One of the most effective ways to win big in real estate is to understand the career choices available in this space and fully understand its ins and outs. Or perhaps you can dabble in all of them in some way? Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit present the four career choices you could embark on in real estate and what you can expect to achieve in each one.

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4 Real Estate Career Choices

Overview

I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit and this is the Land Academy Show.

This is episode number 2079. Today is Monday. We’re talking about the four career choices that you have in real estate all week this week. We’re going to take each day, Monday through Friday, and talk about each of these choices. Today, we’ll do a little bit of an overview. I have to admit that I sat down and wrote this barebone script like I do every single week for John and me to do our podcast. I didn’t fully realize, I guess I haven’t thought about it lately, how much of an impact the real estate industry has on all of us all the time every day. I guess we don’t think about it.

I do.

Are you thinking about real estate all the time?

I do, actually. We know it’s interesting in two parts. To answer your question or follow up on your comment, I should say I do think about it because I’m always thinking about where people are living and why they’re living there, For so many people on the planet, where they can afford to lay their heads at night dictates where they are. It often will dictate their career.

People make career changes so they can afford to have a “fill in the blank” house or something like that. There’s a lot that goes into this in our lives. The other thing I was going to say is are you going to bring math into this? I’m sure you’re going to discuss good and bad. Here’s what you could make and here’s what most people make, and here’s what a lot of people make kind of thing. There are different levels of all of these.

Here’s some maths to begin with. If you look at what you’re daily budget is or the budget of anything, there are three things on the top that are very expensive. We’ll start with all of our personal budgets in our lives. Number one, and not necessarily in this order, is real estate. You have a mortgage, rent, or whatever. That in of itself tells you that if a lot of money is coming out of our pockets every month, it’s going somewhere. We’ll talk all about where it’s going. Number two, real estate, healthcare, and education are the three largest budget items that we all have. It’s what the governments have. Those are the three largest items for the government.

Hold on a moment. I know a lot of people that have cars in there. I’m not saying that it’s good or bad. I like your math better. I know a lot of people who are upside down and they do cars. I’m sure you know this. Cars, real estate, and fun. Seriously. This is why the world is upside down right now. I’m not kidding. If you go on Facebook or social media, it looks like cars, entertainment, real estate, and then food and clothing. Somewhere at the bottom is education and healthcare. They are way low.

They are optional. Education and healthcare are optional.

I’m not trying to say that. For someone who’s 21 years old, that’s very true. We may know some people like that.

Real estate is an expensive option for a lot of people now, especially in a big city. You can stay on the sidewalk and that’s free. Where did this go, Jill? We always count on Jill to take us to a place that is completely unintended on the show.

Thank you for saying unintended, not saying unimportant. I thought that’s what you were going to say. All right, back to it.

Here are the four. We’ll talk about it on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday kind of thing. On Tuesday, we’re going to talk about the landlord model. That’s an obvious choice when you buy a house or buy something, you rent it, and there are some huge benefits. Depending on your personality type, there are pros and cons to all of these things.

On Wednesday, we’ll talk about the real estate flipping model, which is our preferred model and it’s what Land Academy is all about, and how Jill and I take it even a step further. In the back of my head, every time I look at any type of business model with anything, I think how fast and easy is it. How fast and easy is it for me to create equity for myself? In flipping, I don’t think anybody can deny it. It is the fastest and the easiest.

We have to tell you, we’re not talking rehab. We’ll fill you in more.

We’ll talk about that on Friday. On Thursday, we’ll talk about the real estate service industry. All the people that are involved in trying to get their fingers into your real estate, real estate agents, everything from handyman. The are too many to mention. We’ll mention them all on Thursday, for sure, but mortgage brokers and actually, mortgage companies, title agents, real estate managers, people who manage rental portfolios. There’s a huge service industry that keeps people employed, surrounded by the real estate deals that you do.

Discord Question

You can choose to get involved in that and make some dough for yourself. On Friday, finally, the modern construction industry, which means developers, contractors, subcontractors, and construction workers. By the way, it’s my favorite. Where would we be with that construction worldwide in the universe? Where would we be about without it? We’re not heavily involved in it, although we are involved in it, and Jill and I’ll talk about that on Friday. It’s not the fastest way to make money, but you can create some amazing equity for yourself and feel good about it. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Lan Academy member Discord forum. We take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request. Jill, let’s take the question.

Modern construction is not the fastest way to make money, but you can create some amazing equity for yourself and feel good about it. Share on X

Davon wrote, “Hello, Land Academy team. My goal is to be more precise with the records I’m pulling. After selecting a county and applying filters for vacant land, I’m left with over 1,000 records, which is great. However, I need to manually move certain parcels. For example, those that can only be identified visually such as actively farmed land. This required the record count to be under 1,000. The problem is that I was being charged $100. I have to export at least 1,000 records at a time. That’s a free Land Academy thing, by the way, but I’m able to visually review more than 1,000 records at once. Does anyone have a workaround for this or a more efficient method?”

I do have a workaround for this. I’m not picking on anybody, but I’m super glad you asked this question because I think it’s going to clarify the process of pulling data, reviewing data, and getting it from the point where you pull it, that decision that you make to pull records in which ones you pull, and what could go in the mail.

For some people, it’s daunting. For me, it’s not only because I’ve done it a million times. Here’s the deal. Number one, please review chapter 3 and chapter 4 of Land Academy 3.0. I go through this process of what Jill would call a painful delivery. Here’s the deal. Data is cheap. We make it free, but sending the mail is very expensive. I would highly recommend that you go to WallStreetPrep.com and take an Excel course.

Many people have taken it in our group and they’ve all come back. I’ve never heard anything bad about it. You should not be limiting yourself in any way. It’s how many records you pull, analyze, and reduce from a number standpoint when you get ready for a mailer. I pull the entire county like every single record in a county. In Maricopa County where we are right now in Arizona, that’s 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 records. It’s not that expensive.

That’s what I was going to say. I’m wondering too. I wonder how big is this county. It could be a very small county that doesn’t have a lot of property. I’m curious if he’s accidentally already having too many things going on before he even hits the download button.

We’re in Career Path right now and we have multiple people in Career Path that have taken Career Path in the past. One of the guys’ names is Chris. He has reminded me of the last Career Path that he was involved in. I said this. Land Academy and land investment in general and real estate investment is not a place where you want to sit down and try to save money. Save money on your mortgage, save money on your kids’ birthday presents, and drive an old car. There are a lot of ways to save money. This is not one of them.

Real estate investment is not a place where you want to sit down and save money. Share on X

Not on your wife.

Do what you need to do with your wife. I’ve never figured it out. If you figure that out, please email me.

I’ll make up for myself.

If you have a podcast with your wife, please email me at Jack@LandAcademy.com and ask me how that’s going.

We’ll explain how yours is going. That’s funny.

Everybody pulls a ton of data. He was successful at this, pulling a ton of data and reducing it. There are a lot of ways. It reduces the amount of records that they’re going to send mail to because that’s just how it is.

It’s their nature for some reason. Why is that?

I understand praying to the efficiency God. I’m a middle-aged man. I get it. Efficiency is how and why I live and get up in the morning for a few degrees of it. You have to pull all the records, get in there, and however you reduce all of those records into your target is how you do it. I have a set way and it’s proven that it works. That’s what we teach, but it might be different for people in Career Path. I’ve never had anybody in Career Path, and there are people who make millions of dollars a year come to me and say, “I pull too many records.” I understand your point.

Four Career Choices

In a perfect world, if you’re going to do a 4,000-unit mailer, you download 4,000 records, and you look at them and you mail it. That will never happen. You’re going to pull a ton of data of all different types. It might be vacant land. There might be houses on it, but depending on what you’re trying to accomplish with that trailer, you’re going to have to extract all the anomalies in the data set and send it out to your target. I understand your frustration and it’s a great question. The answer is in the Land Academy 3.0. Today’s topic is the four career choices you have in real estate that Jill and I are going to go through.

I feel like there are 40. How did you narrow it down to 4?

Because they’re subsets.

Okay, got it. I didn’t know where we fell so you followed us falling in the Wednesday group.

Our bread and butter is flipping land. It says Land Academy right in the title, Jill.

I realized that, but we need to explain this a little bit. When I sat down and looked at the topics, not that you did anything wrong here. I would just clarify that. I thought when you put flippers, I was thinking rehab or I didn’t think of me in that category. I know what it is, but explain it to the planet.

Here are the four career choices you have whether you’re a long time in the industry or just starting out. You can choose the landlord model. There are all kinds of forms of landlords, you buy property. Maybe it’s an SFR, single-family residence. Maybe it’s a massive Class A apartment building. Maybe it’s a skyscraper in Manhattan. It might be triple net properties. You know, Chick-fil-A, triple net properties that you were on the real estate, and obviously, Chick-fil-A or whoever owns the operation.

There’s a ton, too many to list, and we’ll talk more about it tomorrow, but they all have one thing in common. You secure the real estate and equitable title and you rent it out. There are two huge amazing benefits to that. You have income every month and you have a balance sheet-type equity increase. It’s hugely attractive for the right personality type.

Number two, flipping is what we do. You buy or secure a piece of real estate and you sell it for more. The whole point is to buy it as inexpensively as you can and resell it theoretically for as much as you can. It’s not necessarily our specific model. You get in and out fast. You get tired of it. For a few months, you can stop doing it. There are a lot of benefits for our personality type. It may not come out on the podcast but Jill and I agree on this. It’s in and out situation. We’re just wired for both of us for whatever reason.

Number four is the service industry. We talked about this just a few minutes ago. There are so many people involved in the management and the changing of hands of real estate, starting with real estate agents, which we know all about, real estate property managers, and on and on, and then finally, construction. I think that construction chooses you. You don’t choose that career. I know people who love construction. It could be the people on HGTV who love design.

You could be a plumber. You could be everything from a regional mall developer and on and on. There are tons of constructions. We’ll talk about that on Friday. There are a lot of ways to make money in real estate. The best way in the end is to get me involved in all of that, which we are to some degree.

There are a lot of ways to make money in real estate. The best way is to get involved in multiple career paths to some degree. Share on X

Excellent.

Closing Words

Join us tomorrow, Tuesday. We’re going to talk about analyzing the landlord modeling real estate. You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.