Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Jack 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 Valley of the Sun.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about keeping up with real estate data sources in 2023. I’m going to tell a story here in a minute about explaining our business model to younger people recently and being laughed at pretty directly about how archaic they seem to think that it is. And then I think we all can learn something from it.

Jill K DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
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.

Jill K DeWit:
Ryan wrote, “Hi all. I’m new to Land Academy as of a few days ago. I am new to land in general, but not to SFRs. I’ve done one land deal within the past month which has led me into Land Academy. I’ve watched Land Academy 3.0, I’m currently rewatching the video on DataTree and pulling a list. One thing I’ve encountered that I would love some clarity on is when you pull your list, how are you ensuring they are not church owned, HOA owned, et cetera. In the videos, Steve searches through a couple of records, but he doesn’t have a method of bulk scraping out these type of properties In your opinions, is this something to care about or you just pull your list, scrub out the assessed improvements, and then mail it? I hope this question makes sense and thank you for the feedback and I’m stoked to work and learn with you all.” That’s cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
Thank you for this question. And the question completely makes sense and it’s a great one. So there’s a reason I put it in this episode. So here’s the deal. There are amazing improvements and ways to pull data, scrub it, and actually create a mailer and get it in the mail. If I talk about all of those in chapter four of Land Academy 3.0, a substantial number of people will get freak out and abandon the idea of sending a mailer out. So I have to teach the basics on a screen. And then this environment, which I love this question, is for us to address, “Hey, there might be a better way for you.” If you’re a super tech savvy person. The old way works great. Is it the fastest? Nope. Is the most accurate? I think so. But there are all kinds of ways to make it faster. That’s kind of what this episode is about.
So the fastest and easiest way to scrub out people who own property, or entities that own property, in a mailer data set is to write a macro and YouTube’s plastered with all kinds of those things and they are keywords. So I do address this in a pretty direct and simple manner in the program, just follow the program and you’re going to do fine. If you want to write a macro to eliminate church owned properties and stuff, which I don’t think you should eliminate churches at all.

Jill K DeWit:
No, I bought from churches.

Steven Jack Butala:
Right.

Jill K DeWit:
Churches are great.

Steven Jack Butala:
We all have. But there are place, like you don’t want to send a letter to the United States government. So the US owns a lot of property and they end up in all of our data sets and they just need to be scrubbed out. You can write a real simple macro to do that. And that’s what this episode’s about is talking about making this more efficient.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, you know what I was going to say too is I bought and sold properties that are in an HOA, so I don’t want those out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
So you got to really take a step back and think about what you’re trying to take out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, in general you don’t want to make a data set smaller, but you also don’t want to waste money on stamps On a mail on the mail. And I say stamps figuratively. Today’s topic, keeping up with the real estate data sources for 2023. This is the meat of the show. A couple days ago, or maybe it was yesterday, Jill and I did a talk on Jill’s little talk show on Clubhouse.

Jill K DeWit:
Last week. Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Last week? Yeah. Because of when this airs.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And a guy came on and was talking about how he locates property. This is not a guy in our group. This is one of the things that I love about-

Jill K DeWit:
Clubhouse.

Steven Jack Butala:
… being a guest on Jill’s show on Clubhouse and just speaking in general or talking with the public in general and not so much seasoned Land Academy members, they have new and fresh and strange ideas which I think we all can learn from. And this guy was going on about artificial intelligence and AI and writing programs and code to worm through the internet and locate would-be sellers for property. So one of the examples that he alluded to was, who’s behind on their utility bills? And so you can dig deep into county websites and find out-

Jill K DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
…. or let’s say utility websites, not so much county websites. And to that end, you can dig deep about back tax property and all of that. So when these new unique ideas come up, my mind’s always open about it but I’ll tell you I don’t have this gray hair for no reason. And back tax property buying properties with back taxes associated with it was how Jill and I started the company. And we’ve done very, very well and still once in a while we buy back tax properties, but in general it’s no replacement for sending everybody in the market an offer, a direct offer. And so there are new and amazing ways constantly evolving that you should completely pay attention to and some may sing to you. We have a lot of members in our group who are software engineers that have figured out a way for themselves to make this more efficient. All different types of ways, they’ve addressed the basic program, the basic pricing, and getting property offers out in the mail, have addressed that for themselves and made it more efficient and a more power sphere.
But the basic concepts of how and why we scrub out the United States government or why we don’t just send offers to back tax property and all of that are still hold. So it’s not so much our methodology that I think that should be seriously renovated. What really should be paid attention to is why. Why are you guys sending all these offers out to churches, including churches, or to everybody who owns property in a qualifying zip code? Why are you doing that and why are you taking out the US government but keeping in the churches? Why are you keeping in back tax property for example, and not just sending it to back tax property? A real popular one is, “I’m going to scrub out owners who just bought the property within the last three or five years,” which is a really bad idea because we buy property from those people all the time.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
So awareness is fantastic, but really question… Sometimes I think certain personalities and I’m one of these people want to make everything so efficient that it doesn’t work.

Jill K DeWit:
I was going to add that. Don’t think that we’re not always testing those things too. So we’ve tested the whole email blast and so don’t think that… Here’s what I want to say, we test these things because we always want to stay ahead of you and make sure you have the best tools, resources, you know what you’re doing. Right? So if we didn’t incorporate it, there’s a reason why. My example is the email thing. A while back, we even were, this is years ago, were saying too, “Hey, why are we even sending letters? Maybe we should just get these people’s email addresses, check, and then email them an offer. Save all that mail and a time and the money.” But the legalities of that is what kept us away. So don’t think we haven’t considered all these new and exciting shiny products just like there’s a reason why we’re not doing it. As much-

Steven Jack Butala:
Anyway, in 1995 when I started all this, I didn’t sit down with RealQuest or a data set. That’s not what happened. These choices and the decisions that we made and how we do it now were a constant progression on top of, “Hey wait, this is more efficient, let’s do it this way.” Back in the day, I would pull data sets from the actual county because data aggregators like RealQuest and DataTree were just not available. Before that, before computers, there’s a book behind us, behind Jill’s head, called the Stevenson Method where they’d go to the county and sit down and look at paper and write down on a yellow pad the properties that they wanted to send offers to and they did that in the ’70s.
So while I got involved in this a lot later with an actual computer on my desk there, there’s always a way to get offers into hands of owners to see if they want to sell their property. That’s what this is about. And when you start to make that data set smaller, and rethink that basic concept, you’re going to get yourself in trouble. If you have a great way getting offers into someone’s hand that’s ethical and legal and you’re including the entire data set that you’ve analyzed as people that need to get offers, because you want to buy that land, I’m all for it.

Jill K DeWit:
And I was going to say, a lot of people do cold calling and I’m like, I’m surprised that hasn’t got a bigger in more trouble yet, if that makes sense.

Steven Jack Butala:
Bigger spanking?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, the email people have got a big spanking. That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the texters.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, the texters don’t even start that. Because we thought that too. Were like, “Oh, well let’s go down there.” Then we realize if you text the wrong person and they raise their hand and they get an attorney involved, boy really That will shut you down so fast it’s not even funny how expensive that could be, the fines involved with that. Yeah, email, texting, and I’m really surprised that cold calling hasn’t.
But anyway, that’s the thing. At the end of the day, our way is the safe… Not only is it the safest and the best and the legal way, but I personally think there’s something about sitting there holding it in my hand and looking at it, for me. And I have to say a lot of our sellers are older. That’s part of it too. They get the mail, they darn and read everything in their mail, just being honest. And if they don’t like the offer, they’ll call you. And if they don’t like it right now, they’ll put it in their file. They have a file. So they don’t scan it and shred it like we do. They’re putting it in their file and it’s on their desk, they know right where it is.

Steven Jack Butala:
Look, it’s predictable, the way that we do it works and it’s predictable.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is it appropriate to try something new in addition to this?

Jill K DeWit:
Sure.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure. Heck yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Always.

Steven Jack Butala:
Try it.

Jill K DeWit:
And let us know.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
You find something great and you’re like, “Hey guys, I think I’m onto something here. Can you guys help me and we can all make this great?” Please bring it to us.

Steven Jack Butala:
But while you’ve got mailer mailers going out and you’re sending, let’s say 5,000 a month and doing one or two deals a month in the background and you’re cash flowing and happy and absolutely try all kinds of new ways to make that easier on yourself.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally.

Steven Jack Butala:
Outsource everything that’s part of career path, is a huge part of career path. The class that Jill and I instruct for more advanced people or people who are this is their career, that that’s a lot of this is outsourcing. Heck outsource it to a tech person to make the mailer process easier if that’s what you’d think is appropriate for you.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep. 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 of the Land Academy Show is called, “Should we buy infill lots in this down market?” You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill K DeWit:
Hey, I got to add real quick here. If you are new and you are listening and you are not a Land Academy member, it would behoove you to check out our website because I’m doing a rocking crazy, amazing, I haven’t done this in a long, long time, won’t be the slow again, sale. So I’m doing half off-

Steven Jack Butala:
Won’t be this low again really.

Jill K DeWit:
No, because I’m raising the prices. So I’ll tell you, it’s half off between now and the end of the year for our whole education bundle. Period. That’s it. It’s awesome. And in 2020, I’ve had a lot of people come to me and go, “Wait a minute, why is this so cheap?” I’m like, “You know what? You’re right.” Sometimes people get confused or like, “You have all this wrapped up?” I’m like, “Yep, I do. That’s who we are.” So it’s not going to go crazy up, but it will go up in 2023. So check it out now the coupon code, or the promo code, is half off. So go to landacademy.com and you will find out all the details there. We are Jack and Jill.

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

Jill K DeWit:
… and inspiration-

Steven Jack Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.