Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steven Jack Butala here.

Jill Dewitt:
And I’m Jill Dewitt, and this is the Land Academy show.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s sort of the House Academy show today.

Jill Dewitt:
Oh really, why?

Steven Jack Butala:
If you don’t know this, we have a website just like Land Academy, a company just like Land Academy, called House Academy.

Jill Dewitt:
I knew that.

Steven Jack Butala:
For years it has not been feasible to buy and sell houses. Well, that’s what it’s all about today.

Jill Dewitt:
It has been feasible, but now, because there’s people that have been successfully doing it in our groups, so I don’t want to pooh-pooh anybody that’s doing it. They’re like, what are you talking about? What they’re probably saying is, “Stop sharing this.”

Steven Jack Butala:
It hasn’t been feasible enough.

Jill Dewitt:
There we go.

Steven Jack Butala:
To meet Jill and I’s standards where you can get rich off of it.

Jill Dewitt:
That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
We probably could do a deal here and there.

Jill Dewitt:
Right, exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s not how we roll. This is episode number 2015, and today we are talking about why the housing market demands that we expand our land businesses into buying and reselling houses. I didn’t just wake up today and think, we should start buying and selling houses.

Jill Dewitt:
I’m bored.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t have thoughts like that.

Jill Dewitt:
This just seems like a good idea.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m looking at the data, as I do every single week, and share it with the Land Academy community, and the data is now for sure telling us that there’s excess, there’s an incredible demand for houses still, and there’s now a supply that has caught up with it and it’s time to start buying houses again for us.

Jill Dewitt:
What’s interesting is, well, I’ll save my questions for the show because I actually have some questions on this topic for you. Go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into land related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. Let’s take a couple of questions today.

Jill Dewitt:
Cool. Jenny … Oh, by the way, in case you couldn’t notice, we are still coming to you from the RV, so on the road for quite a few months actually this summer. So the background may change. Right there over my shoulder, that little window, that view’s going to change, but this shouldn’t change.

Steven Jack Butala:
And our attitude will change for sure.

Jill Dewitt:
Oh, definitely.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill’s will.

Jill Dewitt:
Yeah, exactly. I’ll get angrier.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s usually my job.

Jill Dewitt:
Oh, that’s true. Your job is angrier. I just get loopy, like what, I’m supposed to do what? Okay, so back to the questions. Jenny in our group wrote, “I have a newbie question for everyone. I have a purchase agreement in place to buy my first parcel of land this weekend. Yay. My sellers are in a situation where they need the cash as quickly as I can make it happen. It’s a vacant land parcel that an end user will most likely put a mobile home on. Power’s at the street. Well, septic of course will need to get done. All normal stuff. Given all these details, and if there’s anything else I need to consider, will it be okay for me to do a self close following the steps from Jill, or would there be a reason to make this a title escrow close instead? Buying for 18K.”

Jill Dewitt:
Do you want to go first or-

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes. A lot of people had comments, and I believe in the general consensus of those comments and they are as follows. Having a baby’s not really a cash crunch situation. This is not my words. These are the words of other Land Academy members.

Jill Dewitt:
Did they say that?

Steven Jack Butala:
In Discord. Oh, yeah.

Jill Dewitt:
Where’s there a baby involved?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, somebody’s having a baby.

Jill Dewitt:
Oh, is that why it’s in there?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Oh, this is why they need the money.

Jill Dewitt:
That got cut out of the question.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not them. They’re having their first grandchild, so they’re probably freaking out. Yeah, it did get cut off.

Jill Dewitt:
Oh, okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
And number two, you know somebody’s going to put a mobile home on this. They’re going to need title insurance. So I would close with title insurance, like we do with most transactions, a vast, vast, vast majority of transactions, and I would try to find a residential or an escrow agent that can do it quickly and effectively.

Jill Dewitt:
My turn now. I’m with Jenny, you do have options. You could buy it really fast and get title insurance on the sell side. There’s nothing wrong with that. Make sure you have those people in the loop because they may be needing to sign some documents, blah, blah, blah, when you do the title insurance on the sell side. Have we done this? Heck yeah.

Jill Dewitt:
And then on the flip side is, too, the big picture is it shouldn’t take that long anyway because we’re not in COVID. There’s actually an abundance of agents. There’s so much of abundance and time right now with title agents, speaking from experience, that they have all the time in the world to analyze your deal and even try to save you from some things. So I’m kind of like just close it like we talked about kind of thing. So that’s another show. But you should be very capable and able to make five phone calls and find a good agent in your area that can do this inside of two weeks-

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez.

Jill Dewitt:
… period-

Steven Jack Butala:
A week.

Jill Dewitt:
Because you’re all cash with title insurance.

Steven Jack Butala:
And there’s probably not a loan. There’s no loan on the property, so that takes out a lot of time and energy.

Jill Dewitt:
They’re probably worried because they’re thinking, you know what, they’re thinking of their house experience where, gosh, it was 30 and 45 days to close because I had to provide all these documents. I had to provide letters that I paid off that credit card. I had to provide this. That’s kind of a normal situation for people. So to them, when you say, “I can get it done a week from Friday,” they’re going to be like, “Oh, okay, that’s perfect.”

Steven Jack Butala:
So for the rest of you, if you’re brand new, or for any of you who are saying what the heck are these two talking about now, there’s two ways to close a real estate deal. The one that everybody knows about, Sally Smith, the residential real estate agent, gets a listing. You sell the property, you sign your name 3000 times. Sally Smith, who does not actually know how to close a real estate deal, sends it to escrow agent John Smith, and John Smith does all the work.

Steven Jack Butala:
And from there, again, a bunch of stuff to sign, disclosures, all kinds of things, and they manage the money for you. So if you were to buy this for cash, you would be buying it for $18,000. You would put it in escrow. The escrow agent would set up a closing statement where the money goes and the whole thing, and that’s how Jill and I sell property and that’s how we buy it 99% of the time.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you go way back into our podcast, that’s not how we did it in the beginning. A lot of years ago, 10, 15 years ago, that was exactly not what we did. So that’s way number one, the way that everybody knows.

Steven Jack Butala:
Number two is just like selling a car without a dealer. You have a title in your hand and the buyer of your car has a fistful of money. He gives you the money, you sign over the title to the car. Some states you need a notary, some you don’t. I take the money, I give you the title, and the title gets recorded and it’s done. Same thing with real estate, and that’s what a self close is. I’m oversimplifying, but it’s really important to know. Everybody needs to know you don’t need a real estate agent to close a real estate deal.

Jill Dewitt:
Thank you. All right, next question. Steven wrote, “Any issues with using my home address for mail? Should I pick up a post box office instead? I do not plan on moving in the foreseeable future. Also, is it recommended to get a second phone line? Any option on using a virtual phone line like RingCentral versus a second dedicated phone line?”

Jill Dewitt:
I have a lot to say about this and I’m sure you do, too.

Steven Jack Butala:
I do. You go first. You’ll probably cover all of it actually.

Jill Dewitt:
That would be nice. Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think you and I are-

Jill Dewitt:
You don’t need mom and dad weighing in on this, so that’s why I held back on the last one. I let dad take that one. We’re going to let mom take this one. So you know what, Steven? What if you hit it big, or just who knows? Life happens. You might move. You never know.

Jill Dewitt:
So one reason is I want you to get a post office box or some kind of a virtual mailbox, something like that, that will never change, because 10 years from now, 15 years from now, hey, this one, I’ve been doing this for 15 years, he’s been doing it for 30. Thank goodness we still have the same mailbox address because people do write letters and still reach out to us from now I can say decades ago. It’s crazy, but it’s true, and I want to get those letters because I might want that property now, whatever it is. So I do want you to do that. The flip side of that, too, is like I don’t really want anybody showing up on your door. Not that they would.

Steven Jack Butala:
Sure they will. Eventually they will.

Jill Dewitt:
But what if somebody’s not happy about something? I don’t know. They have something to say about it. You definitely don’t want your own personal stuff. You don’t want a package on fire on your doorstep.

Steven Jack Butala:
Mom’s softening this topic. Do not use your home address.

Jill Dewitt:
Well, that’s what I’m saying.

Jill Dewitt:
Okay, then number two on the phone number, same thing. I can’t be sure I’m going to have my same phone number forever, but I can keep my phone and I want to keep it separate too. There’s a couple different reasons. A, I don’t want people to have my own cell number. I need to be able to differentiate if it’s a work call or it’s my friends calling me. B, I need to flip this number around sometimes. I need a phone number that I purchase and I own. I might buy it from [inaudible 00:09:43] or something like that and then port the number into my phone system, and that’s the best way because what if I’m not taking the calls this week? I’m doing so great, I’m so busy. I have Pat Live take the phone calls and I can just route the phone number to Pat Live. I can route the phone number to my new assistant five years from now.

Jill Dewitt:
And again, the main point is they might reach out to you six months or six years after that mailer goes out and there’s a good chance you’re going to want that property. At least you want the option to look at it and go, “You know what? I did so well in that area and boy, I wouldn’t mind doing a couple more. I’ve got the whole team in place.” You need to get those calls. So that’s why you want to do that.

Steven Jack Butala:
The relative cost for all this stuff is so small.

Jill Dewitt:
Cheap.

Steven Jack Butala:
And geez, maybe 30 minutes.

Jill Dewitt:
A hundred bucks a month, if that.

Steven Jack Butala:
Both of these things set up. In 1995, I got a mailbox in midtown Scottsdale and we still to this day have that same mailbox. We have moved, we’ve lived in three different states. We’ve probably moved 12 to 15 times, and that mailbox is the same.

Steven Jack Butala:
I had a home phone number and a fax number. That’s how long ago this was. That is still in use within our companies today, that we still use it for certain stuff because I was fortunate enough because we owned it and then we forward it and the whole thing. So you want to leave open a lot of options. Millions and millions of letters, hopefully if your career goes well, you’re going to send out millions of letters like Jill and I do, and you’re going to get calls 10 years later.

Jill Dewitt:
Here’s your nomad tip of the day. If you want to have a lifestyle like us, doing deals from wherever you choose to be, whether it’s in this country, in an RV, whether it’s on the back of a boat, whether you’re in the Caribbean, wherever you are dreaming up, spending a month in Paris, I don’t care, you could even do mailbox place to mailbox place.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s what we do.

Jill Dewitt:
That’s an interesting thought. Exactly. So we have, like Jack just said, from 1995, our same whatever address, guess what they do? Bundle it up, send it to us wherever we are. It’s the greatest thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have our home mailbox and our professional company’s mailbox in the same place and we don’t get mail anywhere else.

Jill Dewitt:
We don’t get mail at home. Everything at the mail at home is all the junk mail that I feel bad that people are wasting money on because it gets stacked up and then I recycle it all.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the people that run the mailbox place, I think we’ve been through three owners there, pack up our stuff and send it to us probably once a month, whatever’s in there.

Jill Dewitt:
Yep. Okay. Today-

Steven Jack Butala:
The bigger, deeper question is, Steven, we address all this stuff in the program, and I have to ask myself, I guess I have to ask it out loud myself, why would you veer from what we teach?

Jill Dewitt:
Well, maybe he hasn’t got to that part of the program yet. That happens a lot. I’ve noticed that. I had some dear sweet woman recently and I went back and I looked and I’m like, tell me how much, she’s like, and she stopped watching at that crucial point. I’m like, “You turned off the thing.”

Steven Jack Butala:
What happened? What’s the story there? Tell us the story. I want to hear this story.

Jill Dewitt:
It’s all right. She turned it off at that crucial moment where you go on to talk about, “And here’s what could happen and here’s why you test this and here’s how you do this,” and stuff. It was data related, and I’m like, “You’ve got to watch this stuff.” Not only do you have to watch it, watch it a couple times because every time you’re going to pick up on something different.

Steven Jack Butala:
When are you guys going to get to the topic?

Jill Dewitt:
I know. Can we talk about it?

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, why the housing market demands that we expand our land business into buying and reselling houses. Jill and I have a lot of experience buying and selling houses. We’ve done many deals. That saved us around 2009, 2010, long before we had Land Academy, where we just, if you’re old enough to remember, we had the largest real estate recession in the history of our country, with the exception of 1929. So it was a tough time. We had a ton of real estate. Jill and I owned a bunch of land free and clear, as we always do, and we couldn’t sell it. Nobody was buying land.

Steven Jack Butala:
And certainly nothing like that’s going to happen this time, but it is showing the sign. And back then we saved ourselves by buying houses and selling them. We were buying houses from banks for 40 to $60,000 that are now three and $400,000. And we were reselling them back then for 80 to 120 really successfully. And that was only because the market was conducive to that situation. That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so yeah, we bought and sold houses after that, and all throughout my career, I’ve always been buying and selling houses and so was Jill. She cut her teeth on that actually. I cut my teeth on land and we got together and did a bunch of house deals, and at that time it wasn’t our favorite thing because we were cleaning them up too much, but they were always profitable.

Steven Jack Butala:
So there’s some circumstances that are lending themselves in the market that are starting down that path of repeating what happened in 2009, only a lot less acute. And so I’ll go through what those circumstances are and why we’re going to start and already have started out. We’ve got a house [inaudible 00:15:06] hitting here in about less than a week. All right, here’s number one.

Jill Dewitt:
To my phone.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you remember-

Jill Dewitt:
I’m taking those calls right myself, at least the first wave.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you remember back then, what caused that financial breakdown that trickled up and down into the housing and real estate community was credit. It was lack of credit, which was really catalyzed in my opinion by predatory lending. We have weird, weird crazy lending practices with reverse mortgages and all kinds of stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
And fortunately, and I don’t say this too often, but fortunately, and I think it was required back then, the federal government stepped in and made some changes for the better I think. Now what we’re experiencing is COVID. So COVID happened and we all thought that it was going to destroy the economy and it didn’t. It had the opposite, direct opposite effect to real estate. So if you look at any graph, you can see COVID happened, the world shut down, and nobody was buying or selling property at all.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the next January came, I guess it was around 2021, everybody started buying property. It was time to buy mountain houses and second homes and all of that, and it was mixed up with the three percent. We were having two and three percent mortgage rates. There was a massive house buying binge that was happening. Well, little did I even know back then most of the deals that were happening for residential properties were adjustable rate mortgages. So you were locked in for a certain amount of time and then after time passes, it adjusts to actual interest rates.

Steven Jack Butala:
So from a lender’s perspective, you have to say or think, well, how can you lose actually? They’re kind of betting on the fact that they’ll go up, and they are. Interest rates have gone up. They were two to three percent back then. They’re around seven percent now. Six to seven, maybe seven plus. So all those interest rate mortgages that were locked in at three percent, two and three percent, are going to go up two or three percent. They’re literally going to double. That was 2021. This is 2024. Three years later.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you had a 3/1 adjustable rate mortgage, an ARM, it’s adjusting right now. And the direct result of that is a lot more houses are going on the market. And here’s why. If your mortgage is 12 to $1,500, which is the national average a month, and it goes from three to six percent or seven percent, that $1,200 mortgage is now $2,500. A very substantial number of people can’t handle that financially, and understandably so. Your mortgage is doubling and your salary and the revenue that you have in your household is the same. So significant. Way more than half of the people that are experiencing this can’t handle it.

Steven Jack Butala:
What’s the first thing they do? They call their sister-in-law real estate agent and put the house on the market. And that is why we’re seeing tons of inventory on the market. And people are celebrating. I read an article today that was published by the National Association of Realtors. Jill and I are going to talk about it on the call, on our Thursday webinar, a closed call for Land Academy members and House Academy members, and they said there’s reason for celebration. And I stopped before I even, I stopped right after I’d read the title. I didn’t even get into the article. Why are we celebrating? There’s more inventory on the market.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, that industry sees that, number one, real estate agents, now they have more stuff to sell. That’s really what they mean. And I’m not even going to tell you what I really think about that. The real positive in it is that people who could not get into the housing market as an owner are now having a better shot at that. There’s more inventory. It’s driving the prices down, very slightly and slowly, but it is driving the prices down because it’s bringing supply and demand in sync again, instead of just having all this crazy demand and not enough supply. So that’s what’s happening and it will continue. And then 5/1 mortgages are going to kick in, too, between now and two years from now. So that rate from 50 to 60% who can’t handle it, it’s going to go even higher.

Steven Jack Butala:
Demand in the real world, in a regular situation, it would be great because that regular amount of demand would kind of equal out, like I said. But geez, this generation is the largest generation in the world. There are two generations at work here, the Generation X, and I’m sorry, the millennials and then the next one after that, I think it’s called Generation A or something like that. I don’t know. I don’t remember. Together they are 140 million people. The baby boomers are only 70 million. It’s twice as large as the baby boomer generation, which is our parents, Jill and I’s parents. If you’re about our age, that’s the case also.

Jill Dewitt:
What is our age?

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m not going to say that.

Jill Dewitt:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
That was a trick.

Jill Dewitt:
Yeah, thank you. Good one.

Steven Jack Butala:
If there’s a woman in your life, don’t answer stuff like that.

Jill Dewitt:
You’re on your toes.

Steven Jack Butala:
Please know not to answer anything like that.

Jill Dewitt:
There you go. How much do I weigh? Good one.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s how interested Jill is in this topic.

Jill Dewitt:
You got this.

Steven Jack Butala:
So now you’ve got this massive demand. You’ve got real high interest rates because the feds are trying to keep us in check from an inflation standpoint. And you’ve got all these mortgages coming due. So you’ve got tons of property on the market and tons of demand. All right, so how do we make money on this? What you have is a heck of a lot of activity, tons of activity happening.

Steven Jack Butala:
What you need to do is start trolling around on realtor.com or Redfin or Zillow, like we teach in Land Academy and House Academy, and find the markets where properties, lots and lots and lots of properties are being listed and lots of properties are being purchased. And then within that market you are going to find the break point. I talk about all this stuff in House Academy in great detail.

Steven Jack Butala:
And you’ll find that at about the top of the bell curve-ish, let’s just say there’s tons and tons of properties listed for between 325,000 and 375,000. There’s very few properties between 100 and 200, 250, and very few properties in the five to $600,000 range. The break point is somewhere at the top of the bell curve, and it smacks you in the face because when you click on pending properties, properties that are under contract, and you click on sold properties, the values will smack you in the face. They will be somewhere around that 350 mark.

Steven Jack Butala:
So you send out a mailer, you figure out how to buy property below that break point. When you have all this activity and tons of properties are hitting the market, some people get your offer, they get your letter, they get your offer in the mail, and they say to themselves, “There’s 14 houses for sale on my block right now. Every time I drive to work, I see the signs. I’m going to call this guy back. He wants to buy for 250. I think I’m going to sell it to him if he wants it that bad.”

Steven Jack Butala:
If this works, Jill and I have done it in two market downturns. So I would urge you, if you’re listening to this because you’re buying and selling land, or you want to, I would urge you to expand into this space or at least explore it.

Jill Dewitt:
Do you want to share anything at all about, and you can say no.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, good. No.

Jill Dewitt:
Okay. No, I was just going to say we all understand and agree and appreciate your insight and your research. That was wonderful. Beautiful presentation about why it all makes sense and what numbers and where you should be looking at and trolling and that kind of thing. There’s a couple questions that I’d just like to throw in there and see if you want to talk about, am I cash or am I financing these?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez. So that’s a great question. Boy, nothing will make you run out of money faster than buying a house and reselling it. If you’re buying for 300 and selling for 400, two or three deals and you’re a million bucks extended. For most of us, that’s a lot of money.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s the same situation. The people in our group, the people in the Land Academy group, are dying to apply money to what you’re about to do. Your job is to find properties that are below that break point in that market. That’s the money. And one message on Discord as a Land Academy or House Academy member, you will find the money you need. Jill and I will give you the money.

Jill Dewitt:
What about it needs a carpet, and the roof kind of stinks, and boy, that carport should be a garage. What do I do about that stuff?

Steven Jack Butala:
So it’s obviously that I left out all the HGTV topics that apply to buying and reselling a house. And the fact is, I could care less about that stuff. I only care about it if it will dramatically stop you from reselling the house. And so nobody wants to buy a super huge piece of garbage. Nobody. And it doesn’t show well and it stinks and it doesn’t pass code and the whole thing.

Jill Dewitt:
Except for a flipper.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.

Jill Dewitt:
They do want that. If you do too much to it, you’re going to scare all the flippers.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s got to make financial sense. You need to walk in, you need to be the kind of person that can apply common sense and say, “I know I can easily sell a property like this for $350,000. The guy accepted my offer at 250. There’s a lot of stuff wrong with it. I think I’m going to go back and probably re-offer 210 just because I think there’s a lot of [inaudible 00:25:24].” You’re going to get an inspection anyway. The inspection’s going to tell you what’s wrong.

Jill Dewitt:
The point I’m trying to make here is in its current condition, the whole goal is you’re trying to find an asset where, what were your numbers? Anywhere from 20 to a hundred. There we go. You’re trying to find a sweet spot, I’m going to argue even more than $20,000. I’m going to say 50 to a hundred thousand. You’re trying to find an asset that’s marked, that’s priced 50 to a hundred thousand dollars below what it’s worth in its current position. And because it’s convenience, you’re finding it before there’s an agent involved, there’s no commissions, all that good stuff. It’s convenience between you and the seller. They can walk away and have a check, and it’s going to be cash and no one’s going to make them redo the roof or clean out the garage. Those kind of things.

Jill Dewitt:
And then the point of it is, too, you’re selling it in its current condition. And well, I know we’ll talk more about that because that’s the whole Land Academy, House Academy model. I’m not going in there and making it beautiful. Again, buying it for 250, let’s just say buying it for 250. In its current condition, it’s worth 310, 320. But some flipper can come along and make it beautiful and now it’s worth 400. That’s the goal.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or 450. That’s what those outliers are.

Jill Dewitt:
That’s what you’re doing. You’re selling to them and let them do that work. You don’t have a construction company.

Steven Jack Butala:
Listen, you do not want to become a contractor here.

Jill Dewitt:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
You do not. This is not, it’s called House Academy. It’s not called House Renovations.

Jill Dewitt:
True. Or HGTV.

Steven Jack Butala:
We do not renovate houses. The most we’ve ever done with any level of success is paint and carpet, and maybe light fixtures in certain cases, if they really need to be replaced.

Jill Dewitt:
That was only because I was doing the end user. You know what it was? We bought one that was a little too nice and that’s all it needed. And none of the investors wanted to touch it. I’m like, well, I guess we’re going to sell it then, we’re going to sell it to the end user. Guess what happened? Then we made even more money. So that’s the worst thing that can happen if it’s in that good of shape. So good stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is all math.

Jill Dewitt:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s all buying properties that are like kind, analyzing sold values, active values, reducing it down to a price per square foot, and doing the math. It’s not about window treatments. If you are really interested in buying and selling houses so that you can express yourself artistically, this is absolutely the wrong show for you and the wrong program.

Jill Dewitt:
We’re here to make money.

Steven Jack Butala:
Through data, through the use of data.

Jill Dewitt:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s it.

Jill Dewitt:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
So yeah, something to share today.

Jill Dewitt:
I was thinking about, in light of this environment, I’m talking to my team and talking about people coming into Land Academy, and it’s so interesting the shift that we’re seeing of the very accomplished corporate people coming to us right now due to little, I don’t know if little or big, I don’t know what the right word is, but shifts in the job market. And I just want to talk about it for a minute and make everybody feel really good about this.

Jill Dewitt:
Again, our group is small, and when you really think about the number of people out there doing what we do, it may sound like a lot of noise, but the number of people really actually doing it and doing it well and actually getting mail in out there to people, it’s not that big. So I want you to feel good.

Jill Dewitt:
And then to make you feel even better, what I wanted you to know is you could have some very conservative goals in Land Academy, screw it all up, and still have no trouble putting food on the table. So let me just, that’s my whole thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
Good point.

Jill Dewitt:
We talk big numbers all the time. That’s just who we are. We’re wired to do that, and it’s fun. But realistically, if you can’t live on $10,000 a month, we could, then we’ve got some problems. Think about it. If the world all goes sideways and you had $10,000 a month, could you live on that? Yeah, you could.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez.

Jill Dewitt:
And you know what? If you can’t, we need to talk because then you’re paying too much. You bought your house for too much, you need to reel it back in. You shouldn’t be driving that car and you shouldn’t be going to Hawaii right now.

Jill Dewitt:
So you can do it. Those are not crazy numbers. And then within Land Academy, boy, if you just did a couple deals a month, like I said, your goal is to do three, four deals a month and you want to make 10 grand a deal, super small, conservative numbers, you screw them all up. Guess what? Now you make 10 to $20,000 a month and you’re going to be just fine. That’s my point today.

Steven Jack Butala:
Use this how you’d like to use it. That’s the whole point here. You can scale it.

Jill Dewitt:
That’s true.

Steven Jack Butala:
Scale it how you want.

Jill Dewitt:
Well, because I talked to people recently, just in this last, you know, a couple of weeks ago we did this big workshop. It was five days, ended up being six. We went over the next week because we did a whole big Q&A day, workshop, really helping people understand what we are, what we do. And I broke it out into five days. Jack joined me. It was a whole lot of fun.

Jill Dewitt:
And I talked to people, and there was an interesting gentleman who was very successful. He said, “You guys scared me with sending out this much mail.” I said, “Well, hold on a moment.” Because you know what’s funny? He’s like, “I don’t want to do that much. I don’t need that much money. I don’t want to do that much.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Really?

Jill Dewitt:
Yeah, it was really kind of funny. And I’m like, “I can’t remember hearing that before, but okay.” It was really interesting and it made me take a step back and just realize, we’re not going to push you to send out a hundred thousand units of mail a month, uh-uh, but I am going to push you or at least help you and show you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Guide you.

Jill Dewitt:
Guide you with how much mail you need to send to hit whatever your personal goals are. That’s it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t want that much money, Jill. I’m good.

Jill Dewitt:
It was so funny. He’s like, “Yeah, you guys turned me off on sending that much mail.” I’m like, “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me.” I’m like, “This is the funniest thing, but I get it. Okay.”

Steven Jack Butala:
Somebody else said that to me. One other person in my entire career said that, “That’s too much. I don’t want to do that.”

Jill Dewitt:
I’m like, “Well, you don’t want to make that much money.” “I don’t want to do that.” I’m like-

Steven Jack Butala:
By the way, we don’t physically stuff envelopes here.

Jill Dewitt:
No, that’s true too. So I guess that’s all I wanted to make sure you know. Whatever your goals are, well, we just introduced personal coaching, by the way. It’s starting this summer. I’m so excited. And that’s one of the main things that I’m really going to get with all the coaches, and we’re going to really sit with you to help you. You may not even know what your goals are. We’ll help you set your goals if you don’t know.

Jill Dewitt:
We’ll go through the equity planner with you step by step by step until you feel so good about like, yeah, I can do that. All right, 20 hours a week and that much mail a month. Okay, yeah. To hit those numbers so you feel good about whatever it is for you, and whatever number is magic to you, we’re going to help you hit it. So that’s my point today. Thank you. What do you have to share?

Steven Jack Butala:
If this stuff’s intriguing, by the way, I failed to mention, go to either landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. I think if you want to become a guest on our Thursday call-

Jill Dewitt:
You could do that.

Steven Jack Butala:
I think you go to service at Land Academy.

Jill Dewitt:
Support.

Steven Jack Butala:
Or support.

Jill Dewitt:
Support@landacademy.com. Send them an email if you want to be a guest on our Thursday member call and see and hear more about some of the deals that we’re all doing.

Steven Jack Butala:
That’s your opportunity as a member or not to ask any questions you want.

Jill Dewitt:
Totally. All right. What do you have to share with us today, Jack?

Steven Jack Butala:
My inspiration slash information segment is a direct segue from the actual topic. You have to adjust to the market. It’s imperative. We have had people in the past who’ve now since, I’m happy to report, gotten over this, but they are one track minded people in the distant past that say, “I’ve been mailing urban Dallas and I’ve been buying infill lots for two years straight. And this most recent time, it doesn’t seem to be working as well. And I guess it’s over.” It’s never over, never, ever over in real estate. You just have to adjust to it.

Jill Dewitt:
Could you imagine? Well, Texas is done. Mark that off the list. Everything’s bought and nobody’s moving. No, everybody’s settled. Yeah, that’s it. Texas is over. That would be really funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
If our government one day wakes up and says, “Yeah, it turns out we own everything. We’re the government and we own it all, and you’re just our guests here,” which could happen, that would probably end it. But short of that, I think-

Jill Dewitt:
Hello.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill Dewitt:
We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill Dewitt:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.