Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit and this is the Land Academy Show from the road. Sorry, I had to just throw that in there.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1,957 and today we are talking about the land component of affordable housing. It’s a in depth discussion that we had in the most recent career path alumni call.

Jill K DeWit:
Career path alumni.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then Jill’s going to talk about the role of marketing in this, what we call modern land flipping currently. How we do it now.

Jill K DeWit:
What I do now is not what I was doing five years ago.

Steven Jack Butala:
Exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s going to be cool. I want to say too for a few minutes, like we are coming to you from the road, we happen to be in Colorado, and if you could just imagine as I look at the camera and I shift my eyes about four inches to the left over the monitors that I’m looking at, it is the most dreamy, beautiful tree lined blue sky view. It’s what? 70 degrees today?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
So we were on our bikes all day yesterday. We had to race home to not get in the rain yesterday. It was so flipping fun.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re in Durango. By the time this is airs, we will not be.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
And we’ll be out of Ouray also. We’re going up to Million Dollar Highway in our new RV. New to us RV over the next week.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly. We’re loving it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I just installed this studio today, so we’ll see if it works. But I’m pretty happy with myself.

Jill K DeWit:
We’ll see if it works.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m generally not happy with myself and I’m pretty happy with myself right now.

Jill K DeWit:
Why are you… I’m the opposite. I roll around. I am generally happy with myself, but if nobody else is, I don’t care. I’m happy with myself.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s why this works, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
I could look like, I don’t know what. I could be a disaster going down the street, but I might feel really good about myself.

Steven Jack Butala:
Your strange unwarranted positivity offsets my eternal negativity. So we’re always at zero.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you know what’s really nice? A lot of negative people say, “Oh no, I’m not negative. I’m a realist.” You don’t say that.

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s really kind of funny. Exactly. I just want to add that this is us. This is us on the road. We’re going to be on the road for months now you guys. This is our first podcast on this trip, so this is number one of how many weeks we should start keeping… We should put that in there. Keep track of it’s episode 1957, but it’s episode one of this… What am I trying to say? This particular outing and our outing might be eight weeks, it might be 12 weeks, it might be 20 weeks depending how today goes. So you never know how this is going to end, but I just want to add, the whole point I’m trying to make is I’m buying and selling land all over the country. I’m not standing there. I’m not going there. I’m not seeing it. I’m not doing anything of that. Why do I have to stay in any one state or any one country?

Steven Jack Butala:
I love this thought, this methodology.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I want to hit this home to all of you. If you want the flexibility of, hey, if you’re tired of going to office, I understand and you want to be your own boss and have your own life, we got that licked. This is a good gig.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, we do. And it wasn’t so much that we couldn’t do it before, it was just we had children at home and-

Jill K DeWit:
True. School.

Steven Jack Butala:
… There’s just a lot of things. Jill has a… It’s a good time to bring up Land Academy Ladies. Because you just had your Land Academy Ladies discussion and I think you guys talked a little bit about life gets in the way. Don’t let it.

Jill K DeWit:
Don’t let it. If you’re like, “Oh, I can’t leave.” Really? Think about it. It’s summer, kids are out of school, why can’t you? We can. You can.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars and we take a deep dive into two land related topics by popular request. I just mentioned those. If you want to sneak peek of our discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It’s free in read only format.

Jill K DeWit:
By the way too, if you would like us to answer your question or you would like some help getting involved with our community, just text us, 480-530-7383. We read all the texts and your question just might be answered here on next podcast, like these two that we’re doing today by the way. These were questions that were texted in. So Steven wrote, “I have a question about the possible upcoming recession. I heard you guys saying in the last recession you were really affected when land transactions really slowed down. I was wondering what advice you have for full-time investors if we’re experiencing something similar over the next six to 12 months.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s, first of all, these two recessions are crazy different when it comes to real estate. The last one was called the Great Recession for a reason, and it did nothing short of bring Jill and I to our knees. It was a terrible, terrible time in my professional life and in Jill’s too, and we got ourselves out of it because we adjusted with the time. But by no means were we in a comfortable place.
This recession is largely inflationary. The last one was mortgage and banking driven, so it caused a lot of foreclosures and sub-prime mortgages and it was real estate based worldwide, starting in New York. This one, it’s not the case. It’s not real estate based. It’s not mortgage based. It’s was caused largely by, I think, COVID. And so what we’re about to experience, if we do it all, in the next six to 12 months is higher interest rates, which means combating inflation. So where you’re really going to see it in this recession is at the grocery store. And if you finance something like a car.

Jill K DeWit:
Or a house.

Steven Jack Butala:
You have real control over both of those things. You have a lot less control over housing and accidentally signing a bad mortgage. We didn’t sign a bad mortgage, but nobody was buying real estate, and so we had all this real estate. So we had to come up and when I say we, I mean, Jill came up with a very creative idea to take the existing inventory they had, which by the way, we paid way under value for and liquidated it as we needed it to buy new product.

Jill K DeWit:
New stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s really what happened.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
We adjusted and then we went out and bought, because it was so much lower priced on some amazing inventory.

Jill K DeWit:
So as a full-time investor, number one thing I would say buy for cash. So then you’re not affected. Who cares about the interest rates are, you paid cash for it. And there’s a lot of people out there that are going to need the dough. You’re going to get some better deals. So that’s what we’re finding. I’m still trying to like, I want to be cash heavy right now so I can buy these great deals as they come along.
And often too, this is an interesting conversation. I just had a deal fall through this week actually yesterday because the… It was a 70 something thousand dollars property, so it’s not a lot of money, in the scheme of things, let’s just say with the deals I’m doing. But these people couldn’t qualify. They could not qualify for the loan. It had nothing to do with the property because it’s still, it’s worth like 90 or a hundred. They just couldn’t, so we’re back. We just put it back. But here’s the thing. We had a backup offer, which was better anyway for $75,000 cash. Here we come. So now we’re okay. It’s working out better in the end. So you’re going to be buying for cash and selling for cash and the right people out there just looking for the deals. Maybe you don’t three times your money, maybe two and a half times your money. I think you’re going to be just fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
I mean, in regards to the land business, your sales might slow down, but the way to look at it is you’re going to be buying property cheaper. Nothing really has changed for us since this whole thing started. In fact, COVID really kicked our business up from a acquisition and a sales standpoint. What will be affected, make no mistake, is commercial real estate. And so if you own a bunch of highly leveraged office buildings.

Jill K DeWit:
We’re all watching that.

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re probably not watching this show or listening to it because you’re crying in your Cheerios somewhere.

Jill K DeWit:
Crying. Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because this is about land. This is not Office Building Academy and there’s a reason for that.

Jill K DeWit:
Could you imagine? Oh, that’s actually funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is not Class C Strip Mall Academy.

Jill K DeWit:
Wait, I hate to say it, but the Office Building Academy would be, our first year would be a suicide hotline. I hate to say this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my God. That’s not funny, but it is.

Jill K DeWit:
I know it’s not funny. First of all, don’t do anything crazy. Next. Sorry.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s absolutely right. If you are buying… We buy property for 20% of probably what it’s worth on average, maybe less for cash. It’s really hard to get hurt in any situation if that’s what you’re doing.

Jill K DeWit:
Even 30, I’m good with 30.

Steven Jack Butala:
Just in general. 25, 30.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
20 to 30%.

Jill K DeWit:
You got this.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s first topic is called the land component of affordable housing. So earlier this week we had, every month we have what we call our career path alumni call, and it happens every month on the first Tuesday of the month. And it’s everybody who’s ever been through the career path program that Jill and I have, which is kind of like the advanced one-on-one sessions that we have. It’s an eight week program that we do twice a year. And so everybody that’s ever been graduated from that program is on that call. And we had a very lengthy and really intelligent discussion about affordable housing.
So affordable housing is defined as in any given market, there’s an average amount of money that’s made. And in an any given market, there’s an average cost to buying houses or the cost to live, depending on how you define it. Could be the rental cost for an apartment, could be the payment on a single family residence. It all gets put together-

Jill K DeWit:
A mobile home.

Steven Jack Butala:
… And one is generally higher than the other. Cost of housing is either higher than the average wage when you look at the payment every month or the other. So at a hundred, if the index is at a hundred, then the world is perfect and the average wage first earner household can afford the average price. Well, that’s not happening right now. What’s happening is the wages are lower and the cost of housing is going up as that percentage. According to the index. I don’t care how you feel about this politically or don’t feel about it. That’s just the math.

Jill K DeWit:
We all know we can all take a step back and look that. At what I earn right now today, I couldn’t afford to live at, fill in the blank. We all understand. So that’s another way to say that. Perceive it.

Steven Jack Butala:
So somebody in our group, I won’t name their name, although, because I have nothing but positive things to say. He said, “Why can’t we as a society figure out how to manufacture houses the same way we manufacture cars? Stamping stuff out, put it on an assembly line, make it cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.”

Jill K DeWit:
Agree.

Steven Jack Butala:
And I couldn’t agree more. So why doesn’t that happen? Because of the variable of land. So land cost, generally the more attractive places that anybody wants to live, the land’s more expensive and it’s more scarce. So now you’re messing with raw supply and demand. You have a huge demand for very expensive land. So the cheaper… Even if you put a very inexpensive product, slap it right down on there. It’s not apples or oranges if you put that same actual… Let’s call it an F-150, you put that F-150 right on top of a rural piece of property. Then to add on top of that, where you’re going to get water. If you’re living the in California water’s a real issue. You’ve got municipalities telling you what type of product and only stick built homes here. Yeah, well, maybe we’ll let you install some manufactured housing, but we have to approve it. We’ve got to connect the sewer. That might cost $28,000 in California and $13 in Detroit.

Jill K DeWit:
Don’t forget permits.

Steven Jack Butala:
So there’s a huge, huge variable when it comes to land itself in affordable housing. One of the remedies for that is ADUs, accessory dwelling units where you slap it in the backyard of… You already own a house that’s on a lot. You drop one of these things down and connect it to the existing utilities and you remove a tremendous number of variables. And so that’s a very viable option to move toward that F-150 model, up the assembly line, but enter politics.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s some communities that love the idea of putting a couple ADUs in the backyard. Los Angeles is one of them. For what reason I’m not sure, because Los Angeles is extremely crowded.

Jill K DeWit:
They do, but they don’t.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a lot of issues that are-

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not a truck where you drop it down in Missouri and you drop it down in Northern California, and it’s just about the same.

Jill K DeWit:
I’m frustrated. Places like California, let’s just say it, they have opposing rules. They’ll change the zoning for really like, oh, we want everybody to have up to four units on their property or even just two, whatever it is. They’ll just automatically across the board, pick chunks of areas and change zoning that they can allow this. Then the permitting things don’t go against it. And then the parking allowances go against it. There’s all these opposing things. It’s almost like you can’t… It’s so hard to untangle.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s exactly right. What she’s saying is there’s a tremendous number of variables in LA City versus, let’s say, Hermosa Beach, which is in LA County, and now you’ve got a different set of rules-

Jill K DeWit:
All over the place.

Steven Jack Butala:
… And they’re adjacent to each other versus-

Jill K DeWit:
Are we pro or against this today? I guess I’m not sure where we’re going.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m neither.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. Got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I was neither. I know what I am personally. I’ll tell… Well, I’m glad you brought that up.

Jill K DeWit:
Where are we going with this? So I feel like I don’t mean to undermine-

Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s all the map that goes to the variables and that’s it.

Jill K DeWit:
Undermine your positiveness.

Steven Jack Butala:
What Jill’s getting at is in our day and certainly every single generation before us, if you can’t afford it, then go somewhere else.

Jill K DeWit:
Move where you can.

Steven Jack Butala:
You don’t look at statistics and say, “Well, I live in an unaffordable area.” Yeah, you do. Because you can’t afford it.

Jill K DeWit:
You need to get another job or do something else.

Steven Jack Butala:
I did a podcast probably a year ago, maybe more, when this whole affordable housing thing used to be an… Affordable housing is a huge topic right now. So I did a show called Affordable Escalades. Since we’re comparing cars, if you can’t afford an Escalade, you don’t whine about it.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
You just buy a cheaper car or you buy a used one.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you have the same options with housing. If you can’t afford where you want to live, which is my entire life, excluding right now, I can actually afford where I want to live. I live somewhere else.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
What Jill’s getting at is there’s a massive whining component to this instead of just actually doing something about it. Get a better job if you want to live there.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, okay, hold on a moment. I’m not saying there’s whining, but there’s just like-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, no I am.

Jill K DeWit:
… Opposing. Okay, yeah. Okay, good. But here’s how I was thinking of this. Well, how I see affordable housing in our world is there’s a lot of places you can go and a lot of things that you can do that are very affordable. The tiny house thing is still not done. I still think there’s a buzz for tiny… It’s quieted down though. Have you noticed?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s not like everybody’s all excited like they were everybody when it first came out.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not that fun to live in a hundred square feet.

Jill K DeWit:
Every single person said, “I want a tiny house. I’m going to do this. It’s so cute. Isn’t this great? Look at my boyfriend and our kid and our two dogs,” or whatever it is. I’m like, “Really? You’re all living in that thing?” And we only need a four by eight or something. That has worn off. But legislature doesn’t necessarily make it easy, which makes it bad.

Steven Jack Butala:
They make it harder.

Jill K DeWit:
They do. But the beautiful thing is there’s places that are. This is my thing. If you’re trying to do this in San Francisco, maybe a little difficult. However, maybe you’re somewhere in Texas. There’s a lot of places in this country that are beautiful, that are way more tax friendly, that have lot less regulations that you really can afford to have a nice life. I think what’s bringing this up is too, is what we’re doing right now. So we leave Arizona, we’re going to Colorado, we’re in Colorado. We’re all over Colorado. There are even parts of where we are right now, we’re like, “Why is this bad?” I mean, come on. I’m not in Denver. I don’t want to be in Denver by the way. You can drive not too far. Have a nice life. And it’s a lot less expensive and beautiful. So we’re driving around the country for the next several months and most of the times we keep saying, “What’s wrong with this?” Look-

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re saying that right now in Durango.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I mean, this is so sweet. There’s so many times Steven’s like, “Look at that guy driving his own tractor around. What a sweet life that guy has.” His little downtown over here, looks like there’s three bars. They have a grocery store, and I’m sure he is growing his own vegetables.

Steven Jack Butala:
Talk about healthy outdoors living.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. What’s wrong with this life? I think sometimes we all get just a little too, I don’t know what it is. It used to be keeping up with the Joneses or something stupid. That’s what the saying was when we were raised. Like, you’re trying to one up the next guy and you’re trying to have the cooler car in the driveway or the bigger house or the fancier watch. Oh yeah, you need a Rolex or whatever it is.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t think that’s that. That’s not this.

Jill K DeWit:
No, no, no.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know what you mean. It used to be that.

Jill K DeWit:
It used to be that. So I still think there’s people that don’t think the way that… Just take a step back, take a step back, see what you can afford and make some changes.

Steven Jack Butala:
What she’s saying is that the phrase affordable housing has never been brought up. It began around COVID.

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
Around that time. I’m not saying it’s a result of that. But affordable housing is the result of raw supply and demand. And so there’s less demand in a rural community so it’s cheaper. There’s more demand in an urban community so it’s more expensive. You yourself have control over how much money you make. Complete control over how much money you make and 90% control, I would argue a hundred percent control in where you live.
I’ve asked several people over the course of my entire professional life, “Why do you live here?” because I’m from Detroit. I grew up asking that question. To my parents, to everybody, “Why do you live here?” And they’ll say things like, “Well, this is where my family is.” You have control over that. Or I literally, one person said an answer was, “Well, where would I get my dry cleaning done?” So the problem is, there seems to be this sentiment that someone is pushing the buttons in a control tower somewhere about how expensive the real estate is over here versus over there. And there’s not government manipulation on housing. If there was, it would be called the projects. And those got all removed during the seventies because it was-

Jill K DeWit:
Thankfully.

Steven Jack Butala:
… Not a good environment for anyone living there or not living there. And so you have control.

Jill K DeWit:
For me, I’ll end on this for this topic for me, but as a land investor knowing about this, it’s a personal thing for all of us where we can afford to live. But then also we need to think ahead about who our buyers are and what they’re doing. So even if you’re like, “I can do whatever I want, Jill, we’re doing great,” which I get and I love that. But you need to be knowing and thinking about this because this is where you’re going to be buying and selling land for a lot of people. And maybe try to be ahead of it or just watch where they’re going and watch where people are moving to and what they’re trying to buy and cue up that land.

Steven Jack Butala:
Geez, Jill, that’s the greatest way to end this topic. We have as land investors have a total control over this. The statistics are everywhere. You can see where it’s affordable and where it’s not affordable, or you can see where people are moving, buy land there.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.
Hey, if you didn’t catch it last week, Jill announced the new dates for our career path fall. And so you can either announce them now or we can ask you to go back and take a look. Do you want to announce it now?

Jill K DeWit:
Well, how about this. It may or may not be open to the public at the moment, but-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
No, it’s all good. I always give the love to our members first. But go check out the site. Go to landacademy.com/careerpath, and on the landacademy.com website, there’s a dropdown that has career path dates. It has times, it tells you what it is. Basically, it’s our eight week intense, it’s our highest level coaching still done by Jack and I. We’re doing two more sessions this year. They’re going to go concurrently in the fall, September, October, November. And it’s going to be… It’s amazing. The results that are coming back from our current… Well, really our alumni. Right now, we don’t have a class going at the moment, so our alumni is staggering. We have repeat alumni people that come back too and do it even more than twice. They come back and do career path again. Because they get so much out of it. And it’s launched new products like Land Academy Pro and other things that you’ll hear more about.

Steven Jack Butala:
Do you have dates?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, but not off the top of my head.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, okay.

Jill K DeWit:
End of September.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want to sneak peek at it, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Robert wrote or texted in, “Hi, I just joined your group. And my first question is, how do I find a good title company to work with? And do I find one near where I’m buying property or is our good title company that works nationwide on land deals?” You want to go first or you want to go first?

Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Been down this path. Try to do this path about doing just one First American Title. Hey, let’s just get in bed… Well, theoretically, you know I’m saying. Get in bed together. We’re going to use you exclusively. I’m doing all these deals, my community’s doing all these deals that did not work. I’m like, “We can get some great rate.” I might circle back around. I’ll tell you honestly, it’s been five years since I was working on this, but they just didn’t understand it. I tried this and they didn’t get it. What do you mean you’re doing all these deals and you have all these people? I’m like, “Never mind.”
So here’s what you do. So the first thing I would do, since you’re in our community, which is awesome, Robert, I would drop a note in Discord first with my peers and say, “Hey guys, I need a good title company and a title agent in this county, this state.” And there’s a pretty good chance someone’s going to go, “Oh, call Sally over at Your Title Companies Are Us, Title R Us.” I don’t know. Something like that. Anyway, and then you get, that’s my favorite, a word of mouth. Somebody’s used them, they understand us, they know how we roll, cash and we’re investors and there’s going to be more coming at you kind of thing. So I would start there.
And if no one comes back with one, then you just start picking up the phone and you’re going to find a title company in the county and the area where you’re buying the property. Not where you are, where the property is, because that’s where your seller is, because they’re going to be working with them, getting documents in and out, getting it recorded in that area and all that. So that’s where you want to do.
The conversation is really easy. You’re going to have a couple questions right off the bat. My first one is going to be how much does it cost and how fast can you close? Those are the two most important things I want you to cover. I want you to let them know that you’re an investor. If this goes well, you’re going to have more than one for them that you’re going to be sending their way. This is the first one. And I want to know how fast are you guys taking. Remember, I’m an investor, super easy buying for cash. There’s no financing. Oh, and by the way, there’s no agents involved. It’s just myself and the seller. It’s going to be your easiest deal ever.
And then hopefully on the other end, the right title agent is going to go, “Oh, whew, I’ve worked with you guys before. This is great. You may not have to deal with a bank and I don’t have to deal with an agent or a broker. Awesome, great. I could do that in about, right now, I’m running about 14 days.” You’d be like, “So if I presented something on the first, we could close by the 15th?” Or give her something like that. You could start getting technical there and lock them in when you have one. But they’re like, “Yeah, totally. I could do two weeks on these things. No problem. With title insurance, don’t think about it.” That’s what you do. And there’s more to it, but that gets you going.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s really one of three ways to handle this. Number one, if you’re brand new or a DIY type person, you want to find a title agent, like Jill said, close to the property and one that’s hopefully maybe recommended by the recorder at the county where it’ll be recorded.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a way.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two is what we do, which is we’ve gotten big enough and we do a lot of deals. So Jill hired a her transaction coordinator, her name’s Jan, and she does all of our deals. So she will, if we buy a piece of property in Florida, she will seek out… We never talked to anybody in Florida when we talk to Jan. And Jan seeks that. She puts it all together, whether we’re doing real estate deals in 19 states, she handles it all. So we only talk to her. The third way is join Land Academy Pro, and then you get to utilize our employees so you don’t have to go out and do this stuff. So if you are in career path or a career path alumni, at some point you will be able to… It’s closed right now. We’re full. But that’s the best of both worlds because it’s a lot cheaper and easier than hiring your own person.

Jill K DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s second topic, the role of marketing in modern land, flipping by Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s not by me. I should just get up. It looks like you’re standing up to walk away. You’re like, “Get up and leave.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my God, I should do that. That would be hilarious. Watch the numbers improve on the show.

Jill K DeWit:
There he goes. Once again, welcome to my world. No, I was just going to talk about… So marketing and land flipping. This is what we do. So first, let me describe what I used to do, and let me describe what I do now. Okay. This is awesome. So here’s what you used to do. Back in the day it was me. It was you. First it was you, then it was your people. Company changes. Then it was me, and now it’s somebody else. I’m going to get to that.
But I’m going to talk about me. So I don’t know, five, 10 years ago I learned from Jack, what do good photos look like? Do I go out and take my own photos? No. But I know how to hire somebody. I know what to tell them what to look like. I would give them a laundry list of photos of I want this angle, that angle. Looking from here, looking from there. I want blue sky. I want no snow on the ground. I want the town. There was a lot.
The role in marketing was writing my own description, writing my own title, getting my own photos, getting my own drone shots. Even back then, drones weren’t even a big thing. It was really just photos. Now, it’s so easy to get one guy to do it all. And then getting it posted. And by the way, I had to take all the calls, inbound. All the people asking all the questions, and the more they asked the same question, I had to go back and update the posting. And I would have it on our website. I’d have it every darn website I could think of. I would’ve it on social media. I would have it on flat rate MLS listings. I mean, basically the point is, I did it. We had to do it ourselves.
Let me fast forward to today. So today, and I wrote down a note here, yep, we are eating our own words. Because this came up this week. Someone was asking me some point blank questions on the… It’s Land Academy Ladies, but it’s soon to be Land Academy W. That’s it. We are Land Academy W. We officially voted, that’s it. We love it. So it’s Land Academy Women, like ESPNW. By the way, that’s where I stole it.
So we are now not doing any of that. I am baking in on all of my deals, somebody else to sell the property to me, for me, I should say. And they are brokers and they’re agents. So I will spend more time now, extra time. How’s my time spent? Not with a photographer, not with a drone guy, not writing the description, not doing this. Now my time is spent while my property’s in escrow getting ready to close, I am trolling all the brokers in that area. I’m on all the land selling websites and just regular realtors. Zillow, I’m finding my favorites with who has recent sold properties that are just mine in my area. I like the numbers, I’m looking at how fast they did the transaction. I’m looking at their listings. I’m looking at what they wrote. I’m looking at the photographs, and then I’m calling those guys.
So by the time my property closes, and I can do this in one afternoon, by the way, it’s not like I’m spending weeks on this. One afternoon, I’m sitting down, if I don’t have one already. I’m like, well, now I need to find a guy to sell this property, and I’ve got more coming in this area. So let’s see, who do I want to start with? I’m going to call three or four brokers, see who answers the phone, see how we communicate, see what commissions are like. How we connect. I’ve already seen their work, so I wouldn’t have called them anyway if I didn’t know they couldn’t do it in that area because I’ve done it and I like their work.
So it’s really now how we connect. And then I want to find out too, hey, by the way, what do you think you could sell this for and how fast you think you could sell it? It’s that kind of a thing. And I’m letting them do it like. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Jack and Jill, hold on a moment. I’ve been binge listening to you and in episode number 4 92, you were still cursing out brokers. Yeah, you’re right. This is me being-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, no. We all still feel the same way about brokers.

Jill K DeWit:
This is true.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s no change there.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, there is some of that.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s just a couple good ones. You have to find them.

Jill K DeWit:
There is some of that. There is still going to be stuff that’s not perfect. But you know what? I accept it. I’ll tell you, even today, I just sent my transaction coordinator a note. We were messaging back and forth this today, and I’m like, “What is this stupid form this person is asking me to sign?” Yes, I know this is actually… And I’m like, I hadn’t seen this before. I don’t even understand the verbiage, but she’s like, “Basically, you’re signing because the buyer number one couldn’t qualify.” Remember you told me, I just talked about… “And buyer number two is moving into the lead position.” I’m like, “We really have to do a stupid form for this?” I’m like, “Okay, fine, whatever.” And I wrote her a note. I’m like, “This is why I would never survive if this was my job.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez.

Jill K DeWit:
I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I would crack. It would break me.

Jill K DeWit:
I would be-

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, me too, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
I would be telling the state, I’d be putting my middle finger up to the state I’m licensed in saying, “Are you flipping kidding me? I got to do this form?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Me too.

Jill K DeWit:
Because this is ridiculous. So anyway, I couldn’t do it. So my point is though, there are some good ones out there. And yeah, you were right in episode 492.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not 492 exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
Actually maybe for the first 800 episodes, from episode one to 898, we were poo pooing agents at all costs saying, “Don’t call them.” And now I’m like, “No, no, I love them. And they’re great. And you know what? I bake them in.” But I bake in good ones.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s 10%.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? Even less, six to 10%. Let’s just say I’ve never paid more than 10%. So as little as three.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the thing-

Jill K DeWit:
Bake it into your costs. And it’s not-

Steven Jack Butala:
A classic example of productive outsourcing. Now you’re removing almost half of what you do for a living-

Jill K DeWit:
Your workload.

Steven Jack Butala:
… And so you can concentrate on one thing, which is buy undervalued land.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so if you can find or have your transaction coordinator find, and that good land agents in the area, theoretically going to do twice as many deals because you have that much more time to spend on finding a great property.

Jill K DeWit:
Can I give a little disclaimer here though? Land Academy Pro does not get agents for you. That’s one thing you need to do. But again, you can do that in two hours. So thank you. But once you have that, we’ll get everything going. So you’re good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take another look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar. Jill, you have something inspirational to share?

Jill K DeWit:
Yes, from Land Academy W. I love that now. I’m totally going to get some swag. We’re going to get a logo and some swag coming. So hang on everybody. It’s really cool. So we were talking about, we alternate every month what our topics are. We get together at the beginning of every month and connect, and it’s our community. And we go between a real technical thing to a mindset. We’ve flip flopped from technical issues to mindset issues every other month.
And this month, June was a mindset issue. And we were talking about being productive and not getting hung up on stuff, things getting in your way. And one of the things that we talked about that came out of this was, are you rewarding yourself along the way. So for me, I kind of dangle a carrot to myself and give myself little rewards when I follow through with things and I stick to my schedule and I get things done, and I sell properties and things close. I’ll never forget, we have this career path member from either session three or four, I don’t remember which it is, but he’s working real hard for his family. This is their gig. And he might have a day job too, I can’t remember. But anyway, when a property closes, here’s what he did for his wife, because his wife is picking up some of the slack with the kids and some of the responsibilities around the house. She has a very good taste in wine. So he bought a case of her favorite wine. So every time a property closes… What are you working on here?

Steven Jack Butala:
My topic after you.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay, got it. So every time a property closes, he brings out a bottle of her favorite wine. I want you to participate in this if you can. And that’s the reward. And she gets excited. So every time it closes, she sees a bottle of wine coming out and she goes, “Ding, ding, I know this is working. This is our reward.” I know this is going well for our family. So that’s one way of doing it. For me, I do personal little treats for myself. Which is, I’m a massage person, I’m a spa day person. I’m a that kind of a reward person. So whatever it is to you, we talked about, again, this is Land Academy W. So we talked about get a house cleaner, do some things… What I think too is something like that, it’s not only a reward. I never have to clean my house again. But also it’s, hey, it’s saving time and energy for me. So I’m focused on this other stuff too.
So I want to make sure that you’re rewarding yourself along the way. I think it helps keep you motivated. I think it’s a little bit of a celebration too. I mean, why not? If you’re not celebrating yourself and celebrating your individual company, celebrating your deals, celebrating your wins, then why are you here? I know you want to get this big bank balance, but I want you to celebrate little things along the way, because I think it’ll keep you going.

Steven Jack Butala:
Men don’t have this.

Jill K DeWit:
At all.

Steven Jack Butala:
Nope.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, hold on a moment.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me tell you how it goes.

Jill K DeWit:
What about the men going out and having some beers celebrating like that?

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s going to happen anyway.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s going to happen on Friday or Saturday.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, even if you have a bad day, you’re going to go out and celebrate that?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, yeah. Even more. Not celebrate, but…

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Alcohol is the cause of, and the problem in their…

Jill K DeWit:
Here we go again. Is this an Al-Anon?

Steven Jack Butala:
Girls, men are different [inaudible 00:37:33].

Jill K DeWit:
What do you guys do?

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’re our age or older during daytime TV, the six times you watched it in your entire life, you remember that Calgon commercial. “Calgon, take me away.” This is what Jill’s talking about. Now what you see is these commercials for chocolate. Just take a little moment out of your day and treat yourself.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, like a Lindt chocolate or Dove.

Steven Jack Butala:
Have a little chocolate or whatever. See, she knows even the brands. You don’t have a Budweiser during the middle of the day. You don’t see that. And you won’t. Men play the long game. And so at the end of the year, they might say, “Wow, it’s a pretty good year. I did 13 deals. I made about 780,000 bucks. I’m going to go buy a new truck.”

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Well, that counts too.

Steven Jack Butala:
And I’m going to pay the taxes on it. And I’m going to pay the taxes on the year, and I’m going to half a million bucks into the bank and slam it towards my goal of $9 million to retire. And so it’s not a daily little pat on the back. I need a little break.

Jill K DeWit:
I never said mine was.

Steven Jack Butala:
No. Well, I don’t-

Jill K DeWit:
[inaudible 00:38:35].

Steven Jack Butala:
It happens annually and it happens in a big way. Men are penny wise and pound foolish.

Jill K DeWit:
Sweetie, you are agreeing with me. You don’t know that.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, I’m not. Because I don’t have a little chocolate during the day.

Jill K DeWit:
No. And that’s not-

Steven Jack Butala:
And I don’t clink my glass of wine.

Jill K DeWit:
How about this, I’m trying to say whatever it is to you. I brought up my version of it. You’re sharing your version of it. It’s all the same thing. Now I’ll be realistic.

Steven Jack Butala:
So she asked me a question and I answered it and she didn’t like the answer.

Jill K DeWit:
No, you did. How are you rewarding yourself along way?

Steven Jack Butala:
Or she twisted it around to make sure it fit in that-

Jill K DeWit:
No, no, seriously. Babe, I liked your answer that was good. You informed me that we don’t need those things. And I’m sure there’s a lot of women that feel that way too. There may be guys that do, maybe they go golfing. I take Tuesday off, whatever. I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
They’re going to do that anyway.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, okay. But I’m sure there’s some women that do the your way too. At the end of the year, I’m buying, maybe I’m doing this vacation. Now, my family, we can do this. Maybe we’re going to go do something.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not disagreeing with you here at all. I just think men are different in general. Not all men, not all women.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, however it sings to you. I hope whether it’s an a monthly treat as you close a deal or at the end of the year, whatever it is that you reward yourself or you’ve got something to motivate you like that, that you work so hard for that you let yourself do it, buy it, have it. I hope you’re doing that because I think that helps.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Sheesh, that was difficult. Well, what do you have to share with us today?

Steven Jack Butala:
Men don’t. Men are afraid of rewarding themselves. Rewarding. They’re afraid of getting out of a groove and rewarding themselves because it makes them soft.

Jill K DeWit:
Got it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t speak on behalf of all men, but most of the guys I know are like, “Yeah, let’s just wait till… Let’s see this the whole thing out and then let’s celebrate when we’re good.” Let me give you an example.

Jill K DeWit:
Are we still talking about this?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh boy.

Steven Jack Butala:
What do you think a coach says in the middle of a hockey period if the team scored two goals and the other team scored three goals, he doesn’t say great job on those two goals. You guys look fantastic.

Jill K DeWit:
No, only Ted Lasso says that everybody else says you’re an idiot. Everybody else, every other locker room is, “You losers.” No.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
But Ted Lasso’s like, “Are you having fun?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my gosh. Is that what that show’s about?

Jill K DeWit:
Kind of.

Steven Jack Butala:
So that’s why it’s for girls.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, stop it.

Steven Jack Butala:
Because you had to wait till the end of the hockey game. Really end of the series and end of the season to really start to celebrate, I think.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Can we move on?

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. Are we still using this term, by the way?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. I didn’t know if we were still promoting that. Do you have something man plannish to share?

Steven Jack Butala:
I do. Okay. Mine’s called rating the eight ingredients needed to succeed in land flipping in order of importance. This is a direct question in the most recent career path by one of the guys in there. And because he’s kind of new at this and he’s in a massive planning stage, and he said, “Oh, you keep talking about these eight things you have to do in the anatomy of a land transaction. Which one’s more important? Which ones are important?”

Jill K DeWit:
Is going to be a whole show, you realize that? We’re going to turn this into another show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure.

Jill K DeWit:
This is good.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s the one through eight in order of occurrence. And then we’ll talk about importance. Finding a place to send mail. I call that trolling. And there’s a real specific way that I do it, and we talk about it in Land Academy in an incredible amount of detail. Once you’ve found a place to send mail and you’ve tested it and you believe it’s great, it will work for buying undervalued property and reselling it for more. You send a direct mail campaign out. You send a mailer out. We call it a mailer. You price it correctly. It’s usually around 15 to 30% of the actual retail value of land that’s been active or sold in that area. So number two is just send a mailer out and you price it and send it out.
Number three is you manage the inbound traffic from that mailer. So all the thousands and thousands of offers go out. Some people call in and say, “Go pound sand.” Some people say, “You know what? I’ve been thinking about selling that property. But the offer you made, that $30,000 offer. If you make a $35,000 bucks, I’ll think about it.” And then finally number three is, “Oh my gosh, you read my mind. I signed your offer and send it back. I want to sell.” So there’s a huge… That’s a moment of truth in our business. This step number three. Number four is, all right, I sent the mailer out. I’ve got six, seven, eight maybe deals to look at. And they’re all staring me in front of my desk. I’m not going to buy all of them because there’s going to be some flaws. So we apply, this is called due diligence. We apply the six or seven A’s that Jill and I have developed six. Six, seven was supposed to be asphalt because it’s on-

Jill K DeWit:
Because it’s silly, but it’s funny. We don’t need seven.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so you go through due diligence and you actually decide based on hard facts, whether or not you want to buy the property number. That’s number four. Number five, you actually buy the properties you want. Number six, you manage the sale of it. So now you bought it, you prep, and then you’re going through the management portion of the sale, like we’ve talked about earlier. You find the right real estate agent and you get the right escrow agent and on and on and on. Number seven is you sell the darn thing, which usually involves you clicking the back of your ballpoint pen and sign in your name a bunch of times. It doesn’t take a lot of time. And number eight finally is repeat over and over and over again until you have enough money and you don’t have to do it or don’t want to do it anymore.
So the person who asked this question in our career path group is very statistically minded person. And he’s in this heavily planning for how many mailers yield an acquisition. Of those acquisitions and on and on, and endless questions like that, which I understand. In the planning stages, budgeting stage, you want to get a handle on it. And so he asked, let’s rate them in order of importance, to which I immediately responded, “They’re all essential.” Every single one. Every single one. Number one, if you don’t find the right place to send mail and it’s not supported by data, it’s supported about by feelings or throwing a darts at a board in your office. That’s not good.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s going to fail.

Steven Jack Butala:
Then don’t send a mailer, nothing’s going to happen, number two.

Jill K DeWit:
That’ll fail.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number three, which is what Jill does, and I can’t express this enough because it changed my life permanently. The person that’s answering your phone and putting these deals together needs to have some type of magic about them, which is what Jill has. So I did pretty well at it for a lot of years. Many, many, many, many years. Very well enough to do it on the back of the yacht. When Jill and I joined forces, my job was on the desk for at least a year about how she handled. And I never said, “Jill, handle it this way,” or “Maybe you should do this over here.” She just did it. It’s like you were born with it.

Jill K DeWit:
I was.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so this is critical. You can get away with. You can get away with it, like I did kind of being a dud on the phone. But if you have somebody like Jill-

Jill K DeWit:
Can I write a note for myself?

Steven Jack Butala:
… You’re going to smash it out of the park. But if you don’t send the mail out, which is what I do in our relationship, she’s not even going to have the opportunity to shine. So and the fourth one, you look, you’re staring at those five or six deals or 10 deals that came in out of the mailer. And if you choose all the wrong ones that don’t have access or whatever, one of the A’s are, they’re fatally flawed, you’re going to have a real tough time reselling them for more. If you don’t pull the trigger, number five, and buy the ones, actually buy them. This happens with people. They get cold feet. Not going to happen.
If you don’t get the right real estate broker, number six, and manage that sale and manage that broker or agent until you’ve, they find a buyer, fatal. Number seven, you just don’t sell it. You buy a ton of property and you just kind of… I’ve had this problem personally, I’m really good at acquisitions and not real interested in selling anything. That’s not good. And number eight, if you don’t do that second mailer, it was all just for nothing. You just made a few 10, 20, 30, maybe a hundred thousand bucks one time and you didn’t repeat.

Jill K DeWit:
Excellent.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s eight components to this and all kidding aside, they’re all imperative. Gives a lot of people out of this business, which is what I love.

Jill K DeWit:
Me too. Don’t forget, you could reach us for questions and help simply by texting 480-530-7383.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode, because you are not alone, in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information…

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.