Jill Friday – I Love Everything about Your Land But the Price (LA 1867)

Transcript:

Steve:
Video – three, two. Steve and Jill here.

Jill:
Hi.

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

Jill:
I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the still amazingly nice weather, sweet Detroit, Michigan. Why did I just call it Sweet Detroit, Michigan? If you have not been downtown lately, Detroit, let me tell you, it’s changed and it’s awesome.

Steve:
Really is.

Jill:
Fancy restaurants and walking down the street, having a good time and shopping and yeah.

Steve:
Today’s Jill Friday. She’s going to talk about – I’m quoting her now. “I love everything about the land deal, except the price.” Happens all the time. If you buy and sell a lot of property, you know this happens.

Jill:
Yep.

Steve:
If you’re still in the beginning stages of your career here, get ready for it.

Jill:
Yep.

Steve:
Deal’s awesome, too expensive.

Jill:
Yep. And as a side note for yesterday, the Happiness Lab is still existing, so that was kind of funny. Clearly Jack does not listen to that.

Steve:
No. Nor have I been invited to be on the show.

Jill:
No, no, that’s okay.

Steve:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our land investors, one of our members of the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free and I hope you know that we have a site now and we’ve had it for several years called parcelfact.com. It allows you to look up an assessor’s parcel number and find the property and all the things that we think as land investors, you need to know about to make a real quick first, phase one due diligence decision.

Jill:
Uhuh.

Steve:
Check it out. Parcelfact.com.

Jill:
Exactly. Okay. “Can someone with Land Academy experience, give me some advice on PATLive? I’m new to Land Academy and have the ability to answer my own calls from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM central standard time. I’ve been in sales for 40 plus years, so answering the phone is the easy part for me. However, if I’m on the phone, it will go to a vendor voicemail, which I want to avoid. I’m starting with a five to 6,000 unit mailer month and I’m going to wrap up to 10,000 plus units a month as the business income grows. My budget’s tight, so I’m trying to get a price range on what your average spend is for a 10,000 unit mailer. Thanks in advance for your help.”

Steve:
I think you’re setting yourself up for serious success here. If you’re going to answer the phone between seven and seven, it’s 12 hours a day. I think that’s a great start. I really would highly recommend, Jill, this is more your area than mine, to have yourself with an account with PATLive or whatever, so that if you do miss calls, which nobody wants; but it happens, especially in the beginning part of a mailer, then-

Jill:
They could roll over to PATLive. Or for whatever reason, you’re not available every single day from seven to seven, you could just flip a switch and have them go to PATLive.

Steve:
No, I think you thought this out perfectly well. I love your five to 6,000 mailers a month and ramping up to 10,000. You’re going to be successful.

Jill:
And taking the initial calls, you’re just going to learn so much about this and sellers and develop your own script and tweak what you want PATLive to do for you and your business. I think it’s awesome.

Steve:
Yeah.

Jill:
Don’t change a thing. I know it might be a bit in the beginning, but just do it. And there’s always waves when the mail hits; you know it. There’s a couple crazy days, that’s fine. And then it starts to trickle off. You’re like, “ah, you know what? I can handle this.” You’ll be – you could do it because you’re a professional – Sid, you could handle it.

Steve:
Yeah. Yes. Answer the phone. Seven hours a day is huge.

Jill:
Ten –

Steve:
What do you think –

Jill:
12. Yeah.

Steve:
What do you think [inaudible 00:03:41], he’s asking at the end here, for 10,000 units.

Jill:
Oh, for the full costs? I have no idea.

Steve:
I don’t either.

Jill:
But that you asked in the right place. Pretty sure if someone in Discord – someone’s already answered this by now.

Steve:
Yeah, me too. It’s probably a couple hundred bucks.

Jill:
Yeah.

Steve:
I would think. If you do everything that they tell you to do in Discord and limit your script and limit what the phone answering service can say and not say and all that. The important thing is, and you know this already because you’ve doing it for 40 years, call those people back, even if it’s just on caller ID. If they call and just hang up, you have their phone number. Give them a call back and say, “hey, I’m pretty sure you responded to my offer on your land in XYZ County. I’d love to buy it. You want to sell it?” Right?

Jill:
Mm-hmm. It’s fine.

Steve:
It’s Jill Friday.

Jill:
Yeah.

Steve:
She’s going to talk about how she loves most land deals but just not the price and what she does about it. This is the meat of this show.

Jill:
So this happens often and you’re a member and you’re on our Thursday calls. Some of things we’ll say is “shucks – 20? Shoot. Can’t quite make 20 work. Can you get the guy down to 10?” Because if you can get down, get this person down to 10,000 from 20,000 now you can’t lose because everything else is great. It’s just the price. So that happens to me in our own mailers. It happens to people I talk to on our Thursday calls. It happens to people who send it to me in deal funding. So that was just, and a recent thing that made me wanted to talk about it today was my transaction coordinator put a note into Airtable for me on a deal that I’m reviewing. Like, “hey, the person understands that you’re asking for a price cut. They’re not sure really sure how to word it.”
So I wrote in there, well you hear me do it a lot and here we go again but – and it’s a – and I know it’s a scary conversation; it’s like calling – how do you call someone back? And this particular situation, too, it’s like the wife is terminally ill; I’m not kidding. I’m like, could this be more of a sad story? She’s terminally ill in the hospital. They need to get rid of this and they need whatever the most money that we can do for them obviously will help them, slash, however, it’s like, “shoot, this is my business and my livelihood, too.” So I may not be able to make a big number work as much as I would want to. So you have to, unfortunately, whatever the situation is, you always want to be understanding and acknowledge and extend your heartfelt sympathy; and speak to them, like this particular situation;
Speak to them with heartfelt, real response. I understand your situation. However, after I looked at the property and I looked at what’s going on in the area and I looked at the distance to the town, I looked at the condition of the road, what’s going to be needed, even just to get there, fill in the blank. My agent’s been out looking at it kind of thing. Whatever you’ve got and based on fill in the blank, the best I can do is $10,000. And if that works for you, great. I will open escrow tomorrow. And then be silent. You have to let them think. It has to – you have to let it – You can’t over talk them and you shouldn’t offer too much information. Just kind of get one or two. Some people think I gave three things, the taxes were too high, it was too far and they only had legal access, not physical access, something like that.
They don’t need all of that. Just one or two. I really thought this was it and because of that, and sometimes too, because if there’s too many things they kind of wonder why are you even buying it? And if there’s too many things, I’m not buying it. I shouldn’t be buying it. And there’s plenty of times that I’m calling people back and saying I love everything about it. Or usually in this situation, I don’t love anything about it. And the price doesn’t matter.

Steve:
Except the price.

Jill:
No, and that happens sometimes.

Steve:
They like nothing about this land except the price.

Jill:
I know. And sometimes they’re going to go, like I’ll have people go, “you know what, shucks. I got this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, and because of that I can’t do this deal.” And it’s a bummer because often they’ll go, “well whoa, what would you pay?” Just give me any number kind of thing. And you’re like, “shoot, I don’t even want it,” because you get, sometimes it gets so small you’re like, “it’s not worth my time.”
But today is just talking about, I want to give you some content and some meat and ways to think about this and word sentences, when you’re in this situation.
So again, the first part is acknowledge whatever’s going on with them in their world; be really cool about them. Don’t be businesslike. Be cool because you want to still get the deal done, right? This is only for the situation that you really do love it, but the price is the last piece you’re like, “doggonit. I love everything. I just can’t afford it for that because at that 20,000 number it doesn’t work because I think I can sell it for 30. And if I’m buying it for 20 to sell for 30, I have no wiggle room. Maybe if I get an agent involved and look at the escrow costs when I buy it and when I sell it and now I got to get pictures and I got to post it online. I might be into it for 25,000 by the time I’m all done to make five. And if anything I did guess wrong, I’m in a pickle. And I don’t want to do all this work to make $1,000. I don’t want to buy it for 20 and do all this stuff and sell it for 26. But at 10 I know I can’t lose.”

Steve:
That’s right.

Jill:
So my 10,000, I’m like, “that’s a no brainer.” And now I’m staring at this situation where it’s pulling on your heartstrings, too. You’re a real person and they’re a real person and part of the reason why they’re working with you and dealing with you is because of that.
So please remember this. They love that you’re a small company. You’re not “We Buy Ugly Land.” And they appreciate that relationship, and you have set that up with them, that this is who I am. It’s me and you doing this deal. And I will make sure it gets done. I will take care of the escrow part of it and all of that. So be that person. Be at their level. Give them one or two reasons why the price is not what you offered. And just get it out there. What is your best offer? And let them absorb that. That’s the hardest part, too. People, they kind of dump on people; have a little bit of a diarrhea of the mouth situation. And I do that every day. I know. Thank you for not saying no. Like say, did that come, I don’t know what they’re going to say about – anyway.

Steve:
Wow.

Jill:
I don’t know.
Anyway, let them have that moment to think for a minute and let them speak first. I know it’s hard. You’re going to have to. The good news is they can’t see you. So you’re going to get this number out there and you’re going to, so say this is my best offer. It’s $10,000 and then you’re going to go “one-1000, two-1000…” Let it just happen.
And then when they go, “oh shucks.” You know what, here’s what we’re going to do. You guys talk about it. I know that’s not what you were thinking and I wish I could do more, but that really is the best I can do. So why don’t you guys sleep on it. Think about it. Call me tomorrow, let me know. And again, if that does work for you, I’m really, it’s the best I can do. I really put a lot into this. And when you call me tomorrow, if you say let’s go, I will get that money in your hands as fast as I can. I have Susie at ABC Title all lined up, ready to go. And don’t forget, I’m paying for all those costs. So this is, the money we’re talking about is going to be in your checking account. So let me know. And then that’s it.

Steve:
A couple points to make. Number one: this should not be your business model. We’re not here to try to get, to squeeze every single acquisition penny out of every single piece of land.

Jill:
Right, don’t be that guy.

Steve:
Offering somebody’s hand for $30,000, they say, “you know what, 40, you got a deal,” and you know it’s worth 80 wholesale, maybe 90 with a fast turnaround because you did all your homework on where to send mail. That’s good enough. Don’t try to bang them up so bad on the price that you lose the deal or you become without integrity. You still have to maintain the level of integrity and respect, mutual respect for everybody. There’s legitimate reasons why you can’t, the property, you just can’t. You’re going to have to solve something and if it’s a real cost, then that’s real. But to get that same property for 30,000 instead of 40,000 is silly and it’s a waste of time. You’d be better off spending more time sending another mailer out. Number one… I forgot my second point.

Jill:
Mail. Wait, don’t be that guy. Don’t make this your business model.

Steve:
I wonder.

Jill:
I’m trying to help.

Steve:
My second point is this.

Jill:
Okay.

Steve:
This was really hard for me. I had a personal hurdle to seriously get over this topic when I started.

Jill:
Really?

Steve:
Yeah, because –

Jill:
Really? Why?

Steve:
Yeah, because I was staring at this deal. I want to buy and sell land and be successful at it. I don’t want to really be working in my W2 job anymore and I want to make some money. I want to get this thing going. And so yeah, I sent the offer out; the offer’s what I wanted to pay. They came back and said, “nope, it’s going to be this number.” And it’s like, I know I can make it up on the south side. I really want to just get in this business and get it going. Don’t do that.

Jill:
Right.

Steve:
You do not ever, ever want to pay too much for land, where you’re so out your comfort zone, you’ve got to make it up somehow.

Jill:
Right.

Steve:
You’ll end up with a lot of property and no money.

Jill:
Yeah. That’s funny. I have one right now. When you do this, too, and you let it go, and then – so let me finish this whole thought. So they call you back tomorrow. They’re like, “yep, let’s go.” Or they’re like just “no,” it’s just not going to make us do this. We’ll hold onto it. We’ll figure it out. We’ll sell something else, whatever it is. So please be sure and leave them with, “I understand. Hang onto my letter, please hang onto my number and if anything changes, please reach out. This is my business. I’m here. Let me know.” And let that go. Because I have a guy right now. He’s in England, he probably heard me talking about him back and forth. So we came back… his number… This is what’s interesting, is this particular individual spent way too much. Let me give you an example. I think he spent a million dollars on 160 acres. Right?
We offered him a thousand dollars an acre; 160. It was like $180,000. So little more than a thousand dollars an acre. So we offered him $183,000, or whatever for this 160 acre property. And of course he’s like, “yeah, no.” So I had a broker look at it, right? And the broker’s like, “ah, it might be worth 300,000. That’s kind of the top end.” I’m like, “alright.” And I didn’t even really like the 160. I kind of wanted a little bit cheaper. But you know what? That’s – or 180. Or 180, right? So I still could make $100,000 on it if I sold it close to 300. Buying it for 180, sell it around 300. We’re still going to net $100,000. It’s not double. I think we’re okay, though. But we weren’t on the same page. The guy was at a half a million or so. I think it was at 300 and – I think it was at 3,000 an acre. So that would’ve been 40, almost $500,000. Right? Okay.

Steve:
300. But it’s okay.

Jill:
Wait. Three times 160. Isn’t that four? Eight?

Steve:
Oh, oh yeah. 50. Yeah.

Jill:
Okay.

Steve:
Okay, sorry, yeah.

Jill:
Thank you.

Steve:
I’m thinking 2,000 an acre.

Jill:
You got it. Well, so this is what he came back with. So then, and this was like three weeks ago. We politely parted ways. I said, “that’s okay.” He’s like, “I’m not hurting for money.” I’m like, “I get that. That’s totally fine. And I’m not dying for this property.” That’s kind of how it was. But we had a connection via email, and actually we spoke on the phone one time. So it was really cool. And this is the power of this connection, by the way. So then he just emailed me back days ago and he is like, “you know what? The British pound is not what it’s supposed to be right now.” And he’s like, “I’ll sell that now for 2,000 an acre.” Okay, still not going to – that doesn’t blow me over, right? Cause it’s still more than what it’s probably worth.

Steve:
It’s 300,000. That’s where I got the 300,000.

Jill:
Right.

Steve:
And that’s where we are now. And it’ll go down.

Jill:
320.

Steve:
We will buy this property, Jill…

Jill:
Oh yeah, I’m waiting.

Steve:
Jill knows what to do here.

Jill:
Exactly.

Steve:
It’s really fun for me to watch. This is a great example for this episode, of how it’s going to go.

Jill:
Yeah. This is real world.

Steve:
She’ll get that property for the price that – where it’s supposed to be.

Jill:
I’ll keep you posted.

Steve:
For us to feel safe about it. Not to squeeze every penny out, but for us to feel safe.

Jill:
And by the way, when I had that broker opinion, I copied and pasted verbatim, what the broker said in my email to him. I’m like, I’m not making this up. This is what a professional in the area said. So your counter offer is not even what it’s worth. So I obviously am not going to buy it for more than what it’s worth. And even though he spent a million dollars on it, sadly this poor gentleman overspent. So he is going to take the hit anyway. It’s just where he’s going to get out of it.
So the last conversation was, so he emailed me the 2,000. I said, so here’s my response. I said, “hi, thank you so much. I really appreciate you letting me know. It’s just still too much money for me to purchase.” And he wrote me back “alright, I got it. Thanks. Take care.” Now Wait. Because we all know. I’ll keep you posted. Give me a week or two or maybe a month, maybe two months. I’m the only one that’s interested in this property. And again, we have a connection and like I said, he is going to take a hit and we’ll see where we end. It’s really interesting.
Happy you could join us today, five days a week. You can find us here on the Land Academy Show. Join us tomorrow.

Steve:
Join us next week.

Jill:
Oh, next week.

Steve:
For another interesting episode.

Jill:
You are not alone.

Steve:
Oh.

Jill:
In your real estate ambition.

Steve:
It’s Jill…

Jill:
You okay?

Steve:
Yeah. It’s Jill Friday. And I just, you know.

Jill:
I’m sorry.

Steve:
I just didn’t show up.

Jill:
Did you have some more you wanted to add to that?

Steve:
No.

Jill:
I’m sorry.

Steve:
Not at all.

Jill:
I’m like, “shoot, Did I cut you off? Because you wanted more to say more?” I’m like, “okay.”

Steve:
No, not at all.

Jill:
All right. Whew. Good. Well, you know what, happy to be here and happy you’re here. 3, 2, 1.
We are Jack and Jill.

Steve:
Information.

Jill:
And inspiration

Steve:
To buy undervalued property.

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