In today’s competitive real estate market, standing out requires more than just good pricing. In this episode of The Land Academy Show, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit tackle the topic of creating irresistible real estate deals. They explore the essential components that make a real estate deal stand out, including strategic pricing, unique attributes, and the importance of location. They emphasize the importance of understanding the market, conducting thorough research, and having clear acquisition criteria to identify and acquire these lucrative deals. This episode provides valuable insights on how to generate and capitalize on profitable opportunities in the market.

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Create Irresistible Real Estate Deals That Wow

Introduction

This is episode number 2020, and we’re talking about how to create an irresistible real estate deal. Who doesn’t want an irresistible real estate deal?

Who doesn’t want an irresistible partner or an irresistible piece of pie?

That’s what I mean.

You can take the most boring topic, I don’t care what it is. Would you like an irresistible keyboard? Does that make you think, “Are the keys squishy?”

That’s my point. I’m glad you brought this up. What is an irresistible real estate deal versus just a good real estate deal? That’s what we’re going to talk about. I’ve had and Jill has had many irresistible real estate deals. We didn’t call them that at the time, but I’m going to tell you what I think they were.

Maybe because I was involved, it was an irresistible real estate deal.

I knew it was going to come to this. I knew it was going to come to female attraction.

Hold on a moment. I’ve had irresistible brokers I worked with.

Did they stick around?

Yeah. There’s one with a cowboy hat that got sidetracked when he got a new girlfriend, but we won’t go there.

This is what I’m saying. You’re making my point. If we have nothing but irresistible real estate deals, then we will be selling those same irresistible real estate deals to people who find them amazing, and our lives are great. There are a bunch of ways to accomplish that. I will be saying the word HGTV too many times during this episode. If you’re a data person, the one thing that you like about this show is that it breaks everything down for price and data and all that. You’re going to be a little disappointed here.

Are you going to talk wallpaper?

Yes.

I’m ready for it.

Choosing The Right Real Estate Agent

Each week on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. Let’s take a question, Jill.

Jenny wrote, “Good morning, everyone. I have a newbie question. I’m getting ready to list my first property. I’m down to three realtors. There are pros and cons to each one. Would anyone who is a seasoned experienced land seller have a minute or two to look over my three choices and give me their take, please?”

Before Jill answers this, I will say this. Everyone goes through this. I don’t care how seasoned you are, we go through this. Unless it’s in a market where we already have somebody set up, we go through exactly what you’re going through. Go ahead, Jill.

I narrowed it down to three. I’m looking at their choices. I’m going to look at their listings. That’s the first thing I’m going to look at. I’m going to look at whether they have similar properties in the same area, the same size, or whatever it is. How fast did they sell? This is a you thing, but I’m going to look at the numbers. If they had one down the street that had just sold, and I can see it went under contract in 42 days, awesome. They probably still have some buyers hanging out who would want my property. Mine is going to be better and cheaper. I’m going to start there.

Number two, I’m going to look at the actual listing. How good is it? Do they have pictures? Is it more than one line? Do they tell the story? Do they pull me in going, “I want to buy that. I want to live there.” What the heck is this thing?” They answered all the questions. The posting is thorough. I read it and I don’t have any questions. It painted the picture and pulled me in. That’s number two. Number three is them. When I call them, do they answer the phone? Do they connect with me? Are they responsive? Do they do what they say? Do I connect with them? If they don’t answer the phone for me when I’m calling them to solicit their business, they’re not going to answer the call for my buyers.

This is not the place or time to get creative. There are lots of places in this business for creativity, where you send mail, and how you price it. Those are all appropriate places to apply some artistic versus numbers. Finding a real estate agent is something that everybody struggles with in a new market. When that happens, I have to come back to experience. If you go back to the previous episode, we had a comment from somebody in our group about what a difference a good real estate agent makes.

We had a listing for twelve months, but nothing happened. Not a single offer. I got a Mossy Oak guy in, got the listing done and we had an offer within a week and the property was sold in three weeks. If you don’t know Mossy Oak. they are a land-focused national real estate brokerage that deals with property that we buy and sell all the time.

Whitetail is a good one too.

Versus Coldwell Banker, Century 21, or your Aunt Tilly. If you’re giving Aunt Tilly the listing because your wife is pressuring you to do that, expect failure.

Aunt Tilly, who got her license, doesn’t know what she’s doing. When you call her, she’s out putting flyers on doors. That may not work.

Jill and I have experienced the whole gamut. The listings that we have and the property we own are very well-listed in some cases and very poorly listed in other cases. That all has to do with one direct thing, Jill’s involvement. She’s not often because we have people working in our land company who aren’t as good as Jill. It’s not their thing. Choosing a real estate agent is not in their wheelhouse. If you want to have success in this, it needs to be yours. This is a good and important question. We all go through this.

That is true. We don’t want you, Jenny, to sit like, “I’ll give you a pro tip.” We covered it again in the last show. That poor person who had that bummer agent had a year-long listing. They were stuck with them for a year. I would still try to find a way to get out of it with less of that. When you’re on the same page, everybody should agree. I want you to make those changes and if you don’t want to make those changes, the last time I checked, you worked for me. We’re either going to make my changes or we’re going to undo this. I’m not trying to be mean. It’s just the facts.

I’ll be mean then. Real estate agents are, in general, wired, taught, and motivated to get listings. If you forget about our perspective and look at their perspective, a real estate agent who has ten listings or who perpetually has 25 rolling listings is pretty interesting to them. They have a pretty good chance of making a good living. How about 100? A real estate agent who has so much talent for getting listings, 100 rolling listings all the time, they’re in the top upper echelon of their group financially. I don’t blame them. They are very motivated to get a lot of listings. Once you get the listing, we’ll see what the market does. It’s on the MLS, like the other 99 listings I have. If it doesn’t sell, something is wrong. It’s not me. It’s not what I’m doing.

No, it’s the price.

I sell 4 to 8 properties every month. If yours isn’t selling, it’s not my fault.

No. I put it out there. Let’s go.

Was that mean?

I don’t know. We could bitch for a while, and I don’t want to.

That’s not bitching. That’s telling the truth. My point, Jenny, is that 2 of the 3 real estate agents you’re probably talking to have that idea, but that’s not what they’re telling you. They’re not sitting in front of you saying, “We’ll see what happens with your listing.” They’re telling you beautiful peaches and cream stories about how properties get sold. You have to sift through that.

You do. That’s the reality. That’s why you don’t want to go with the very first one or the one that has the highest number. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right. Sometimes they are sadly trying to get your business. Very true.

Irresistible Real Estate Deals

Our topic is how to create an irresistible real estate deal. As I said earlier, let’s define and dream for a second what the perfect real estate deal is so that we can go and locate it, attempt to buy it, and resell it over and over again. I came up with three specific components of what an irresistible real estate deal is.

1) It’s got an amazing price. Everything else in the market is priced at $300,000. You’re going to buy this for $200,000 and sell it for $250,000. That’s a pretty amazing price. The lower the better. The allure of price doesn’t work if the property is a pile of crap. 2) It has to have some pretty severe uniqueness about it. Usually, that ends up being a location. I always come back to thinking of New York City and Manhattan and how unique those locations are worldwide.

Price doesn't work if the property is a pile of crap. So, it has to have something pretty severe that makes it unique, and usually that ends up being the location. Share on X

It’s one property to an adjacent property to an adjacent property. Those three properties might be one block off of Broadway. It becomes a less and less unique location. That’s the same thing with ranch property, infill lots, and all of it, especially waterfront property. If you got waterfront property at an amazing price, it’s starting to sound irresistible. If you got an amazing price three blocks off the water, it’s not as irresistible.

Finally, if you want to hit it out of the park, you need to have a property that has some type of amazing or a set of amazing attributes. That’s what everybody thinks about when they think about real estate. Continue to half-dream with me. Think about all these shows on HGTV and why they’re so successful. They don’t talk about the numbers on HGTV. If they do, they’re almost always not real.

What they talk about is the before and after. Here’s a terrible property with a reasonable price. It’s not terrible. It’s just dated or used. It’s used and used. It’s not new and fresh. Irresistible properties evoke a fantastic feeling in the potential buyer. That’s easy to show on television when you’re walking through a house that has been completely renovated by a professional renovator. It’s got to be competitively priced, in a fantastic location, and something very attractive. You almost can’t quantify it or put it into a word. It has to have some type of allure.

Are you talking about land or houses or anything?

Anything.

I have different ones. As you were doing it, I wrote down my three. Two of my three are the same, and one is different. I agree with you on the money. That’s a duh. I agree with you on an attribute that invokes a feeling. When there’s a creek or something special about it, that pulls people in. My third one was multiple uses.

I love properties where it’s not just one thing. It could be subdivided. It could be built on. It could be this. It could be a mobile. It could be commercial or whatever. Some properties have more than one. It could be recreational, residential, or fill in the blank. That’s going to appeal to more people. To me, that’s irresistible.

My only job becomes getting it out there, blasting it out to the planet, which for me means picking the right broker who is going to do that, the right agent, and making sure that it looks stellar. When that pops up on everybody’s feed, they’re like, “What is that? How pretty is that photo? Look at that property.” Look at how well it’s described and conveyed. Every last little detail is in there. I don’t have any questions like I talked about earlier, down to what the annual taxes are. I know what that is too. People don’t do that. I wish they would.

You’ve created an irresistible real estate deal if somebody’s like, “Where do I send the money?”

There’s nothing left to talk about. It’s beautiful. When they stand on it, it’s that good. I made sure it was that good. I didn’t have the dump across the street. It’s not conveyed in the photos.

What we’re saying when we say, what’s the definition of an irresistible real estate deal? What we’re doing in professional real estate speak is defining an acquisition criteria. I want properties between 20 and 40 acres. They need to be in these three ZIP codes. They need to be at this price per acre. It should sell very quickly. With plus or minus and a few details. That’s the same thing that people do on HGTV. It’s not so much the location, three bedrooms, two baths or more, X amount of square footage, either on water or with a water view.

Amazing garage, boat dock, fill in the blank.

I’ve been in acquisitions my entire professional life in healthcare and long-term care. The facilities that we would only buy had to have two or fewer nursing stations for staffing reasons. They had to have no more than semi-occupied rooms. No 3, 4, and 5-bed wards. They had to have no less than 100 beds for the efficiency scale, contracts with certain insurance companies, and on and on.

You develop an acquisition criteria. Your entire job becomes to jam that pipeline full of opportunities. That’s it. You have a pipeline, and you’re searching for those irresistible deals. You have a jammed pipeline. If you’re a Land Academy member, you have people lining up to partner deals with you, so you don’t have to worry about money. You’re going to win.

We described what an irresistible real estate deal is. Got it. From the buyer’s perspective, what does it need to look like? We have covered that. What do we think are the 3 or 4 most important items? You’re saying, great. What you’re doing is you’re taking that to the acquisition level, which is what we all should be doing. You should know going into a market what you want to sell and for what price. When you back into what you’re willing to buy and what you’re willing to pay, it should be no problem and no question. There should be no guessing.

You should know going into a market what you want to sell and for what price. There should be no guessing. Share on X

That’s great, guys. You make this sound so easy. Fantastic. You described this great situation.

Congratulations. You turn on the faucet and gold comes out. Great. That’s awesome. I don’t have that.

The last half of this episode is going to be about how to do this.

Thank you. I didn’t read ahead. I did not read that far. Enlighten me too.

This process is almost identical, if not identical, to the regular acquisition process that Jill and I have been doing for decades. What has changed are the tools that we use to do it and why it’s getting easier and easier, in my opinion, and not harder. Here’s how you create an irresistible real estate deal.

1) Identify the profile of what the property is. We just did that. We’ve said we want between 20 and 40 acres. It needs to be less than $2,000 an acre. It needs to be in a certain area because I know from what everybody has told me that if I can fill that order, then it’s going to sell quickly. Great. I know exactly what my acquisition profile is. 2) I need to know where those deals exist because ten people can come to you and say, “If I had the corner lot on Broadway and 5th and I got it for $0.13, I’d be all set.” It has to be realistic.

“Everything on this lake.” It could be something like that.

“Any one of these six properties that surround this lake would be great, and I need them for $500.” That’s not realistic. If you have too small of an area, you’re hurting yourself. You need to give yourself a lot of opportunity to fill that order of that acquisition criteria. 3) Now you know what you want to buy and where you want to buy it. You know where you want to buy it because you’re applying the red, green, and yellow test through the trolling methodology that we talk about seemingly endlessly in Land Academy.

It’s a system I’ve been devising and improving for a couple of decades. We know what we’re buying. We now know where because we tested it with the red, green, and yellow test, and there are opportunities to do that enough so that we can send 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 units out and potentially capture that.

We now want to identify through data who owns those properties. We now know what we want to buy, where we want to buy it, and who owns it. The last part is to contact them intelligently with a well-priced offer, with a blind offer campaign, and follow up with Jill-like accuracy to create a real estate deal.

That’s it right there. You’re creating a deal. People don’t realize that you’re creating a deal where one didn’t exist.

That’s the name of the show, how to create an irresistible real estate deal, not how to identify one, not how to price one correctly.

To create an irresistible real estate deal, first identify the profile of the property. Share on X

Also, not what one looks like. You create the deal.

You’re creating the transaction. I create in our real-life jobs, not this, the opportunity. I present the opportunity for Jill to create a real estate deal by finding the right area. By the time it gets to her and the phone rings and the person is within the price of what I sent out, she knows because we’ve been doing this for how many years together. She knows it’s close.

I was doing a coaching call and I was talking about that with you. Their first mailer is going out. They’re asking some stuff like what to expect. I said, “Here’s the difference for me and why I’m very lucky. We’ll get you there.” I pretty much can assume when my phone rings, if they’re anywhere in the ballpark of what we offered, we’re going to buy it. I am very fortunate because you are so good that those offers are stellar. If they’re anywhere in there, I answer the phone, assuming it’s a deal. I always answer the phone, assuming there’s a deal. They’re calling because they agree with me. Now I’m trying to find something wrong with it. That’s it.

I don’t want to make this sound too easy because there’s a reason that I said this in some other venue. Jill came to me on our last mailer. I had her check the mailer at the very end of it. I think it was last week that we talked about this on the show. I asked her, “What do you think?” She looks at it and for less than an eighth of a second, she looks back at me and says, “Will this create potential transactions for us to look at?” I said, “No.” She said, “How about you let me know.” When it’s like that with the mailer, however you do that, and whatever the mailer is like, she waves her hand around and says, “Call me when you have this figured out.” I went back and did it.

This is a very specific thing too. We’re doing some very unique specific things too. It’s hard for me to do it if I don’t have the faucet coming at me.

She didn’t say this, but this is what she meant. What she meant is, “I don’t want to work this hard.” Sift it through and make deals work that I shouldn’t be working. I want it to be easy. I want so many deals in front of me that I’m going to pick that one because it’s so easy and I know that it’s going to work.

It’s a hell of a lot easier for me to respond to her requests like that and then go back in the darkroom for maybe an hour or two hours or more. For you, it might take a little longer because you’re new, but it’ll be the same experience for you. It’s easier for me to generate 10 deals versus 5. All the stuff that she has to go through to find the 1 or 2 deals that we want to do that month, we bang our heads against the wall trying to make them work versus looking at 25 deals and saying, “These two work. These two are going to work. I can see it right now.”

Do you mean you told me it took five hours and only took one? I’m just kidding. I know that goes on, by the way. I’m going, “I’ll be over here working on the mailer.” He’s been dabbling with that for a while.

I have never not been caught up with The Walking Dead.

You are caught up. That is what you’re saying. I don’t like double negatives. I hate that.

I’ve always been caught up with The Walking Dead, which has been on for as long as we’ve been doing this.

I’m well aware, but that’s okay. My phone rings.

That’s great. She’s got two great deals in front of her. She and her staff get them purchased, and that’s great. We’re all done. No, we’re not done at all. We have to resell it. I say this jokingly because that’s mentally when we’re done. When we bought an amazing piece of property, the high that both of us got for that was over. It’s just now numbers on a computer screen. We have full-time staff to do that. They can go and resell it and convert it to cash.

Maintaining Resilience In The Real Estate Market

You got some cash or maybe you have no cash, but a partner with a bunch of cash. You buy the property. It’s cash, real estate, back to cash. A small amount of cash, a small price for real estate, more cash in the bank than when you started. Jill, if that wasn’t inspirational enough, do you have something inspirational to share?

I was going to make a joke about that earlier about inspiration. This is a tough time. I’m going to talk about this for a minute. I want everyone to know that I feel your pain. We feel your pain, and we are right there with you. Please remember that I’m doing deals right next to you and ahead of you. Hopefully, I’ve got stuff going on too. I’m learning things, figuring out areas, and solving problems to save you time.

There’s a lot of stuff going on right now. There’s a lot of uncertainty. This came up a couple of times this week. You and I have talked about it a lot. I’ve talked about it privately in some coaching sessions. I’ve talked about it on the Land Academy ladies’ call. Please don’t lose sight of the goal, lose your momentum, or lose your excitement. Of all the uncertainty coming at you, stay the course and buy things even better.

That’s the thing too that we are doing personally. I was picky before. I’m getting even more picky. It’s going to be fine. There are always opportunities. Whether things are up or they’re down, there are opportunities, depending on where you are and how you’re looking at this. I know you want to add to that.

If you’re brand new, you are at an advantage over people who have been in the real estate business for a while, including us. You don’t know what it was like the last 3 to 4 years at 3% interest rates. Anything that you would buy would almost immediately resell. That’s how the market was. That’s what happens with markets.

I came in professionally at a time in the early ’90s when there was a huge recession happening. I was at a huge advantage. Computers were just becoming commonplace in the office. I was at an advantage because I understood that, and everybody else in the industry didn’t. Everybody else was fat and happy, buying new Cadillacs. I was not.

You were hungry.

I was eating ramen noodles. I found a better way. It stuck because here we are.

It worked.

If you’ve been in this for a few years, it is imperative that you review your processes and make the changes to adjust to the market. I’ve made that mistake. I guess it doesn’t work anymore. The stuff we’ve been doing for five years from the back of the yacht that I bought no longer works. It’s over. Enter Jill. She’s like, “What are you talking about? It’s not over. We just have to change this, this, and this. Give me a list of all your buyers that have been buying from you consistently. I’ll call them and we’ll do some deals.” It was that simple.

If you've been in real estate for a while, you must review your processes and make the changes to adjust to the market. Share on X

I wasn’t used to having to pick up the phone to do stuff. The properties that we were bringing into inventory would sell themselves within days. You have to review and make those changes, or you’ll die. My final point is this and I say this from a personal place. It’s also a time to make permanent changes. This is going to happen again 10 to 15 years from now. All of it. It happened fifteen years ago. I’m shocked that it came to this. I thought it was going to be about ten years.

These real estate cycles historically, if you look all the way back, are eleven years apart. We got 4 or 5 more years out of this one, which is great. In the last cycle, Jill and I made permanent changes in our financial life. We promised each other we’d never take on any debt of any kind, in any way, with the exception of a rationally priced conservative primary residence, first position mortgage, and that’s it, which I think is fine. That worked out great for us. It’s very important that you don’t beat yourself up or let anybody else in your life who’s close to you let you even think that you suck as a person because you made some decisions at the time that were good for you and your family. You made a mistake.

That’s good.

Nobody knows when these things are going to happen. The only reason that we’re not in any form of financial trouble at all is because we went through it fifteen years ago. We were in a serious, severe, and detrimental financial situation. Jill pulled us out of it, and we promised each other we’d never do it again. Ten or fifteen years from now, whoever you are, if you’re going through this, their goal is to never go through it again. It’s to solve it and never go through it again. It’s not to beat yourself up or listen to your stepmom tell you how stupid you are. That’s the worst thing ever.

Get together and make the changes. You’re going to be fine. If you’re tuning in and you’re paying attention, good for you. You’ll be fine.

That’s right, Jill. Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.