Forget driving for dollars, it’s time to start driving for dumpsters! In this episode, Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit discuss the importance of analyzing local real estate markets using data-driven approaches. They explain why traditional methods like driving for dollars are inefficient and how data analysis can help investors identify undervalued or overvalued markets. They also share practical tips on how to access and interpret real estate market data, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision-making in real estate investing. Tune in to learn how to prepare for the 2025 real estate market adjustment and make informed investment decisions.

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2025 Real Estate Market Prep: Step 3 – Analyzing Local Markets (Driving For Dumpsters)

This is episode 2086. We are talking about Preparing for the 2025 Inevitable Real Estate Market Adjustment. This is step three of five this week. We’re going to talk about analyzing local markets, what Jill calls quite simply driving for dumpsters, which I was against in the beginning.

Thank you very much. I’m glad you like my little saying. Used to be driving for dollars, but now it’s driving for dumpsters.

We’ve complained and criticized driving for dollars for decades. Please do not drive for dollars. Please don’t actually drive for dumpsters.

Please, do not drive for dollars. Share on X

That’s true.

Just find a zip code where there are a lot of dumpsters and then go to town on the data.

We’ll explain in a minute.

Land Academy Member Question: When To Send A Mailer

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Mark wrote, “I was just curious at this point in the year what to do as far as timing of sending mail. If I send a mailer now, it would arrive right before Christmas and over the next couple of weeks between Christmas and New Year. Do you wait until the mailer would arrive after the New Year? If so, how long do you wait or do you just send it now? Thanks.”

I want to hear Jill’s answer. I wonder if mine’s the same.

Send it.

Send it.

I was actually talking to someone about this just the other day. They’re like, “I’m just about to do it. When do I hit the button?” I’m like, “Now.” Who would not want to get an offer to sell some land that they still haven’t used now and they’ve had it for who knows how many years, right about the time, they’re staring at their wife’s receipts for how much money she spent over the holidays?

By the way, wife always gets it on the show.

That’s true. Our house is not always the wife.

I think that you’re the defender of the wife.

Excuse me. Let me back up. Who would not want to get an offer for, let’s just say, somewhere north of $10,000 right when they see their husband bought another motorcycle that, there you go, for themselves for Christmas?

People need cash regardless of gender.

People need off-road vehicles too. Poor people need off-road vehicles too.

I long to be someone who just their primary vehicle is a Polaris Ranger. That’s what I want.

I know.

As soon as possible actually.

I know. We both do.

I know.

The point is, let her rip. The end of the year is great. It’s often I get these great, amazing, crazy home run deals because we’re like, “You know what, Jill? If we can get this done by the end of the year and out of my name and into yours, you can have it. You can have it for X because I do not need to go into another year with this. My accountant’s already bugging me. My wife’s bugging me. My husband’s bugging me. Fill in the blank. I shouldn’t have bought it anyway, we’re never going to build there, we’re not going to retire there.” Whatever and just frankly, I need the dough.

Who doesn’t want to get a fall-out-of-the-sky offer to cash out of something that you don’t use? Think about all the crap that you have in your garage. Somebody just offered $12,000 for it.

I’ll come clean out your garage for you. I have a couple of things right now. I wish someone would send me an offer.

If your wife gets a hold letter before you do on that $12,000 garage thing, it’s you’re going to come home to an empty garage and she’s going to make you clean it and then park all the cars in there again.

It’s a good thing.

The First Mailer Is Often Not Always A Success

I want you to take a step back before we end this because this is super important and many people in our group and in real estate don’t understand this. I’ll never understand why. I want you to take five steps back and look at a blank whiteboard. I want you to write on the whiteboard the professions in this world that you could choose that only require you taking one crack at it.

Bus driver.

You’re going to learn to be a bus driver and the first time you get on a bus, you’re going to know how to do it. In fact, you’re going to have the same amount of success. The first time you sit in front of a bus, on a bus seat, and driving a bunch of people behind you as a person who’s been doing it for 35 years. Not going to happen. Same thing with brain surgery. God help us all. If every time, the only way you could have surgery on your brain is if you needed it for the person who’s doing it for the first time in their life. For some reason, people think they’re going to send one mailer out, and be amazing at it, and buy 1 or 2 pieces of property.

Follow me on this one. I like where you’re going with this. What if I go to bus driver school and I pass everything with flying colors and I go out and get an accident? I’m not trying to blame my teacher. Seriously. You didn’t do enough that I got in an accident. No.

What if I pick up a guitar and after two hours of horsing around with it, expect to play like Eddie Van Halen?

I was going to say you get lessons from Eddie Van Halen. I love this. We have Eddie Van Halen to the house. A couple of years back.

His ghost.

I know. Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper is here and Alice Cooper doesn’t live very far. We get Alice Cooper over to give me singing lessons.

God help us all.

Good, you got you. This is even better. I’m going to call him up, get him over here. We have Jill singing lessons and I’m going to go, “Alice, I still don’t sing like you and it’s your fault.”

He’s qualified to give you golf lessons now.

I bet he is.

Not me, you.

Yeah.

One day you and I are going to go play golf together and I’m going to hire a film crew in the trees. It’s going to be just a freak show anyway.

That’ll be entertaining.

Kidding aside, you’re not going to send one mailer out and smash us out of the park. You’re going to put yourself hopefully in a system, in an education system, in a system where you’re sending a bunch of mailers out. Each time you’re going to get better at doing the mail, you’re going to get to know more people in the education source that you choose. Maybe it’s a Land Academy, maybe it’s not.

Yield more deals.

Learn from your mistakes. Buy some property, some of it you’re going to regret, a lot of it you’re going to make a ton of money on it and you’re going to learn what the difference is. Just like anything else in life, including getting married and having children. You screw a bunch of stuff up, hopefully, everybody sticks around and you make it work. This is no different. You cannot talk your way out of it.

You cannot fast-track yourself. Some people are better at it than others. Some people were born to do it. Unfortunately, Jill and I, for whatever reason, hardwired at birth to buy and sell real estate and to utilize data to do that. I’ll never understand it, but that’s just how it is. Which makes us pretty qualified people too, as instructors and ringleaders, let’s call it. Please don’t expect and save up this one mailer that you want to time correctly around Christmas. You should be sending out 10 or 12 mailers a year and December should be no different than June.

You should be sending out 10 or 12 mailers a year. December should be no different than June. Share on X

Thank you.

Don’t you think?

Perfect, I agree.

Utilizing Data For Real Estate Investing

Our topic is Preparing for the 2025 Real Estate Market Inevitable Adjustment. It’s step three of five. We’re talking about analyzing local markets, AKA driving for dumpsters. Everything in what we do, we go to the data first because we want to buy a piece of real estate and sell it for more. That’s the entire business model. It’s as simple as that. To do that, we don’t walk out of the front door and start looking around for real estate to buy. Like 95% of the people in the real estate business who are have already failed. They don’t know that yet.

That’s what they do. They drive around the block. They drive to a bad part of town, maybe and drive test. That’s not how you do this. What you do is you pull up data. Where do you get the data? I’ll tell you. Go to Realtor.com/Research/Data. Scroll down to the bottom and on the bottom right, you’re going to see historical zip code data. There are a bunch of things you can download there and I would heavily recommend. You lock yourself in a dark room and tell your kids to raise themselves for a couple of hours.

I was going to say a couple of years, I’m like, “No, where’s it going?” Like hours is fine.

I used to say that to our kids, “You’re going to raise yourselves for the next three hours. Mom and I are doing something that we actually want to do.”

It’s, “Sorry, it doesn’t involve you.”

Download that data. It’s almost a million lines in Excel. Once you have it downloaded, it’s every single zip code and the performance statistics of that real estate market per zip code for the last trailing, I think probably eighteen months-ish. Once you get it all organized how you want and this is what we teach in Land Academy and in Career Path. You’re going to see and start with them as it come that you can visualize. Wherever you live, there’s going to be a zip code that is boarded up and burned out.

There’s going to be one that’s middle of the road and there’s going to be one that’s crazy expensive and I want you to really look at the statistics that are associated with those zip codes and those real estate markets and you’ll see why the middle pricing and I want you to see why that moves so much faster and the other two ZIP codes. For the really wealthy one and the really run-down one, the velocity of how those assets trade is much slower.

You can see over the last year and a half, when the days on the market go up and down from a seasonal standpoint, every month of every year for the last eighteen months, you can see if the market is overpriced. This is called analyzing these local markets. I want you to find out which one of those zip codes seems like it’s undervalued or overvalued. If it’s overvalued, that’s a place where you can expect a pretty substantial market adjustment in 2025.

You’re not going to be able to do this driving around. Looking at the actual asset and analyzing the actual asset, the house or the piece of land is almost insignificant in what we do. It’s all about the data and looking at it and saying, “This is so undervalued, it’s silly. I’m going to buy it and resell it.” I might not even walk through the front door. In fact, I’m doing a presentation later today when we’re recording this about this exact topic. I looked at all the deals that we did in one specific year, the houses. I have never been to any of those houses.

No, I only did it when we filmed House Academy. I flew there with a camera guy just to show them and talk about them in front of them. That was the first time I ever physically saw the asset.

The point of this episode is not for you to learn how to do this. I just want you to please know that this is how the best way to do it. Is to check the data first and look at these markets. It doesn’t take anything more than simply downloading a source of data and reviewing it. Start to put together a plan.

Check the data first. Look at these markets. It doesn't take anything more than simply downloading a source of data, reviewing it, and then putting together a plan. Share on X

“I love this zip code over here. I’m not so sure about this zip code over here. I can take these nineteen zip codes off my list. They’re not overvalued. They’re not performing the way that I want to see them perform as an investor.” Join us next time. Again, we’re prepping for next year, 2025, the real estate market, and how it’s going to adjust itself and you need to establish Deal Flow. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• Realtor