Revisiting The Why Behind Your Land Business

This is episode number 2208. Jill and I are talking about Revisiting The Why Behind Your Land Business. I love this topic. I asked myself, “Why are you doing what you’re doing right now, Jack? Why do you live in the house that you live in? Why have your children made the choices that they’ve made?” Let’s think and talk about it.

Why have you fallen in love with plaid? I have all kinds of whys. Let’s pause here for a moment, shall we? Let’s just come back to this. I can think of one nice dinner we went to where you didn’t wear plaid in the last two weeks. That’s the only such example I have. What is it with plaid?

It started last year. This is why this is part of the topic. You should be able to answer questions just like this. You shouldn’t sit and say, “I don’t know why I’ve been wearing this shade of lipstick since high school.” You should know that. I don’t know why I ended up with seventeen children.

I want to know your plaid. Keep going. Don’t try to divert from the topic.

The answer to the topic is this. It started where you took our third summer-long RV trip, which was the most recent summer in Durango. I went, and we were there, and I was out of place. I was out of place in these mountain towns during the summertime. I was dressing like a college kid, and which that’s where my lipstick comment just came from. Why am I dressing like a college kid? I couldn’t answer that.

You landed on this?

Yeah. I probably wore it out by now from now.

A little change would be okay. The best was last Thursday when we both wore plaid and everybody went, “Whoa.”

Everybody, meaning everyone who works for us.

I have one plaid shirt and I wore it last week, and then it was like too much plaid.

It hasn’t aired yet.

You’re going to go off plaid on the start, wearing plaid. It’s funny.

Here’s the point. You should hold yourself to a standard of self-awareness where why you’re doing what you’re doing because I’m telling you, you’re going to wake up 10 years from now, 20 years from now and wondering why you put up with your boss’s crap for all these all this time or why are you letting your spouse push you around so much or some some version of that? I think this is healthy to ask yourself, “Why am I buying and selling land? Why am I trying so hard when it’s not working? Why don’t I hire somebody to do this mailer?” I’m having great success. I hate doing mailers. I got to find somebody to do that.

This is therapy hour.

Yeah, that’s what this is. That’s what this topic is. That’s why I like it. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum to take a deep dive into land-related topics at your request.

Challenges & Mysteries Of Land Ownership & Deeds

Joseph tells a story here. “Virginia land mystery, 12 acres, one black walnut, and zero boundaries. I recently chased down a 12-acre parcel in rural Virginia.”

I love this story.

“On paper, it looked like a dream. Similar parcels go for $300,000 plus. I offered $160,000, and after some digging, the owner’s daughter just wanted $15,000 to get rid of it. There was one catch. No one can say where the land actually is.” I’m familiar with this. “The dead on file was written before 1871, likely during the pre-Civil War, and opens with, beginning at a small black walnut tree.

It goes on to reference chestnut trees, long gong from the region, and contains no reference to adjoining parcels. No plot, no markers, just vague poetic directions. Local markers aren’t much help. The cadastral layer for the area is incomplete, and every surveyor I spoke to was fascinated but baffled. The town’s planning department couldn’t locate it either, and then came the historical twist. During the Civil War, courthouses emptied out their documents to protect them from being burned or seized.

If a map ever existed, there’s a real chance it was lost during that shuffle. Now, the only way to move forward for the owner would be to hire a land use attorney to claim an undefined tract and define it from scratch. Essentially, scratch some lines on a map and then defend it as they are 12 acres. Would I still buy it?” Maybe if we can triangulate the location using parcels with similar APNs but equally vague deeds, there’s a path. It would take collaboration, deep historical knowledge of this mountain range, creativity, and a budget and time.

Trust.

Sometimes a land wants to be found. Other times, it disappears into the woods and dares you to follow. Boy, this sounds like Oklahoma to me.

Sounds like Taos, New Mexico to me. This is not the only place where this happens. I’ll tell you, over the years, so millions and millions of letters and responses. We’re not too new to this, but if you’re new, this shouldn’t scare you. This doesn’t happen very often. The survey system is a hodgepodge of systems, which this in our relatively new country.

For example, the survey system in all of Texas is based on railroad lines. It’s not based on a metes and bounds range township system like most of the country. Specifically, Virginia makes no sense. There’s crazy stuff. What I would say here, and I know you’re not looking for an answer, it’s just sharing a story, which I love, is to find out where other people’s properties are not.

If there’s some void space between, let’s say, hopefully 3 or 4 people, maybe even two, and nobody knows who owns it, chances are they’ve already claimed it anyway. I think from an easement in use or something. I cannot remember from back in the day, but if you’ve used the property for more than ten years and no one’s contested it, there’s an argument and a really good argument. That if it gets contested, someone’s going to say, “This is so old.” Someone’s going to say, “I had been parking my car there. My grandmother parked it there.”

Driving over it for twenty years, no one ever said it. Now it’s an easement by something.

Opportunity or something, I don’t know. I love the story. I understand and I feel for the owner.

Isn’t it amazing when you see those? I haven’t seen one, you’re right, especially nowadays, too, we’re not dealing with as much rural land as we used to be. I’m budget-wise and experience-wise, mostly budget-wise, we’re going in different areas. Goodness, back in the day when I first started with you, I would see more of those deeds because we’re just buying stuff way the heck out there. It might be you start at this rock, you go to this tree, go down to the road, come up to this, and then you cut in. Like that’s the legal, but that was illegal.

It’s like the box at the end of The Shawshank Redemption.

I don’t remember. There’s nothing in the box.

Money and directions. A secret note.

I don’t remember that. That’s a guy thing. That’s like the moral of high society. Thank you. It’s the same thing as the box.

You should hold yourself to a standard of self-awareness where you know why you're doing what you're doing. You don't want to wake up 10 or 20 years from now wondering why you put up with all that crap. Share on X

Society didn’t have any more.

No. There is an underlying moral under that movie.

Personal Goals & Motivations For Being In The Land Business

Welcome to Friday night with Steven and Jill after two Scotches each. This topic revisiting the why behind your land business, like I said earlier.

Why are we here? Why are you listening? Why is he wearing plaid? Why did you go through that again? That’s the wise. I want to know.

One of the reasons that Jill and I endure time together is because Jill tends to skip along the top and make fun of everything. I tend to overanalyze and try to get to the bottom of everything. I have no choice. That’s a certain amount of that’s at a certain point where I have to give in and just start laughing with everybody instead of saying, guys, this is serious for trying to split an atom here.

Yes. I’m sorry.

It doesn’t work the other way. It feels like, “I’ll stop laughing and horsing around.” We do have to talk about this, Adam.

No, yeah, I know. I’ll figure it out. I’m like, I know you’re going to get to it without me. You don’t need me.

The reason that you should be in the land business or want to get into the land business because you’re sitting there asking yourself why is because it’s crazy profitable, it makes sense to you, and you have control over your life. My life goal has been to not work. My whole life goal is not to work.

You’re saying you personally or a listener?

I found that me personally, my buying and selling land up to and including yesterday was the easiest way to accomplish that. I do not think Jill’s life goal has been, I don’t mean not work, try hard, not put in my all, or any of that. I mean, not work in an accounting office the rest of my life for somebody else.

My goals were different. Do you want to know mine?

I would.

Mine were this. Again, this came back from my dad. His whole thing was, “I’m going to find a career, or I don’t have to work very much, and I make a lot of money.”

I think that’s fantastic parent parental advice.

There were three. He went into flying, became a commercial pilot, and at the end, he nailed it, man. He was gone, I don’t know, a couple of days a quarter. He got paid very well. He also did some real estate. He was trying to learn other trading things, which was not his thing, that wasn’t his forte. He wasn’t fast enough for that. Even before that, though, I grew up in Southern California. We’ve talked about this before on the show. I watched what was going on around me. I got to fly and Don Cole’s helicopter and the Super Shops guys’ plane and stuff like that.

Nobody knows who that is.

Do you know what? If you know, you know.

You’re from central Orange County. Who might this one person be?

You’re from Newport Beach or Southern California or Rhineland, you know what that is?

Most of you don’t know where Orange County is. Most of you are saying, “Orange County, Florida. Sure.”

I’m in California. Anyway, I was but I knew about these very prominent, wealthy developers where I grew up, and I remember someone going, “How do you get this?” It was a long shoot. You’re in real estate. That’s, “Why would I not do that?” That was my why.

I was very fortunate at a young age to be exposed to wealthy people, also, and I knew that I wanted to have control of my own time and not have to worry about money. I don’t really mean not work. I just mean remove money from my life as a variable. Those are the reasons that you, as a young person or whoever you are in your career, if you’re thinking about buying and selling real estate, if those are the things you want and you want it bad enough, man, this is an amazing vehicle.

You know why one more why that is important to me, that I know is important to a lot of our community, that it might be important to you listening? Having a legacy company and teaching your family how to always put food on the table is super important to me. I see it in the Land Academy. We have parents and kids. We have siblings doing it. “I’m bringing in my dad, I’m bringing in my whatever.” There’s a lot of that going on because once you figure it out and you realize we could do this as a family and we can all do well, and I don’t have to work that hard, by the way, it’s beautiful. I think that’s an important why.

Look, the whole message here is I’ll wrap it up on this. You should know why about everything in your entire life, every step of the way. At some point, I often think it happens to me anyway. It’s like, “Why are you doing this? Maybe I shouldn’t, or maybe I should do it another way.” It keeps you on the right path.

No, it makes me think of this. I can end it on this. When a toddler, we all know those two-year-olds, and all they keep doing. “Why? Why?” You just want to smack them because it just cuts too much.

That’s me.

Yeah.

Is that what you’re trying to say?

A little bit.

Join us next week, where we discuss nonviolent topics concerning your land of business. You are not alone in the real estate ambition. We’re Jack and Jill, information and enduring it all, to buy undervalued property. Thanks, Jill.

Sorry. Go ahead.

You’re going to finish for me there. Why? Why does she?