I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show.

This is episode number 2,095. Today, we’re talking about defining clear goals and removing everything in your way. All week, we’re talking about reframing your mindset for 2025.

There are a few things I’d like to remove.

I have to tell you, I love these topics. People ask us, “You’re on episode number 2,000 and what? How can you possibly talk about buying and selling land?” It’s not really about that.

It isn’t?

No. This week it’s not. This week is about, you either see it and have that light bulb or have had that light bulb moment about how the real estate industry is very profitable, or you haven’t. If you do these things that we’re talking about this week, you’ll smoke that out very quickly. You probably already have.

I’m just thinking about things I want to remove. Sorry.

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related questions by popular request. Can you make that noise again?

There are a few things I’d like to remove in from this room. Sorry. Which? The gurgling noise?

I don’t know what it was. It was a mistake laugh, or something.

That. Don’t worry. It’s going to happen again.

It’ll happen again. This episode?

Yeah. Not my best self today. It’s all right.

It’s the holidays. Jill pulls out the stops.

We’ve been whooping it up.

We have lights all over the house, and all of our family’s coming over. We have like five things to do. We’re recording this right before Christmas.

It’s because that was a good idea. Fernando wrote, “Jack, I wanted to follow up a little on my data question regarding identifying overvalued properties from Realtor.com research data. You addressed it in the podcast dated December 18th, 2024. Are you saying that zip codes showing double-digit growth year over year are overvalued and will be due for market correction in 2025? Thank you.”

Understanding The Impact Of Overvalued Properties And Market Adjustments

That’s exactly what I’m saying. If you go to Realtor.com/research/data, they have resources there. They’re huge spreadsheets, million-plus line spreadsheets or databases, that you can pull down. They publish new ones every month about what’s going on in every zip code in the country. Believe it or not, there are 26,000 zip codes, and they have trailing historical data for each zip code for at least 18 to 24 months, maybe in some cases more.

It’s very easy to see what’s been going on with completed sales in those zip codes in chronological order. What ends up happening is you pick a zip code and take a look. In the last 4 or 5 months, the year-over-year data is double-digit increases, 10% increase, 20%. These are real numbers, 30% increase, 20%. These are the last five months. It takes the seasonality out of it because it’s a year-over-year comparison. If you’re looking at June, it’s this month’s June over last month’s June. If there’s a 30% increase, that’s apples to apples.

It’s happening all over the country. I’ve been very loud about this. There’s going to be a huge twenty-plus percent, maybe more, market adjustment down in a lot of the zip codes that are overinflated from COVID. From people saying, “I want to get out of the city. I went to college in X market. I’ve always wanted to live there. Let’s go buy a house.”

“I can afford to do whatever I want. We’re going to overspend and get what we want.”

There’s a lot of other factors here. Five-in-one, three-in-one adjustable-rate mortgages are kicking in. The economy is slowing down. Interest rates are way higher. It’s a perfect storm for what we do for a living because all these properties are overvalued, and the vast majority of people that would have been interested in buying them and absorbing them can’t afford it. The market’s going to correct itself. A lot of property is going to be sold for way less than what they paid.

The thing for me, in particular for deal funding, they’re coming in too high. I’m like, this is not the time to be overspending for land. Now’s the time to really make smart decisions. $40,000 should be $15,000.

Now is the time to make smart decisions. Share on X

When is it? When do you ever overspend for land? I’ll tell you when, when the market is so hot, and this happened about four years ago, that every single piece of property that you buy, you resell it for more, and it sells really fast. It’s very unusual to see that. It’s only happened a few times in my professional career. It’s probably happened three times. You usually get a good year of it.

When you have all this experience, it’s like, “It’s happening again. We should start to buy and overpay.” We did, and we have very few properties left from that time. Those are great properties to go back and rebuy because the market is now adjusting itself way down to reality. These are really positive things. Jill and I will buy hundreds and hundreds of properties next year.

Great question. Today’s topic, define clear goals and remove everything that’s in your way. What’s your goal? I brought this up on our Thursday call. I can remember the moment, I was 13 or 14 years old, cutting the neighbor’s lawn. I think I got $13 a week for that back then, which was way more than I could make. I had a minimum-wage job that I had in a restaurant. That was already a step improved from the regular job that I had. I already had a side gig going, and I started doing the math.

I remember exactly where I was, cutting that person’s lawn, about what I had to do to make X amount of money because I didn’t want to do this anymore. I didn’t want to cut lawns and work in a restaurant. I realized by the end of the lawn-cutting session there that it was not possible to do it with what I was doing in any way. I would have to get and employ people, get a bunch of them. I just didn’t want to do it. You need to define what that goal is and do a tremendous amount of research to find out what the best way to accomplish that goal is. I have to tell you, on a personal note, I can’t stand goals like this, “I want to be a billionaire.” I can’t stand that. That’s not a goal. That’s just a pipe dream.

You need to define what that goal is and do a tremendous amount of research to find out the best way to accomplish it. Share on X

Today, for me, my goal is to get through today. What can I remove? Work. Here’s my contribution.

Thank you for chiming in, Jill.

You’re welcome. Continue on.

Defining Clear Goals And Removing Obstacles To Achieve Success

My goal has always been to, after tax, amass $10 million. That’s not net worth, that’s just cash because I can invest it in what I believe are true passive investment channels, not even real estate, and make a million dollars a year. Jill and I have long passed that, but that was my goal back then. It remained my goal as I went through accounting jobs and real estate acquisition jobs and all types of jobs. That was always in the back of my head.

Whatever your goal is, you feel free to steal mine, you need to set it, make it realistic, and start down the path of implementing it. That’s what this whole week is about, getting your head changed. The more people you tell, you’re going to have to undo a lot of things in your life. I don’t care how old or young you are or what your situation is. There are always people telling you it’s not possible.

I want to know, talk about some of the things that you want to remove. What are your examples of removing when it’s appropriate?

You have a clear goal. For me, that’s what it was. I don’t know, but in a few years, I don’t have a lot of fun.

That’s pretty much like travel and have fun. Don’t forget. I go see a lot of concerts.

Fortunately for me, Jill is just a rockstar salesperson. We have the same goals. Let’s put it that way.

We do.

We’ve long passed all this. We have fewer financial things to prove to ourselves and fewer milestones ahead.

True. Now we’re having fun. Now it’s about my goals.

Having fun.

We get your goals, now we get to circle back to mine.

I don’t care who you are. You can’t just do nothing when you retire. It’s very destructive.

It’s really not good.

You can do nothing for a couple of weeks, but then no.

I’m good with that.

The Importance Of Reframing Your Mindset For The New Year

Here’s some stuff that gets in your way. The most popular things, and life gets in the way. Everybody loves to say that. What they mean is their spouse is standing in their way and actually hurting things, not helping. Or they have too many babies. For a lot of people, too many is one. You have to ask yourself, and this is people of all ages and all careers, what’s standing in my way?

You can’t remove some of those things.

I disagree.

You shouldn’t, you can’t remove kids.

You can manage your children with this in mind, “I’m going to get rich, and you kids are coming with me. You’re young, like it or not, you’re coming with me, and it’s going to be fun and educational.

It’s going to be some work, but Mommy or Daddy’s going to be busy some of the weekends. But it’s going to be good. There’s a reason why.

Kids don’t care. They think anything’s fun when they’re young. Anything that you’re doing with them is fun.

True. This is good.

Whatever else is in your way, I feel very strongly about this. I’ve had a lot of people stand in my way. Jill is not one of them. My life changed when Jill and I got together, and we both wanted to really improve. Jill and I always want to improve things. That’s what Land Academy is. We can’t help ourselves.

I’ve been involved with people, starting with my immediate family, that weren’t why they got up in the morning. I grew up with my entire extended family. My immediate and extended family were factory workers in inner-city Detroit. They did not see the value or respect anyone who wanted to get out of that environment, first of all, and do something better with their lives. It was the opposite. There was punishment for that.

Clear goals. You’re talking just business monetary, we’re not talking about life stuff right here.

Life stuff can happen later.

Maybe that’s part of it. Life could cut. Would you suggest a list of goals and, maybe at the bottom, like plan your life and then plan when I’m going to get married?

Like a vision board?

No, like planning out when you’re going to get married and have kids and all that. At what age should we be doing this?

For whatever reason, if you need to get married and have children, then you should do it after you’re financially at the place where that works and that you can manage that from a time standpoint.

What if I made a mistake and I already did that?

That’s great. I love that question because that’s most of us. To a lesser extent, it wasn’t me, but I was well on my way when all that stuff happened to me. Then you’re going to have a tougher time from a time management standpoint accomplishing your goals, but it’s still very feasible and doable.

Got to get them on board.

I had a Spanish teacher in high school. He was famous for saying, they didn’t call it dyslexia back then, he had some type of learning disability. He said, “I have to read everything four times before I understand it. You all can read it once, but that should never stop you.” You’re going to spend a lot more time in reading comprehension than you do on math or whatever. That always stuck with me, obviously. If it’s harder for you than the person sitting next to you, that’s no excuse not to do it.

It takes you a little bit longer. The flip side, I’m going to argue that sometimes, for those people, there’s other things that just come easier to them. There’s a yin and a yang.

If someone in your immediate family is standing in your way and just encouraging you to keep your job that you hate because you have bills to pay, you need to go off by yourself for a couple of hours as soon as possible and figure out what you’re going to do about that because that really only ends one way. If you continue down that path, it doesn’t end with happiness.

Got it.

You have to make constant changes if you’re going to hit some serious financial goals. Join us again. We’ll talk about implementing five daily habits until you see automatic and direct financial results. You need to retrain your head and your personality. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.