In this episode, Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit dive into the crucial steps of getting a land deal under contract in just two days. If you’re navigating land investments, time is of the essence, and this episode walks you through the process of securing deals quickly and efficiently. Jack and Jill discuss the psychology behind closing deals, key strategies for success, and common pitfalls to avoid. Whether you’re new to land investing or experienced in the field, this episode offers practical advice to help you stay ahead in the competitive real estate market.
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How To Get A Land Deal Under Contract In Just Two Days
Introduction And The Importance Of Timers
This is episode number 2028, and the topic is getting the land deal under contract to be purchased within two days.
Before we start, I would like to share a little thing. Jack, here’s what I thought, and I’m going to ask you this question here. Dear Jack has a little timer next to him. I don’t know why we need a little timer because I’m staring at a timer on the screen. However, there’s an additional timer that he has going, and it’s a rather annoying sound when it goes off. If we go too long here, you’ll hear it. So I asked, “Why do you need that?” Jack said, “Because I like to be under the gun.” My question is, I like this da-da-da, my question to you, Jack, is.
Moving forward, I like it.
He’s just like, “I need it. It helps me keep going.” I’m like, “Does this work for all things in your life? For example, can I set a little timer here that says, If you’re not in the bedroom, mister, in the next five minutes, the door, the window is closing? Would that work?”
Yes.
Noted.
That would work for most readers, I bet.
Most men?
Just anybody. We need to get this done.
That would work for me, too. If you said, “Jill, we got 3 minutes, and we got 20 minutes, let’s just say, we got to be out the door. If you want to do this this morning, let’s make it happen.”
It took us 45 seconds to get off real estate and onto.
Other good things.
Bedroom stuff.
Back to where we were here.
Really quickly, along the lines of these timers, I watched an early morning news show where they take polls. They ask you to do that. I didn’t participate in it. I just laughed, though, because you don’t want to. “Do you like vanilla ice cream or chocolate?” That poll. This one said, “How many timers do you set a day? 0 or 9? All the numbers in between.” My first and immediate thought was nine timers. I set like 30 timers a day.
That’s what I was going to say, 30.
That’s why I get a bunch of stuff done.
It’s so fun to be around. I got to tell you, I’m going to start doing it. I was just going to do random timers for no reason. I just wanted to know what three minutes felt like because I forgot. That’s what I want to do.
This is what I live with. Just being laughed at all day.
I’m going to do a two-day timer. Let’s see what that goes like. Here’s my question, too. How much time has to pass before you forget you set a timer? Does that happen?
It doesn’t work that way.
You always know. You’re like focused on it.
What may happen is that a timer will go off and I got something done. A 45-minute timer might go off, and I got it done in five minutes, and then I forgot.
There we go.
It goes off and I pat myself on the back and say, “Next time, I’ll set it for three minutes.”
Do you know what I do? I don’t know if you do this. I don’t think, but looking at your phone, I don’t think you do. I set timers and I put what they’re for.
I never do that.
I have to get up. I have to admit, I usually do two timers in a day. Do you want to know what they are?
Waking up and going to bed.
One is waking up. I can’t remember. I have something hokey. I have a hokey little saying like, “You deserve your day,” or something. I totally have a little hokey thing.
I don’t have that.
I do. I have to admit.
Hang in there.
I do two timers, and then the second one is get butt in shower.
Really?
Yeah. I always make it so I can get up and just have at least an hour to have coffee with you, watch TV, whatever. Just read, lay around, look outside, and then I have to get going.
Jill and I lived in our RV this summer, and you would think there’s nothing new.
That we don’t know about each other.
About the other person. You just know it all. Just not the case. I didn’t know this.
Good. I learned something new, too.
Getting The Land Deal Under Contract Quickly
Little hokey sayings. It’s Friday, and we’re wrapping up this entire week where the theme was rules to live by in your land investment business. We’re talking about getting the land deal under contract to be purchased within two days.Go back and read the other four. It’s interesting. We had fun doing it. I like this new format. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum. We take a deep dive into a land-related topic by your request.
By the way, I think that’s going to be open at some point. Didn’t I hear that? The Land Academy Discord forum is closed just for members. I think I heard we’re going to have an open public area.
I thought there was a public area. We go back and forth on that.
Don’t quote me. It may or may not be there yet. If you’re interested in the Land Academy version of Discord that’s open to the public, send a note to my team, and if enough of you do, they’ll do it. There you go. It’s support at LandAcademy.com.
Maybe just send them a note and say, “You guys need to change the show.”
“Jill said in episode number 2028 to send a note.” Would that be funny? They’ll crack up at that. Martin wrote, “When sellers call in, what are your responses?” That was from Thursday. Am I looking at the wrong one? Am I not on Friday? Number five. Our question got in here. Isn’t this in here twice?
No, it’s taking a deeper dive into the actual topic.
Sorry. I’m just speeding and moving quickly.
Everyone, take a break while Jill figures this out.
I did answer this question Thursday morning and all that stuff. We did. Let’s just go into this topic. Do you want me to show you where I did? I’m sorry. I did. Maybe I didn’t. There it is. Speeding and quickly. There it is. I did it on Monday. No problem.
Let’s go.
Thank you for bearing with us.
Straight to the topic, and the person who edits this will take all this out.
No problemo. You’re right, the topic is important. How do we get these contracts purchased so quickly? It’s not really, I’m going to say, not really purchased. I’m going to say, what did you mean when you wrote this topic? I could get a purchase in two days if I had to, or do you mean open escrow?
Getting the land deal under contract to be purchased within two days.
It’s very realistic if you are. This whole thing came about because we had a question earlier about when you have a seller and they want to sell the property and you’ve got the price done, the steps that follow that and what can go on. There are certain people that have a personality type where they get into the process. I am not one of these people, and neither is Jill. Let’s explore and digest the journey together.
I’m about getting to the end and converting it back into cash. You need to, this is my opinion, especially if you’re new, target two days to get the deal purchased, to get the deal under contract with the escrow open where the seller’s expecting and realizes when they’re going to get paid and you realize when you’re going to actually buy the property for and then try to immediately resell it. Does that make sense?
Yeah, or as fast as possible. Let me paint the picture.
I really think you need to go into it saying we’ve got to get this done and under contract, and I’ll stop talking to the seller within two days so you can move on. That taps in strangely into that whole timer silliness in the beginning.
I know the question you were talking about because someone had asked me in Discord about, we take two days from PatLive to respond. We take 4 days to do this, and we try to do it within 2 weeks. I’m like, “What the heck?” If you wait two weeks, you’re going to change your mind, not just the seller, and you give them all the time in the world to rethink this and overthink this and call everybody on the planet and find a family member who says, well, for $2,000, I’ll buy it kind of thing. That’s what you don’t want to do. The whole point is to move quickly.
My rule is that when the call comes in for our companies and myself, if I or a live person can’t answer it at that moment, it’s usually because I’m on the phone. What do I do then? Do I wait two days? I immediately call them back, period. So, that could be, so that’s myself or PatLive. They need to get a live person as fast as you can, and that live person is collecting the details. You do want to sell, how much. If it’s me, I start the whole process, but let’s just paint, this is what’s going on for most people.
Handling Seller Responses Quickly
You’ve got a day job. You’re using a service like PatLive. The calls come in. PatLive knows your schedule. You have pre-told PatLive, if calls come in from Friday to Monday morning, tell them they’ll get a call back on Tuesday. If the calls come in from Monday afternoon to whatever, tell them they’ll get a call back on this day, whatever, but it can’t be any more than, I like to say, the next day or two days.
You should be doing your deal review a couple of times a week, especially starting out. Three times a week is great. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, maybe it’s your lunch break that you spend looking at all the deals that came in over the weekend. Wednesday, you do the Monday, Tuesday deals. You can see how fast this needs to go. It’s critical to lock these deals in with the seller and open escrow, and then you can breathe.
It’s critical.
Very critical. You’re only giving yourself just enough time to do whatever level two due diligence you need. Level one due diligence, you can do in an hour sitting at your computer when you’re looking at all ten deals that came in. Access, yes. Attribute, yes. Affordable, yes. Alive, no. Whatever it is, you can sit and go through all that stuff and you know your things.
Level two is like, I got to call the county and find out this. I’m not sure this grade might inhibit it from being buildable. I don’t know about these setbacks. Fill in the blank. I need to find out. I see physical access, I need to confirm legal access and anything like that. You only need a day or two to do that, and you tell the seller, this is where I’m at, too. While you’re doing your level two due diligence, the call came in on Monday morning, let’s just say to PatLive. Monday afternoon at lunch, you’re looking through all the things, and you call back Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, whatever works out for your timing, or Monday evening. Everybody knows what’s going on.
You always let the seller know what’s going to happen. “Hi, this is Jill. I got your details on your property. Thank you so much. I have a call into the county. I just wanted to confirm a couple of things, but I think we’re going to be ready to go. I should hear back with them by later today. Where can I get you tomorrow? What are you going to be around? What’s the best number? Make sure I have your email.” Get all that stuff, too. Keep them moving forward. Let them think you’re buying it. “By the way, I don’t have your email and I need to double-check on the deed. It shows such as such.”
Hold on. We got it.
I don’t know.
This is an interesting episode.
I could talk a lot about this, obviously. This is important, and you have to lock it in.
Concluding Thoughts And Advice For Real Estate Investors
The point is there is a psychology behind completing a real estate transaction, and please think about this when considering yourself. You want to buy this piece of property absolutely as fast as possible. You do not want time to get in the way of analyzing the deal on your part, your personal life, or any of that. In fact, we have done it in one day. If you don’t go through escrow, the entire deal in one day we have done in the past. That’s a different topic. Take a look at yourself and whether or not you want to drag things out for 2 or 3 weeks because there are people that that’s their personality.
You’re not going to get the deal.
I know. It’s just too fast. Everything’s going too fast for me. I don’t want to go this fast. Let’s slow down. Chew your food.
This is not the business for you, then.
Yes, this is not. That’s correct. It’s natural, as you just saw. “We’ve got $5,800. I just opened escrow while we were talking on the phone in the last 30 seconds. They will contact you tomorrow, and my transaction coordinator, Jan, is going to take over the position. She’ll probably be contacting you in an hour. Does that work for you?”
You just need to think about how you want to spend the money.
I think that this delay in the deep dark back of why people choose to spend a lot of time doing a real estate deal is because they’re not sure they want to do it. The due diligence part of our business model is a pain point for them, and they truly never know whether or not it’s a good deal. If that’s the case for you, and it’s very natural, due diligence is a pain point for many people. More people, that is probably the biggest pain point. Please align yourself with someone in our group if you’re in Land Academy. It’s not a pain point. This is every Thursday, Jill and I hold a closed webinar where we review transactions that people are doing, and we call it “Would You Do This Deal?”
They post all the information. We talk about, “Hey, oh my god, you got to go do this deal right now. You got to get off the phone and go do this deal. That’s how good it is,” or, “Ah, it’s a good deal. I know your seller’s talking at $22,000, but I really think it’s worth $12,000 on the buy side. You can go sell it for $22,000.” If this is a pain point for a lot of people, and we try to alleviate that pain that way. If you’re extra crazy about it and don’t know whether or not the deal is good, align yourself personally in the group.
That is not a pain point. Somebody’s got more years of experience. You can’t function successfully in this business if you wait two weeks to make a deal. It’s just too many things happen on both sides. It’s that age-old universal sales concept, strike while the iron’s hot. If the seller wants to sell, then give it to them.
Exactly. That’s beautiful. Thank you. Join us next time for other interesting episodes. We’re back to five days a week.
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Land Academy PRO is the brainchild of founders Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit. Designed at the request of Land Academy members who are ready for a higher level, we’re excited to continue to provide the tools and support needed by professional investors.
Each level comes with a preset amount of included data, Concierge Mail service, and postage. For example, the Green level includes 6,000 units of completed-for-you mail completely out the door at no extra cost to you.
All levels include a PatLive introduction and preset script (we will set up your phone answering for you), use of Land Academy’s personal Transaction Team to manage your deal flow, an AirTable (CRM) base setup managed by our (and your!) Transaction Coordinator, personal consulting, regular office hours, and includes your Land Academy subscription cost.
If you’re making this a business, Land Academy PRO takes the work off of your plate so you can focus on the things that matter – like running your business.
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Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
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Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
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1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
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Concierge Data+ (with data)
Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
6,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost
We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator
Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable
Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting
1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
-
Regular Office Hours
Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact
ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy
No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
Concierge Data+ (with data)
Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
9,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost
We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator
Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable
Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting
1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
-
Regular Office Hours
Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact
ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy
No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
Concierge Data+ (with data)
Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
12,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost
We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator
Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable
Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting
1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
$1,000 value
Regular Office Hours
Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact
ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy
No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
Concierge Data+ (with data)
Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
15,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost
We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator
Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable
Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting
1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
$1,000 value
Regular Office Hours
Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact
ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy
No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.
Concierge Data+ (with data)
Included mailers each month (data + concierge + mailer + postage). Our team will do your data for it and get it out the door.
18,000 mailers
PatLive introduction at no cost
We will help you establish your first script and get PatLive set up on your behalf to answer your phones.
$500 value
Transaction Coordinator
Use of our personal Transaction Coordinator team to manage your deals. Trained and ready to go!
$7,500 value
AirTable
Ready-for-you CRM managed by your personal Land Academy Pro Transaction Coordinator
$100 value
Personal Consulting
1 on 1 personal consulting with our Transaction Coordinator each week.
$1,000 value
Regular Office Hours
Regular office hours with Jack and Jill + our staff. Private for LA Pro Members Only. (Think Career Path Office Hours)
$2,500 value
ParcelFact
ParcelFact is included in your LA Pro membership with unlimited pulls.
$150 value
FREE Career Path Access
$23,000 value
Land Academy
No more separate charges - Land Academy is included with LA Pro Membership. This includes all education, tools, support, and future releases.