Jack Thursday – The Concept of Respect (LA 1786)
Jack Thursday – The Concept of Respect (LA 1786)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hi.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show Entertaining Land, Investment Talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today is Jack Thursday.
Jill K DeWit:
And we’re going to talk about the concept of respect. I wrote it down, so I thought I’d help there. And this is kind of your thing.
Steven Jack Butala:
It is.
Jill K DeWit:
So I’m really curious. So when we sit down and do the topics, sometimes I’m involved with them and sometimes I’m not involved in the topics each week because things happen throughout the week. He goes, “that’s going to be a show. That’s going to be a show”. So then I don’t even know what’s coming.
Steven Jack Butala:
We were talking. There was a string on Discord about legal stuff. Get this, you don’t probably even know this. Somebody sent a mailer out. I don’t want to freak everybody out, but stuff like this happens once in a while. And they sent a mailer out to everybody, let’s just say in Tennessee, who owns real estate. And as you know, as we all know, we don’t send letters to the actual, the piece of dirt, nobody lives there. There’s not a mailbox. There’s not even a mailing address in most cases. So we send it to where the tax bills get sent. And somebody happened to live in Iowa, who is very, very, very familiar with the Iowa law. And so they blew a gasket and called the Iowa attorney general. And it was all fine. This happens once in a while, every month-
Jill K DeWit:
There’s always one.
Steven Jack Butala:
Every month. I’ve talked to a lot of attorney generals over my career because it turns out some people don’t really believe in how we value property, which I understand. And so there’s a law in Iowa that prevents out-of-state LLCs, out-of-state entities that are not individuals like Jill Dewitt. It prevents them from buying farmland and it’s in response to, I’m grossly oversimplifying this because it just, I am. It’s in response to federal laws that have been going on for a while. There’s huge, huge tax advantages for businesses to offset the regular ordinary gains, taxable gains, by owning farmland and leasing it out and getting tax credits.
Jill K DeWit:
In Iowa.
Steven Jack Butala:
In Iowa.
Jill K DeWit:
Nevermind the property’s not in Iowa.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yes.
Jill K DeWit:
Keep going.
Steven Jack Butala:
And so, there’s a happy ending to this story. It was all fine, but this person, they freaked out.
Jill K DeWit:
He got bullied in schools is what happened.
Steven Jack Butala:
Freaked out. The attorney general from California called me one time, woke me up. I’m sitting there shaking. What did I do? This is a lot, lot of years ago, right. When I started all this and he was fortunately, and I told this story on Discord, I typed the whole thing out. Fortunately, he was about the nicest guy there ever was. He said, look I know you didn’t do anything wrong. I am obligated to follow up. I got to build a file. I got to open the file. And I got to close the file. And I have to show that I responded to this complaint. He said, “This is the last time you’re going to hear from me”. I wouldn’t have slept for months if this guy, you know, “This is the last time you’re going to hear from me, just-”
Jill K DeWit:
“Humor me”.
Steven Jack Butala:
“Just humor me-”
Jill K DeWit:
“Knock it off.”
Steven Jack Butala:
“And just mind your manners.” He didn’t tell me not to send a mailer again. So this person in Discord copied and pasted- oh my gosh, this is a whole, we didn’t even do the thing yet. 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 please don’t forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill K DeWit:
You are just so darn excited. Just want to start the show. The whole concept. So let’s get [inaudible 00:03:55]
Steven Jack Butala:
Concept of respect is very important.
Jill K DeWit:
Can you pause, can you mentally pause and pick up where you left off? Yeah. Okay. Got it.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not my first show.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. Good.
Steven Jack Butala:
Plus, I live with you.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Can you mentally pause? I have to mentally pause a lot. Boy, boy. Okay. Josiah wrote, I love Josiah, “I’d love to hear others’ opinions on this topic in general. Infill lots freak me out some because there’s basically one use case and that is to build a home on 40 acres. I don’t care if the wetlands cover 30% or even 50%, but on an infill lot, 30 to 50% could be the difference between making money or losing money. When you buy 40 acres on a county road, the due diligence and comping seems so much easier. You can farm it. You can hunt it. You can camp it. You could build on it. You could run a business, plant timber, fill in the blank. Big acreage seems more multidimensional, limitless in its potential. Infill lots are very limited. And I have to consider so much more in the way of due diligence. Are there protected species or Scrub-Jays? What about gopher tortoise?” Oh my goodness. “What are the setbacks?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Josiah too.
Jill K DeWit:
Saying he’s like, this is hilarious. “Does the shape and the setbacks make this unbuildable? I’ve had that. What size home can you build? What are the rules for septic and well, did the neighbors build their septic 50 years ago, right next to your property line, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And on and on. LOL. What do you think?”
Steven Jack Butala:
For the record? Josiah was a roadie for a band and now he’s killing it in Florida. He’s our Florida expert in Land Academy.
Jill K DeWit:
And Career Path member.
Steven Jack Butala:
I would never think of buying a piece of real estate in Florida without talking to him first. Anybody can do this if you have the right mindset.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
I think that works for him. I read this, I thought about it. We actually talked about it on the Advanced call earlier this week. Everybody who’s in Career Path, who graduates from Career Path, goes into what we call, the Advanced Group. And we all get together.
Jill K DeWit:
Once a month.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a special Discord section and we get together on a call. So I thought about this and I’m like “most of the real estate we own, it’s infill lots”.
Jill K DeWit:
He’s not nuts.
He’s not nuts.
Steven Jack Butala:
He’s not nuts.
Jill K DeWit:
I’ve transitioned more, the deal funding stuff I’m doing are not infill lots and a lot of it’s because these exact reasons. It’s hard. It’s really hard.
Steven Jack Butala:
The infill lots that we buy are very rural and pretty large in acreage, but they are meant to be mostly for us right now for mobile homes.
Jill K DeWit:
I just did a deal of three. We just sold three of three in the same little area with some other Career Path members in the Pacific Northwest and killed it. And those were totally for this use. They were one acre, one acre properties had three of them. So you do have to consider all this. And I have had these kill deals. I had one that was, it was in a killer area, but with the setbacks, it’s like the area demanded, every home had to be a minimum of 3000 square feet. But with the setbacks, it was going to be a less than 2000 square foot house. We’re like, “This isn’t going to work. No one’s going to want this.”
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s terrible.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I know.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s really constraining.
Jill K DeWit:
And then it backed up to a power plant or something was right behind it. We’re like, “Yep. Nope. Moving on.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Good.
Jill K DeWit:
It wasn’t worth it, but Josiah is right. Every property has nuances you have to figure out. Every property type I should say. So then you just have to decide what’s your passion? And what’s your threshold? Some people love these infill lots because they have a list of people they’ve been working with. Especially people who come to us from other backgrounds, like they are contractors and they already have a list of builders in their back pocket. So for them, it’s a piece of cake and they know exactly what to do going into it. And I think that’s great. But to make it easier, I agree with Josiah, which is so true, if you go for bigger properties, we joked about this on the advanced call. If I’ve got 40 acres, I’m pretty sure somewhere on there it’s going to perk.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
But if I’ve got 0.2-
Steven Jack Butala:
If you care about that thing, which I don’t.
Jill K DeWit:
Or 0.12, I might have to think about this a little bit. So it’s interesting.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s Jack Thursday. I’m going to talk about the concept of respect. This is why you’re listening. I fully anticipate losing loyal listeners over this episode.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, why? Pick up where you left off. Here we go. Okay. I’m hitting the play button, hitting play on where you were talking. Go.
Steven Jack Butala:
So we’re talking about this Iowa situation and the law and all of it. And the point to this person’s reaching out in Discord, as they should, this Land Academy member saying, “Am I out of business now?” to which we all said, “Oh, come on. If I had a nickel for every attorney general I talked to and it never amounts to anything, not a single time.” Then lawyers start piping and there’s lawyers in our group and they start
Jill K DeWit:
This. I didn’t know this. This is funny.
Steven Jack Butala:
So, and I’m not pick picking on anybody individually at all, but I learned that I do not have a lot of respect for the law. And I don’t mean like speed limits or-
Jill K DeWit:
This ties into the show the other day. Please let us know some of our bad habits. This might be one of them.
Steven Jack Butala:
Then I started thinking about what else don’t I have respect for?
Jill K DeWit:
Uh-oh.
Steven Jack Butala:
And it led me back to when we bought this house, we had a horrific experience with the listing, the real estate agent that put the deal together.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh, she was horrible.
She was mean.
Steven Jack Butala:
And at one point, she said to me, “I have never been so disrespected,” to which I said to her, to her face, “You are a real estate agent. What is there to respect? You’re two notches below a used car salesman.” And so, no, I don’t respect real estate agents. I don’t. I think there’s other ways to make money in real estate, obviously, in great, respectful, self-respecting ways to buy real estate and sell it.
Jill K DeWit:
I have several that I love and work with. But I understand.
Steven Jack Butala:
Most of the lawyers I know, not all of them, believe that they are material in solving the world’s problems and that they’re above everyone else because they can create laws that make the world a better place, to which I laugh. I think more laws cause more problems.
Jill K DeWit:
I do agree with that.
Steven Jack Butala:
And create more rules. And so, no, I don’t respect the upper echelon of the legal community. I have a million tons of respect for law enforcement and all kinds of stuff, frontline stuff. So you have to decide what you respect and what you don’t respect. And I think you’ll be a better person for it and then stay out of there. I don’t have beers regularly with lawyers. I just don’t have a lot of respect for this uppity opinion of saving the world and making a better place with rules. And I think it’s really, really funny that the law and a jury of your peers and how lawsuits play themselves out is something out of the 16th century England, minus the wigs. It’s the same stuff.
Jill K DeWit:
You know what I would love to say.
Steven Jack Butala:
What a colossal waste of time and judgment.
Jill K DeWit:
I have one thing to say. Please. In the last minute, don’t hold back.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, I know we lost half our listeners already.
Jill K DeWit:
I’m kidding. I know you’re not holding back. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Steven Jack Butala:
What do you think I was going to talk about?
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. I didn’t think it was going to go here today.
Steven Jack Butala:
Do you take any notes at all?
Jill K DeWit:
Nope.
Steven Jack Butala:
Do you have anything to say?
Jill K DeWit:
I’m trying to figure out how to save it.
Steven Jack Butala:
What do you have no respect for?
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t-
Steven Jack Butala:
What do you have a lot of respect for?
Like what do you say? You see somebody and you say, “Wow, I really respect that person. Wow. She chose to become a stage actress. God, I have a lot of respect for that.”
Jill K DeWit:
You know, actually I kind of do.
Steven Jack Butala:
Really?
Jill K DeWit:
I do. Because that’s hard to do. I tried that, come on, I took a theater class in community college and I had a ball and it was flipping hard. It’s hard. We all could recognize good acting and bad acting. And I think it’s hard. I mean, try it.
Steven Jack Butala:
You know what I have a lot of respect for? Every single person who works in healthcare.
Huge. Huge amount of respect for that.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. We’ve been really lucky too that everywhere we’ve lived, we’ve had really good police presence and all that stuff.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Teachers.
Jill K DeWit:
They’ve been great.
Oh, teachers. That’s a total respect. That’s a selfless. Geesh.
Steven Jack Butala:
You should get a trophy at the end of every year.
Jill K DeWit:
Every teacher I’ve ever known needs to get paid three times what they’re-
Steven Jack Butala:
Solid gold. Solid gold trophy.
Jill K DeWit:
Oh my God.
Steven Jack Butala:
College professors. All of it.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. I agree with all that too. And I’m trying to think because I don’t know. You know what? It’s not a profession of people I don’t respect. It’s people who are jerks and idiots that don’t deserve respect. That’s it. So it’s not their livelihood. It’s the person.
Steven Jack Butala:
At any given time in Land Academy group, there’s about five people that don’t know what respect is. They believe that our customer service people are their whipping boys.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Can you say that?
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t respect them. Yeah. I can say that.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. But yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Or let’s just say doormat.
Jill K DeWit:
Something. But it’s true. They walk on our, and we won’t have it. It’s not cool. I think everybody, everybody deserves respect.
Steven Jack Butala:
So I think my whole point is I think that there’s stuff that you yourself need to ask yourself, like I do, “am I somebody that is respectable? Can I earn respect?” Number one. And then number two–
Jill K DeWit:
That’s fair.
Steven Jack Butala:
If you don’t respect stuff, then just stay out of there.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Don’t put yourself in that situation. Yeah. Totally understand. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week you can find us here on the Land Academy Show. If you’re still listening to us.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow’s still Friday. Tomorrow’s still Friday. She’s going to save that, what I just did. She’s going to undo Jack Thursday.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
And she’s going to talk about her concept of a reverse bucket list.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
You are not alone in your real estate ambition. What’s a reverse bucket list?
Jill K DeWit:
It’s the things that I’m not going to do anymore. There’s a bucket list before you die. I want to do this, this, this, and this. And there’s things that you go, “You know what? I’m never going to do that again. Not worth it. That’s on my reverse bucket list.” And I’ll give some examples tomorrow. It’s pretty funny actually.
Steven Jack Butala:
I have a long list of stuff I’m never going to do again.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay cool. Oh goodness. Yep. There we go. Hey, thanks for tuning in. And we hope you find our content valuable and we really do appreciate your support. If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button. And then guys, you’ve heard us talking a lot. If you are a Land Academy member, get your rear on Discord. There’s so much happening there that we can help you everyday. We are Jack and
Steven Jack Butala:
Jill. Information-
Jill K DeWit:
And Inspiration.
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property. You know what I forgot to mention?
Jill K DeWit:
What?
Steven Jack Butala:
Real estate agents and lawyers operate within this predetermined system that somebody set up. I don’t respect that. That’s the problem.
Somebody set this legal system up a long time ago. Most of it’s ineffective.
Jill K DeWit:
All right.
Steven Jack Butala:
And it doesn’t work anymore.
Jill K DeWit:
So it’s the system not necessarily the title.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Somebody set this real estate agent system up a long time ago. It’s completely ineffective today because of the internet.
That’s the real problem.
Jill K DeWit:
I understand.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not people.
Jill K DeWit:
Thanks.
Steven Jack Butala:
Out.
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