Difference Between County Unincorporated and Township Land (LA 1860)

Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill K DeWit:
Hello.

Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment advice. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from the valley of fishing. I should say, not the fishing from the land of fishing. We’ll look behind me. There’s so much fishing going on here and I never knew what smelt was. Isn’t that funny?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Until come here I didn’t. Yeah. I’m like, I thought smelt was well, something smelt. I didn’t know that was a fish.

Steven Jack Butala:
People think that’s how you use the word.

Jill K DeWit:
I know that’s not how.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s okay.

Jill K DeWit:
No. Yeah. Like what the heck is smelt? How do you eat that? I’m like, oh, it’s a fish. So anyway. Yeah. And you’re loving it. I’m loving it.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve been fishing since I got here. This is Silver Lake right behind us in Northern Michigan, just outside of Traverse City. And we are in our RV in arguably one of the best spots in this RV park that we’re in. And I many, many times just walked out there and through the line in. I went to a simple store, got a old Shakespeare, not old, but a new Shakespeare rod, whole thing cost 25, $30. Got some pretty good lures. And I’ve been pulling fish out ever since to the point where I was about to start cleaning them and eating them and I’m like, why? This is just too much work. This is more fun.

Jill K DeWit:
When I can go somewhere else and they’ll serve it up for me all beautifully. And I love that. I’m probably going to have white fish tacos again for dinner tonight.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Because I love them.

Steven Jack Butala:
Totally. I’m right there with you.

Jill K DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Jack Butala:
I plan on eating white fish till it’s like,

Jill K DeWit:
Till I’m sick of it. Till we leave.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Exactly.

Jill K DeWit:
And then it’ll work out perfect. Then we’re going to eat it until we can’t get it anymore. And then it’s going to be fine. Cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the difference between county unincorporated land and township land. Everywhere we go Jill and I, especially here because my sister’s a very successful almost local celebrity, like real estate agent. So we find property that’s for sale. Whether it’s a sign on the road, maybe it’s on the MLS. We go look at it. We start asking questions. Sometimes you can answer them, sometimes you can’t and this is a result of one of those conversations. And I’ll talk all about it. Before we get into it though let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free. Last year, a ton of Land Academy members came to Jill and I needing extra help to getting their blind offer campaigns underway. Hey, it’s sometimes it’s complicated. It is for most people. It’s complicated if your brand new.
And so we created a product called concierge data, where we take instruction for you about where you want to send out offers. We put together the entire mailer, get the retail pricing component complete for you. And then we ask you at the very end to price it. It’s a very, very, very popular service that we created. And it’s helping a lot of people who I think otherwise would not have gotten their mail campaign off the ground. And get their career started. So check it out at offers to owners and just type in concierge data.

Jill K DeWit:
I just was reading this question ahead a little bit. It’s good. Eric wrote, so I signed up yesterday and I just binge watched, oh my goodness, Land Academy 3.0 and 2.0. This might seem like a dumb question, but how important is naming and niching your land business? I’m in Charleston and I want to niche in the surrounding counties and all along the coast. So I’m considering calling my business Low Country Land Buyers. Is this a good idea? I’m also disabled veteran. So I’m kicking around something more patriotic like America First Acquisitions or something like that. I know getting the mail out and doing deals is more important, but I want to get off on the right foot. Thanks for any feedback you can give this newbie.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, I have a lot to say about this and I’m confident Jill’s not going to agree with most of it.

Jill K DeWit:
Go. Try me.

Steven Jack Butala:
And a lot of people had a lot to say about this in Discord. And thank you, Eric, for signing up and thank you for taking this seriously,

Jill K DeWit:
Glad you’re here.

Steven Jack Butala:
And watching the programs.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And then obviously naming stuff. I think namings, most of the people said, eh, don’t worry about it. Get a couple of deals done, slap up a website, make sure it’s for you. And a lot of people said this and I was actually surprised season Land Academy members were in here giving that advice, that’s not what I think.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
Get a .com that’s two syllables like land stay or land tank or something like that if possible. It’s getting harder and harder and harder to do that and then make sure that whatever you choose to name your company, that’s what it is. So there’s no question that about what it is.

Jill K DeWit:
How about Land Vet?

Steven Jack Butala:
How about Land Academy? I mean, well, you know what that is.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Land Vet is taken because I own it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh really? Seriously.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. I own a bunch, a bunch and bunch of .coms,

Jill K DeWit:
What are you going to do with them?

Steven Jack Butala:
Like that. I don’t know. Just like the fish, I don’t know.

Jill K DeWit:
Great, great, great, great.

Steven Jack Butala:
I really think that and number two, and this is actually more important than actually naming the company, niching your land business is a bad idea in the beginning. And I think maybe this is what everybody was responding to. If I had a nickel for every time we went out and tried to do something really specific and then it’s like, wow, this worked. And now we painted ourself into a corner because we can only do one thing. Just ask Luke Smith the name of his company, is Rural Vacant Land. And he doesn’t deal with Rural Vacant Land anymore at all. He’s buying all kinds of property.

Jill K DeWit:
Good point.

Steven Jack Butala:
Developable properties. So I love the vet angle and I love the American angle. If I had to pick the ones.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
America First Acquisitions is, I think you’re going to even probably get a really good response rate, maybe better than you normally would on a mailer for that. So I think something patriotic is great, but it can’t be a really long .com. It needs to be Maryland.

Jill K DeWit:
Low Country Land Buyers would be hard for me, .com would be hard for me to type in. It’s going to take a long time. So I understand.

Steven Jack Butala:
Shorter’s always better, real specific. Shorter’s always better and sending one message is great. We are American land buyers. But just keep it as small as you can. It’s hard. I’ve spent days on this. I just bought a .com.

Jill K DeWit:
I know you have.

Steven Jack Butala:
I spend money on .com sometimes too much. And when they don’t get used the way that they should or as fast enough, my business partner lets me know about it.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
We have Jackjill.com, pretty expensive.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
We don’t use it the way we should.

Jill K DeWit:
Nope.

Steven Jack Butala:
I keep threatening to start this company called Man Plan, P-L-A-N. You’re a man. You need a plan. You need a life plan. That just hasn’t happened yet. And,

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That’s okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s good money for that.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s all right. Every time jewelry comes up, all I have to do is say man plan. You’re like, oh yeah, you’re right.

Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, the difference between county unincorporated property and township property. This is the meat of the show.

Jill K DeWit:
I’ll be over here.

Steven Jack Butala:
My sister is, as I mentioned earlier, a successful local real estate agent. Can’t go to any restaurant without just stop and talk to everybody. They just know her. They know,

Jill K DeWit:
Good point.

Steven Jack Butala:
Which is funny for me because that’s just not how I knew her when she was a little kid. Anyway, we started to look at this piece of property that’s listed on the MLS, Jill and I did. And I’m asking about, I’m talking with my sister over drinks about what it can be used for and what she thinks about the area. And she said, what township is it in? And I said, what the hell’s a township and why would that matter? Isn’t it in an unincorporated area of Traverse County? And she looked at me cross side and every time I get with my sister, we get in a two hour debate about something like this.
And it happen to be this topic this time. She said, what the hell is unincorporated property? I said, well out West, everywhere out West there’s property. When you look at the map it just hasn’t been incorporated, it’s not in a city or a town. Phoenix is an incorporated town. Paradise Valley is an incorporated town, Scottsdale and on and on and on. So when there’s property that’s inside an incorporated area, they have the jurisdiction to tell you what you can do with it. They have a planning, they typically have a planning and zoning. You can’t put a heavy industrial factory next to a subdivision in most cases. They have some type of urban plan or even rural plan. And so and all kinds of different uses for different types of property. In a lot of cases, if it’s really rural, it has unclassified. We don’t know what it is yet. Because we’re not as developed as some more urban places. Well, that’s not the case in Michigan at all.
Michigan has townships and the townships just like it comes from range township. It’s 36 square miles. And so if you look at a township map in Michigan, everything is incorporated. There’s no such thing as unincorporated land, as I can see it and the townships are straight lines or squares and they stop. And then the next one starts and that’s just not what happens out West at all. It’s like congressional districting. It’s all depending on the land in strange little places. And then you’ll find in a lot of cases, you’ll find, right, an island of unincorporated property within a city.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
So it’s kind of like it organically developed over time. The issue, why do we care? So we very much care because of this. If that property was unincorporated that Jill and I looked at, we’d probably buy it because the rules about what to do with the property are very unrestricted. This whole point of this episode is absolutely check in your level two due diligence what the jurisdiction is for your target acquisition. If it’s in an unincorporated area, then you’re going to talk to the county about what you can do with it. If it’s in a city or a town, then you’re probably going to start with the town to see if, Hey, can I put a trailer park there? And they’re going to say, oh my God, no, are you nuts?

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the county might say, oh sure.

Jill K DeWit:
Right.

Steven Jack Butala:
You got to do these five things and we’ll help you by the way. And a township is something in between that. That’s what I learned,

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
In my stay in Michigan.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s really good. That’s really interesting. My first encounter with it was in Arizona where I was buying land. And in this circle, this bubble that happened to be inside the city limits, it had to be site built. But then I go, okay, wait a minute. But a half mile over there. She, oh no, that’s right. Now that’s outside. Over there it doesn’t have to be site built. I’m like, huh? I’m like, wait a minute. It was so confusing. It was not that far. It didn’t seem to really make sense, but it’s just like you said, check it out though. It’s really good. And you’re right. Usually the county’s going to be more, my experience is way more forgiving and a lot less rules.

Steven Jack Butala:
And more encouraging.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. Hey. Especially parts of Texas, like West Texas, knock yourself out. It’s like the good old boys, wild west stuff.

Steven Jack Butala:
And the whole thing’s not an if then statement. So townships in Michigan anyway, because I did a bunch of research after we talked about this and for this episode, each township is different. So sometimes they have an assessor just like the county does. They get involved in assessor. Not necessarily a treasurer, but an assessor. And so they’re all very, very different. It’s not by any stretch oh, townships have this role and that’s it. It’s very, very flowy. Makes it complicated.

Jill K DeWit:
I was in the county office about a week ago with my niece.

Steven Jack Butala:
Getting a marriage license.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Not me. Her.

Steven Jack Butala:
How did that all go? Was the county…

Jill K DeWit:
Oh my gosh. There was no line. It was a dream. Everybody was so darn nice. I have pictures of it. The assessor deeds go down that way. All the different, the GIS area. And then of course, where we went to get the marriage license, it was really easy. No, everybody was nice and sweet and easy. It was weird that it was not busy. There was nothing going on in there. It kind of felt oddly quiet, but it was cool.

Steven Jack Butala:
So I’ll end on this. I didn’t really realize it but for years I’ve been sending out area specific mailers for county property only that’s a certain size and a certain zoning designation because I know what, this is the stuff we talk about in career path because I did all the research before I sent out the mail. I don’t want in town property because what we’re going to do with this is put mobile homes on it or we’re going to sell it to somebody’s going to put mobile homes on it. So there’s all different kinds of rules and you got to stay out of town to do that. And so if I were in a place like Michigan or on the East Coast, I would take this a step further, find out which townships allow it, which ones don’t. Jill would probably establish a relationship with somebody or two or three,

Jill K DeWit:
True.

Steven Jack Butala:
Adjacent townships and really make this work for ourselves. So please check jurisdiction. Jurisdiction as a concept is if you ever taken a law class, I took a couple of law classes and really learned that I don’t want to be a lawyer, but I did learn some stuff. And jurisdiction is really, really important. There’s a woman NBA player in federal prison right now for marijuana possession where if she did that in California, they’d slap her on the back and say, congratulations. So she’s just in the wrong jurisdiction. So where you do stuff really, really matters.

Jill K DeWit:
Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us here on the Land Academy Show.

Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrows Jack Thursday as if today wasn’t Jack Wednesday. I’m going to talk about, Hey it’s fourth quarter. It’s the fourth quarter. We’re in October now. And it’s time to make some money decisions before you get to the end of the year and file your tax return. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill K DeWit:
Sorry. I was going to add because it’s Wednesday, like my little whiskey Wednesday I got. It’s like taco Tuesday, but for bad asses.

Steven Jack Butala:
Is that what you are Jill? You are a badass.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s me. Here’s my whiskey Wednesday.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my God it’s whiskey. Oh no. Today’s Thursday.

Jill K DeWit:
No it’s Wednesday.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh it is Wednesday.

Jill K DeWit:
It is Wednesday.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s whiskey Wednesday.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s whiskey Wednesday. And right now it’s cherry whiskey Wednesday.

Steven Jack Butala:
How much is left in that bottle there?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know.

Steven Jack Butala:
And why did you buy such a small bottle?

Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. You know what? I’m just going to have to get more. All right. We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Are we thanking for tuning in?

Jill K DeWit:
I thought we already did. Oh, I guess we didn’t. Thank you for tuning in. Hey, by the way, we would love to connect with you. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but soon. The first and third, Thursday of every month we are on Clubhouse, so.

Steven Jack Butala:
It is this week. Because next isn’t it?

Jill K DeWit:
Nope.

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, sorry.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. It’s fine.

Steven Jack Butala:
Don’t listen to me.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, exactly. Don’t worry.

Steven Jack Butala:
First and third Thursday.

Jill K DeWit:
Thursday,

Steven Jack Butala:
Okay.

Jill K DeWit:
Of the month. Check it out. Just get on Clubhouse. Go find the land investing club. Follow that, follow us. And you can see the schedule there and then you won’t get goofed up.

Steven Jack Butala:
We’re Jack and Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
We’re Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.
The BuWit Family of Companies include:
https://BuWit.com
https://offers2owners.com
https://landinvestors.com
https://landacademy.com
https://landpin.com
https://parcelfact.com
https://countywise.com
https://deedperfect.com
https://ownersdata.com
https://houseacademy.com
I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.
And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.