Capping off their discussion about buying and selling real estate in 2025, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit discuss how they resell properties to ensure profitability. They share their strategies on securing profits despite the many risks of land selling and the ever-changing market trends.

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Ensure Profitability: The Right Way To Resell Properties

This is episode number 2103. Today’s Friday and we are talking about how we resell properties to ensure profitability. All this week, Jill and I have been talking about how we are scheduled to earn about $2.5 million in 2025, buying and selling real estate. This is the last installment on that. If you’ve done everything right. You have purchased property that you believe you can resell for more according to your schedule to hear your budget.

Or you wouldn’t buy it.

Spoiler alert.

By the way, if you think you can. If you don’t think you can, then you don’t buy it. Gets cut to the chase there

Cut to the chase.

Thank you.

Buy property under its value. It’s right in the title of our whole thing. The title of Land Academy is We buy undervalued property. When you buy the property correctly, selling it is a magical, fun, and simple experience for everyone.

When you buy property correctly, selling it is a magical, fun, and simple experience. Share on X

We never say unwanted but undervalued.

Discord Question: How To Tell People No

Each day in the show we answer a question from our Land Academy Discord forum member. We take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular requests.

Jackson wrote, “Hi, I’m new to Land Academy and I’m now getting a lot of responses to my first mailer.” Congratulations. “I have a problem telling people no at the price they want for their land. Seems like Jill has gotten over this. Any advice?” This is good. Let’s role-play. I want to hear how this will go. Ready? I’m me and you’re the seller.

You sent me this offer of $38,000 for my property?

What do you think it’s worth?

I think it’s worth $3.8 million.

Jackson, here’s what you do. No.

Just say no.

Let’s continue this because this could be good. I said what do you think it’s worth and you said 3.8 million. Holy cow. What did I miss? Is there a casino on it?

No, there’s no casino. It’s my life’s dream and that’s what I want to retire on. I’m just joking. In reality, I think at $100,000, I probably could sell that to my wife.

Tell me again. Why do you price it that much? It looks like you guys paid $20,000 for it.

Because that’s how much I need. I have medical bills that are close to that.

Now, you know, and now you start the conversation. It’s not about the land.

It’s never about the land.

I’m going to do this. This is how you find what’s going on too and then you’re going to get on the same page. I wish I could do it, but what else can you sell? You know about that. You need $100,000 to pay your medical bills. I’m happy to give you $40,000 for your property but that’s the best I can do. If you have any more property, I can buy that too.

She’s meeting the seller from where they’re coming.

I told him what I could do and that’s it. It’s not $100,000 but I can give you $40,000 and that’s going to make a nice dent in it. Let’s talk about it.

At some point, if they’re a real seller, in my opinion, it will no longer be about price. It will be about Jill.

It’s about I’m going to get them some cash. Right now, they’re talking to me, 40 is better than 0. They need 100. What else are they going to do? Are you going to sell your house? I can’t. I don’t know where to go. I got it. All right. This is the least I can help you out with this chunk. You’re right. Let’s get this done.

Jill is hardwired from the minute she was born to say yes. She’s correct. She has had an issue with saying no in the past.

I don’t understand the word no.

You need to try these properties. You need to purchase that at the correct amount. It’s not a hard and fast thing. If you look at a property, a lot of times, we’ll do a mailer. I underprice it. I come back and people say, “No, I wanted $80,000. That’s its worth.”

It might be. That’s it. You can talk about a casino but they’ll come back and say, “You know what? I put a barn on it and I put a well in, and this, this, and this because I thought it was going to, and I poured the path. Now, let’s talk. I did not know that.

This is the attrition concept. One percent are going to respond, 50% of that 1% are going to be angry, and then the rest are up to you to make a deal happen. It just comes down to meeting people from where they come from.

Good question, Jackson.

Reselling Properties And Ensuring Profitability

Today’s topic is how we resale properties to ensure profitability. If you have an expectation to make $100,000 a deal, which is what we’ve been talking about, then you better buy a property, if it’s worth $200,000 for less than $100,000. In fact, a lot less. Jill let the cat out of the bag right out of the fire and I’m glad because of all the things we do here, this is the least complicated one and the most automatic.

That’s the reason we hire a real estate agent to just go do all the work most of the time on the south side because we bought it correctly. We stuck to our acquisition criteria. We did all the stuff in the first four days this entire week. We executed that according to the plan and now we can turn it over to a person who’s got a fourth-grade education like a real estate agent.

You can’t say that. I was going to make a comment about how they don’t have to be that good because I bought them.

That’s what I said.

I know.

I’m sorry, 8th grade.

Anyway, the point is it hasn’t come up in a long time, but maybe two because I have been taking the calls. When we first watched Land Academy, I was on the front line. We were in it. We wanted it to be this. I would take a lot of inbound calls. What the heck are you doing? How do you double your money? I’m like, “Think about this, sir.” I would say this often. What car do you own? I own a 2023 Lexus convertible. What’s it worth right now, 40? What if I had it for sale to you for $22,000, would you buy it? Well, heck yeah. I said, “That’s what we do with land.” What are you talking about? It’s worth 40. I’m selling it for 22. Pretty hard to screw that up. Yeah, I guess you’re right. How did you get it for 22? Welcome to Land Academy because I bought it for 10. Next. He’s like, “Oh, thank you.”

This confuses a lot of people. People have this notion of why the hell. We’ve been so conditioned to look at things like Zillow and the MLS where there’s just a range of properties for sale. It’s very logical to think the ones that are cheaper in this range of properties that are for sale in his upcode are worst and the ones that are more expensive are better. They have better wallpaper and better finishes. That’s just not the case. The fact is there’s a ton of time that the properties are being traded or sold at a price because of life circumstances. There’s a whole subculture of real estate acquisition out there that’s based on the obituaries.

I like your fixtures analogy because it doesn’t matter if it’s the prettiest house on the block or the yuckiest house on the block. It’s what you bought it for. That’s the whole point because it works both ways. It could be a fallen-down dump. Great. I would pay to get it all cleaned up. It’s worth $300,000 in this condition. That’s worth $200,000 so I’m going to buy it for $110, $120, or $140, something like that. Whatever those are. It’s a house with a little bit different kind of numbers. It’s the same place for land.

Picture a block of houses with ten houses that are exactly the same and a picture on your computer screen. There are ten things going on in the families that own those houses. Ten different wildly strange different things are happening.

Under the roof.

We all think because of the freaking HGTV and all of that, that the properties that are the most celebrated ones are the prettiest or the most up-to-date, or decorated the best or renovated the best. We’re just wired that way. It’s unfortunate because that’s not the case at all. Whatever life circumstances those ten families are going through, maybe the guy at the end passed away and has no heirs. Somebody who is selling the estate, I just want the estate to be over. Maybe you just renovated his house. Maybe he didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The price per square foot is what matters.

I’m using that as an example because it translates directly to land. That’s why we can resell properties and ensure our profitability because we buy at the right price or we don’t buy it. We have complete control of this. Many people are of different types. If you own a restaurant, you live and die by who walks through the front door. You have no real control in my opinion. We have a massive amount of control by saying no to the acquisition.

If you own a restaurant, you live and die by who walks through the front door. You have no real control. Share on X

We have owned a restaurant.

Briefly.

That’s a good point. I’m going to finish the thought about the control.

You have complete control. If somebody says like an example earlier if you sent out an offer for $38,000 and they say, “No, I want $80,000,” then you say no or you say, “You know what? I can squeeze out 60 because I think it’ll work in the property.” It better be worth 120. Not worth 120. You know you can sell it at 120 because it’s way below the actual market. If it all goes correctly, the seller is going to say, “Thank you. I don’t want to go through this. I didn’t want to go through listening at selling it. We just went through that. My son went through it.” They’ll tell you the whole story. “All I want to do is just get the $40,000 or $60,000 or whatever the number is and be on my way.”

It’s funny. This is a common theme of people coming to Land Academy. They call in. They want to learn about this and then they’re like, “How much to join?” and then the next sentence says, “As soon as I sell this property, I can afford to do this.” What do you have? What’s going on? What’s taking me six months to sell? What happened? I was trying to wing it. I bought this property thinking I could do it, but it’s still not sold. Ultimately, it comes back to one thing. I’m like, “You paid too much, didn’t you?” They’re like, “Yep.” I said, “All right.” That’s often what happens.

I’m super glad you brought this up. Why would you pay too much? We have properties we paid too much for. You don’t need to beat yourself up over it. Why would somebody pay too much for a piece of property?

A) They are inexperienced. B) They think something magical is going to happen like if I hold on to it for a little time, it’s going to magically whatever, or they think they’re going to improve or do something to it, and then it doesn’t pan out. I think most of the time it’s inexperience.

What happens in the thought process during your diligence, the time when you’ve got a seller who wants to sell it for $80,000 and you want to pay $38,000? There’s something that happens during the due diligence process in yourself when you make a decision. If any part of the decision is this, “It’s too much. I don’t really want to pay it but I want to get a deal done. I guess I’ll take the risk.”

“I think it’ll make 20.”

“I guess I’ll take the risk.” We do not buy property that Jill and I consider in any way a risk. We are not here to take risks. We are here to shuffle data around. Jill is here to make friends on the phone. We’re going to buy the property for the price that we tell them. We’re going to buy the property that we are 100% sure is cheap enough so when everything goes wrong, we still got our money back. There’s no risk. I had to get over this. Very early in my career, that was a huge problem for me because I wanted to get my career going. I wanted to buy and sell land. I call it a deal junkie. You don’t want to do deals just to do them. You want to hear them make some dough.

Episode Wrap-up And Next Week’s Teaser

Join us next week for five more interesting episodes. I hope you got a lot out of deals this week. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• Land Academy Discord
• Zillow
• MLS