The land investment business is certainly one of the best areas to delve into to elevate your wealth building strategies. To help you get the most out of this venture, Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit present some real-life examples you can learn and draw inspiration from. Find out how these actual stories of actual people can guide you in designing your own land investment roadmap and set realistic goals along the way.
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Real-Life Wealth Building Examples In Land Investment Business
NThis is episode number 2071. Our topic is real-life examples of creating wealth in the land investment business. It’s big meaty, like, “What the heck are you guys talking about?” All we’re talking about is that we’ve got some examples of successful people, so you can learn from them and mirror those traits or say, “I’ve got it, or I don’t.” Just try to understand that. That’s our topic for a whole week. We have different things that we’re doing and it’s all around the secret recipe for success in our world.
Discord Question
We’re in the middle of Career Path 10 and every Career Path, it’s so amazing. We’re always meeting new, very successful people and it’s so fun because they’re coming from other worlds. It’s great for us to see and even learn from ourselves what got them there. We want to share these stories with you so you can see and go, “All right, I’m doing that,” or, “I have that,” or, “I’m going to make that kind of thing.” The first thing we’re going to do, though, is we’re going to answer a question. Every week, we have a question here that was posted on our internal Discord online community in Land Academy.
Mike says, “I posted this deal about a few months ago, and the seller has come back and lowered his price. It’s 27 acres. It’s got a brand-new mobile home on it. Two acres are fenced off. I have pics and information if anyone’s interested in discussing it. The local agent said it will likely sell for about $330,000. The seller is down to $220,000.” This is my kind of deal.
“He owes $130,000.” The plot thickens.” He is willing to leave his mortgage in place while we take ownership and sell it to the end buyer. Would anybody be interested in partnering this? I’m asking for $90,000 to close on the deal and list on the market for $330,000. Potential profit is $96,000, but between the funding partner and me, I’m willing to take a lower cut to get this deal done.”
I’m having trouble with the brand-new mobile home on it. Excuse me. That was a piece that I missed. I saw the land part, but I didn’t see the brand-new mobile home. Can I assume that days on market, Jack, we’re assuming all these things are going to be great with the new mobile home? It’s a great area. There’s got to be something going on with the story here.
I have something less fun to talk about. Why are we complicating this deal? If you believe in this transaction, Mike, buy it. I don’t know why you’re trying to wholesale it. This is great. I’m glad this question came up because Jill and I don’t ever wholesale anything. If we believe in the deal, we buy it. If we have to, and we’ve done this many times in the distant past, we bring in a funding partner for us or with us, so I don’t know why he wouldn’t just buy this property from this person.
I wonder, too, by the way. He’s down to $220,000, given Mike’s terms. I think the seller might even go lower saying, “I’m just going to give you cash and be all done with it. You don’t have to deal with carrying the mortgage. We don’t have to worry about your bank. How about we make it $210,000 kind of thing and I’m buying it outright?” The seller can go, “For that extra $10,000, now I really don’t have to think about it. There are no agents involved. I don’t have to worry about my mortgage. I can pay that off and I’m going to walk away with $130,000 in my pocket.” It’s less than that. He’s going to walk away with a nice check and he’s going to be happy with that.
I don’t know. I struggle with why people want to wholesale stuff. I don’t see it as a reduced risk. It’s either you either believe in the deal or you don’t. Jill and I have created a group of people for years who are dying to throw money at these deals. Why don’t you just buy it?
Why take ownership and then split and sell it? I can’t even imagine right now because what kind of paperwork the lender’s going to think. There’s so much potential for this to go South and the lenders to say no. Even though the seller and you have this great agreement and this great plan, the bank would probably say, and as I would, “No, I wouldn’t do this.”
In the best case, the bank is going to let you assume the loan, which they won’t do because if it’s at a much lower interest rate, they want that loan to go away. They don’t want to keep it in place at 3% or whatever it is, with mortgage rates at 7%. This looks like a really solid, really attractive deal, but it’s getting complicated. The deal’s not going to get killed because it’s not a solid deal. It’s going to get killed because of what Jill just said. All the paperwork and people changing their minds and amount of time that this takes. Back in the day, this is an old guy comment here, do you know that more than 50% of mortgages and how they’re calculated are incorrect?
I totally believe that. How do you know that?
It’s a statistic that I read all the time. It’s actually higher than that. The people who are in control of your mortgage should not be trusted to do that.
Who are you to say you have to argue with them and fight to get it fixed If you find the error? I don’t even want to go there.
Get a funder in our group. I would open escrow.
I would fund it outright. Let’s just do that.
Real-Life Examples Of Creating Wealth
We would fund it and I would buy it, close escrow on it, the lender’s gone and sell it for $300,000. As Jill said, he owes $130,000 and he is trying to get out of it. I’d give him $140,000 and solve his entire problem, then control the asset and make some dollars. Real-life examples of creating wealth in the land investment business. Jill, do you have anybody right now that’s in personal coaching that you can really say is bringing the right attitude and succeeding?
I do. I’ve got a couple of women. It’s funny. Right now, I’m women-heavy in my personal coaching business. I’m trying to think of one. I have three different examples. I have a former/current business owner. I have a former real estate agent pivoting and then I have someone who came from basically a union background but a high-paying environment where she retired and said, “This is what I’m doing now. I’m not messing around.”
One of the things that is common among the three of them is this commitment, which is what I have. I think you do, too. When I go into something, and it’s hard for me not to, I flip that switch like, “This is it. I’m done.” I stop looking at other things. I shelter myself from other noise. I don’t look at other businesses and things. I’m head down, in it, out of my way. It might take me months until we’re there, but that’s what I’ll do. That’s something that all three of them have committed to. I’m really impressed.
We’re talking about wealth and creating wealth and I think that the vast majority of people think that being wealthy is Elon Musk. Hundreds of billions of dollars. I don’t think that. The most successful wealthy people, and I’m not going to name their names, there are three people that have come through Land Academy that really come to mind. We’re all very honest and open about how much money they made and why they were choosing to make that much money. The first guy stood up and told his story during our live event. He said, “My wife has had some healthcare issues. I understand the meaning of life now. She pulled through it and I make $100,000 a month doing one deal every month. I end up making around $800,000 a year. That’s what this is. I don’t have a job anymore and I spend time with her and this is what I do.”
Fast forward a year. It’s the same exact thing, but a different personal story. “My kids now are playing baseball and I’m their coach and that’s what i’ve always wanted to do. I made $800,000 this year and that’s what I’ll make next year. I send out work this amount of mail out. I take about eight calls a day and it all worked out.” In the last episode, we talked about the final stage or one of the personality types about exit. Those guys have that licked. The people that I’m concerned about more, they always come through Career Path and they say, “I want to make $10 million a year. I made $1 million last year. I want to make $10 million.” Hold on a second. Why? Do you need a faster car or what?
How is that going to change your life?
The truth is I’ve never been one of those people. I’ve had the same financial goal, plus or minus some zeros and plus or minus what it actually looks like, since I was fourteen years old. We’re long past that. As I get older, I’m totally in the exit stage right now, I am less and less interested in taking any type of risk. The deals that Jill and I do, for the most part, are what I would call risk-free. That makes the most sense to me. These are what really happens. If you’re in the idea stage and you’re reading this, please sit down and take a very realistic goal. If you have a W-2 job that you hate and you’re lucky enough not to be in a committed relationship with children yet, you’re in a total driver’s seat.
Plan it out. Do you want to make $100,000 next year or maybe $300,000 because you’re making $100,000 now? $100,000 used to be a huge amount of money when we were early professionals. It’s not anymore. That’s great. Plan it out. “I want to make $250,000 doing some land, then I’m going to quit my job. The next year, I want to make $350,000 or $400,000,” all very realistic goals. “I want to take a partner on whether you’re a Jack or a Jill and then get it to about $1 million. It’s just $100,000 a month, then I’m going to stop.”
Those are really good and very realistic. That’s perfect. The point is to have an end. Have a number and make it count. When you start talking crazy numbers, it’s fun to talk about that. We joke about it and stuff, especially in Career Path. You can do that if that’s what you want to be. We go back to is that really going to change your life? We have that discussion ourselves all the time. We’re always teetering with when do we want to call it. I don’t know when that’s going to be because we both have the type of personalities that I don’t think we ever can. I can’t see us just sitting down reading the paper every day and just doing nothing. We’ll always be doing something is it really going to change your life that much? You can dial it up or dial it back however much you want. That was perfect.
I’ll end on this. What struck me about these three specific individuals is that the way that they were describing it was so matter of fact and they long accepted it. I’m sure their spouse accepted it and they were just explaining it. They weren’t looking for anybody’s opinion. Our generation really thinks that we all should make $100 million a year.
Trying to one-up each other. I hate that.
Me, too.
Episode Wrap-up
That’s perfect. Thank you. Join us next time. We’re going to do five questions to ask yourself before you attempt to create more wealth in your land investment business.
You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.