DeWit:
Is it because you don’t ever want to go out with somebody else again? Or is it because you found the pinnacle?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I found the pinnacle.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s no way I can improve on this.

Jill DeWit:
Just had to clarify. Thank you very much. Hey, thanks for tuning in. By the way, we would love to connect with you on Clubhouse. And oh, by the way, we’re going to be there tomorrow. Oh my goodness. The first and third Thursday of the month, you can find us live on Clubhouse.
If you’re not sure what that is, it’s like a live radio show. You can kind of listen in and then raise your hand just like you would with Frasier and pose a question and chat with us. It’s awesome. So get on Clubhouse, go look for the Land Investing Club and look for us. Follow us and you’ll see the schedule and you’ll get notified when we are there and we go live. It’s awesome, so join us. We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
We are Jack and Jill. Information-

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration-

Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.

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