Transcript:

Steven Jack Butala:
I am Steven Jack Butala.

Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy show.

Steven Jack Butala:
This is episode number 1,973, and today we are talking about buying land in your backyard. Super, super good idea for a bunch of reasons. And a little bit later, Jill’s going to talk about the perfect mailer response from sellers. We send out all this mail, how many people call back and say, “Yeah, sure. I’m going to buy it,” how many people call back and say, “Go pound sand,” and on and on and on, and what to really, from a reality standpoint, expect according to Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
Got it. And this came up because of what you’re seeing in Discord more, or just Career Path stuff?

Steven Jack Butala:
This is Career Path. So Jill and I are now in the very beginning of instructing… Career Path I guess is closed, right?

Jill K DeWit:
Seven and eight, yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
And we’re instructing the eighth Career Path, about 20 people actually, and it’s very, very interesting to really see in a real amount of serious depth and detail where people are in their careers. We have people in there that send three, 400,000 mailers out and we have people that are just starting their career out, and so when you get them all in one kind of Zoom room together, you can see… It’s my way personally of keeping my pulse in a great way on what’s happening out there.

Jill K DeWit:
I feel like Career Path starts like this: We have this and this and at the end… You know what I mean? We all kind of come together at the same point at the end. Does that make sense? You might be start Career Path thinking, “Wow. Spending $10,000 on a property for me is a lot. You want me to spend $100,000 on a property?” And then the end of Career Path, you’re like, “I just got this back. It’s $150,000. Let’s do it.” And it’s funny because I can say, “Do you hear what you just said?” They’re like, “Yep. Now I’m very comfortable dealing with those numbers.”

Steven Jack Butala:
It removes a lot of inhibitions and concerns because when you co-mingle people who’ve been doing this really successfully with brand new people, the new people… We have a couple in Career Path right now that are fantastic at locating deals.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, and it’s not like they’re new, it’s just a different dollar amount, different property type and things like that too.

Steven Jack Butala:
Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy Member Discord Forum, review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular requests. If you want to sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Or by the way too, if you would like us to answer your question or need some help getting involved in our community, simply send us a note to support@landacademy.com. All right. Greg wrote, “My friend is looking at buying some land-“

Steven Jack Butala:
I have to preface this question.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
I kind of put this in here to get Jill’s juices going because it’s-

Jill K DeWit:
Looks like I already got your juices going this morning. Now is it my turn?

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s a topic that’s near and dear to both of our hearts.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. Okay. So Greg wrote, “My friend is looking at buying some land on Zillow. The seller has a realtor,” Got it, “Anyone have success in buying from a realtor but not being represented by a realtor?” I have some funny things to share about this.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know, I’m sure you do. So do I.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, no, just new information too. Do you ask for half of the realtor fee to go to the buyer or you just reduce the price by that fee? I can’t say I’ve ever bought anything from realtor without doing the dual agency. Okay, so let me back up and paint the picture. In traditional real estate deals… Well, I don’t want to call it traditional, because it’s not traditional for me. Yeah, here he goes.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to wait until the end for my comment.

Jill K DeWit:
All right. In many real estate transactions, person owns house, person calls realtor, realtor says, “Sure, I’ll take the listing. It’s going to be 6%. Now, whether or not someone comes up to buy it that has a realtor or not, then we’ll decide if I share that 6%.” So if someone comes up to buy the house and now we have not a lot of houses on the market, this other person wants to buy the house, they have a realtor. Well, guess what? That 6% commission that the seller has agreed to pay will be split now traditionally between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent. So the question here Greg is asking like, “Well, hang on a moment. So my friend…” This all makes sense. What you’re saying, Greg, makes so much sense, but to a real estate agent, they can’t get this and they don’t think it’s right. They see 6%. If I’m going to share it, I’m only sharing it with another realtor or I’m not sharing it at all.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let me interject this because it’ll reframe how we take this question from here.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
The way that real estate deals are done with real estate agents, and that’s the vast majority of real estate deals, is the culmination of 50-plus years of organic contractual horror. It’s add a paragraph here to protect this. Oh, my God. Somebody got sued over here. Let’s add it. And it’s a state mandated thing. Each state’s different. So the contract in California might be a quarter inch thick, the one in Arizona might be an eighth of an inch thick, and in New York State it might be two inches thick. What I just said is not too far from the truth actually. What you’re asking to do is customize this 50-plus year old tradition, and real estate agents, all they know is that they’re going to get a check at the end and it’s going to be for 6%, 3%, or 1.5%. I won’t go into that now.
So the person who has this land signed a listing agreement and now you’re in it. Now you are in it as a buyer, they’re in it and you don’t even know you’re in it. So I love what you just said. What you’re trying to do is eliminate half the fee, which makes complete sense to investors like us. People in Land Academy and land investors in general don’t realize that they’re kind of part of an elite group. We understand this stuff. Real estate agents don’t understand this.

Jill K DeWit:
I love this thought, “Well, why can’t the 3% that’s going to be split anyway, just be taken off the price of the property or go to the buyer because the buyer’s not using a realtor?” Greg, that makes great sense, and I’m sorry that’s not how they think.

Steven Jack Butala:
And it’s not going to happen, I’m telling you right now. First of all, they’re going to be confused as hell at what you’re even asking because if they’ve done any deals at all… I have to tell you, my sister in Northern Michigan is a very successful real estate agent, and she has said multiple times after all of us having a couple of cocktails together, “I would never represent you guys. You would never be my customer,” and it’s just because we pull stuff like this. We have multiple real-life experiences being involved in this and having Jill and I say, “Look, we’ve done 16,000 deals. We’re not licensed real estate agents and this is how this is going to go,” and to which they… It makes their head spin. They don’t know how to do the paperwork, they try to take it back to their broker, their broker probably doesn’t know how to do their paperwork, and all they’re really trying to do is be a lapdog to their broker, which I don’t understand because they’re actually representing you.

Jill K DeWit:
Should be.

Steven Jack Butala:
Dual representation means they represent both the buyer and the seller. What the hell is that?

Jill K DeWit:
Right? That’s exactly what this is going to end up being. So if your friend comes to this person without a realtor to buy a property for whatever reason they want to do it this way, I would not recommend, because Greg, you know how to do it. So all that’s going to happen is poor sweet seller is going to pay 6% to somebody and it’s going to be 100% to their person, and your person is going to have no representation, but themselves and they’re going to be fighting with that other person who, quote, unquote, is dual representing everyone, which by the way, that’s a whole separate thing. So when we’re done with this question, I want to bring up a case study and I apologize, I don’t have the article in my hand, but trust me, I’ll have it in my hand today for the member call because I wanted to share this today anyway. So are you done with this?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So there’s a large real estate company. I don’t know the name of it. It’s like an organization that owns HomeVestors or whatever like that. So there’s a lawsuit that’s been going on and they just settled out of court and paid a hefty sum of money to make this go away where they were being sued on this exact situation where, huh, wait a minute, seller is paying a commission to their agent and my agent, so my agent’s getting a kickback from the seller. They’re representing me. That seems like a conflict of interest. How should this person be getting paid by the seller? It almost makes you think that my agent’s going to push this deal through too, because they’re getting money and they’re getting compensated by the seller.
So there’s a whole big thing going on about this right now, and I have this great article that I read and I printed it out, and like I said, I’ll share it. It’s really cool. They paid a hefty sum of money just to make it all go away. So the point is there’s a chance this could go away because there’s a chance that the commission, half commission… Which is what I think how it should be. Half of the commission should be paid by the seller, because that’s the agent helping them, and then if I choose an agent, great, I pay them a commission and it’s not crossed because they work for me.

Steven Jack Butala:
Imagine how many times in movies have you seen courtroom scenes where there is a lawyer representing the defendant and a lawyer representing the plaintiff. Imagine if the lawyers didn’t sit next to those two people anymore, they sat in the center and they both shook hands and said, “We’re going to represent equally. We’re going to represent both of these sides. So I’m not representing this guy anymore, I’m representing both of them,” and the other lawyer says, “Yeah, me too. I’m going to represent both of them.”

Jill K DeWit:
Well, the other lawyer goes away. We only have one even.

Steven Jack Butala:
And so now using the word representing is not even correct. There’s no representation at all. It’s just one or two people trying to get in the way to get a fee in a real estate transaction that a seller’s trying to sell. It’s absurd what this has turned into, and I blame it all on the National Association of Realtors because the real estate agents themselves are stuck. By getting a real estate license, passing the test, getting a real estate license and hanging on the wall, they’re stuck with these rules. We are investors, we’re not licensed. We don’t have to play by those rules at all.
If I sell a piece of property to Jill without any real estate agents involved, which I would highly recommend, which is what we do all the time, and I go get an escrow agent and that escrow agent closes the deal, we can do a contract on the back of a napkin. I agree to sell it for 60,000, she agrees to buy it for 60,000, we’re going to pay all cash and the deal needs to close by October 31st. That’s the extent of the contract and that’s the way it’s been done forever until the National Association of Realtors got involved around the ’40s or ’50s, I think. And it’s nothing short of an outrage the amount of money that exchanges hands needlessly to the point where we’ve all been brainwashed, not us, and not people in Land Academy, but the entire public has been brainwashed into thinking that you need a real estate agent to legally sell your house, which is absolutely untrue. You don’t need that at all.

Jill K DeWit:
Makes me mad when you’re watching… I love your judge and the two lawyers. That’s a good way of looking at it. I look at it like what happens often is you have a defendant and a plaintiff and one attorney going, “Oh, I’ll help you and I’ll help you.” That’s just not possible. That’s not possible.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not representation at all.

Jill K DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s not a correct use of the word.

Jill K DeWit:
Uh-uh. Not at all.

Steven Jack Butala:
So Greg, let us know how it goes because deconstructing that contract is… Yeah, it’s not going to happen.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, please let me go and you try to explain to real estate agent du jour about, “Hey, this is not right. You shouldn’t get 6% anyway. You should get 3% because here’s the reasoning,” and I’ll end it on this for me, “Because look, if I bring my brother-in-law in right now on the tail end of this deal and sign agreement with him, you’re not going to get 6%, you’re going to get 3% period, and no one’s going to argue and he’s going to get 3%, period. So how about I don’t call my brother-in-law right now, and you just reduce it 3% and give it back to the seller or split it between the buyer and the seller? That’s really what makes sense, reduce the price or something.” Nope, no one will. They’ll be like, “What? Huh?”

Steven Jack Butala:
Not going to happen because the seller signed a listing agreement. That’s correct, Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
It’s like it’s the right thing to do. What?

Steven Jack Butala:
So let me be super clear. We send out 10,000 letters, a bunch of people call back, we buy one or two or three properties without any type of real estate agent, without signing any contract except to purchasing a sale agreement, and we don’t have to put up with all this mess. We’re not subject to any of this. The only way we’d be subject to any of this is if the seller themselves is actually a licensed real estate agent, and even then, because no contract was signed, all they’re required to do is disclose that they’re a real estate agent. It might be against what they signed with their real estate broker, but that’s up to them, that has nothing to do with us. Land Academy, I didn’t design this overnight. I designed Land Academy and what we’re talking about out of frustration for things like this where it’s like this doesn’t have to be this way, and so on we went to do 16,000-plus deals and we do deals every week. Jill’s transaction coordinator, I just heard, opened 10 escrows this week.

Jill K DeWit:
On Monday. Yeah, on Monday. You’re right, this is a beauty of Land Academy. I can’t tell you how many times that when I’m talking to a seller and they’re like, “There’s no agent.” I’m like, “No, no. Whatever deal you and I cut, that’s the deal. And the money that you and I talk about, whatever we agree on, that’s what’s going to be on your check.” They’re like, “Wow. Jill, you’re awesome. Let’s do this.” There you go.

Steven Jack Butala:
There’s no agent and there’s no lender in any of our deals, which translates to the seller getting a check sometimes that week or maybe the next week in most states.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, if you’re not getting your escrows done in 14 days or less right now in this climate, you’re doing it wrong. Call Land Academy.

Steven Jack Butala:
That topic got both of us heated.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill and I’ve been dealing with this for years, for decades. Real estate agents getting in the way of a deal that we created. Today’s first topic is called Buying Land in Your Backyard. This came up in Career Paths and the most recent Career Path session we had. We asked everybody to go around the room, explain who they are, where they come from, what their real job was or is and why they’re there and what they expect out of Career Path and land investing in general, and one person said, “I’m here. I’ve done very, very well in the county where I live for several years, and I think it’s time for me to kind of expand, make my goals a little bit more broad from a geography standpoint and a financial standpoint, and so that’s why I’m here, and for the next eight weeks I want to learn this. I want to learn how to do stuff in a different state, different county.”
To which I almost immediately said, “Why if you’re smashing it in this county and now you’ve got escrow agents that work for you on a first name basis and everybody at the county and all of that? I’m not discouraging you in any way from expanding because I think you should,” and by the end of the eight weeks, he really will, but it sparked a interest because there’s a couple of counties that Jill and I do business in over and over and over again. We add counties, we add states all the time actually, but geez, there’s these watering holes that we keep going back to that just keep providing fruit. How’s that for mixing up two cliches? Providing fruit from a watering hole is not possible.

Jill K DeWit:
You know what? I zoned out way before that, so don’t worry, I was already confused. I’m sure I had this fog on my face.

Steven Jack Butala:
I love when people do deals in their backyard. I’m kind of a backyard deal person too, in addition to going fishing in other waters. But I think that there was one guy that we had in Career Path a couple years ago that he was even more micro than that. He’s only ever done deals in one subdivision and he keeps just doing deal after deal after deal in one subdivision, and we had one guy from Texas, that same thing. He did a ton of land deals and now he’s just doing mobile home deals.

Jill K DeWit:
It works until it doesn’t. That’s the whole thing.

Steven Jack Butala:
But I just think it’s a different mentality. Then we’ve got, I call it the private equity mentality. None of these are wrong by the way. Whatever makes money makes money. My point is there’s a lot of ways to go about this, buying and selling land. The private equity mentality is I don’t really have to learn anything or know anything, I just need to throw a ton of money at it and an expert. I need an expert and endless supplies of money, and I can pretty much get anything done, and that way works too. I’m not a big fan of it. I think you’d make a big huge mess and leave a trail of blood and tears behind you, but that can work.
But I love the back home… Jill and I spent three or four months driving around in an RV this summer analyzing little tiny real estate markets like Jackson, Wyoming and Northern Michigan and places that we’ve all heard of that are international destinations for sometimes skiing in the winter and then summer stuff. That backyard mentality where you get to know everybody, everybody gets to know you, reputation matter, you put your money where your mouth is and all of that stuff is really, really intriguing and can be for the right person, really profitable. That type of personality… I’ll just end on this, Jill. That type of personality can then go do that private equity model pretty effectively, but it’s hard to do the reverse. If you’ve got that big picture, send out a billion letters, let’s just see what flushes back in, it’s going to be hard for you to go into a backyard situation and have some personality and get some deals done.

Jill K DeWit:
The beautiful thing too is once you’re in a county and you’re used to that county, most of the people that you’re working with, not the county representatives, but your escrow people, they can do the whole state and some of them can do a lot of neighboring states, which is great too. That’s an advantage. I would look at that when I’m picking a title/escrow, I use it interchangeably, person like, “What all can you do? What states can you cover for deals? Just so I know are good to have.” I think back to… It depends too how big the county is. A couple years ago, you may have been listening, we were working with a specific group of buyers and really going hard for this LA County stuff, and I came to him one day and I said, “You know what? We have barely scratched the surface. We’ve spent six months doing these deals and finding these things and there’s so much.” There’s some counties that are just huge.
I could end my career doing deals in LA County, period. That’s it. Because at that time, we were looking for multifamily kind of things. It was stuff that was rezoned from R1 to R4 kind of thing. You went from having one unit per property to you could have up to four per property and not everybody knew that kind of thing. So we’re looking at those, because the buyers wanted to scrape the one and put four townhouses on it kind of thing. So that’s one little teeny, teeny, teeny thing. I mean, we didn’t even get into the land part over there or the other commercial possibilities or the other sizes and things. So buying land in your own backyard to me is good If you’ve got plentiful property types and uses and things that you could just be happy for a while.
But I do always agree too that unless you’re sitting in… Here’s a perfect example. I bet all of us thought that San Francisco would never not be the hot place to be. You know what I mean? San Francisco for decades was growing, growing, growing, no one was leaving, growing. You want to be in San Francisco, you want to have real estate in San Francisco. Not now. So your little backyard could someday change. So I always feel better when we’re trying new areas, I have other things going out there, other bucket types, other property types. I sleep so well because I’m not focused on one product, one size, one county. I’ve always got a couple things.

Steven Jack Butala:
You really deconstruct why people want to sell their land. It’s almost always for some life reason, they’re just tired of it, geez, all kinds of life things can happen where they could use some extra money or maybe they’re just done with it, and so you can send… If you live in a county with eight or 9,000 eligible properties, let’s say, that work for what we’re trying to do, and you send the letter out to everybody, well, one month they may not have some life event, but the next month they might. And so now you start to think about the letters that you’re sending to 9,000 people. Some of them stick them in the refrigerator, some of them put them in a file, some of the people have inherited the property, they’re just not ready to sell it yet, they haven’t received the tax bill yet in the mail.
They get the tax bill, they go back to the refrigerator, they go back to that file and say, “You know what? I’d rather just get a check for 20,000 bucks instead of pay this $1,000 tax bill this year.” And so when you keep yourself involved in the minds of a land owner over years and they know you as a reputable person, you might even go so far as to do commercials on television about buying and selling their land, that’s really, really powerful. You are a brand now in that community or maybe it’s just, let’s say, it’s two or three counties in that area and you can really buy some serious property and really do well.
San Francisco may or may not work. Then it’ll create more business models for you. You’re going to get a call at some point that somebody owns two or three pieces of property and a mobile home and you’re going to buy it all, and then you’re going to say, “Well, buying and selling mobile homes, that’s something else I can do.” Or they have a shack in the woods and then you buy that and turn it and do really well, now that’s a new business. Pretty soon you know everybody and you’re buying everything and selling everything.

Jill K DeWit:
Mm-hmm. You’re taking these 10 acres and now you’re doing minor splits.

Steven Jack Butala:
Love the backyard model.

Jill K DeWit:
Dream it up.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Jill K DeWit:
Do you want to know more about Land Academy? You want to get into what we’re talking about? Check it out. Go to landacademy.com. Scroll down, schedule a call. You will talk to my team or me. You never know who might be calling you back sometimes. And then also just so you know, you can get a one-time invite to be a fly on the wall on our weekly member call. I haven’t brought that up in a while. So every Thursday we get together with all our Land Academy members and if you want to be a fly on the wall, get invited, see the deals that we’re doing, see the discussions, and just kind of get to know us a little bit better, go to landacademy.com or send a note to support@landacademy.com.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want to sneak peek, go to landacademy.com. It’s free.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Chris wrote, “What’s a seller…” Okay, thank you. “A seller would like to split an odd-shape parcel…” Hold please. We are having a minor technical difficulty and we got it. Okay. “A seller would like to split an odd-shaped parcel and sell me one side of it and then retain the other. It is in-“

Steven Jack Butala:
A state.

Jill K DeWit:
A state. Okay, that’s what that is, “And requires an administrative review for $250 and a survey. How would you guys handle this? I can do the work and pay for it all. He will have to sign off and then negotiate the price down to accommodate the cost of the survey/admin review and my time.” Well, my first choice is the seller pays for this stuff upfront and then maybe we split the cost or whatever it is and my offer price, whatever we want to negotiate, at the backend. My first thing is I’m not a fan because things can go wrong of you prepaying for this person to have this stuff done should he change his mind after the fact.

Steven Jack Butala:
So please really digest this, what this person’s really asking or what they’re really getting… At the root of this question is the following: who and what do you want to do for the rest of your life?

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Jack Butala:
I know what I want to do and what I’ve been doing, and I’m pretty successful at it, and so is Jill, is buying a piece of land and selling it for more really quickly. Think about buying a house and renovating it yourself, which a lot of people have done and other Land Academy members. You need to be-

Jill K DeWit:
Because they don’t do it anymore.

Steven Jack Butala:
Good at budgets, maybe a little plumbing on the side, maybe a little finished carpentry, on and on and on. You need to be good at a lot of stuff or good at scheduling contractors and then yelling at them and then paying them and on. There’s an endless number of job descriptions that you have. At Land Academy, I have given myself one job description and that’s to locate property that’s undervalued. So what’s happening here in this question is, okay, I’ve done that and now I’ve established a relationship with the seller. Okay, good, but the seller wants me to do stuff now. Well, let’s split this, and believe me, he doesn’t want the worst half of the property, he wants the best half.
So he wants to stick you with the property and now I’ve got to start talking to the county and surveyors and it’s a year and a half down the road and the deal’s not done, and I spent all this time when I could have been just doing that one thing I’m supposed to do that I’ve proven already that I’m good at, finding an undervalued real estate deal. So I do not recommend ever improving your property that requires you from leaving your desk ever. In fact, I don’t think you should be improving property at all in the beginning of your career.

Jill K DeWit:
The correct answer, Chris, is, “Awesome. Call me when it’s done. I’ll see if I want the other piece that you have and let me know what your price is.”

Steven Jack Butala:
You’re buying an APN, an assessor’s parcel number, in as is and where is condition. Please look at that deal. Look at the APN, look at the property in its current condition. If it’s 20 or 30% of what you know can sell it for two weeks from now, do the deal. If it’s not, send another mailer out because that’s what we do.

Jill K DeWit:
Or open the next envelope.

Steven Jack Butala:
Not, “Oh, the seller’s got…” That’s houses. That’s what goes on with houses. Every house deal Jill and I have ever done, we have someone who works for us run around and help the seller do whatever they need to do, because we’re solving some kind of strange problem. There may have been a death in the family, there may be a hole in the roof. There’s a lot of stuff in the basement, but that doesn’t happen with land, which is why we buy and sell land. So ask yourself what business do you want to be and what your role you’re assigning yourself in your life, and I bet it’s not to do splits.

Jill K DeWit:
Because here’s the end result. Chris, you helped this guy, however you work it all out, there’s going to be 60 days, maybe six months, anywhere from 60 days to six months depending on how long this takes of your time babysitting and helping this and how much are you going to make? That would be the first question I would ask you. How much is it worth? Because if it’s like, “Oh, because then I can buy this for 10,000 and sell it for a 100,000,” all right, I might be interested. But if it’s a buy for 10, sell for 25 when we’re all done. Nope, move on. Your time is worth more than this. You could do another deal that’s not this difficult, do 10 deals in the time of this one.

Steven Jack Butala:
Here’s a problem with all of us, starting with me. We’ve accumulated all this knowledge, and we’ll call it knowledge, but we’ve accumulated all these real estate stories, and like gambling stories, you only hear the good ones, not the bad ones. And so we’ve all heard about, “Oh my gosh, this guy’s brother 22 years ago over on Baseline Road, bought this piece of property for 10,000 bucks, cut it all up and sold it off. He made $22 million. Well, I’m going to join Land Academy and split up some property,” and so now we have to undo that because that’s a beautiful story. Half of it’s true maybe. Maybe none of it’s true. I don’t know.
We have to undo all of that, deconstruct it all and find out how to buy that property for 10,000 bucks anyway. That’s what we’re here to do. Not split it, not be a landman. Jill and I, we had the unfortunate event of parking our RV next to somebody, a woman, a retired woman who called herself a landman, and explained it to Jill and I for a couple days straight how to buy and sell land. And that all of it was true if it were 1968.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s true. Exactly.

Steven Jack Butala:
Give yourself one great role, be great at it, smash it, find undervalued property and reach out to other people in the group if you don’t have the money, they’ll come out of the woodwork to fund you and just sell it for more or move on. I wouldn’t touch this deal. Today’s second topic is called The Perfect Mailer Response from Sellers. I can start us off.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, yeah. Even though Jackie lovingly said, “This is for Jill,” he has something in his head. You have a plan for this and how you want this to be explained, so I’m going to have you set it up and then ask me questions please.

Steven Jack Butala:
Again, this topic comes from speaking with in a very two-way conversation the people in Career Path right now and the people in Career Path, they’re there because they’re going to do this for their rest of their lives. Some are smashing it and some are brand new, but there seems to be a surprise, let’s call it that, about mailer responses, even for people that have been doing this for a long time. So here’s what happens when you send out a mailer, and I can tell you with extreme confidence this comes from other land investment groups out there that have very, very little experience. They’re a pretty face talking about buying and selling land and how it’s a great, I’m going to air quotes this, side hustle. This is not a side hustle, this is a career. A way to make a tremendous amount of wealth for yourself. Not on the side.

Jill K DeWit:
I’ve done 25 deals. You don’t think I’m qualified to share this?

Steven Jack Butala:
No, no. Here’s what happens then when you send mail out and this is what’s supposed to happen and it exudes shock and awe. You send out 20,000 letters, 10,000 letters or some number like that, after we’ve done all the research on where to send mail and you can pretty much predict the numbers that are going to come back and what properties are worth and all of that. We scientifically make data-driven decisions and we’ve chosen these four or 10 zip codes. You send out a bunch of mail, it’s priced relatively correctly, and you look at your watch, two weeks go by and you get that first call, and the first call is from somebody who says, “I’m going to hunt you down and kill you. You’re trying to low-ball me,” and then they call you a bunch of names and you kind of laugh and say, “You know what? I clearly made a mistake. You know something about this property I don’t. And so if you’re interested in selling it, we can talk about adjusting the price. If not, I totally understand.”
They’re going to respond to that or they’re going to say, “Go pound sand. See you later.” The next call might be the same, the next call might be the same. 13 calls might be like that, and then you’re going to start to, on about the third week, get a call that goes something like, “We’ve been thinking about selling this property, and I talked to my husband about it,” or, “I talked to my wife about it. We’ve owned this thing for 32 years. We’re on to different stuff. Our grandchildren live in Florida and I would like to do an easy transaction like you described in your letter, and we’re not interested in getting retail price for it. However, the price that you did put in the letter’s probably on the low side. So if we can get together on a price, I think maybe we can put something together.” And then you’re going to get a couple calls like that. And if you respond the way Jill does, they’re you’re going to turn into deals if you want do the deal, if it passes all your due diligence tests.
And then at the end of the cycle you’re probably going to get a couple of calls, maybe one call that says, “Your timing’s perfect. What’s the next step? Should I just sign this and send it back to you? Can I take a picture of it on my phone and send it to you, or how do we do this?” That is the regular mailer response that generally happens if you’ve done all those steps correctly, all the research on where to send mail and price it correctly, and you’re set up to take the calls and you’re mentally ready to not get worn down by the first slew of calls that can be disturbing. I personally think… I find those people to be a huge source of humor. I have my entire career. I grew up in Detroit, so I’ve got pretty thick skin anyway, and the fact is… So did Jill for whatever reason. We’ve always gotten along about this and she’ll turn those people into sellers pretty quickly. That’s what goes on. That’s the norm. I don’t know where people think that this is all peaches and cream and it’s just your own personal ATM.

Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. What makes you think that?

Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, because multiple people have… I watched it in Discord and I’m seeing it now. Discord, I understand because Land Academy has its own Discord and there’s all walks of life in there. Career Path’s a little different, and I heard two or three people last week talk about, “I’m just not getting the response that I want.” Oh, please describe it. Then they describe what I just said and they’re like, “This is not the response I want.”

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay. I see what you’re saying. So they’re getting what we just described, which is true, and they’re missing it. They think everybody’s going to call back and say, “I love you.”?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.

Jill K DeWit:
Marry me and I will absolutely sell you that for $3.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
And thanks for calling and I saw you on the internet, and you’re amazing.

Jill K DeWit:
Okay, got it. So we’re just reinforcing today what that is, the response.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, thanks for joining us.

Jill K DeWit:
Well, I was trying to jump in a few times and you were on a roll, so I stopped. So I just kind of sat here and waited until I could ask questions. Do you have any questions for me?

Steven Jack Butala:
Am I off at all on what to expect from a mailer response?

Jill K DeWit:
You described it perfectly. The main points that I have is don’t obsess on it. You’re going to have mad people. You’re going to have people that you don’t reach the same number with, but there’s some big takeaways you’ve got to do is, one, you have to have a live person answering the phone. Number two, you got as fast as possible try to get on the same page with them and just what your goal is on this phone call, once everybody’s calmed down, if that’s the situation, if they don’t like your number… Or number one, do they want to sell? Okay, we got that out of the way.
Number two, does my price work? Nope. Okay, we got that out of the way. Number three, what price does work? Keeping in mind, this is me. I’m not an agent, there’s no 6% commission, like we talked about earlier on this show, that’s going to be flying out of this deal. There’s no commissions, no funny thing like that. It’s you and me making a deal and I’m going to make it really fast. I’ve got Susie at ABC Title ready to go. I can have you paid out in 10 days because my other deals are going that fast. Really? Yep. So now knowing that, what’s the number that makes sense to you? All right, Jill. I know you sent me an offer for $23,000 and whatever change. Make it 25. That’s what I want. And I’m like, “I can make that work.”

Steven Jack Butala:
I grew up in an… Well, I’ll put it this way: Can you imagine if send the mailer out, somebody calls really angry and says… And then you met them with anger.

Jill K DeWit:
I know. How would that go?

Steven Jack Butala:
You would never do a transaction in your entire life.

Jill K DeWit:
That’d actually be kind of funny.

Steven Jack Butala:
I grew up in an environment where you have to meet these people from where they’re coming. You can’t take them on and bang your chest. I grew up in that environment where there is this stance, and again in Detroit, where the way you get any respect is to really be the biggest a-hole there ever was, scream at people, they scream back at you and then you shake hands and have a beer. That’s the culture, or at least the one that I grew up in. That has no place for what we do. None. And there are people that are saying these mailers, “I’m not getting the response that I want.” Well, how are you responding to these sellers?

Jill K DeWit:
That’s a lot of it. I’d like to talk on this for a minute. What you don’t realize is you’re selling yourself right now. I think that’s what people miss. And you need to make them feel good. Whatever they love about that property and however they see it and why they want to hold onto it and why they want to get whatever out of it, they just need to feel something about it because there’s some reason they have this property. Even if they inherited it, “Dad had it for 30 years. I feel bad selling it.” All right, I understand that. I’ll make it really easy and I can see that would be tough, and it sounds like you could use the money now more than the property, I get that too.
You need to come at this with compassion for whatever the situation is. Sometimes they’re going to tell you like that and sometimes they won’t. You don’t know they just got laid off and they don’t want to tell you that, and they’re desperate for cash right now and they’re embarrassed, but they need to get that done, and you need to sell them on how great you are and how easy you’re going to make this. This is one of things I’ve seen people fail at in Land Academy. They come out like they’re the authority, and they’re telling them what’s going to go down. And instead of being compassionate and understanding, and like Jack just said, meeting them from where they come… You need to… If they’re a sweet little old lady, which maybe they are, there’s a lot of those that I’ve spoken to over the years. I’ve spoken to everything, but it’s a sweet little old lady, they don’t need you pushing them around and saying, “All right, be ready at 3:00 because Susie’s going to call you.”
You can’t do that. You got to go, “When’s a good time? Oh, Jeopardy’s on at that time? Okay. Well, I’ll make sure when I call you and I’ll tell my title person if they need anything from you, the best time is between 10:00 and noon. Got it.” That’s how you need to do this. So that’s a whole ‘nother conversation. I think today was about what to expect and make sure you know that what you’re getting back most of the time is expected, because you know why? The perfect mail response is generally the same unless you drastically overprice your mailer. Anything else, you’re going to get the same response.
So let me tell you what that means. When you hit the numbers right, great. Half people are mad at you, later on, the good stuff will come. We covered that. Oh my gosh, you came a little too hot. You went, “Whoa. I really offered low numbers.” The same people are still going to be mad at you and later on you’re going to have some conversations and you’re going to fix that or maybe you even get some home runs out of it, because that happens too. The only difference is if you way overpriced the mailer, everybody’s calling you back because they love you. They’re like, “Yes, I want to sell. Yes, I want to sell. Yes, I want to sell,” All day long. You’re like, “Oh, no. I just realized I accidentally instead of 10,000, I put 100,000 on these offer. I added a zero where I didn’t mean to,” kind of thing. You got to undo that.
So that’s the only time you’re going to get a different response. So I just want you to know that and you need to work these. And your responses, your mailer response, everybody gets all hung up on the mailer yield. That has to… If you’re going to really take a look at your mailer yield, you need to make it a 10-year project. I’m not kidding.

Steven Jack Butala:
Well, and then in 10 years you won’t care because you’re-

Jill K DeWit:
You’re making so much money, because here’s why: Because my mailer yield in the first 90 days, oh, it improves over the first six months and then in a year my mailer yield from that same mailer, if I’m going to go back and keep looking at that mailer, I’m going to get calls for years, you guys. That’s why we tell you save your… You got to own these phone numbers and own these addresses. It’s years and sometimes decades that people will call you back and you can… So thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
I’m going to leave you with this thought and then we’ll move on to another land acquisition. You’re creating a real estate deal here where five minutes ago there wasn’t one. It’s one of those things you have to unlearn because we’ve always heard about, “Well, what do you mean you buy a piece of property for this and sell it for more?” The reason that that’s happening is because you and your dynamic personality and how you’re talking to that person in that moment that responds to your mailer, how you respond to them and whether or not you meet them from where they come. You already know you priced it right, you already know that it’s in a market there. If you buy it anywhere near what you sent the offer out for, you’re going to do well. So it just becomes about that moment with that person, and yelling at them, you’ll never get what you want.

Jill K DeWit:
Or talking down to them.

Steven Jack Butala:
If you’ve ever yelled at your spouse or your kids, they don’t stand around and do what you say. They might in one second, but then they’re going to turn around and flip you the bird the minute the door closes. It’s just not how this works. So you really got to ask yourself… I did this topic and I’m obviously pretty serious about it, and Jill is too, because if you have an analytical brain like I do and you want the numbers to work on everything, you either need to adjust your attitude to doing what I just said and accomplishing that or finding somebody like Jill who’s going to do it.

Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Jack Butala:
Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Jill K DeWit:
Go ahead.

Steven Jack Butala:
Jill, you have something inspirational to share?

Jill K DeWit:
I did not come prepared today. I’ve been a little busy. So I’m trying to think of something inspirational I’d like to share today, and you know what? I’m going to share this. I’m reading a new book and it’s called Grow. It’s by the, I think it’s called the Busbee Company in Michigan. If you live anywhere in the Michigan area, you know about the coffee company I’m referring to. So he first wrote a book called Grind, and that was… There’s two co-founders who started this coffee company. They’re like the Starbucks in Michigan, to give you everybody else some point of reference here. So his first book was called Grind. I did not read Grind, I didn’t see Grind. I didn’t even know about it, and I happened to be in the Michigan coffee shop in Holland, Michigan this summer, and-

Steven Jack Butala:
Is that how this all started?

Jill K DeWit:
This is how this all started.

Steven Jack Butala:
On our trip?

Jill K DeWit:
Yes. You were waiting for me in the hotel lobby, where we-

Steven Jack Butala:
Imagine that, guys. I was waiting for Jill.

Jill K DeWit:
We were waiting for me or I was getting a cup of coffee and that’s where we spent the night in Holland, Michigan when we met Carl and Samantha, and this book’s on the counter. And I looked at it, I put it down, I looked at it, and I put it down, got my coffee, and I said, “You know what?” Stuff just pulls on you, I’m like, “I’m going to buy this book.” Well, it’s really good. His first book, Grind, now that I know, was going from zero to where they are today or just being cash flowing, I should say. It was zero to cash flowing, it was the book Grind. Well, the book, Grow, which I’m reading now, is going from a cash flowing coffee company to having 300 stores, bringing in, I don’t know, $125 million a month I think are his numbers. Again, there’s two co-founders that remind me of us, and they’re hanging onto this. They want this to be a legacy company. At least right now-

Steven Jack Butala:
It’s all taped together and they just kind of… Just like us.

Jill K DeWit:
Totally. Grow is going from chaos to calm. That’s really it. And my inspiration today is… I’m just giving you a little bit of the backstory and over the next couple weeks/months as I read more about this and I ponder, I’m going to bring stuff to you to share about it. Because no matter where you are in your land business, whether you have a company of one or a company of five people or a company of 10 people or more, this all applies to us. There’s some nuggets there and there’s things that we have to do, things you have to accept, things you have to learn.
Right now, the whole first part of it, you can probably guess, is about how important the people are on your team, and maybe it’s even just you and your partner, that’s all you have. Maybe your team is you and your wife because she’s your anchor, she’s your support, because you’re a team. Or your husband, whoever it is, I should say husband because with the Land Academy ladies, we have a lot of ladies out there retiring their husbands. Anyway. They’re a team. You’re working on the land business and they’re working on the family, they’re working on making sure you have a sandwich while you’re pulling data, whatever it is. So I’ll keep sharing this. It’s pulled me in right away.
So relationships is my first thing that you have to recognize and I’ve come to learn, my little takeaway, I hope, for today is there’s things you can train and things you can’t train. I can’t train loyalty, I can’t train honesty, I can’t train work ethic, but all the other things, how to log in, find something, do something, all of that little technical stuff, I can train that. So think about that when you’re growing your team. And it took me a long time. I’m not going to say my age right now, but over the years, it took me a long time. I was doing it wrong. I was doing it wrong. I was hiring for talent, thinking, “I’ll just fold them in.” I was hiring for talent, thinking, “They’re going to come into the Land Academy world and they’re going to get on board with the way we all think. We’re kind of a happy, eclectic family, if you will,” and that was wrong. I needed to hire, and that’s what we’re doing now, the right people, and then teach them the rest.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, coming in with the right attitude and basic set of skills, you’re going to do great.

Jill K DeWit:
Right. Exactly. Jack, what do you have to share with us today, something informational?

Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I’d like to talk about how you absolutely have to change your business model based on actual results, not on perceived results or what goes on or not just being hardheaded about it and never changing your business model because it’s all going to come up and bite you at the end, probably sooner than later. The way the world is now, the way the internet happens and how fast applications develop and how bored people get with everything has really, really changed since from the time that I started in the ’80s and ’90s. Not just in land, but in everything. And now it’s commonplace for Jill and I… Both in Land Academy and in our regular land business, based on the results that we’re getting, we regularly change to meet what customers need.
And so by that I mean… And it’s a very positive thing, not a negative thing, because for a very long time I thought, “This is it. We’re going to buy a piece of land and sell it,” and if you think about the first deals that we did together and the type of deals that we do now, it’s apples and oranges. You wouldn’t recognize it. And then I started thinking, “Well, what did Land Academy look like in 2015?” It’s like the end of 2023 now. Unrecognizable. The basic stuff’s the same, buy a piece of land and sell it for more. Our basic avatar-type customer’s the same, the same demographic, the same interests, and where they are now and where they want to go is basically the same, but how we go about it is entirely different. I mean, entirely different. The tools and the way data is and the products that we have to help people do things without bending over backwards is really, really improved.
And I grew up in an environment where you get a Q1 rating from Ford and you make a little part and that’s it, and all you do is you hire a boisterous salesperson to make sure that the person at Ford Motor Company is happy, and not necessarily happy with the part, but playing golf and drinking martinis and whatever else is involved in all that. Boy, that couldn’t be different than what it’s like now. And lucky for us, we’ve had all these new tools to buy all this stuff more easily. So whatever comes up, it needs to be addressed based on actual results.
We’re seeing now for the first time, and this is a truth time, that are certain areas that are experiencing a pretty serious competition rate from just getting too much mail, and I know exactly why that is. We talk about it all the time within Land Academy and we’re making those changes, expanding the types of products that we buy, expanding certainly how we look at data and how much data we need to analyze a zip code or a county to greenlight it, and that’ll change two months from now, and it’ll change two years from now. But there’s a strain of certain people that can’t handle that. They can’t handle any change, and their attitude is not, “Let’s look at this, let’s look at the data and make some changes.” Their attitude is, “It’s over. I’m too late to the party. Last month was great. This month sucked. We’re out of business. I’m going to go do something else.”

Jill K DeWit:
It’s too bad.

Steven Jack Butala:
Yep.

Jill K DeWit:
That’s why we’re here. And don’t forget, you can reach us for questions and for help simply by sending a note to support@landacademy.com.

Steven Jack Butala:
Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. This is where you buy land cheap and sell it for more on the internet, usually a lot more.

Jill K DeWit:
We are Jack and Jill. Sorry. You paused, I paused. Okay, ready to get this right. Three, two, one. We are Jack and Jill.

Steven Jack Butala:
Information.

Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

Jill K DeWit:
Hey, how did you and Carl do that last week? Did you go, “We are Jack and Carl.”?

Steven Jack Butala:
No.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, okay.

Steven Jack Butala:
No, it was unscripted.

Jill K DeWit:
Oh. Oh, no.

Steven Jack Butala:
We just talked about working with our spouses and…

Jill K DeWit:
Oh, no. I haven’t listened and watched last week, so apparently I need to now.

Steven Jack Butala:
We talked about what we were successful with and why we’re happy, and then how to fail at working with your spouse.

Jill K DeWit:
Nice. I will definitely go back and watch that.