Join Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit in this episode of The Land Academy Show as they dive into case study number two, featuring a Canadian couple who flips over five properties each month. They explore the strategies that have fueled this couple’s impressive success, examining their determination and adaptability in the property market. Discover the lessons learned from their experiences and how they navigate challenges, all while sharing insights that can inspire and inform your property-flipping endeavors.

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Case Study 2: How A Canadian Couple Masters Flipping 5+ Properties Per Month

Data-Driven Decision Making

I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWitt, and this is The Land Academy Show.

This is episode number 2,055. We are talking about case study number two. We’re doing five case studies this week. Case study number two is about a professional Canadian couple that flip at least five properties per month with us. We’ll take a look at what it is about them that makes them successful. I know what it is already.

They do; it wasn’t always that way. Little ramp-up time, so I want everybody to know if I don’t do that, am I not normal? No, you’re fine if you don’t get to that right away. That’s okay; that could take some time. We’ll explain how they got there.

All week this week, we’re going to take a look at five case studies. If you haven’t checked it out, check the webinar out yesterday on Monday, case study number one. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into our land-related topics by popular request.

Cesar wrote, “When trolling a city or a specific zip code, what is the minimum number of vacant properties currently for sale in my target along with the corresponding sold, like in the last twelve months, that I’d want to see before mailing to that city/zip code? Ten active for sale and twenty sold in the last twelve months? Less than that, more than that, where’s the cutoff?” I’ll explain trolling first.

This is a real popular question, which is why I included it. In our process of buying and selling land, we accumulate data to make decisions. These are all data-driven decisions in our business. There are no dartboards; we don’t guess. One of the first things that we do is open up Zillow or OpenRealty.com and put in the parameters that we want. I want to see vacant properties that are, in a healthy manner, selling with a profile between $30,000 and $60,000 or whatever. We set that profile in what we call an equity planner, which we provide to our members.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but the middle process is to profile a piece of property that the data tells you will sell very quickly based on properties that have sold or are for sale. You open up Zillow, you put in that profile, let’s say $60,000 or $90,000 sale price, five acres plus, and bang, you hit go, and it populates. We usually move from the west to the east part of the country. You can start to see there’s absolutely nothing for sale at that price range.

Let’s say, like Los Angeles. As you move east into eastern Southern California, Nevada, Colorado, you’ll start to see properties populate, which is an indication of possible success. That’s where people are buying and selling properties according to that profile. What he’s asking here, I appreciate the question, Cesar, and your participation. You’re very involved in Land Academy, and I appreciate it. “How many properties need to be in a cluster, let’s say, or a potential zip code for me to take it seriously?”

Do I need to see more than ten for sale, he says, or twenty sold? What are the numbers? The answer is, there is no hard number. I know that for people like Cesar, and I’ve said this to him on the Thursday call and everything else, I’m not picking on him in any way. In fact, it’s great; he’s providing the questions that I think a lot of people have. He’s got the courage and the intelligence to ask us, and I appreciate it. Many things in this effort or in this business aren’t hard numbers.

Many things in this land business aren't hard numbers. Share on X

For personalities like me and for Cesar’s, that’s hard to digest. I’m a former accountant. I want to find the answer, the financial answer, to everything. We do, which is one of the reasons Jill brought up us not talking as much. You have to look at it. Let’s say you’re in Oklahoma, and there are more properties populated, let’s say, on the eastern part of the state than on the western part of the state. I don’t know if this is true, but this is what always happens. I’m just picking on Oklahoma. It might be Nevada or Delaware.

On the eastern part of the state, there’s a lot more properties that fit my profile that I put in, and a lot fewer properties on the western side, or however it gets split up. I’m going to naturally gravitate where there’s more data and analyze it that way. One of the things that really matters here is not so much the number of properties for sale or sold; what really matters is how many. If I have eight properties that are actively for sale, and 32 properties that have sold in the last twelve months, yay. If I have one property that’s active and two properties that have been sold, the percentages come out great, but that’s not a lot. Especially if the zip code right next to it, or 2 or 3 properties to the east or west of it, have populated data and it’s all big and happy.

What this is really doing is smoking out natural supply and demand. I’m not saying you can’t go up to North Dakota or someplace like that where there’s just no data at all and smash it out of the park. We have members who do that, and it’s usually because they have some information about that state or that area of the state that we don’t, like they live there, or they grew up there and they know that, “Oh, geez, it’s beautiful over here, but not so much over here.”

Everybody wants to go fishing up here in July, you can’t fish down here. That stuff doesn’t come up in data. There’s a very personal, soul-like component to all this that needs to be backed up by data. I can tell that we’ve reached Jill’s limit.

What was the answer to your question? Let me help, Cesar. Big picture is more data is better, and those numbers are great. Two to one is awesome. You want to have a healthy, higher sell. I would even argue if I had like 18 to 10, something like that, it’s a hot and moving area, or think of 80 to 30. That’s really what would be nice if you could have stuff like that. That would be really good.

The big picture is that more data is better. Share on X

Canadian Couple Case Study

It’s Tuesday, and we’re on to case study number two. We’re going to talk about one of my favorite members, the professional Canadian couple who flip at least five properties per month. Give us some background.

They have a little baby. They’ve been with us for a couple of years, again, Career Path alumni. I think it was slow going a little bit for them. It was a little bit of a fire hose, then cool, a little bit hot, then cool. I think they’ve found their groove. I hear little things.

We see them every other week when we get together with our Land Academy pro calls. I hear about them through my lead transaction coordinator because she does deals for them, closes deals for them. I’ll hear little rumblings like, “They just opened X amount of extras this week.” I’m like, “Yay, that’s so good. I love that.” The couple of things that are really important I want to cover with you are one, a sweet young couple, professional backgrounds before Land Academy and baby, doing it from another country and not afraid of it.

Not afraid.

They solved it all. You know what’s so great about it? They’re so helpful. Whenever we get other people into Land Academy that are in Canada or even other countries, they’re really sweet to share, “Here’s how we set up our phones. Here’s how we set up our banking. Here’s how I set up getting deeds done.” All of that information, they’re really sweet, open, and happy to share.

I don’t think we’ve had them on a show? It’s probably been some time. We probably need to do another show with them and do a real catch-up. I think that would be fun.

Success Factors

Here’s why they made my top five list here. This is maybe last week, two weeks, or last month. There was a deal because we, in Land Academy Pro, we all meet every other week. We get to know each other pretty well. She brought a deal to us for us to talk about and get our opinion on and just to generally get some advice. The story went like this, and this is my recollection.

Please steer it differently, Jill, if you remember something else. She had a problematic seller. Sometimes sellers say, “Yeah, sure, I want to sell a property.” They might go dark for a while. They might go, I call it going a little schizophrenic. “Oh, I do want to sell it, but this has got to happen,” so.

Probably all five of these examples this week have this tenacity or this persistence of follow-up, to a point of probably a fault. She’ll talk to a seller 150 times if that’s what it takes to get the deal done, without ever blinking an eye. She was telling the story, this woman. It’s a very complicated deal. I would have walked away from the deal probably twenty minutes into it. She’s in week 4 or 5.

Was it a probate or something kind of thing?

Yes. Some people are dead on the deed.

She’s solving it.

She is.

One by one, solving every problem.

There’s so much back tax on the property that it’s about to be defaulted.

That’s right.

It’s at the end of the line, so she’s dealing with that. She’s having to front money to get the deal done.

I forgot about that.

That is her personality type, and that’s what she’s bringing to the land-flipping effort. Neither one of them, nobody this week that we’re profiling here, talking about, that thought has never entered their mind that, “Well, here I am. You guys, not you, Jack and Jill, need to get this going for me.”

They very much took it upon themselves. It’s great. Without fear. She’ll ask questions, and here’s what we recommend. She’s like, “Okay, got it, done, that’s what I’ll do.” She goes off and does it. Makes a call, makes it happen, not afraid of anything.

The ability to ask questions and seek advice is invaluable. Share on X

Real Estate In The US Vs Canada

I grew up, my dad bought and sold a lot of real estate, as far back as I can remember. I’ve been around it, and so has Jill. In both of our cases, our parents, it wasn’t they’re primary source of income, but they were always doing it and always talking about it. I’m not sure how that would work in a different country, because it’s just different, it’s not as prevalent.

Maybe in that country too, because I’m thinking, I’m curious how much is the property in America, sheesh, depending where you live, on the same block, every house will change over three times in ten years. I wonder in Canada if they don’t have as much property as we do, obviously, but not as much population. They have as much land, let’s say that, but not as much population as we have. I’m curious what the average turnover is there. Not enough that I’m going to look it up.

I know this for sure.

I don’t know.

I know this for sure, Canada is not obligated, from a legal standpoint, to disclose, nationwide, the ownership. We’re one of the only countries, if not the only country in the entire world, for whatever reason, our founding fathers institutionalized that whoever owns real estate, you can look it up and find out. It’s open source. That’s just amazing to me. It’s 2024, 2025, and we can send out a letter and see if they want to sell it.

There’s just no other place in the country, in the world, that you can do that. They had to relearn; my point is, whatever real estate system they have there, it’s not too far different from ours. They really had to relearn all kinds of things, how we buy and sell real estate, what the tax implications are, and all kinds of things.

Join us tomorrow, where we discuss case study number three, a global pharmaceutical brand manager that turned land investor and eventually retired her husband a couple of years ago. Actually, she’s been with us from the beginning. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

We are Jack and Jill.

Information.

And inspiration.

To buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• Open Realty