Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit are back with another incredible episode, and this time, they talk about using your own money to fund real estate deals! Learn how they leverage their own capital to secure profitable properties, maintain control, and accelerate their wealth-building journey. Discover the insider secrets to raising capital, forming strategic partnerships, and accessing funding even if you lack traditional financial resources. Tune in to unlock the potential of funding your own real estate deals and achieve financial independence.

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Using Your Own Money To Fund A Real Estate Deal

This is Episode 2,108. We are talking about using your money to fund a real estate deal. Seems so simple. This is what Jill and I do 98% of the time 99. All week, we are talking about the five ways to get your real estate deal funded. This is the final installment of the debt. We talked about debt equity.

I didn’t know how you were going to run through all the days. I was going to say, and you are when you said this is what we do most of the time because we can now. That’s what I wanted to say. For a long time, we couldn’t, or I had so much money. Maybe one month I couldn’t and I had to stretch it out and make it count back then. Now it’s great. I don’t have to worry about this.

That’s a good point. If you are new at this, you should utilize equity funding within a group like Land Academy. If not Land Academy, people do it all the time. It’s a great way to, if you are great at finding deals and don’t have any money which is what everybody hopes. You hope, and I hope. You are going to get a bunch of deals funded with people in our group until you don’t need it anymore.

Equity funding is a great way to get started in real estate investing, especially if you don't have a lot of money. Share on X

Exactly, and then you are the funder.

Funding A Deal In South Carolina

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum. Take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

San Till wrote, “I’m looking for funding on a nice neighborhood in South Carolina. Buy for $60,000, sell for $120,000. High-dollar houses and land in this area.” Let’s see if there’s anything more. The purchase price is $60,000. That said, South Carolina got the details here. It has two brokers who both said the estimated sales price they feel good at is $120,000. It’s 1.3 acres. It’s zoned for houses SFR thing. Sub-residential. Water is available, needs a septic tank. It’s not in the wetlands. No flood zone, that’s good. There’s a small stream on the land at the edge of the property. Requires a 50-foot buffer. Not bad. It’s still 1.36 acres that’s good. Has access. There’s some slope, but it’s buildable. He put in some maps and GPS coordinates. This is great. Seems to fit all eight. They have thought this through. It has the access, acreage, affordable attributes, alive, adjacent all of that’s all in there. This is great.

For you to create a ton of wealth when you don’t have a lot of money now. All of us started with no money. If you are lucky enough to have inherited a bunch of money or have access to a lot of money with no strings attached like inheriting money is good for you. You are in a huge minority. For the rest of us, me included, I had to raise capital in the beginning, and I did. I raised it like this by finding amazing real estate deals, getting somebody to partner with who I trust, and completing the real estate deal as quickly and efficiently as possible, then returning the capital so I can go do it again.

Jill and I built Land Academy not to make money selling education. We built it for deals like this so we can participate in deals like this. And like she said, we can raise capital ourselves because way back in the day, constantly running out of money. We had more good deals than we did money. It’s the reverse now. We have a lot more money than good deals. We are giving back. The whole goal is to use your own money to make real estate or financial decisions. It should be your goal too, no matter what business you are in. Do you have anything to add to that?

The whole goal is to use your own money to make real estate or financial decisions, no matter what business you're in. Share on X

The Importance Of Education And Starting Small

That’s true. This is a common thing. I now and then will help and take calls for people thinking about joining Land Academy. In the beginning, I was the phone call person. Now I have people who also answer questions on our staff, and that’s one of the number one things I don’t have the dough. How much do I need to get started? A great question you need to know to get into this, I should say. You don’t need money for the deals. That’s it.

I tell people this all the time. This is a natural progression. You need $5,000 to $10,000 to get started. Get an education. Be able to afford to download some data. Send the mail out. Biggest expenses. Let them come back. Pick the best ones. Use us to fund them until you don’t need to. Think about it. You do a handful of deals.

Say you do 5 deals. I’m going to make it easy. Buy for $50,000 and sell for $100,000 and we are splitting the profit. Your brand is making a deal and I’m helping you with a lot of that, and you feel good about it. 5 deals at you netting $25,000 a deal. Now you’ve got $125,000 in the bank of your own money. You are going to quickly say, “Jill, I don’t need your money now. The next five I can fund myself.” You can do the next three or whatever you are doing, and it keeps building and building.

Then you come up for air. You put your head down, and do everything that we said. You come up for air, and it’s 6 or 9 months gone by, and you have $500,000 in your bank account. Now you are going to start going, “Maybe I start being the funder for some other person needing deals,” and that’s how it goes. You learned, and then you don’t need us, and now you are like, “Now I’m going to help somebody else. I’m going to put $200,000 of my $500,000 aside. I’m going to keep doing my deals, and I’m going to fund somebody else’s deals.” Now watch what happens. Now the end of the year comes along. Now you’ve got $1 million in the bank, and now you start making different decisions again. It sounds like, “What? It sounds too easy.” There are a lot of moving parts but in the big picture, that’s what can happen and does happen.

Creating A Legacy And Partnership Opportunities

As there has been money, people have been doing exactly what we have created here but not everybody has had access to it. True. You hear all the stuff in this day and age, based on all kinds of things, people having more entitlement, more access to things. In the simplest form, some of us, not me, and I’m pretty sure not Jill, were not lucky enough to be born into some type of legacy where I could become 18 or 19 years old and go to my parents or family or whatever and say, “I have this great idea.” I have proven myself over and over, “and I need about $25,000 to do this, and if you want, we can do it together, or I’d like your advice,” or all of that. We were not lucky enough to be involved in that. That’s how 2nd, 3rd, 8th, and 10th-generation wealth is carried on, and very few people have access to that. That’s not the case anymore. Jill and I created this specifically so we could be the people providing access to all of this.

That’s such a good point. It’s almost like the Land Academy family is your legacy family. I didn’t think about that. You can go off and learn, take everything. People have done this. We have been doing this show for many years now. Many people have said, “I got this. I have been winging it on my own.” That’s great, and they have probably been successful, but how much more successful could they have been being part of a group where they had way more access to funding and way more opportunities to do deal funding? I’m going to argue if you’ve been doing this quietly on your own on the side in the last several years and you’ve amassed $2 million, you probably would have had $10 million or $50 million and it’s not too late. We can help.

We still do partnership deals now.

All the time. I will not do partnership deals. I’d be an idiot to go, “I don’t need anybody’s money,” or, “I’m not giving out any of my money.” That’s dumb of me to think that. I would be losing out if I’m not funding or being a part of any deal offer that makes sense.

Building Wealth By Doing Deals

We send a ton of mail out every month. It’s very possible and it has been the situation where we’ll send the money. It’s happening now, specifically in the beginning of 2025 here, where we’ll come up with 10 deals that cost $500,000 each, especially with houses, where we need $5 million, and they are quick turns and easy deals.

If you can do your job well to come up with great real estate deals, you're going to be extremely wealthy. Share on X

We seek funding within our group to do that. People come out of the woodwork saying, “I want to be a part of it.” On whatever side you are on, you are on one of those two sides or both sides. A lot of times we fund the deals ourselves, or we will bring in somebody else if somebody brings a deal like that if it’s so big. It has to be a great real estate deal. I have said this one million times. Your job in life is to come up with great real estate deals. That’s it. You have one job. One single professional job and if you can do it well, come up with great real estate deals. You are going to be extremely wealthy.

That’s it. Everything else falls into place.

Join us next episode for five more interesting episodes. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.