5 Ways to Seriously Increase Your Land Value (LA 1768)
5 Ways to Seriously Increase Your Land Value (LA 1768)
Transcript:
Steven Jack But…: Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Steven Jack But…: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack But…: Today, Jill and I talk about five ways to seriously increase land value.
Jill DeWit: This will be cool.
Steven Jack But…: I say this with confidence – they are not what you think.
Jill DeWit: This is you bought it, you own it, and now, because you bought it right, you already are going to make money anyway. Because if you do what we tell you to do, what we show you to do, and follow us, you’re going to make money anyway. But there’s things you could do to make even more money and increase not only your sales, I think, but also the speed in which you sell things. I love this. This is all you.
Steven Jack But…: Why are we here? We’re here to make money on land. We’re here to create a healthy spread between acquisition price and sales price, so these are ways that you can seriously increase that value.
Jill DeWit: Before we get into this, I have a pet peeve that I just wanted to share with the planet.
Steven Jack But…: Did I snore or something like that?
Jill DeWit: No, it’s not you.
Steven Jack But…: First time ever it’s not me.
Jill DeWit: That’s hilarious. There’s times it’s you, but there’s a healthy time that it’s not you, so don’t say that. This is pertinent because you either are like us or probably want to do this to have your own company.
Steven Jack But…: Or you’re disgusted by us, and if that’s the case, which I understand, this might not be the show for you.
Jill DeWit: My pet peeve is about people who shoot from the hip, and they say, “Oh yeah, I know how to do that,” and they had never done it before in their life.
Steven Jack But…: Do you have an example?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. Here’s my example – we’re having pool work done, which involved draining our pool. The worker showed up there hooking up the stuff, and he’s like, “Well, I’m going to leave now,” and I’m like, “Why am I hearing gurgling?” I’m literally standing in my entryway, hearing like a ghost gurgling throughout my home, and I’m like, “That can’t be right.” We’re walking around the house, and he immediately says, “Unplug the pump. We got to unplug the pump,” and I’m like, “Yeah.”
Anyway, now it’s unfolded. And I stood there in my driveway before we started the process, asked a couple questions about his experience. He’s explaining something, I’m like, “Sounds like you really know what you’re doing. Make me feel better, you’ve probably done this…”
He was like, “Oh yeah, I’ve done a hundred of these,” just like this. I’m like, “Oh, good. Okay.” No, apparently not. A, I don’t know why people do that, that’s a whole separate show, and B, don’t do this in your own business.
Steven Jack But…: That’s the takeaway here.
Jill DeWit: I tell people when you answer the phone is you’re getting to learn about properties. Don’t pretend you know. Be honest and say, “You know what? Excellent question. I’m not sure what’s possible with this. I’ll get to the bottom of it,” or, “Here’s who you call.” Either I’ll call the county and find out, or, “Here’s the number to the county and here’s who you ask, and they’ll be able to tell you and answer all your questions.”
Steven Jack But…: That’s why we have tools like Discord and Land Investors and all that.
Jill DeWit: And the show, to help you with this stuff.
Steven Jack But…: Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free, and I hope you know by now that Jill and I instruct a handful of new and existing Land Academy members in a live class called Career Path. If buying and selling land is your career or you want it to be, shoot us an email at support@landacademy.com to find out where your actual level of involvement is.
Jill DeWit: Victor wrote, “I have a property with two owners that looks like a great deal in all aspects, but one of the owners is a real estate agent. I’m not sure what to make of this. He could be just an agent that does it on the side, does not want to sell themself, or, for some reason suspicious, does not know how to sell land.”
Steven Jack But…: That’s about it.
Jill DeWit: “But I imagine he knows land brokers exist. Has anyone been in a situation like this?” I see we’ve got some comments here, but I want to add mine first.
Steven Jack But…: Yeah, yours is first. Share.
Jill DeWit: I’ve been in this situation. I’ve had real estate agents that own property that I bought from them very commonly, and the most of the time is, “Hey, I bought it so cheap, it’s not my thing. This guy rolled it in with this deal so I had to buy it, and now you’re buying it from me. I wish you all the best.” It’s usually something really simple like that.
Steven Jack But…: Josiah says, in response to this question in Discord, because everybody in Discord’s answering each other’s questions, “I’ve bought several properties from agents and brokers, and the situation was one or a combination of the following:” – this is what Jill said, all the way through and through -“They’re not land people, and they don’t understand the value of the land that they owned, number one. Number two, they lived a long distance away, so they might not be licensed in that state.
“They inherited the property, so no real cash basis. They had a life situation where they needed cash fast.” That’s the definition of a real estate agent. Most inconsistent income there ever was. “They had the need to simplify their life and they wanted the property gone.” My way to identify this situation is that I know classic cars pretty well, and I can’t count the number of times that I’ve let a car or cars go for a price as a seller just because it was a lot more convenient, and for way less than it was worth. It’s like, “I got this buyer, he’s got cash in his hand. Yeah, I’m probably taking a $10,000 hit, but it’ll be gone tomorrow and I can go buy the next car.”
Jill DeWit: Usually that’s not the case. You hang onto it because you want it. You know the value and you do it the right way, but understood. Thank you.
Steven Jack But…: Today’s topic, five ways to seriously increase the value of your land, and this is the meat of the show. Jill and I individually did a list of five. I haven’t seen her list, she hasn’t seen mine. I can’t wait to see. Jill goes first.
Jill DeWit: Okay. I love this. Jack told me to do this Dave Letterman-style. I’m going to give you 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Here’s the scenario – you bought this property, it’s great, you’re ready to post it for sale, and you’re sitting here thinking about, “Huh.” I know already I bought it right, so I know I’m going to make X amount on it. I already know that. I know what the market’s like in this area, but, “What are the top five ways I can really hit this home in selling this property?” Mine are: number five – make a few phone calls. Why is that so funny?
Steven Jack But…: I detect the sarcasm already.
Jill DeWit: People don’t do this. These could be, “Duh,” for some of you, but for others they’re like, “Oh, that’s good.” So seriously, make a few phone calls to know what’s possible. People don’t do this, you’d be surprised. Call the county. And the guy you bought it from probably doesn’t know that it’s mobile friendly. The guy you bought it from didn’t even realize how close it is to X, and the guy you bought it from didn’t know that you could put an RV on there indefinitely. There’s all kinds of little things – when they come up, we’re talking about them – that a few simple phone calls, you can find out. A local real estate agent might be able to give you some insight to what’s going on in the area, if you haven’t uncovered them on your own already. That’s my number five.
The number four way to increase your land value when you’re going to sell it – Have a sweet video of the property, the drive up to it, the quaint little town nearby. Here’s what it looks like as you’re rolling up. Here’s what the path is like so when you’re coming up, you know what kind of car to bring, by the way, to check out the property that you’re going to buy. Everybody knows, and they’ll remember that when either they buy it sight-unseen and they love it, and then when they drive up to it, they know what it looks like. “Oh, I remember seeing that mailbox on the corner or that sign or that beautiful tree or that pond,” fill in the blank.
Number three – put a shed or something cool on it.
Steven Jack But…: Wow, ours are really similar.
Jill DeWit: Are they really? Okay, good. I can’t wait. Put a shed or something unique on it that’s cheap, inexpensive. Maybe even buy a used shed off Craigslist and just have it hauled over there. Find something on Craigslist in the area and say, “Hey, for an extra hundred bucks, will you put it over here?” and they’ll be like, “Yeah, because my wife wants it off the lawn. I got to get rid of this.” Done, done and done.
Number two of my top five ways to increase land value – have and accurate… Let me stress this. Accurate and great title and description of the property and the area. For example, in the title, I want the size of it, I want the money, and I want what’s great about it. “Five acres near X waterfall, only $28,000,” something like that so I know right away what it is, and what I’m looking for, this is the property.
And my number one way to increase your land value after you buy it and you’re posting it to sell, and again, I see so many people doing this wrong is an awesome lead photo. I need the fall out of your chair wow factor, and if it’s not a good day for your photographer, send them back because you know what? The extra $200 you spend to have them go back on the beautiful sunny day or to get the sunrise or the sunset and the dew on the trees. You think I’m kidding, I’m not, because that tells a story. Just think about it. When you scroll down Zillow, LandWatch, wherever you’re looking at property for sale and getting an idea of what other people are doing, there’s going to be something that jumps out at you like, “Whoa. Alex, that’s gorgeous. God, I want to buy that and keep that for myself.” It needs to have that wow factor. That’s my list.
Steven Jack But…: When you go out on the internet and you take a look at other people’s land that’s for sale around the property that you’re about to purchase or have already purchased, it’s boring. They’re all the same. The postings are all the same. If you’re lucky, there’s a non-Google Earth shot, there’s an actual in-person shot standing on the road or close to the property, but you can’t tell the difference between that property or any other property that’s listed in that area with very, very few exceptions. Your whole goal is to separate yourself. Here’s my five ways to do that.
What Jill’s talking about is building a use case. My number five is put a shed on it, and this is my least favorite thing to do, we’ve only done it a few times. It always works, but that’s very property specific, if it’s heavily treed or there’s no real clearing, there’s all kinds of stuff. It’s only very specific situations where that works, but it separates you from all those other listings.
Jill talked about building a use case and telling a story. Those fall into my number two, which I’ll get there in a second. Number four for me is send out neighbor letters. Look, when I started, sat down, literally Jill and I were on vacation, got a pad of paper out and a pen, and started writing down thoughts about Land Academy. This is long before I ever brought it to Jill like, “Hey, maybe we should teach this.” We were already very successfully buying and selling land. What they tell you in these books, “Hey, I want to start a company. What do I do first?” they sit down with a pad of paper and a pen, and you write until you have a couple of sentences about what the company’s going to be all about and stop there.
So what’s Land Academy about? It’s about this topic, strangely enough, it’s seven years later. It’s this topic. How do you create equity in a piece of property that you’re about to buy? That’s what this question really is. We’re not here because it’s cool. It is kind of cool, I think. Not this show, this show’s not cool at all, but I mean buying and selling land. We’re here to create equity. Putting a shed on it, you’re going to create some equity. Very inexpensive way to separate yourself, create some equity.
Number four, send out letter neighbor letters. There’s overwhelming statistics from all kinds of sources that say people who live close to the property are probably the ones who are going to buy it. That goes for houses and office buildings and all of it, and all kinds of special use property. I used to buy and sell nursing homes, and the first thing I would do is call the people who own nursing homes in the same town and say, “Hey, do you want another one?” and it almost always worked. Same situation as here.
Number three is put a freaking sign on it. The day that you close or that you know it’s going to close, have your photographer, or whoever’s going to go out there to shoot it or however you deal with it, even a neighbor, put a sign up that says, “Hey, this is for sale now. Call this number.” Not for sale and complicate it all, just for sale by owner, here’s the number. Every time we’ve done that, you sell it in the first week, or something’s wrong and you got to figure it out, which is easily solvable.
Number two for me is market it better. All you ever see online with regular postings is, “Look at this great property. It’s 1.32 dreamy acres over here that is great, and you are going to love it.” instead of saying, “This property is suited for RV living for the first 30 days,” whatever the rules are. You’re building a use case and telling a story. You should build a use case and tell a story on every description for your property. It’s super, super important, and not enough people do it. And if you have a real estate agent, you can’t count on them to do it at all. They’re not going to do it right. I can tell you right now, I’ve never met a licensed real estate agent who markets property correctly ever in how many years have I been doing this?
Number one, buy it cheaper. That’s the best way to create value when you’re buying and selling land.
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome. This is a good show, because I think we covered two different things. Not just increasing value, but also speed, because some of your things trip into speed of sales.
Steven Jack But…: You know what we didn’t say, either one of us, and we didn’t compare notes before? Drill a well. Install a septic. Clear the property. All this location, physical presence stuff that you can do. That’s for contractors. That’s not for you. Unless you’re a contractor, then maybe it’s real cheap for you and easy to do that, and you’ve got a Bobcat in your backyard ready to go. Good for you. That might be how you use Land Academy, but for me, and I know for her, if I leave my desk, I start to lose money. These are things, they’re all achievable at your desk.
Jill DeWit: Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy.
Steven Jack But…: Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is how money works in your land business. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
Jill DeWit: What’s that about tomorrow? How money works in your land business? Can you give me a little insight?
Steven Jack But…: Sure.
Jill DeWit: I know how it works in my home.
Steven Jack But…: It’s the same way. There’s a commercial version of managing money and then there’s a household version, and pretty much nothing in between. This is the commercial version, and it has to do with speed and velocity, and it has absolutely nothing to do with managing cash, which I think the vast majority of people, personally and professionally, make mistakes on.
Jill DeWit: Hey, happy you could join us today, or thank you for tuning in, both of them. I got a little garbled there because I have a sticky thing I’m announcing right now. We have just a few days to go, and then Land Academy enrollment is reopening. You heard it here. I think I leaked it a little bit last week. I’m leaking it now, then, telling you it’s coming up quick. How are you going to get notified? Get on our email list. Go to landacademy.com, download the ebook – that’s going to tell you all about this anyway – and if you have the ebook, you’re on our email list, and you will know, because it’s coming up soon, and by the way, I have a holiday special coming at you, so watch for that.
Both: We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack But…: Information…
Jill DeWit: …and inspiration…
Steven Jack But…: … to buy undervalued property.
Out.
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