Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hello.

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

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the five land investing tools that we can’t live without.

Jill DeWit:
Yes, this is going to be good. I have my list. Don’t look.

Steven Butala:
Okay.

Jill DeWit:
Don’t [inaudible 00:00:20].

Steven Butala:
Okay, good. 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 if you’re a member, please join or participate in our strings on Discord. I promise you, you will not be disappointed.

Jill DeWit:
You’re going to get immediate answers. I was telling someone about that the other day. I’m like, if you’re struggling with anything.

Steven Butala:
Anything.

Jill DeWit:
And you’re not taking advantage of the support that’s there, you just got to throw a question and people will answer it.

Steven Butala:
Here’s an example.

Jill DeWit:
That’s kind of like, I can’t help you with that. If you don’t do it, don’t ask.

Steven Butala:
I’m having trouble getting my first mailer out. I can’t just pull the trigger. Can somebody please kick me in the butt? And everybody will sweep in, me included. I answer tons of questions in real time.

Jill DeWit:
That’s good. Okay. Thomas wrote, I have sold many things online in the past and understand that there’s no shortage of flaky people that call on items listed for sale.

Steven Butala:
We talked about this yesterday.

Jill DeWit:
I did not expect this with real estate though. I’m trying to sell my first two properties and I’m getting a steady flow of interested buyers, but all of them disappear after telling me how interested they are to buy. I’m now advertising on Craigslist and Zillow right now. The properties have good attributes, almost five acres each, and a price at half of what two and a half acre properties are. Is the issue my lack of reach in marketing or because they are desert properties where several others are being bought and sold?

Steven Butala:
This is [inaudible 00:01:45]. This is a classic. This is classic men mistake. I’m a man and I have made this mistake and sometimes make it to this day. You believe that the thing that you’re selling is what matters. You believe that the mouse trap that you’ve built doesn’t require any sales, and what really is happening here is, you’re doing the first 60% of everything correct. And you’re not doing the backend 40%. I would bet you a dollar that you are not having this conversations with these people and then saying, “Hey, what’s your email address? I’ll email you all the information right now, and included there is a link for you to put $500 down on the property so we can start the closing process, and somebody would buy it. That’s all you need to do. It’s not the posting is bad or the real estate’s bad. It’s the sales. It’s the call to action closing part.

Jill DeWit:
We had someone on our staff who now is doing a different job, trying to help with this job for a while. And that’s all they were doing. They thought they were just there to answer questions like customer service.

Steven Butala:
No.

Steven Butala:
I’m like, no, you’ve got to…

Jill DeWit:
You’re there to sell it.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. You’ve got to do a little bit more than just answer the question and go, is that it? Okay, well, have a nice day. Click. Hello? What the heck? That’s not what this is about. That’s right. That’s where it is. Okay, good. All right. Take care. No.

Steven Butala:
It’s interesting, most real estate agents are like this too. They just don’t… They just wait. Okay, thanks. No, you’ve got to send… You need to…

Jill DeWit:
Work. You’ve got to work a little bit.

Steven Butala:
Jill can write the book on getting people to do what she wants them to do without them having any idea that they’re actually being sold something. And when I say people, I mean me.

Jill DeWit:
Well, there’s a couple of things I would say, Thomas, though. Number one, if you’re swimming in the pool where there’s a 100 of similar properties, that’s going to be a problem.

Steven Butala:
It better be cheap.

Jill DeWit:
I’m just going to say it. So, a good thing you are cheap. Now, you’ve got to make yours stand out somehow. And apparently you are, because they’re calling and asking you some questions. Then the only other thing is, moving the property. Whatever it was that drew you to it, and maybe it was the only price when you bought it, that’s fine. You need to be saying, “Hey, look, by the way, I’m getting a lot…” Just so you know, it’s obviously still available or the posting would not be there, but I’m getting a lot of interest right now because this is priced so well. So if you are serious, here’s what you need to do. Kind of thing.

Steven Butala:
I sat in a Home Depot parking lot two days ago for two hours, with a guy, a Tuff Shed representative who is sitting inside a Tuff Shed that he had… They had it all decked out. So what I learned is this, because Jill’s talking about making your property stand out from the others. There are no zoning requirements for sheds almost ever. I mean, you can put a shed anywhere. And because it’s a Tuff shed brand, you can build the whole thing out inside, do all kinds of stuff and it’s still not a house, it’s a shed. So for a couple thousand bucks, you can make your property be completely different than every single other property that’s online. They usually have a leasing program, they’ll drop it off and pick it up and all that stuff. So, once a property is sold, you can move it.

Jill DeWit:
They can buy it. That’s not a bad idea.

Steven Butala:
But I’ll tell you-

Jill DeWit:
I hadn’t taught about that.

Steven Butala:
But I’ll tell you that especially if there’s not so much desert property, and you’ve got to anchor it to something, because somebody will take it. This is a great idea. Jill and I are really exploring… That’s kind of my job right now in real estate, is to make these properties look very different. Why? I’ll tell you why, it allows me to pay more. If I can pay more on the acquisition side, I can buy a lot more property. The sale side prices-

Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:05:33].

Steven Butala:
That’s right, exactly.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. Sorry to [inaudible 00:05:37].

Steven Butala:
It’s okay. Today’s topic, five land investing tools that we can’t live without. This is the meat of the show.

Jill DeWit:
I just got excited, sorry.

Steven Butala:
Go ahead, Jill. I know you’re feverishly writing stuff.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. Here are my five. I’ll do them in order. I’ll go with the least… I’m going to do the Dave Letterman countdown. Number five is telephone apps to record and float phone calls around.

Steven Butala:
That’s on your top five.

Jill DeWit:
Seriously, I really sat and thought about this. That is very important to me, because I’ve been taking these calls. I need to communicate with these sellers. It’s the sellers that I’m dealing with, not the buyers. The sellers, I need to-

Steven Butala:
It’s fascinating, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
Sometimes I pick… Because you know what my point is, I tell everybody, you’ve got to pick up the phone. If you don’t pick up the phone, you’re missing a call, and sometimes I’m out and I can’t write things down. My calls are recorded so I can go back, I can just mentally make a note, put it in my phone like three o’clock on Tuesday. And I’ll go back and find the call on three o’clock on Tuesday, because I know I asked the questions where I got the APN. I got the name, I got his phone number. I’ve got everything right there, so I can go back and write down the notes, do my research and my due diligence and get back with this person. Then I can also point calls in different directions. I can have-

Steven Butala:
In many years, I wouldn’t think that that would banner your list.

Jill DeWit:
I can point them to… Maybe the weekend calls go to me, which is often, and maybe during the week they go to somebody else, and on Tuesdays they go over here, whatever it is. That’s important. So, this is also kind of… I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, but that was my thing. Then my number four top tool is Neighbor Scoop. I always have it-

Steven Butala:
That’s on my list too.

Jill DeWit:
… open on my computer so I can look things up. I think we’re working on an app. I can’t wait. We need an app for Neighbor Scoop, because I love Neighbor Scoop. I would do it on my phone. So what’s Neighbor Scoop? I can immediately put state County APN when I’m talking to somebody on the phone and I’m looking at the whole thing. I’m looking every property detail, I’m looking it on the map. I’m looking at FEMA flood zone. I can see his phone number. I can look at all the property details, everything that’s from RealQuest Pro I’ve got it all right there. Maybe what he paid for it, if that’s in there, I can have that. I may have things about when the property was built. If it’s a house, I have the size of the rooms. I have the square footage. I might have mortgage information, anything that’s like that, that’s recording there, I’ve got it. And it’s like, what the heck?

Steven Butala:
And you can click on all the neighboring properties and see what they paid for him.

Jill DeWit:
[inaudible 00:08:08].

Steven Butala:
It’s pretty amazing. That’s on my list too.

Jill DeWit:
And do valuable due diligence at that moment.

Steven Butala:
Jill and I own Neighbor Scoop.

Jill DeWit:
We created it.

Steven Butala:
So here’s a hint on my list. If there was no tool out there, I went and created it.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
So, my list is packed full of tools that I created actually.

Jill DeWit:
Well then, number three would be like another one too, Offers2Owners.

Steven Butala:
That’s on my list too.

Jill DeWit:
O2O, cheap male who understands us. We got tired of trying to explain what we do to people.

Steven Butala:
[crosstalk 00:08:37].

Jill DeWit:
And they’re trying to up-sale us and offer color or yellow letters, even talk about it. We know what we do, we know what works. So, O2O is best.

Steven Butala:
So, we created it.

Jill DeWit:
And we just [crosstalk 00:08:46] the best price.

Steven Butala:
It’s a bulk mail company that Jill and I own. That’s right. It is the best price, and they do the mail merge for you.

Jill DeWit:
Totally. Number two is the best data. I put best data baby, which is RealQuest Pro, [Data Portree 00:08:59] and TitlePro. We didn’t have access to all that stuff years ago, so it’s amazing.

Steven Butala:
That’s on my list too.

Jill DeWit:
And my number one top… What was the thing? What was the-

Steven Butala:
Tools.

Jill DeWit:
Tool. I hate to call you a tool, but…

Steven Butala:
You’re in my number one too.

Jill DeWit:
I know you did it.

Steven Butala:
You’re in my number one.

Jill DeWit:
You’re so sweet.

Steven Butala:
I hate to call you a tool.

Jill DeWit:
That’s true. You’re in my number one too, baby.

Steven Butala:
Google earth is the one that… I’ll tell you, because none of these things… When I started, this was before Jill and I joined forces. When I started, none of this stuff was available. We literally had to find properties on an Atlas. We had 50 atlases for all the States to try to find it. And we couldn’t, or we would rely on whatever the County had, which back then was not much. There’s no such thing as GIS. So, Google earth itself really can shed some light very quickly on whether or not you want to buy a piece of property, very quickly, and data. My list is the same.

Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:10:06].

Steven Butala:
Not necessarily in this order, data, you could never… I used to have to go to the County website and download the tax roll or buy it. And they send it to you on a CD or back then even a DVD. It would take a month to do a mailer, because the data’s a mess. So data, obviously Jill, Offers2Owners, Neighbor Scoop, and then Google Earth, that was… When Google Earth came out… Google earth used to be called Keyhole and Google purchased it under their umbrella of… I don’t remember what the holding company is above Google.

Jill DeWit:
Is it alphabet or something?

Steven Butala:
Yeah, alphabet. That’s it.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
Interestingly-

Jill DeWit:
How smart am I?

Steven Butala:
… YouTube and Google itself are the only real revenue generators in that entire family of companies. And they have tons and tons of companies, Google Earth is one of them. They don’t make a dollar off of Google Earth. It’s just a huge black hole of expense. It is. There’s just a bunch of them like that.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you for not calling me a black hole of expense. THat could have gone a different way.

Steven Butala:
I was telling some of my friends yesterday, Jill just got back to Arizona. I was hanging out with my friends and I said, “Jill’s actually a profit center.” Most women… I’m going to get all kinds of hate for this. Most women are cost centers, Jill’s a profit center.

Jill DeWit:
Well, you know what’s funny? That’s actually true. Our next door neighbor at the beach was telling me how his wife… He’s like, she runs about $25,000 on American Express a month.

Steven Butala:
How do you spend that?

Jill DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Butala:
What do you do?

Jill DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Butala:
Is it spa?

Jill DeWit:
Maybe there’s some things, and there’s travel in there I’m sure.

Steven Butala:
They’re an interesting couple, because you won’t let her park in the garage either.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, that is kind of-

Steven Butala:
They have a two car garage and he takes both spots for a sports car.

Jill DeWit:
Yes, he does.

Steven Butala:
How does he get away with that?

Jill DeWit:
I don’t know. She used to park outside. It’s so funny.

Steven Butala:
There’s a lot of love in that house.

Jill DeWit:
It’s hilarious. It’s really good. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on The Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on Land Academy Show is called how and how not to review a land acquisition deal. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. This category tomorrow falls under things I didn’t know I had to explain. But our staff is very involved in writing these topics now, they have been for quite some time, for several months. Our numbers are better on the shows, because we’re actually answering questions and talking about things that people really want us to talk about.

Jill DeWit:
Not just what Steve dreams up every day, like this is what I want to talk about, this is what you’re going to listen to.

Steven Butala:
It’s not your a PhD level discussion on data analysis.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
It’s actually like, Hey, idiot-

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Butala:
… how do I actually… Should I buy this or not?

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
That’s what the show should be called.

Jill DeWit:
Hey, idiot.

Steven Butala:
I was calling myself an idiot.

Jill DeWit:
Hey, if you need access to any sort of ownership or property details, including owner phone numbers and FEMA flood map overlays, like I explained in the show, you got to check out neighborscoop.com. I don’t know how they got by without it. It’s created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.

Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.