Do You Need to Go See the Land Before You Buy it? (CFFL 0028)
Do You Need to Go See the Land Before You Buy it?
Jack Butala: Welcome to the Cash Flow From Land Show. In this episode Jill and I talk about ‘if you need to go see the property before you buy it’. Welcome Jill.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Jack Butala: Hey, I’m so glad we’re covering this topic. I’ll tell you because I get this topic from Land Academy members and people inquiring to be members every single week.
Jill DeWit: Yup.
Jack Butala: I have a ton of opinions about this but I would love to hear your take on it because, you know, you’re so close … You’re so much closer to the buy side and the sell side customer these days. What do you think? You got to go see the property?
Jill DeWit: Oh my goodness absolutely not.
Jack Butala: Oh my gosh that’s not … Oh my gosh.
Jill DeWit: I thought that’s what you were expecting. You weren’t expecting me to say-
Jack Butala: Here’s the thing Jill. I started this company in the 90’s and Jill came aboard around seven years ago, like whatever that is … Like 2009 or 2012 or something. All the hard work was done, she just came in for the fun part. No I’m just joking she works her butt off. You know, I spent a lot of time driving around the country looking at this property and she just says, “Nah, you don’t have … all you have to do is go out over to Steve’s office and ask him if we should buy it or not. You don’t have to go to see it.”
Jill DeWit: Not true, thank you very much.
Jack Butala: I’m sorry, I’d love … I can’t wait to hear this now. What are we supposed to do?
Jill DeWit: No you do not need to see the property at all. There is this fancy tool that, by the way we are all carrying around in our back pockets right now, called a cell phone. Where you could do so much research, look at maps, everything right there. I am constantly … People don’t know this but you can plug … I don’t want to give GPS 101, but if you know what a GPS … If you’re in this business you know what a GPS coordinate is. Or you’re military or you travel … A pilot, anything, you know what GPS is. My point is, now it’s so advanced you can even just pop the GPS coordinates in any Google Maps, any IMAP, anything you want you just … Like you’re typing in 123 Main Street. I could put in 34.991, you know, -109.6815. Bingo, and it’ll take me right there and map it just like it would anything else. Tell me how, the driving directions.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: My point is, with the resource that we have nowadays … Resources … You do not have to see your property before you buy it.
Jack Butala: Right, well can I give my answer now?
Jill DeWit: Oh yes. That’s mine, I’m sorry.
Jack Butala: I think that in the very very beginning it might make a lot of sense to go take a look at some property. This is what honestly, what most people do … Most of our new members do, hire somebody from Craigslist. Pay them a small amount of money, maybe $25-$30, maybe $40-$50 to go out there and take some pictures so that you can really get a good north, south, east, west, perception of the thing. This is just in the beginning of your career. Do you have to do it on every single one? I don’t think so, but it still, it gives … You’re going to use those pictures to sell the property so you might as well use them to make a decision about buying them.
Do you have to go see the property? No I agree with Jill. You don’t really have to and in fact that’s one of the … We have … A lot of our members are former house flippers and they got frustrated because they’re only as good as driving to the house on a weekend from where they live. We have many many many members now that buy out-of-state land and they find photographers and people to do the due diligence for them. No I agree with Jill, I don’t think you have to.
Jill DeWit: Well no and I’m back-peddling a little bit too because I’m agreeing with you too. Because, you know, I didn’t mean to say that this is … I also agree with you. Starting out it’s a good idea to get a feel for the county and get a feel for the area. I jumped ahead to where I am now. Would I hesitate buying property at the point I’m at, in a county that I don’t know, in a state I’ve not really worked with very much? I am not afraid of that at all.
Jack Butala: Right.
Jill DeWit: I know enough around here in Arizona. I’ve learned in Mexico really well and stuff. Am I afraid of buying things in West Texas, although I’ve never spent any time in West Texas? No I’m not afraid of it at all. I guess the rule of thumb is you don’t have to, but yes starting out I’m going to back-peddle and I’m going to agree with you also. That’s a good rule of thumb and you’re 100% dead-on that even if you don’t go there, you do need to have some good photos. Because when you turn around to sell that you’ve got to have some good accurate photos to sell your property. Let’s put it this way, if you want to sell it right.
Jack Butala: Yeah and if you want to sell it fast and give your customers a very good accurate, real, indication of what they’re buying you should have GPS based pictures. How do you do that? It’s really simple. There’s a website called WeGoLook.com which I’m getting reports from our members that they’re just not getting the response that they … It’s a bunch of people that buy into a website and then you say, “I want to hire WeGoLook,” and they have like an affiliate that goes out and takes a picture for you. It’s more geared toward house listings than anything else. I’m getting bad reports about that site recently from our members in Land Academy and in Success Plant. The better way, I think, is just go onto Craigslist and post an ad and say, “Hey I’ll pay you $25 to go take a picture of my property.”
Jill DeWit: Well that’s a great thing and it sounds like … Yeah I know some of our members were … They have a … Basically it’s their guy now on retainer. You know like they call their guy Bob and they give him some coordinates or an address and Bob goes out takes … He already knows the kind of pictures that Kevin wants because Kevin’s working in the same county and the same area. They’ve got a nice little relationship going too, so it’s really really good.
Jack Butala: I did a deal a long time ago, it was a lot of acreage, and we split all the acres up. We ended up with a lot of property in one spot that was all subdivided. The guy that bladed the roads he ended up taking pictures for us and everything, and then even after that, because we were in this deal for so … For a couple years. The people who wanted to buy the property, they were asking because it was kind of terms property and higher priced. They were asking, “Can you show it to us?” It was in a different state and so this guy that ended up just doing that for us too.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: We were sending him $50 incremental help checks all the time and he loved it and we loved it and the whole thing. Somebody’s got to just kind of hire somebody around there to take a look, I guess is what I’m saying.
Jill DeWit: You know what’s funny about that is that I’m still dumbfounded that I see a lot of property for sale, you know, in Trulia, in LandWatch, [inaudible 06:59] with very minimal descriptions. Like when you’re expecting people to get excited and want to buy this property when all you pretty much did is put APN out there and your phone number.
Jack Butala: It’s so true.
Jill DeWit: It’s amazing to me.
Jack Butala: Isn’t that true with everything in life though?
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: It’s like why are you putting … People just … It’s not just our business.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Why … Everybody’s … Certain people are very interested in putting the minimal amount of effort in what they do and then they wonder why they’re not killing it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: Like we have a handful of members right now that are not putting the minimal effort in they’re putting the maximum effort in and they’re killing it.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Well and in my-
Jack Butala: If you’re going to buy a piece of real estate, why not have somebody take a good picture of it?
Jill DeWit: Do it right. Well and my thing is too, the more information you provide and the more that … It’s going to … The calls that make it through to you are the quality buyers. The quality calls … They can see it, they’ve got all the details, they’re not calling you 25 times going, “What’s the property tax? Where is it? And what about this and what about that?” Because you have it all in the listing.
Jack Butala: You know what ended up happening with Land Academy, Jill, that I didn’t intend. In fact I thought it was going to be the opposite.
Jill DeWit: Uh-oh.
Jack Butala: No it’s good. For whatever reason our membership base is made up of relatively bright people.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: That they take this stuff seriously and, you know, I appreciate that. At least the ones that are the most vocal. We get a lot of people that just buy this stuff and they throw it in the back of their closet, I think, and we never hear from them again. That’s not my favorite kind of customer. I like the people that take it seriously. I can name their first names right now, I’m not going to, and they take this stuff to heart. Do they go and see the property anymore now? No, but what they do is they report back to us about great experiences that they had about people that they’re hiring for $20-$30 in these little local markets that handle a lot of this stuff for them.
Jill DeWit: I love it. Yeah in Success Plant, I see a lot of it in our site SuccessPlant.com, which was set up for this reason. They’re all sharing their experiences and resources and, you know, not to get into too much detail but we might find a good … Someone might find a great deal, “Hey use these guys, it’s the cheapest for printing letters around, they do a great job so we’re all going to go over there.” It’s a great environment.
Jack Butala: I do want to drive this point home and it’s the reason I wanted to do this podcast topic. This business is scalable. It means that if you live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, you can buy property in Nevada, Oregon, Ohio and Florida all at the same time right from your desk. You never have to leave. You hire a photographer or you hire a local guy. You end up buying a bunch of property in one of those areas, more than the other, maybe you hire two people but it’s very very very scalable. It makes it very attractive to people who are flipping houses who have to show up on location all the time on Saturday and Sunday and clean up contractor’s messes and stuff. That’s really why I wanted to write this topic.
Jill DeWit: That’s the point.
Jack Butala: No you don’t have to go see the property after you’re a little bit experienced.
Jill DeWit: I love it, thank you.
Jack Butala: This might be the shortest podcast we’ve ever did. Did you … Do you have any funny-
Jill DeWit: I have a few things to say.
Jack Butala: I bet, yeah go ahead.
Jill DeWit: Well here’s another funny little side tidbit about this because this came up … We have a Thursday afternoon weekly ambition call that Steven and I get on and do with our members. We’re all kind of laughing at one of our members a week or two ago because he shared with us that he went out and looked at one of his properties and then fell in love with it.
Jack Butala: Yeah don’t fall in love with your property.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, he’s like … And he’s almost like standing there going, “Why would I sell this?” You know, kind of like, “Look at the view, it’s paid for.” It was so funny because we’re like telling him, “Kevin, knock it off Kevin. Don’t fall in love with your property.” That was a little funny side bit because I’ve had that … It doesn’t happen so often-
Jack Butala: You did it two days ago.
Jill DeWit: I did do it this week. I went for months, I was doing so well. We buy gorgeous properties all over the place and I usually have no trouble 90% of the time, but every now and then there’s a property that just sings to me. I had one this week, that there were two 1 acre properties right next to each other, so 2 acres together. I’m like, “Why am I letting these go? I kind of like this. It’s a couple hours north of here on the way to the Grand Canyon. Why would I do that?” Then, you know, I have to remind myself, “Knock it off, don’t get emotional.” Certainly don’t go … I did not take a visit up there, that would’ve sealed the deal. I would’ve been in big trouble so I didn’t not drive and see it, but just looking at the maps and the area. There’s an airport right there, by the way, that sung to me a little private small … Private it was public, it was a small public-
Jack Butala: Just a pilot.
Jill DeWit: Yeah this is a … We could be up there easy, any time we want, so yeah I had to knock myself out because if you’re not careful you’ll fall in love with your property.
Jack Butala: We’re developing a program … A separate program for people, and this is at their request. A separate program for people who don’t necessarily want to start their own real estate business and make passive income and buy and sell property. It’s just for people … Substantial people … A number of people contact us and they just want to buy a vacation property, like one or two properties. They just want to learn that side of it. “I love this little area, we vacation there all the time, or I would like to vacation there. How do I buy a property for like 20% of what everything else is listed for?” We’re developing a package like that where you intentionally fall in love with the property and, you know, buy one or two and that’s it.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: It’s a way scaled down version of ‘we don’t need most of the stuff’. You don’t need to build a company.
Jill DeWit: That’s a good thing that we should … I don’t know if you have the curriculum already that far along, but I just thought about that. It’s not crazy to have … Say you want a 5 acre property in this, you know, I don’t know. Northern Arizona, Southern Utah, some gorgeous dreamy area.
Jack Butala: Northern Michigan.
Jill DeWit: Okay Northern Michigan. Why not buy two of them and you keep one and sell the other one to pay for the one you just bought?
Jack Butala: That’s great. You know what? We should put that in that program.
Jill DeWit: Right, so not only did you just-
Jack Butala: Why buy one?
Jill DeWit: Right, buy two and then when you sell the other one you’ve paid for your primary vacation property, so you just got it for free.
Jack Butala: I’m writing that down.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: That’s brilliant.
Jill DeWit: Thank you, because that works.
Jack Butala: Because now you’re in it for nothing.
Jill DeWit: Right. I could’ve done that. Those 2 acres I was just talking about. I had two 1 acre properties, so I keep one, sell the other one, I just made some money.
Jack Butala: Wouldn’t that be great if you could do it with your house too, your primary residence? You could buy two side-by-side houses … I’m just dreaming here for a second. You buy two side-by-side houses for cash and then you sell one … Let’s say you buy two houses for $100,000 each for cash and then you sell the one next to the one you want to live in for $200,000 and now you live there for free for the rest of your life. That’s what we’re talking about.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jack Butala: That’s the package we’re talking about or the program we’re developing.
Jill DeWit: It’s the equivalent of that, except it’s a lot easier to do with land.
Jack Butala: It’s like a dream come true.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Exactly. I don’t know if I want to live next door to my neighbor though, that close.
Jack Butala: Oh next to that guy.
Jill DeWit: Yeah. He’s going to always be caught walking over and bothering me.
Jack Butala: So here’s what you do then.
Jill DeWit: Just kidding.
Jack Butala: You put him in a company that you have and then the guy buys a house and he never knows that you sold it to him.
Jill DeWit: That would work. I like this, I like this.
Jack Butala: He thinks it’s some guy that lives in Florida.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, I like it. Okay did we cover our topic?
Jack Butala: I think we did. I think this is the shortest podcast ever.
Jill DeWit: It kind of is. I’m trying … I’m feeling like is there anything else about … It’s not crazy, I think for me … Can I back up about this for a second? It’s what we just pointed out everyone … I don’t think you could argue that. Can we all look up on the map and see what it looks like? Yes. Can we all pull up the comps and see what the properties are selling for? Yes.
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