Structuring Infill Lot Development with Home Builders (LA 1436) Transcript: Steve Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt: Hey. Steve Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWitt: I’m Jill DeWitt broadcasting from beautiful Southern Arizona. Steve Butala: Today, jill and I talk about Structuring Infill Lot Development Deals with Home Builders and it’s Infill Lot. I-N-F-I-L-L. It’s pretty funny, because I’ve heard people call it infield. Jill DeWitt: Oh. Steve Butala: And, inful. Jill DeWitt: Inful? Steve Butala: I-N-F- Jill DeWitt: F-U-L? Steve Butala: Or, something. F-O-O-L. Jill DeWitt: Infilt? Infold? Unfold? Steve Butala: So you’re filling in a lot between two houses. We’ll talk all about that. There’s a deal we’re involved in that’s pretty pertinent, but before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free. Jill DeWitt: Hey, by the way, if you are a Land Academy member, you can also find us on Discord. So Julius wrote, “Hi everyone. My name is Julius, and I’m just jumping into land investing 100% fresh. I had been thinking about it from my own personal property purchases for a while now, but after some research found this business model to be rather incredible.” Steve Butala: Good. Jill DeWitt: Yeah, you’re right. “I’m currently a grad student. I’m in the process of saving up to join Land Academy. I have some extra capital from my actual mailers and deals when that time comes. My question is this. For someone who is totally new, how would you recommend someone who has a couple months to prep make the most of their time doing so before diving in? What are some good resources to really map out the process, and maybe even get a feel for searching for, scrubbing and playing with some data? I’d also be super grateful to get the chance to speak with someone who’s been through it, to see how they learn from those first steps. In any case, it’s a pleasure to be here and very excited to start. Thanks very much and wishing everyone all the best. Cheers, Julius.” Oh. That’s awesome. You want to answer first? Or, you want me to answer? Steve Butala: Yeah. I mean, Land Academy is very much like Alcoholics Anonymous. Jill DeWitt: Oh my gosh. Not at all what I was going to say. Steve Butala: You’re in a group, and there’s some steps to complete before you can get a chip. Jill DeWitt: Move forward. Steve Butala: Instead of getting a chip, you get a big bank balance. Jill DeWitt: Or a deed. Steve Butala: Then, if you’re lucky, you can find somebody who will, on a personal one-to-one basis, mentor you. Just like AA. Jill DeWitt: Like your sponsor. Mentor. We call it mentor, some call it sponsor, pick a word. Oh my gosh. Steve Butala: Jill’s going to answer. Jill DeWitt: Well, I was going to say, you’re doing everything right. Start communicating. Steve Butala: That’s what I think too. Yeah. Jill DeWitt: Communicate with everyone. Okay. Yeah. If you don’t know Excel, get to be a wiz in Excel. You don’t have to know exactly what we’re scrubbing, just get really good at maneuvering and not looking at the keys when using Excel. That’s a lot of it. Just, I think that there’s so much out there. Listening to this show is one. There’s so much free content that you and I put out over the years now, five going on six years, that you can really get a lot of information right there. I would just spend time listening, watching, following, writing, communicating, then you’re going to get a real good idea. Enough that you think, “I got this,” but wait for it. Then, when you’re ready and you join, it’s going to put all the little moving parts in place. You’re going to know, “Oh, I put this before that, then I do this. That’s the nuances. I really need to know about that,” because it’s impossible here for you and I to really… We do, but it just puts it all in place, then spills it out. Steve Butala: I can tell how this is written, how you’re presenting yourself, the fact that you’re a grad student. Jill DeWitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You’re saving money. Steve Butala: You’re saving money. I would encourage this for anybody, regardless of age or search circumstance. Do a ton of research before you ever decide to plop some money down with anything. Jill DeWitt: Right. Steve Butala: Anything. I don’t care if you’re buying a convenience store. Your timing’s great. The biggest reason, these things, when we do exit interviews when people, when they rarely do, but they do leave Land Academy. Jill DeWitt: Right. Steve Butala: The vast majority of the time that they leave is because they had some life event. It’s not because they couldn’t send mail out, they didn’t understand it, or there was some big, huge roadblock. It was just because one of their parents passed away, or just a life event happened. They couldn’t devote the time that they originally thought they could. Jill DeWitt: No, it’s funny. So many people, that they don’t really leave, they go on pause, then they come back. Steve Butala: Yeah. Right. Here’s the steps really quickly for you and everybody else. You find a County or a zip code, where you think people are going to respond to a lower priced offer. We use what’s called a red, green, yellow test for that. If you want details in this, just continue to ask questions in Land Investors like you are. When it passes those tasks, or you find a location and it passes, you download data. Jill and I are licensed providers for the three large data companies in the country. Download the data and get an offer out in the mail with a very specific price to thousands and thousands of people. Playing the averages, we’ve sent millions and millions of offers out, 400,000 or 500,000 offers, our group sends out all over the country every month with massive success. It’s all about how much time you develop to it. If you have, hopefully when you graduate or right before you do, you can work this in, because this is a perfect time in your life, a massive proponent of doing life things in order. Steve Butala: You don’t want to get married when you’re 17, have three kids, graduate from high school, then try to go to college and have a career. That’s backwards. Smart people can get themselves out of that. Smart, dedicated people. Jill DeWitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s true. Steve Butala: Boy, I’m not sitting here telling you I did even half of that right, but we’re sitting here for a reason. You have a huge, huge advantage is my point. Jill DeWitt: I was thinking. Oh, I’m sorry. The other thing I was going to say to, Julius, is, because you’re just trying to grasp your head, get a little head before you dive in. I understand that. Start watching markets too. Start paying attention to where people are going and why. Start watching trends, start watching where land… You can start watching and learning like, “Oh. Look at all these five to 10 acres over here, they sell really fast.” Start getting ideas where you’re going to send mail out, when you’re ready to pull the trigger. Steve Butala: Great. I mean, there’s tons and tons of stuff that you can do. Jill DeWitt: Yep. Steve Butala: Today’s topic, Structuring Infill Lot Development with Builders. This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWitt: Well, now we define infill lot, I-N-F-I-L-L. It’s funny how many people, they even spell it wrong all the time, they’ll say right, and they spell it wrong. I’m like, “Two Ls.” Steve Butala: It’s okay. I completely understand that. There’s infill lot opportunities all over this country. There’s people in our group that are dedicated to them. While I don’t, in a dedicated manner, necessarily send out what we have in the past with a lot of success. We’re more recreational land. That’s just our stable, or like ranches and stuff. Infill lots, we’re starting to see a lot of deals, because this is such a hot market, come through on our deal funding side. In one deal, which we’re involved in is a multiunit deal in a small town in the Southwest, that’s just on fire. The market’s on fire. The people that own all the profits of one owner, are retiring. We’re lucky enough, they’re all contiguous lots in a subdivision that’s completely developed except these lots. Rather than Jill and I writing a check, this is actually the meat of the show, this is how we’re structuring it. I went to the developer of all the other. There are two or three other builders in there, I should say builders. Steve Butala: I went to them and said, “We control these lots. We would like to cut a deal with you, where we make 5% of the sale price of the property when it’s done, when you’re done building it. For that, you will not have to come up with any cash for the land.” The regular sale price that we would have sold to the developer, believe me, they’re jumping up and down. They don’t have to come up with any money for the land. They only have to go get construction financing, or in one case, the guy’s got the money to do it, build the house, sell it, pay us what we originally were asking, which is a pretty high profit margin on a lot anyway, plus 5% of the top line. The math is fantastic for everybody. It’s a huge win-win for everyone. The sale price is the same as it would have been for all the other properties in the subdivision. Those properties are real easy to val- Jill DeWitt: I’m going to interview you here in a second. Okay? Steve Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWitt: How do you find these builders? Steve Butala: Oh, you just go to the County and you look up… It’s very easy to find, because they had to pull permits. The vertical development company for the properties had to pull up permits to get it, to build. Their phone number’s in there and everything. It’s incredibly simple. Jill DeWitt: How did you reach out to them, initially? Steve Butala: I called. I actually called. In one case, I emailed their email address in there, and said, “We’ve just got a hold of the rest of the properties in Subdivision Acts. I know you built 14,” it was very specific. “I know you built 28 of these yourself, and the price ranges were from X to Y,” because you can do all this research, extremely high level of accuracy. Some people drop the phone when you call them, with a phone call like this. People aren’t used to that level of… It’s the same reason our mailers work. Jill DeWitt: Isn’t that funny? Some people, that’s some of the hangups, is just, “How do I reach out to these people?” You pick up the phone. It’s not that hard. Then really quickly, early on, state who you are, what’s going on, what deal you have. Then like you just said, watch him go, “What’d you say? Hold on a moment.” Like, “Everybody leave my office. I got to take this call,” kind of thing. Steve Butala: We’re going down the path, and that’s a structure. You know where I got this idea? For movie stars, because Tom Hanks and some of the A list movie stars, they don’t take salaries anymore. They want a percentage of the revenue. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. That’s true. Steve Butala: We were due… When you tell a developer, “Hey, you don’t have to pay for any land,” you’re going to have to deal with the land. “I’m the land person. We got it covered.” Let’s get- Jill DeWitt: Don’t deal with it now, we’ll deal with it later, kind of thing? Steve Butala: Yeah. Well, just pay me when it’s sold. I’ll take the risks with you. They jump. They jump out of their share, because it’s hard. If you ask any builder, any builder, anywhere, the only reason they’re not building a 7,000,000 more units right now is because they can’t find the land or structure land deals, or they don’t know how to talk to landowners. Jill DeWitt: It’s too much money. That kind of thing too. Steve Butala: We’ll net probably 1.2 on this when it’s done, and it should be done, let’s just say, a year from now. I think it might be less, because they’re contiguous lots. They’re going to take them down in five to eight unit tranches. Jill DeWitt: That’s awesome. Time to go to other questions I want to ask you. Did you need an attorney to get this paperwork done? Steve Butala: Yes. Jill DeWitt: Okay. Steve Butala: Hell yes. Jill DeWitt: All right. Steve Butala: They have one too. Jill DeWitt: Okay, cool. All right. Steve Butala: That’s a good question. Jill DeWitt: Thank you very much. I’m trying to think, what does everybody want to know about this? Yeah. What is the risk? Steve Butala: Jill really doesn’t know about this deal. I mean, what is it? Jill DeWitt: I’m about to find- Steve Butala: We do separate stuff. Jill DeWitt: What’s the risk? Steve Butala: The risk is this. The market may stop, but I don’t see that as a risk. Jill DeWitt: You want to see what I see, by the way? Here’s why I don’t see it as a risk, because you control the asset, you hold the land. Anything they do on that land, if there’s any risk and they change their mind and back out, great. Now I’ve got the land and a slab, and plans. Steve Butala: And a half built house. Jill DeWitt: And everything like. I’m sure you write that into the contract. That’s like, “Hey, if anything goes sideways, it’s mine to take.” Steve Butala: Right. Jill DeWitt: “You have the appliances, but the rest of the structure, that stays with me.” Steve Butala: On the flip side of that, the developer gets to walk away, Jill DeWitt: Right. Steve Butala: They don’t- Jill DeWitt: No one’s going to sue them. Steve Butala: No one’s suing. That’s right. He’s only lost, whatever he’s put into it, and his subcontractors. That’s for them to deal with, not me. Jill DeWitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s awesome. Steve Butala: Lucky to get good… We’re in a high… Say we’re doing incentives in a very high development state. If you’re going to do this in Indiana, it’d be tough. It’s just not… The Midwest has not classically seen the surge of development, SFR development. Jill DeWitt: Right. You’re picking hot areas, where days on market are obviously low, and they’re running out of inventory? Steve Butala: Yeah. I mean, this is a deal funding deal. It came to us. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. Did I miss anything? Steve Butala: I don’t think so. I mean, this is not the longest episode in the world, but here’s the thing. This is really what… I can close on this. Gee Steve, don’t you tell us to not veer from what you’re- Jill DeWitt: From what you do. Steve Butala: Yeah. Why- Jill DeWitt: Is this something shiny? Steve Butala: Right. why- Jill DeWitt: What are you thinking? Steve Butala: What’s next? Golf courses? Are you going to buy a- Jill DeWitt: Great- Steve Butala: Marina? Multifamily properties? No. This is a land deal. This is a land deal in a crazy hot market, that my first choice, I could very easily say, “We’re buying these properties. All these properties for $800 grand. We’re going to sell them for 1.6, make 800,000 bucks. We’re going to sell them to these developers. They would go get financing. They would do all this stuff and take all the risks. We would be cashed out, and that’s it.” Or, I could say, “I’m going to get that money anyway. I’m going to take the risk. I’ll wait a year. I don’t care. We have the properties. They’re all tied up, and I’m going to get 6% on top of whatever 600 times 20 is.” That’s a lot. 600 times two million. No, 600 times 20, yeah. Jill DeWitt: Okay. Awesome. Steve Butala: It’s a great deal for us. I’m happy to take the risk, and the builders could not be happier. Jill DeWitt: Awesome. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show. Steve Butala: Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called Personal Career Advice from Steven and Jill. You Are Not Alone in Your Real Estate Ambition. Jill DeWitt: I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about that tomorrow. I think we’re going to have different things. I know we’re going to have different things. Steve Butala: Well, it’s like Julius’s thing here. We’re just going to expound on that. Jill DeWitt: Cool. That’s super cool. If you need to access to any ownership or property details, including owner phone numbers and FEMA flood overlays, check out neighborscoop.com. Can’t even say that today, neighborscoop.com, created by investors, that’s us, for investors like you. We are Steve and Jill. Steve Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information- Jill DeWitt: And inspiration- Steve Butala: To buy undervalued property.

—————————————-

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Interview with Member Laurie Phillips (LA 1434)

Steven Butala:
Steven and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hello.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California.

Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I interview Member Laurie Phillips. Laurie, welcome.

Laurie Phillips:
Thank you.

Steven Butala:
Give us just a little introduction and then we’ll take this question. Tell us where you are and whether or not you’re happy to be here at all.

Laurie Phillips:
All right. Well, I live in Richmond, Virginia and I’ve been here for a while. I’m happy to be here. I know that we’ve talked before. Some of the things I’m doing in my business, which is not very old, there are a little different than what some other people did. Might be interesting to hear what you think about it.

Steven Butala:
I can’t wait to hear. Everybody who’s different in this group seems to do extremely well. You take the basic stuff that we offer-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
In the environment and then make it your own.

Jill DeWit:
You make it you’re own.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, exactly. Hey, before we get into it though let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit:
Brandon asked, I’m a new member based in Atlanta, Georgia. Three weeks old and I’m trying to choose a market and ultimately do my first mailer in Alabama. I’m considering the following counties, low population density but near a city, low population density and days on market, less than 100 days. I’ve searched the forum… They’ve searched and the forum doesn’t seem to have much conversation or topics about Alabama. Can anyone speak to their experience working Alabama or any of these counties?

Steven Butala:
Laurie, I chose this question because you actually answered it in the forum. I think better than I ever would have answered it. Do you remember this question?

Laurie Phillips:
I don’t. Yeah.

Steven Butala:
That’s great. You want to take a shot at it?

Laurie Phillips:
Why don’t you go ahead and read what I wrote? I answer a lot of questions in the forum. I really enjoyed it and they make me think. I don’t recall this one.

Steven Butala:
Go for it. What you said was Steve spends a lot of time addressing this topic and maybe you should listen to him. I’m paraphrasing. I’ll find the question though.

Jill DeWit:
That’s awesome. That’s hilarious. Trying to find it here.

Steven Butala:
Here it is. You got it.

Jill DeWit:
There we go.

Steven Butala:
Do I read it, Jill?

Jill DeWit:
Will read. This is good. Hi Brandon and welcome. I’m pretty new to… This was months ago. After a lot of overthinking, should I mail to this particular vacation county? Even though it’s five hours from a population area, et cetera. I went back to Land Academy 1.0 and followed Steve’s instructions exactly for picking a new County. I decided being new wasn’t the right time to be creative. His process didn’t involve minute analysis.

Jill DeWit:
Just pick a county, follow the process, have some data to support your choices and mail. That’s what I did but you may have more knowledge of the areas or REI in general. Take what I say above with your experience in mind. Let me keep going.

Steven Butala:
No-

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
She goes on to say-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
The real clear message is here and I can concur exactly. Get the education under your belt. Get that mailer too under your belt and adjust and do the research. But you got to get it out the door, right? The truth is, I have to get a mailer out the door and I’m two days late on it.

Jill DeWit:
Yes, he is.

Steven Butala:
This is just-

Jill DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Butala:
It happens to everybody. Today’s topic interview with member Laurie Phillips. This is the meat of the show. All right. I can’t wait to hear it. Laurie what’s… When did you join? What’s your experience been? Then, how did you veer off into your own direction?

Laurie Phillips:
All right. Well, I joined in beginning of October of last year, 2019. I went through the education programs and I thought about things way too long. I didn’t get my first mailer out until about five weeks after I started. But one of the things I did was in the very first video that you did, you said, “Open an account on Craigslist and put up this listing.”

Laurie Phillips:
I did exactly that. Because I’d already decided, I’m not in this to try it out, I’m in this because I really want to do this. I’m going to commit as much as it takes to make that happen. I went ahead, I opened a Craigslist account, stuck the ad up there, exactly the way you wrote it, bought three properties profit. I mean, I bought three properties, I think before I had even listened twice to the Jill’s inbound caller script. I had no idea what I was doing.

Laurie Phillips:
Fortunately, the people that I bought them from were so nice and motivated. It just went from there. I got my first couple of mailers out and they were small. Now, I go look at it and say, “They weren’t very significant.” But I did buy a couple pieces of property from them. In one case, I bought a five acre piece of land and a 10 acre piece of land from a woman for $5,000. They sold together for 161,000.

Steven Butala:
Oh my God.

Laurie Phillips:
I didn’t figure out the rate of return on that one but I think it’s good enough.

Jill DeWit:
I think that’ll work.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. Well, it’s in the thousands of-

Jill DeWit:
That’s hilarious.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. It was an area I knew it would take a little while because it was such highly valued property. But there weren’t many properties in that area on the market. One mistake I made with that mailer is I mailed to the county before I checked to see what county data was available online. Now, I don’t mail anywhere where I can’t get the county GIS, county taxes and deeds available online. It just makes life so much easier.

Laurie Phillips:
What I had to do there was, I spent a lot of time on the phone with the people in the county and they were wonderful. They ran foundings, they email them to me, they charged me 110 bucks per document to send them to me. I figured out that from now on, I wanted those things readily available. But another thing I did was I went to a title company to talk to them about these properties. They went through, I don’t know, probably 14 or 15 emails to me, educating me on how to deal with properties that are joint tenants where one tenant or one person dies.

Laurie Phillips:
Properties that it’s unclear who the heir’s supposed to be for it. Even though they never got the deal to close the property with us, they were just wonderful to deal with. I’m hugely in favor. You’ll see me write about this all the time, pick up the phone and call the experts. Many people waste so much time looking for the answer online and all you have to do is pick up the phone and call the county.

Laurie Phillips:
You’re not interrupting their day. That’s why they’re there. That’s it. There were people that I called when I was new who were just experts in real estate and different areas. They love to talk and love to educate me on different areas. That’s been really helpful too.

Jill DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Butala:
You have that aptitude and the attitude and the adapt and overcome, just the way that you’re going about this, that all the members in our advanced group have. We usually choose advanced group members based on how much mail they’ve sent and their contribution and all that. But I’m going to go off… I got preapproval to invite you to the advanced group today, if you’d like to join us.

Laurie Phillips:
Well, thank you. Did Jill give you the approval?

Jill DeWit:
No, it wasn’t me.

Steven Butala:
Oh no. It’s-

Jill DeWit:
I didn’t have an idea.

Steven Butala:
Oh no. Jill and I have no idea what goes on in any of the companies we own at all. I had to ask like, [crosstalk 00:08:47]. I’ll tell you, the truth is, I was trying to explain this to somebody recently. We have two companies that Jill and I are… We work in day in and day out. It’s the land. There are two land companies.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
The ones where we buy to sell the land. Jill and I still just do that, the roots of it. But as far as Land Academy goes and all of that, we have a lot of other people handling most of that.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Not all of it. We have a couple of meetings a week and that’s it. I got at a very appreciative and positive approval to invite you to the group.

Laurie Phillips:
No, that’s great.

Jill DeWit:
It’s not that I must agree at all, Laurie. It’s just like, it’s not my decision.

Steven Butala:
But the one thing-

Laurie Phillips:
Okay, thank you.

Steven Butala:
The one characteristic that, had you just confirmed it I didn’t know. But you confirmed it is that the people in the advanced group that are doing a lot of deals, have a background in talking. There’s some version of business owners already. They have a sales background, they get on the phone. This is why Jill makes us so successful. She gets on the phone and just talks with people. She just gets what she wants. It’s not a preplanned. It’s just, that’s just who she is. You obviously have it too. So congratulations.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. It’s funny, Laurie. I can not understand too. You get them talking sometimes and then you can’t get off the phone. I’m like, “Okay, this is great.” It’s almost like, I didn’t want to know that much about the area. Telling me about the new churches that are coming or whatever’s going on in the area or the new crops. Who knows what’s coming in? The Amazon called or whatever. I That’s really great. It’s so funny. Sometimes they talk and talk and talk.

Steven Butala:
You know I’m going to ask you this question next. What’s different about you? What advice would you give to somebody who’s starting out? What’s different about you? How can you buy a $5,000 deal and turn it into 160,000?

Laurie Phillips:
Luck, in that case. Because I’ve yet to have that repaid. But I spent a lot of time reading the forum when I was new. Someone wrote in the forum at one point that they had skipped the whole desert square phase and gone right to buying more expensive property. I skipped the desert square phase and went right to. I think, the cheapest property I had had made an offer on at the time was about probably $2,500. I was able to turn a profit of three times that, easily.

Laurie Phillips:
Since then, I’ve bought some smaller properties. Mainly because I’ve found through some of my research that people sell smaller properties at a higher volume than they sell larger properties. It’s easier to find sellers of smaller properties. But I buy them if I can turn them over for about four times of what I paid them.

Steven Butala:
Amazing. We’ll buy for 30 and sell for 90, right now.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
In general, that’s the target that we’re going for? The mailer that I’m going to complete today is about maybe 12 counties total. Jill and I are in the middle of a contest to see who can make the most money.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
And-

Jill DeWit:
That’s the mailer I’m waiting on.

Steven Butala:
That’s the template. Which is strange. Because I’m going to do her mailer and I’m going to go do my own mailer.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
It’s just, the opportunity for me to win this contest over Jill is enormous.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. We’re agreed to picking our own areas for different reasons.

Steven Butala:
I hope you win. Because I win in the end.

Laurie Phillips:
Who’s going to price Jill’s deals?

Jill DeWit:
He is. He is-

Laurie Phillips:
She’s going to approve it though.

Jill DeWit:
But I’m going bless it at the end. But I went in and told him that… The area that I told him exact counties that I wanted, I told him the sizes that I wanted and pretty much how I want to go at it. He’s just doing that busy work for me.

Steven Butala:
I’m spending, what? Turned out now to be days, pricing.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Because there’s a lot of different counties. Well, how much time do you spend on pricing?

Laurie Phillips:
I used to spend a lot of time on pricing. But I have the tremendous fortune, this summer, of having a bunch of interns working for me. What happened was, as you know, a lot of jobs fell apart that people had expected to have for whatever duration. A lot of college kids were left without internships. This happened a little bit after I started looking for one intern and ended up finding kids with just incredible resumes. Couldn’t decide between one and two so hired them both. Then started getting hundreds of responses to ads that I put out there even after I’d hired people. Ended up hiring nine.

Jill DeWit:
Wow.

Laurie Phillips:
They are doing a ton of research for us right now. They’re researching everything from our past performance in, what made a successful mailer? What made successful, profitable properties that we bought? That’s, everyone who’s ever sent a mailer has that information. I mean, you have, how many rows of RealQuest data that you get that, if you go back and look at what’s in common across them, you can find areas and where you want to target more properties with those certain characteristics and owners with those certain characteristics.

Laurie Phillips:
They’re even taking it as far as… Jill, don’t listen to this. It’s going to bore you. They’re taking it as far as looking at the economies of the places where the owners live to see how they respond to offers as well. So-

Steven Butala:
It needs a census track data or local last week economy last week?

Laurie Phillips:
Last week.

Steven Butala:
Amazing.

Laurie Phillips:
Detailed and local.

Jill DeWit:
I have to say, “Thank you, Laurie. I appreciate that.” It’s funny. I was on a webinar yesterday, all about this. It was put on by Bisnow and I’m hearing that in those email groups and things and the stuff they put out. Anyway, it was a whole discussion on predictability. They’re coming up with this data product as one company, which is, basically most likely to sell. That’s what you’re looking at too based on past property experience, demographics and then other triggers that they… I am interested.

Steven Butala:
I mean, that brings up this point, the amount of data. We are all swimming in assessor data and manipulating it and using it very successfully. Specifically, people in the group and many, many, many other people that are just listeners. The types of data sets, the metadata that we’re collecting that will become available and you’re obviously paving a way here to make these decisions easier and more prevalent, are just amazing. What were you telling me? There are some data sets that were being discussed on that webinar that were surprising me.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Like Local economy data, local current economy data.

Jill DeWit:
Right. We know, one of the things too, it was really funny I took away from that was their data, the top two that they use is CoreLogic. I’m like… Then that it was funny, the facilitator of the call said, “Hey, you guys, one of the things I run into in my business, it’s all real estate, is a contact information.” She wouldn’t divulge that. I’m like, “Well, that’s hilarious.”

Steven Butala:
You mean like neighbors too?

Jill DeWit:
Yes.

Steven Butala:
Wow.

Jill DeWit:
She wouldn’t, how they’re getting and I’m sitting there going, “Wow.” I’m sure it’s not really as good as what we have. With our, what we put together to have the property address, owner address, phone numbers and all this stuff.

Steven Butala:
I grew up in an environment, from the Midwest, where no one talks about anything and all I was ever taught professionally and socially was don’t talk to anybody, keep offers to your vest-

Jill DeWit:
That’s what we’re doing.

Steven Butala:
Don’t share any data, mind your own business, make your own decisions. I came out here and it was exactly the opposite, in early 90s, in Arizona. I like this way better. I think the more stuff that we share, I just think it creates more business.

Jill DeWit:
Where it’s funny it’s, I think it’s an East Coast company that one that had analysts, was in New Jersey. They’re not sharing anything. I’m like, we have all that.

Steven Butala:
The .com model is free first. Then if you’re really into it, then pay. I love that.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
I have to ask you, Laurie, can you share some of the similar statistics about properties or mailers that worked?

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
Well, like I said before, the smaller properties really two to $6,000 offers are the ones most likely to be accepted. Obviously, economies that are hurting are Detroit all the time. Now that you left, Steve, there’s no income there, right?

Steven Butala:
No, I didn’t have income when I was there either. [crosstalk 00:18:36].

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
Where owners live where the economy is harsh, that’s another area where it’s good to mail. They don’t have to be bankrupt. They don’t have to be in foreclosure. Don’t have to be tax deficient. They just need to be living in an area where they feel some threat to their financial stability. That’s a good target as well. In addition, I mean, having insurance, I don’t think is unique.

Laurie Phillips:
But one of the things we do is we focus on, I’ll call it, the emerging technologies and the effect that’s going to have on land use and people’s ability to spread out. We go look at things like where Hyperloop is most likely to affect things and Gigafactory and the effect that’s had on the economy. Lilium, with flying cars and graphene, which is, formerly very, very expensive compound that allowed… Jill stopped listening. This is going to bore you to death.

Jill DeWit:
It’s okay.

Laurie Phillips:
It makes solar incredibly efficient. As solar becomes more efficient, it drives the cost of energy down. When the cost of energy goes down, where do you want to live? Well, anywhere you can get solar, right? With zero cost of energy. All of these things together, they’re not just coming but they’re here. They’re here on small volumes. As that volume increases, all of a sudden people will realize that they can live in DC. If they need to be in LA, they can be in LA in a few hours without getting on a plane.

Laurie Phillips:
A lot of the things that have come up recently with people wanting to work at home, wanting to be distant from other people will be enabled by these technologies. What’s that have to do with land? Having those things lets people spread out and live wherever they want to be. That’s number one. Number two is it takes away a lot of the inconvenience of living remotely. Where you don’t have utilities now, where it’s hard to get groceries. All of those things are factors

Laurie Phillips:
Some people it’s, having a weekend place two hours away is wonderful but six hours away is just not doable, right? You’re going to have to change your program to get rid of the one hour from a city thing. Because as these technologies really develop, you can live anywhere. People will want to. It’s all already obvious that they’re happy to get out of Dodge when they can.

Jill DeWit:
I love that.

Steven Butala:
I’m trying to think, back in my career, if I’ve ever had to explain the benefit of rural lifestyle to anybody who’s ever bought land from us ever.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
You’re saying all this stuff and I’m wondering if you utilize that in your posting when you go to sell the property. Do you educate potential buyers in all this?

Laurie Phillips:
One of the things we do is we go look for buyers who both understand this and want to buy the land as an investment. We want people to look at it the same way we do. Wherever Tesla’s built a Gigafactory, there’s been enormous [inaudible 00:22:02], collateral benefit to them having that factory. They may go look at it as an investment saying, yeah, I want to own that land in advance of that being the place where they put their next one or in advance of the place where a Hyperloop station is going to be located.

Steven Butala:
Yup.

Laurie Phillips:
But also for people, don’t care about that at all. But they want to live remotely and they don’t want to have to drive three hours to Walmart. Those technologies that are coming will make it easier for them to not have to do it. There’s a video on a website that describes and demonstrates how these technologies affect people that live remotely including things like 3D houses that are built by 3D printers. You can get those today. As long as you can get the printer to the location to build it, they’re pretty cool.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Well, I’ve seen videos on that too. It’s amazing to watch. Amazing to see layers of a house being built in a huge frame.

Laurie Phillips:
Yep.

Steven Butala:
You’re a marketer. You’ve chosen a niche, a pretty serious niche, I think. You’re marketing toward that group that understands that stuff.

Jill DeWit:
The smart people with money.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, with dough.

Laurie Phillips:
With smart people with money. Yeah. We both provide funding to other people, other investors and we have other investors provide us money to operate. The people that we provide funding to, we do it differently. From what I’ve been told, no one else does it the way we’re doing it. We take on all the data work. We do all the downloads, scrubbing, putting the letters in the mail. Our partners do all the buying and selling, all the interaction with the customer. They come back to us with a signed contract that’s going to title.

Laurie Phillips:
Then reverse same thing on the back end. What that does is it gives us both skin in the game on where we mail and the deals, the sizes of deals. It’s very much a partnership and we have a sliding scale of percentage profits split that are based on how quickly the property sells. But we don’t do it for everybody. We’re very selective about who we’ll work with.

Laurie Phillips:
We want investors who are experienced who we know to some degree and we know what they like to buy and we know their personalities. Because you know how this works, success is based on your attitude.

Steven Butala:
Absolutely.

Laurie Phillips:
If you’re half heartedly committed or you’re not really yet committed, you’re not you’re not going to do nearly as well as someone who knows what this can do and really wants to make it happen.

Steven Butala:
Very, very unique approach. [crosstalk 00:25:06].

Jill DeWit:
I would say, once again, I am blown away-

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
By what our little thing… We are right, I have to check the date, Laurie, but we’re somewhere right around now is exactly five years of the launch of Land Academy. Maybe, Steve and I, we looked it up. I think it’s like that, it’s 20 something, But I’m just like, I can’t believe in five years where this has gone and what people like you are doing with this. I’m just so happy.

Steven Butala:
How do you see this? I mean, you obviously are looking, I think, maybe 10 to 20 years in the future. How do you see it changing? Are you constantly looking for new technologies that can add to this concept that you have about where you choose to send a mail?

Laurie Phillips:
We are looking for new technologies and some of them are pretty esoteric. Like the whole idea of graphene changing the ability of solar. Even as the oil pipelines dry up because of the price of oil crash, sorry Jill, price of oil crash-

Jill DeWit:
Hold on a bit there. Just say it like, maybe whistle when I should come back in. This topic is-

Laurie Phillips:
I’ve listened to so many of your podcasts. I’ve listened to them in the kitchen. I listened to them in the car, in the gym. I’ve learned so much. I know so many people have said the same thing so I hope you keep doing it.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Laurie Phillips:
But-

Steven Butala:
But are you going to listen to this one?

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
Probably not.

Steven Butala:
I can’t listen to myself either. Even to this day, I just can’t.

Laurie Phillips:
It’s okay. Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Unless it’s short editing but I can’t listen to it all the way throughout the [inaudible 00:26:48].

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. I know it’s always out there. If I have a day when I’m really bored, I can listen to it. But anyway, as the oil pipelines dry up, we’ll be able to use them for water. I mean, we wouldn’t use the same pipe, but the same fundamental infrastructure could be used for water. Think about where that can take water where it isn’t right now. Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
We’re looking at it long-term and we’re both buying property that we’re going to hold for the long-term. And buying property that appeals to people with the same sense that we do as well as people who just say, get me out of here and want to buy something right now.

Steven Butala:
Fascinating.

Jill DeWit:
You’re in this for, obviously, the long haul. What did you do? Well, I don’t think you shared your background before this. What were you doing before the whole investment?

Steven Butala:
I don’t think you were homeless.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. I think, this is my 11th company that I’ve started over the years.

Steven Butala:
Oh.

Laurie Phillips:
They’ve ranged from technology consulting to software development to interior painting to selling stuff on eBay to a nonprofit I started for veterans. It’s a long list and they’re buried. My father had always invested in land. I was interested in and I kept saying, “I’ll get around to it.” It’s something I know I want to do. One day I was shopping for land and looking for some land out in Colorado. I find these listings on this website called LandPin. There was a guy who had five different properties, all the same size and all in the same area. It was in the area I knew.

Laurie Phillips:
I called him and said, “What’s the difference between these?” I’m looking at them. I’m thinking about buying something but I can’t figure out how they’re different. I started talking to him and said, “How did you end up with these properties?” He said, “Well, I’m a member of Land Academy and this is what Land Academy does”. The short version is, he didn’t get the sale but you did.

Jill DeWit:
Heck yes.

Steven Butala:
Wow.

Jill DeWit:
That’s cool.

Steven Butala:
There’s a compliment in there somewhere. I appreciate that.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. It’s obviously assigned to you. You’re obviously a data person. It’s amazing what you’re working on. I want to read your reports now.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. I’m going to go and check it all up too.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
But yeah. Before that, I had a brief stint in where I was employee, actually a partner in a Big four consulting firm which didn’t suit my personality that much. I was always the best boss they’d ever had. Finding myself in that environment, it just didn’t work that well for me. But the great thing is a number of the companies that I’ve had and the position I had in that firm was evaluating startups.

Laurie Phillips:
When it came to due diligence for this, the process to me is probably more grueling than it is for most people. The investors I work with have learned how to deal with that and what I want from them before they bring me a property-

Jill DeWit:
The harder way.

Laurie Phillips:
But the nice thing is-

Jill DeWit:
[crosstalk 00:30:29] really mad.

Laurie Phillips:
They never make me mad. They make me very happy as a matter of fact. But when I send something, the title, I’m not worried about it anymore. I know what I’m getting. Yeah. That’s great.

Steven Butala:
How does this business that you have now, obviously it’s some version of successful, how does it line up from an efficiency standpoint to all the other ones that you were involved in, in the past?

Laurie Phillips:
I’ve always found that the more people are involved in a business, the more efficient it is and the more effective it is. Two brains together is worth three as opposed to just two. I’ve learned over the years to listen more. That’s been really important. Like I say, “Get on the phone and call people.” But also, find people you can team up with. I’m part of an accountability group that you’re familiar with.

Laurie Phillips:
I think there’s more than six of us but there’s only six of us that are regulars. We meet once a week for an hour and we go through and share what we’ve done that week. But we have also started, in the last month, to have each person pick a topic that’s their specialty and do a presentation for the group on that topic for the hour. We’re putting together, as we call it, a book of secrets for being successful.

Laurie Phillips:
For instance, I did the data side, how to find stuff in RealQuest when you think you can’t really find it and the fast way to scrub data. I can take, I don’t know, probably 5,000 records and scrub it in two hours tops and it’s done. Price it in another half hour and it’s done and that’s working at the zip code level, which is, typically where I price it. I want to get better at it, at doing it based on the PLSS map. But that’s something that I’ll look forward to.

Steven Butala:
That’s great.

Laurie Phillips:
I did that part and then someone else did the, how to interact with sellers and someone else did, working with the title companies, title clause and self clause. Altogether, I mean, the group is just tremendously valuable. Really adds onto what Land Academy has done.

Jill DeWit:
That’s awesome.

Steven Butala:
That’s great. That’s what’s supposed to happen.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
That makes me want… If we’re to get off this call and hug each other.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
That’s what our goal was. Our whole goal was to just give back and help people. It was a real funny, in a funny way, a struggle for us to, the first year of Land Academy to communicate that this works. I mean, every day we would put up with some stuff about that, that’s the most ludicrous idea I’ve ever heard-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. This numbers can’t be real.

Steven Butala:
Sent out lying mailers to people for less than their property’s worth? It was something that was so natural to me. I’ve been doing it since the early 90s.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
It’s just, it’s funny where it’s gotten. The numbers on the show will be… You’re confirming what my point is. You’re confirming in a huge way what I knew this could be. Thank you.

Laurie Phillips:
I’ve got to tell you a lot of the posts that more experienced members have put on the forums and on Facebook. Where they say, here’s my experience. I was almost broke but I almost spent all the money I’d allocated for mailers. Then these things started happening. If you do it the way you say to do it, it works. It just works. I mean, we found that in our research that the offers most likely to be accepted were priced between 18.9% and 31% of retail.

Jill DeWit:
Perfect.

Laurie Phillips:
That’s the range. The majority of that data is recent. The 18 to 22% is a good target.

Steven Butala:
Well, I have to ask you now, how do you determine retail value in a very rural area?

Laurie Phillips:
Well, usually go by, we take a combination of Realtor, Redfin, Zillow and zone.

Steven Butala:
Excellent.

Jill DeWit:
That is interesting. Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
Throw that together, come up with the lowest and then we’ll do a percentage of that. The tricky part is always sorting out which listings are wholesalers, people flipping land.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
But after a while, that’s not very hard to figure out.

Steven Butala:
Sure.

Jill DeWit:
You can figure it out-

Steven Butala:
I mean, there’s, I just remove the bottom 10% and usually the top 10% or some version of that. I look at it like a bell curve and just make the curve a little tighter.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Interesting.

Steven Butala:
It’s super interesting.

Jill DeWit:
I’m so happy we did this.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you. This has been awesome. Anything you want to ask us or? I don’t know.

Laurie Phillips:
I was figuring out today, when I look at my mailers, if people say, well, how many letters do you mail a month? That kind of thing. Well, this month we’ll probably set up about 14 or 15,000 letters. Because in addition to doing research, our interns are also doing mailers and social media and website and we’ve got a couple being just assistance. I don’t really count letters. I like to look at the total dollar value of offers.

Steven Butala:
Wow.

Laurie Phillips:
First shot I figured out, okay, we’ve made more than $1 billion worth of offers. Then I thought about it and said, “I wonder what Steve and Jill had done.” How many dollars worth of offers? Could you cover the national deficit with your offers?

Steven Butala:
Maybe a couple of years ago. But not now.

Jill DeWit:
Wow. But just, in the lifetime it feels… Wow. I’m curious what that number is.

Steven Butala:
How I do mailers now is very different than how I did them in 2002 and even before that. Because RealQuest is really different. I think, it’d be possible to go back and really add them up-

Jill DeWit:
That’s really cool.

Steven Butala:
[crosstalk 00:37:21] that data’s all over the place. It’s a lot.

Jill DeWit:
We should do that.

Steven Butala:
You probably sent out 20 million offers.

Jill DeWit:
I’m going to check it. I think it’s too easy to go back to look real quick. We’ve got, like in fall, we did 17,000 unit, LA County. Multi-tenant possible mailer. There’s a chunk of change in those offers.

Steven Butala:
Those are $1 million to $2 million offer price-

Jill DeWit:
Each.

Steven Butala:
In there-

Jill DeWit:
It was 17,000, I think, units.

Steven Butala:
There are two runs on that. I bet that hit a billion.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
That’s pretty fun, Laurie. I want to look at that right now.

Laurie Phillips:
I know.

Jill DeWit:
Just, the thoughts of total at the bottom that I’m offering.

Laurie Phillips:
I always look at that number and look at the average offer, I thought at first, billion dollars, that sounds like a lot until I figured out that we’re mailing about 220 to $230 million worth of offers a month. I’ll hit probably another $3 billion with the mailers this year.

Jill DeWit:
That’s cool.

Steven Butala:
What’s you’re [crosstalk 00:38:35].

Laurie Phillips:
Isn’t that fun?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
I got that [crosstalk 00:38:39]. Cool I like that.

Steven Butala:
All right. Now I got to ask, what do you think you spent acquisition… Well, you probably know the exact number. What have you spent acquisition wise since you started and then how much have you sold? If you’re comfortable sharing those numbers, if you’re not I’ll totally understand.

Laurie Phillips:
I actually don’t know those numbers.

Jill DeWit:
Awe, I’m sorry. Your bank account’s just getting too big to keep track of.

Laurie Phillips:
No, it’s not that so much. I mean, I know we’ve done 55 deals. Those really started in November of last year, so in seven months. It came out to be about 1.65 million in gross profit in that time.

Steven Butala:
Excellent.

Laurie Phillips:
But we’ve been running about 30% overhead and probably a little higher right now as we’re putting more infrastructure into place. Because for a long time, I was winging it and I did my own website. I was doing everything. I’ve realized, over time, that spending some money, there’s the penny wise and pound foolish thing and spending some money where it gives me time back, makes sense. I got a call service involved and got help for doing some admin stuff and that offloaded it. But then this move to bringing in interns that can take just days worth of work and get it done in 24 hours is perfect.

Steven Butala:
What’s the training curve on interns for you?

Laurie Phillips:
Well, they started on Tuesday after Memorial Day. That Friday, they sent out their first round of mailers.

Jill DeWit:
That’s great.

Steven Butala:
Wow. That’s impressive. It’s getting me thinking about our own operation.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
I can see you found some bright kids.

Laurie Phillips:
Very. Very, very bright kids. Yeah. Hard workers and they get it… The great thing is they’ve learned a skill that they’re doing for us. They can join Land Academy when they leave us and do it while they’re in school.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
I mean, that’s just it. I’m sure, hopefully, you’ve experienced that earlier in your life. I know I have. Having these irreplaceable experiences in commercial real estate environment that I brought to this. I brought those big commercial real estate. I worked for two huge commercial real estate companies that had, at that time, seemingly endless resources.

Steven Butala:
I got to try a lot of new stuff. I actually brought the data concept to them and then we were sending faxes out. Faxed offers at the time, this was before email. Man, you’re paying it forward. I respect that. I like to think a lot of people would say, well, I’m not going to share these secrets with anybody.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
That’s good.

Laurie Phillips:
They’re not really secrets. I mean, everyone has the data and you’d probably find out the same things from looking at it. The hard part is finding the time to do it. I don’t know about you. But my to do list just gets rewritten the next day with new stuff and ignored yesterday. I just-

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
You should let [crosstalk 00:42:08] on that. The live event, every year now. People like it, for whatever reason. I do a module on organization and moving things to the next day, not down.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
You move them down they just go away. When you move it like that.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. I got to tell you, there was a there was a podcast where Jill mentioned the book, The One Thing.

Jill DeWit:
Yes.

Laurie Phillips:
Do you recall that?

Jill DeWit:
I do.

Laurie Phillips:
Do you remember Steve’s response to it?

Jill DeWit:
Do not.

Steven Butala:
What was it?

Jill DeWit:
I forgot.

Laurie Phillips:
It was effectively, that’s ridiculous. Don’t do one thing. You have to do everything.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
But the thing is, there’s a few books that have been really influential for me. Rich Dad Poor Dad, 4-Hour WorkWeek, are a couple. The One Thing is another one which I’m not going to bother explaining it in this amount of time. But it’s definitely worth reading. Because it tells you, don’t get up in the morning from your desk until you’ve gotten that thing done that’s going to move you ahead the mumps.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Laurie Phillips:
Once you’ve done that, it’s easy.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. That’s very true.

Laurie Phillips:
It’s really, Steve. Yeah.

Steven Butala:
It’s worth doing it. I love it.

Jill DeWit:
It’s, this is why we’re partners. This is good. We each bring different things to the table.

Steven Butala:
That’s right.

Jill DeWit:
It’s great.

Steven Butala:
That’s right. Laurie, it’s been a pleasure.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Laurie Phillips:
Same here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Steven Butala:
Do you have any advice for new people before we do the closing here?

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah, I have to say, when I got started, I wasn’t sure that it would work if I didn’t have your personalities.

Steven Butala:
Oh.

Jill DeWit:
Oh.

Laurie Phillips:
If I didn’t have Jill’s skills on the phone in dealing with people and being so sweet and getting killer deals at the same time. If I didn’t have Steve sense of really being able to master the data and make pricing so simple that I would have that kind of result. What I discovered was, I am neither of you and I’m sure I don’t have skills anywhere near what both of you have in any way. It’s worked for me. But it’s worked for me because I just stopped trying to be creative and I just followed the directions.

Steven Butala:
It’s fantastic. I’d say, it sounds to me like you’ve got my half licked. No one can do what Jill does. But I think the data part either… I don’t know, that’s just my take on it. When you’re good at something, it seems easy. I don’t know why.

Laurie Phillips:
It does it. That is very easy for me. That’s the part that’s easy for me.

Jill DeWit:
Awe, Thank you very, Laurie.

Steven Butala:
Thanks very much, Laurie. It’s great talking with you.

Jill DeWit:
Land Academy Show remains commercial free, for you, our loyal listener. Wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there.

Steven Butala:
This is Steve and Jill. Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

Steven Butala:
Okay. We’re out. I mean, that was amazing. I’m sure that you’re just going to get this thing. We try to net 2 million bucks a year between two and five, just on real estate and all the other stuff is separate. We’ve hit it. Since we’ve been together we hit it. But I mean, what’s your long-term? I mean, you’ve got to shoot for the fence now.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. To be honest with you, I started out saying, I wanted to hit 50 million in five years. That was before I had other investors’ money coming in to help fund what I’m doing. With that, I think that’s probably very low. I think double would be easy.

Steven Butala:
Yep. So 50 million net?

Laurie Phillips:
50 million net when I do double.

Steven Butala:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
50 million net.

Steven Butala:
That’s cumulative. That’s not a year, right? That’s cumulative?

Laurie Phillips:
That’s per year.

Steven Butala:
Oh, wow.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Laurie Phillips:
Which means if you think about it, that’s not residential deals anymore. That’s getting into some bigger stuff. What I really like is industrial space for warehouses.

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
That’s a thing now. By the way, we know that industrial and tech.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. That’s-

Steven Butala:
I’ve been researching converting office buildings because I think they’re becoming obsolete into condos or apartments.

Laurie Phillips:
Ooh, nice.

Steven Butala:
I’ve been thinking a lot about that.

Laurie Phillips:
New company?

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. What I would like to do is locate the asset, buy it under duress and then package it up like you are with the energy component or the alternative use component and say, this is what’s possible. We all know how easy it is to move an office building walls around it and change all that stuff. Why not just make it a hotel or an apartment building?

Laurie Phillips:
Are you talking about tall or short buildings?

Steven Butala:
The ones that are class B. Maybe even class A, they’re empty. They’re empty now and probably never going to get full. Because of all this. Hopefully, I don’t know, we’ll see. It depends on what the data comes up with and how much of an Exodus there is out of these big cities. I don’t think it’s going to be crazy like everybody says. But I do think it’s going to be significant enough to do something about it.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. I think if anything, for office environments, it’s going to turn out to be more of a campus and less of a building.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
Where people can spread out. But the reason I asked about height of the building is, I had some friends years ago who bought a two story building and put solar panels across the roof and sold it back to the power company and ended up making money on their building. Even more than covering their mortgage on it and were able to turn around and buy another building and do the same thing.

Laurie Phillips:
But they said, really, anything above a certain height becomes squat and you want something that’s spread out so that you can do that. As solar becomes more efficient, you’re producing a lot more power that you can both sell back and use. If you think about it, who are the tenants that want and are going to need a lot?

Steven Butala:
Computer people.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. Data centers. That kind of place.

Steven Butala:
What state was that in? Because in California, there’s a severe limit on what you can sell back.

Laurie Phillips:
That was in Georgia.

Steven Butala:
Okay.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Laurie Phillips:
Savannah.

Jill DeWit:
That’s cool.

Steven Butala:
Arizona, there’s a severe limit too. It’s just-

Laurie Phillips:
On what you can sell back? Really?

Steven Butala:
Yeah. But at that my numbers are, best thought, might just be for residential. I don’t know what commercial can sell back. There’s pretty… Because I did all the math on this. When we used to live on 5th Street. We had a guy in our group who was a solar panel expert-

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. I remember that guy. In Florida.

Steven Butala:
Was trying to get out of the business. Yeah. I’ll barely contact him. I think he’s still a member.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. He was there-

Steven Butala:
Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it now really successfully. He’s just not loud about it in our group anymore.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Him and his wife were there. Super, super neat. Cool.

Steven Butala:
[crosstalk 00:49:21].

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. We’re looking-

Steven Butala:
I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Laurie Phillips:
I was going to say, we’re looking at putting some structures on the property too as we buy it and before we sell it. Like a cabin or a mobile or something like that, which is why I asked you about a mobile for those properties that we were looking at. I think, it would make it easier to sell.

Steven Butala:
I think that’s going to be how we do almost every deal, especially in this. That’s my secret about how I’m going to win this contest. Just to drop some type of structure. Even if it’s just-

Jill DeWit:
Anything.

Steven Butala:
We just dropped about $5,000 on mobile home and don’t connect us to anything and say, knock yourself out and figure it out. There’s a bajillion people out there that love that DIY stuff. I agree with you completely. I hope, the more rural you get, the easier it is to do alternative septic or whatever it is.

Jill DeWit:
I have my own secret weapon that I won’t share.

Steven Butala:
Oh, you shared mine.

Jill DeWit:
I know. Oh, come on. Hey, how much you pay these interns?

Laurie Phillips:
Some of them are paid a fixed amount for the summer and some are paid a commission on the deals we get. We pay them as the deals come in. When we get it in, we send it to title and we figure out what we’re going to price it for. We give them 20% of our profit.

Steven Butala:
You’re creating-

Jill DeWit:
That’s a lot.

Laurie Phillips:
It’s a lot. That’s a lot.

Jill DeWit:
That’s a lot money. Yeah.

Steven Butala:
You’re creating heroin addicts.

Laurie Phillips:
I know.

Steven Butala:
They’re getting ready to stick that needle in their arm, it’s never going to go out.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. It’s not a bad thing.

Steven Butala:
No, It’s great.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Awesome.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah, it’s been wonderful.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, I might air this. After talk, I might air it, if it’s okay with you.

Laurie Phillips:
Sure.

Steven Butala:
If it’s not, I’ll cut it. Okay.

Laurie Phillips:
No. I don’t know. Have I said, no?

Jill DeWit:
No.

Laurie Phillips:
I think we’re-

Jill DeWit:
No, we’re good.

Laurie Phillips:
I think we’re good. Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
Well, I’m hoping to get to the live event.

Jill DeWit:
Yes.

Steven Butala:
Good.

Jill DeWit:
It’s actually on my list of things to work on this week. I’ve got to pick these [crosstalk 00:51:31] together. Hey, let me ask you real quick, Laurie. If you could brainstorm because this will help me out, what would you want to get out of the live event?

Laurie Phillips:
I would love to hear what the other members who are doing other stuff are doing. I mean, we know the basics. Go beyond the training and talk about people who are doing just mountain top properties or people who are actually building something on the property before they sell it. The rezoning part, I know some people are really getting into rezoning, I’ve been through rezoning once with a residential property and it was not only long painstaking, it was boring.

Steven Butala:
That was awful.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. We hate that too.

Steven Butala:
We have the control of about what we buy now. If you just buy agricultural property, you can do anything with it.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
In most places.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
That kind of stuff, as well as, people who are looking at alternative uses for the property. That might be buying it and selling it to someone who just use billboards, for an example. I know billboards aren’t slam dunking. But I’ve seen property, someone brought me a piece of property the other day that was this little tiny strip between a rest area, exit ramp and the access road that ran alongside it. And said, what’s it zone? What can we do with it? It might be worth a couple thousand dollars that the property was for. It’s not going to be residential. Do Land Academy 3.0, stuff like that. Beyond the basic buying and selling.

Steven Butala:
Could be niche. Cover some of the possible niches.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. Maybe even the topic of data. I’ll tell you what, the greatest thing about the interns going through putting a mailer together was that they could bitch about all the things that were incredibly painful to do. Like finding the right county and pulling the right data from RealQuest. You know what? They probably downloaded, I don’t know, 10 plus 1000 records from RealQuest for the wrong thing. I told them to save their searches.

Steven Butala:
Yup.

Laurie Phillips:
But they thought that meant, export and save the file. I was like, gosh.

Jill DeWit:
Oops.

Laurie Phillips:
Amy’s been helping me try to undo some of that. I mean, four times for the same county, right?

Jill DeWit:
Oh my.

Laurie Phillips:
With the same number of records.

Jill DeWit:
Oh great.

Laurie Phillips:
No, that’s not what I meant. But the sticky points, that’s one of it. I think people get way too tied up with pricing. Pricing is, if you get data, not just go look at individual entries. But get data. That’s one thing. The other thing is we’ve really started focusing on demand and trying to put numbers to demand. I don’t care about housing demand. That’s not meaningful to me. I want land demands. We’re starting to try to put numbers to that and get that. Because I think a lot of people focus on, they gauge demand based on how a few properties are for sale as opposed to, are people looking at them?

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Oh, you mean just click throughs and-

Laurie Phillips:
Do people want them?

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Laurie Phillips:
Well, I mean, on Zillow, you can look at views and saves, right?

Steven Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
But looking at them individually, it’s hard to get a picture of how good a market that is.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
What do you think about completed sales, land sales as valid or valid indicator demand?

Laurie Phillips:
I think, indicator demand is a great indicator of demand. But it’s also, that’s limited by supply. So-

Steven Butala:
So limited. Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
Yeah. There’s a county in Utah, Oregon County, where I just bought a property for $5,000. I must have mispriced it when I sent it out. Because I sent out an offer for $1,200, it’s 10 acres. The guy came back and said, “I won’t take anything less than $5,000.” Well, we looked it up. The cheapest listing is $350,000. We went back to him and said, “Okay, we’ll do 5000.”

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
I kept waiting for it to fall apart before we closed on it. Kept waiting, kept waiting. We’re going to list it at about 190.

Steven Butala:
Perfect

Jill DeWit:
That’s awesome.

Steven Butala:
That’s fantastic.

Jill DeWit:
I love it.

Laurie Phillips:
You don’t need many of those to realize that it does work.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. Great talking to you, Laurie. Thanks again.

Jill DeWit:
Thank you.

Steven Butala:
We’ll get you onboarded into the advanced group here-

Laurie Phillips:
That’s great. Hey, question. When does this air?

Steven Butala:
It will air tomorrow?

Jill DeWit:
It will air on Wednesday, next week.

Steven Butala:
Wednesday.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Laurie Phillips:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
Not tomorrow. Next week, Wednesday.

Laurie Phillips:
Okay. All right, great.

Steven Butala:
All right

Jill DeWit:
All right.

Laurie Phillips:
Well, love to talk to you guys soon.

Steven Butala:
Okay. Bye.

Jill DeWit:
Bye.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Drive up Access is More Important Than Ever Now (LA 1241)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hi.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk, I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And, I’m Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how drive up access is more important than ever right now. We said it yesterday just a little bit and Jill, in perfect form, I’ve put her on the spot, tried to trick her, and in perfect form, I said, “Why? Why is this drive up access situation more important now than ever?” She said-

Jill DeWit:
Because…

Steven Butala:
Okay, go ahead.

Jill DeWit:
… we have a different group of buyers now that are looking at land.

Steven Butala:
Yep. Yep. We can back it up with personal experience, tons of personal experience right now. People are flocking to rural areas and-

Jill DeWit:
That would have never considered it before.

Steven Butala:
That’s right.

Jill DeWit:
That’s what’s so cool.

Steven Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit:
Rebecca wrote, “Hi, Land Academy, I have a lot with a storage shed on it. When I send a purchase agreement, does a contract have to include any info on the shed?”

Steven Butala:
No.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. You are-

Steven Butala:
Is it good to have stuff on the property when you buy it or a bad?

Jill DeWit:
Great.

Steven Butala:
It’s great.

Jill DeWit:
Anything on the property, aside from an old refrigerator, a stacked up thing like that, but for stuff like this, any kind of a structure we love. Even if it’s an old rundown mobile home, you get excited about those especially. Love it.

Steven Butala:
Jill and I are launching a mobile home empire this month actually, based on the recession times. We’re going to also launch, not really super soon but shortly, as part of the House Academy program, Mobile Academy. Having anything on your property that makes sense, first of all, sets it apart from everything else that’s on the Internet next to it is great. Second of all, if it’s tenantable in anyway, even a detached mobile home, it’s a really, really, really good thing.

Jill DeWit:
It shows you, well a couple of things are, the utilities are already there, shows you what’s possible, and it just stands out. We, at times, have done things to properties like that just to make them stand out.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
So, none of that’s crazy. I think it’s the greatest thing. So that’s great, but her question is, “Do I need to put it in the purchase agreement?” No, you don’t. It naturally conveys with the land. It’s like you hear people buying houses and then they open up the garage and there was a bunch of junk in it, and they went through and said, “Oh my gosh, there was a cool classic car in an outer shed under a tarp. Yay, I won,” kind of thing.

Steven Butala:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a perfect example. So, the car’s in the garage, probably everybody’s deceased, “Do I write it in the contract?” No, you’re going to have to go through a whole thing with the DMV. It’s a whole separate thing. If you want to get real technical about this storage shed, you should have a bill of sale, but it’s not even worth the time to do the paperwork. I would just have a conversation. Well, I wouldn’t, Jill would.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Have a conversation with the seller that says, “You know, there’s a shed on the property. You’re not going to remove it, are you?” “Oh no, I don’t even know what’s in there. There could be anything in there. I have no idea, I just want to get rid of it,” that’s what they’re going to say.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Okay, perfect.

Steven Butala:
Then, make sure you take great pictures and tell some story about it.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
It’ll sell fast.

Jill DeWit:
Hang some cute curtains. It’s probably a dusty mess inside, but put some cute red checkered curtains in it and shoot some great pictures and that’s all you need.

Steven Butala:
I’ll tell you what, along these lines-

Jill DeWit:
And a new doormat, a floor mat.

Steven Butala:
If you have property, especially out West that’s got a clearing or it’s clear, it’s not crazy at all to go buy the worst, cheapest RV you can find.

Jill DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Butala:
Just make sure the zoning provides for this and make sure it’s not in a ghetto type area where it’s going to get vandalized and put it on the lot, take pictures of it, and sell it.

Jill DeWit:
Right. Yeah.

Steven Butala:
This is your answer to the virus. You’re going to sell it that week.

Jill DeWit:
It’s true.

Steven Butala:
We have never done the RV thing. We’ve done a mobile home thing. Detached mobile with no utilities or anything, just drop it on there, and it just sells that day. So, we just got to make sure the numbers make sense.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
You also have to explain very clearly. Not me, Jill has to explain it.

Jill DeWit:
Do you love how he does this? Sounds like I’m your assistant.

Steven Butala:
No, no, Jill. Hey, by the way, Jill has way more money than I do.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay. It’s so funny.

Steven Butala:
I just have a little more-

Jill DeWit:
Because I earned it.

Steven Butala:
I have a little bit more free time, that’s it.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
You really need to explain it. We’re all a big huge fan of telling the truth here. Just if you’re going to drop a mobile home from the sixties on a piece of property, say that. Say, “This property-”

Jill DeWit:
Say, “I’m not sure anything works, but here you go.”

Steven Butala:
Yeah. I mean, it’s detached. It’s not attached, there’s no utilities, it probably needs a septic system. I don’t really know, I don’t care.

Jill DeWit:
I found it.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, I’m just telling you.

Jill DeWit:
I found it and pulled it over.

Steven Butala:
Or an RV, same thing. We got it there, but the tanks could be full. I don’t know. That’s how bad it could be. Expect the worst when you go out there.

Jill DeWit:
That’s so funny. That is not how to get a girl.

Steven Butala:
I know.

Jill DeWit:
Expect the worst.

Steven Butala:
Yep. I say these things knowing full well that I already got the girl.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
So, there’s a little bit of leeway, there but not a lot. If it’s three quick comments in a row from me, then she’s out. She’ll walk off the stage.

Jill DeWit:
Yep, that’s true.

Steven Butala:
Drive up access, we’re all set. Oh, no-

Jill DeWit:
Today’s topic.

Steven Butala:
Oh, today’s topic: drive up access is more important now than ever. This is the meat of the show. Why? Well, we kind of answered it in this question. If you have drive up access particularly with a state road or county road drive up access, which is all maintained and you’ve dropped something on-

Jill DeWit:
Meaning paved.

Steven Butala:
Paved, it could be a lot of places rural-

Jill DeWit:
Be real specific, if you would.

Steven Butala:
Paved is better in a lot of cases.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
In some cases, even now, especially now, people don’t want to have that good of an access. They want to get to their property, but not everybody else. They want everybody else to not get to the property. So especially out West, there’s a lot of state and county road properties that are, I call them 55 mile an hour dirt roads, not paved.

Jill DeWit:
But, there’s not a lot of gravel.

Steven Butala:
No, you can go 55 on a dirt road, really, year-round.

Jill DeWit:
Right, and not destroy your car. In a real car.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Because, I want to be specific with this. Okay, everybody has a different version of drive up access. Some people think drive up access is curves in a driveway.

Steven Butala:
Oh. Geez, not that.

Jill DeWit:
So, that’s what I want to clarify. So, the point of the show is there’s a lot of people right now that are considering rural vacant land because they want to get the heck out, right? We have virus stuff going on, and they don’t need to be in that city anymore. Now, they can, they’ve all tested it and figured it out that, “I can work for my company. They sent me home. We’re now talking long-term. Then, why am I going to pay for this mortgage? Why am I going to pay to be in the city? My kids are being homeschool right now too, by the way. We don’t have to be here. We have all these more options.”

Jill DeWit:
So, we land people are all talking to these people now and they’re going, “What’s out there?” So, what I want you to think about is they don’t have four wheel drive and you need to kind of properly paint the picture and let them know really what’s possible. I want to ask you, I want to talk with you, so drive up access to them when you say, “Sure, has drive up access,” we land people think, I even think of it sometimes it’s a dirt road. Me, drive up access is I don’t need an ATV, or I don’t necessarily need four-wheel drive. Because if I do need four-wheel drive, I let them know, “Do you have four-wheel drive and a GPS when you,” we all have GPS on our phone, but do you have four wheel drive to get out there?”

Jill DeWit:
There’s two buyers. Some will go, “Uh-oh, I don’t,” or the hunters and the people that really want to be out there are going to go, “Yes, good. That’s going to keep my mother-in-law out, it’s going to keep my friends out,” whatever. I-

Steven Butala:
Yeah. The virus, it’ll keep the virus out.

Jill DeWit:
The virus people out. I don’t want those people coming up. Heck, the mailman can’t even get to me. This is great. I’m going to get a P.O. Box because the mailman can’t find me. I love this. So, you’ve got to properly convey what it is, and jump in here.

Steven Butala:
Drive Up access means you can drive right up to it. It doesn’t mean you can drive right up to it in a Pinto.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
It’s so-

Jill DeWit:
Pinto?

Steven Butala:
In a car that famously doesn’t work in a two-wheel drive, or really in Pinto’s case, one-wheel drive.

Jill DeWit:
How about Prius? Let’s use Prius.

Steven Butala:
Okay, Prius.

Jill DeWit:
Prius. We should probably do Prius access or non-Prius access. So, that would be good.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, there’s Prius access, there’s Ford F-150 access, that’s a little bit more rough. There’s-

Jill DeWit:
Right. Polaris access.

Steven Butala:
There’s Ford F-450 access.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, okay.

Steven Butala:
That’s really rough. Then, there’s monster truck assets, which is…

Jill DeWit:
Jeep.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Jeep Polaris, I’m thinking, what else?

Steven Butala:
You want it Prius access right now.

Jill DeWit:
Right, but he doesn’t have to be. I mean, I think with us, with land people, we have to just properly convey it. I would actually even put in the posting, really put it in there what you need now to get to this property because you don’t want to waste anybody’s time and you don’t want to waste your time have someone in their Prius going out there.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Prius from San Francisco, going to look at this property and they can’t get to it. You want to make sure they can.

Steven Butala:
If that’s your customer for rural vacant land, you have to ask yourself some questions.

Jill DeWit:
But, it’s happening. So, what I want to say, too, is it’s not only we have these new customers, right? They don’t have four-wheel drive, but they have a bit to learn. So, I want to add too that it’s a little bit difficult for some of us right now as land people because we have to up our patience level. This is another reason why-

Steven Butala:
Well, I don’t. I don’t, you do.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. This is another reason why we don’t allow Steven to answer the phone.

Steven Butala:
Thank you for answering the phone, by the way. Can’t thank you enough.

Jill DeWit:
You’re welcome. Steven is not allowed near the phone-

Steven Butala:
For a hundred years. For a hundred years if I said it every day, we could-

Jill DeWit:
We could have 10 phones ringing and people answering it left and right and Steven is still not allowed to touch any phones.

Steven Butala:
I couldn’t thank you enough if I said it every day for a hundred years.

Jill DeWit:
You’re welcome. Because we do have people. I’m just now thinking of this too, you might want to change your listings a little bit. Just make sure you’re in the mindset of, “Who’s my buyer right now? It used to be the majority of our buyers were wholesale people, land people, investors in our business,” right? That’s, for us, has been our customer forever. Because the other buyers, they were very few and far between. Those that did get to us, they’ve done their homework, they know their kind of seasons. Now, we’re seeing a lot of people, their minds are now open to this whole thing like I described earlier, but they don’t know what they’re getting into.

Jill DeWit:
So, it’s your job to take your postings to maybe to a little bit to the next level, because it’ll save you a lot of time. The more you put in your postings that spells out what the property’s really there, what they need to be thinking about. Instead of just saying, “No utilities,” maybe have a few suggestions in there, maybe have a few links in there, even if it’s just to the county website because it’ll save you some time from them calling you and going, “What does that mean, and how do I solve it?”

Steven Butala:
Usability is what I’m getting at here.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
For years and years and years, 25 years, we were selling property other people that are probably going to resell it, or non-use people, people who aren’t going to really use the property. Now more than ever, they’re looking at this real estate saying, “You know what? I’m going to use this. I might build on it, I might put a mobile home on it, but I am going to get out of this city,” because of what Joe said earlier, “there’s no reason for me to be here anymore. That cost of living silly.”

Jill DeWit:
Yep. Yep.

Steven Butala:
“I can go live out there for next to nothing and have a happy life and not have all this stress and make the exact same amount of money as long as I have an Internet connection.”

Jill DeWit:
You know what I just think is funny? All the people, they’re not in the cities, that have been out in the woods are now going, “Yep, told you so. Now, you wish you were with me. Right? Not had a bunch of neighbors.” For all you people who lived in downtown whatever, that thought I was nuts to be on my 20 acre branch, you’re now going, “Uh-huh, don’t you wish you had this?”

Steven Butala:
So, I grew up in Michigan, and so I obviously talked to people and we talked to people all over the country constantly, Jill and I because of Land Academy and everything else.”

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
I’ve never not once, ever heard the sentence out of someone’s mouth, “Oh, you live in Los Angeles? Congratulations, man. I bet you love it there. I always wanted to live in L.A.”

Jill DeWit:
That’s true.

Steven Butala:
It’s exact opposite, and they’re not wrong.

Jill DeWit:
True, yep.

Steven Butala:
I can talk about these shows with confidence because I’m one of these people.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
I’m not sure this is worth it anymore either. All my companies are all online. What are we doing?

Jill DeWit:
That’s another show that we need to talk about as a family first.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, it’s called Couples Therapy.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Oh boy, I don’t want to hear, “I told you so,” again. Happy you could join us today. I won’t say I told you so to you. The Land Academy, or excuse me, you can find us right here on the Land Academy Show every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays, we are next door on the House Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the House Academy Show is called, A Step-By-Step Instruction on how to Double Your House Money in This Environment. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
That’s going to be good.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
I like it. That’s funny. Thank you, baby, for not rubbing it in too much.

Steven Butala:
No, it’s okay.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
You know what? No, you’ve earned it, Jill. I know you want to live here and it’s fine, and that’s the truth of it.

Jill DeWit:
You know.

Steven Butala:
But as far as forever goes, probably not.

Jill DeWit:
Things change.

Steven Butala:
This is just another kitchen conversation for you and I.

Jill DeWit:
It is, things change.

Steven Butala:
It just happened to happen in front of the camera.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. We all know that things change, especially it’s interesting now for a lot of us, it’s not voluntary. These are forced changes, and so you have to adapt and make the best of it as we all are.

Steven Butala:
Yep.

Jill DeWit:
The Land Academy Show remains commercial-free for you, our loyal listeners. So wherever you’re watching and wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information…

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration…

Steven Butala:
… to buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Good Investors Will Make Fortunes in the Next 24 Months (LA 1239)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hello.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how good investors will make fortunes in the next 24 months.

Jill DeWit:
What else should you be doing? I’d be like this. That’s like a drop everything and run title. You know what I mean?

Steven Butala:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now is the time. There may never be another time in our, certainly in our lifetime, but if you’re real young you might get another shot at it, and I’m not saying you can’t make money during great times, but now it’s just kind of a perfect storm. I have some indications about why. Before we get into it, though, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free.

Jill DeWit:
Roland asks, “My partner and I have a beautiful 2.5 acre property in Twentynine Palms, California, near Palm Springs, that we have listed on eBay. This is the first time we have listed on eBay. We have had two bidders so far. One seems legit based on his buyer’s history. The other, who is leading right now, has no buyer history. We’re kind of concerned. So, the question is, what scams should we look out for? Thanks, Roland.”

Jill DeWit:
I was going to add one thing too. You are not wrong in your concerns, because sometimes that happens. People do, unfortunately, are not legitimate. With a buyer’s history, they may or may not be a great buyer. They could be good but you don’t know. We have a lot of experience in this, and I’ll tell you truthfully, I have gone… and when you go into the settings and you’re setting up your eBay account, you can even restrict it ahead of time so people that have less than X amount of transactions can’t even bid, or people who have less amount of dings on their account, things like an unpaid history or they’ve already had some negative feedback, you can also restrict those buyers from your account. You have a lot of control. There’s a lot that you can choose from.

Jill DeWit:
It’s a tough one, because you don’t know who could be good, who could be bad, until you really get rolling. You don’t have a lot of history too, by the way, so let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Is that okay-

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Is that the right kind of a-

Steven Butala:
You’re answering the question for me.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
Total two-way street.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. As a buyer, I don’t really know you too, Roland, so you want to give… I’d say give him a chance. What you could do, because you’re starting out, they’re starting out. If you see two guys going for it and you do like we do. It’s one dollar, no reserve, 30-day auction, going to close on a Sunday around dinner time. Those are things that we’ve learned over the years that worked the best. I would start having a dialogue with these guys. Make sure that you say, “Hey, you’re one of the top bidders. Don’t forget when it closes. I’m going to send you an invoice. This is how the process goes just to give you an idea. Do you have any questions for me now,” things like that. Then maybe too, if you have some interaction with these buyers, both of them, it’s going to help you feel good and know that they’re real and legit.

Steven Butala:
EBay’s a double-edged sword. Jill and I have sold tens of millions of dollars of real estate on eBay. It’s only conducive for really one product type when land is concerned, so the people that buy stuff on eBay are the absolute biggest bottom fishers there ever was, ever. It’s not just for land. It’s for cars and anything else that you can find on there. It’s way, way lower, from a price standpoint and an acceptable behavior standpoint, than a lot of other venues on the internet like, let’s say, Amazon, Craigslist or offer upper… Choose one.

Jill DeWit:
This is all true.

Steven Butala:
You need to go in with an expectation that you’re dealing with maybe the worst customer there ever was, number one. Number two, they’re not going to buy a real nice [info lot 00:04:10] that you spent five grand on for [chen 00:04:12]. They’re going to buy very, very inexpensive rural vacant land. They’re going to expect an amazing customer service experience. They’re going to expect zero fees associated with the transaction.

Jill DeWit:
A crazy price, yeah.

Steven Butala:
I’m talking about 500 bucks. Five hundred to a thousand sales price is where you want to be for eBay. So, that means you have to buy it for 2- or $300 to make any real money consistently. That’s not inconceivable, especially if you buy huge bulks of property in multiple locations all at once, which is what… We’ve done this for years and years.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
The big problem with eBay is it turns a lot of people who are really intelligent off. That’s the problem… or Land Academy people. When people hear the word eBay, very intelligent people, and they say, “What? That’s what this is about, buying real cheap property for a few hundred dollars and selling it for 700 or 800 on eBay 10 or 15 times a week,” no, that’s not what this is about at all. It’s a tiny little part of it.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Ninety-eight percent of the time we talk about data and smart stuff. This is not one of those times. This is just the eBay little portion of it.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah, if you’ve got a good property, I wouldn’t put it on eBay. If you’ve got something that’s in your inventory you just want to get rid of and you don’t care about it and maybe drive traffic to your website, then I would use eBay. Use it as a marketing tool.

Steven Butala:
I want to go out on a limb here and say, I bet you and I have sold more real estate on eBay than anyone.

Jill DeWit:
I bet that’s true. I’m sure-

Steven Butala:
I bet we’re the most qualified people to talk about this little tiny subject.

Jill DeWit:
I’m sure of that.

Steven Butala:
We don’t sell very much, if any, at all anymore for a reason. If us, we’re saying, there’s just better ways to do it, I feel very confident that that’s the case.

Jill DeWit:
You know, Roland, I would rather you have this on Facebook and doing maybe even some paid ads and getting in front of the right people.

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
Then you’re going to get a lot more Instagram. Dream it up.

Steven Butala:
Fifty percent of the people that buy property on eBay and the auction closes, and you either send them a bill or there’s automatic checkout, will pay. Fifty percent won’t. It costs 100 bucks to run an auction, so there’s a lot of stuff that goes on. There’s a lot of moving parts to it. You have to have an incredible amount of patience, so you can remove me in that. But it’s very profitable. People who do well on eBay, I’ve been to these eBay conferences, national conferences, not necessarily with real estate, but anything, have figured it out. They’ve figured out a way to create a machine.

Steven Butala:
I met a couple guys at a conference that, they sold packaging, like cardboard boxes and stuff, for other eBay sellers on eBay, and they were just printing money. I don’t want to knock it, but really what it is is you’re an online retailer who happens to sell… fill in the blank. For us, it was land. For them it was boxes. For some people it’s Beanie Babies. For some people it’s Corvettes.

Jill DeWit:
Thanks.

Steven Butala:
Today’s topic, good investors will make fortunes in the next 24 months. This is the meat of the show.

Steven Butala:
I was inspired to write this title by an article/video that Suze Orman did where she kind of just yelled at everybody. That’s what she does. She’s a branded financial planner, and she just got in front of this camera like she always does, and famously just started yelling at us saying-

Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that funny?

Steven Butala:
I’m applying it to real estate here. She said, “Now everybody’s kind of at home. We didn’t request it, but we have this chill period, let’s say-”

Jill DeWit:
Chill period.

Steven Butala:
It’s like a cooling off period.

Jill DeWit:
Paid time off. You know what it is? What do you call it when it’s your… a career decision. I worked at a company, and before they fired you, you would get a career decision day. Not kidding. It’d be a day off with pay. This is like at the very, very bitter end of the whole thing.

Steven Butala:
After you already got all the black marks on your record.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, yeah. You’re like, it’s just not improving. We’ve coached and counseled you to the fullest extent. Then this last one time, do you really want to work here, because then they could say we did everything we could. So, this is a career decision 90 days or 260 days for a lot of people.

Steven Butala:
Now is the time to make a fortune. If you’re a Land Academy member or a House Academy member already and you’re just in the middle range of, “I’m lukewarm about it, we’ve done a couple of deals,” now’s the time to do 100 deals.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
I couldn’t be more serious. We joke around a lot on the show just to try to make it bearable to listen to or watch. I am not joking around about this. Now is the time. There may never be, like I said earlier, another time in our life that is so conducive to this. We have record unemployment. We will have record unemployment. We will probably have record… Go ahead.

Jill DeWit:
Well, we have record an audience. The audience is huge right now too, by the way. What a great time. If everybody was doing great and it was Superbowl time, where everybody’s stuck on Superbowl, I’d say this is not the time, but right now everybody’s home, and a lot of people have money.

Steven Butala:
This virus has created an environment of fear of big cities, so any kind of heat map you look at, that’s fantastic for rural vacant land or mobile homes or any property. It’s just a universal real estate rule. The further you go out, the cheaper it is.

Jill DeWit:
Drive till you qualify.

Steven Butala:
Now everybody wants to go further out.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
Number three, this is like a perfect storm. Number three, there are more people now than ever that are successfully working at home. I don’t think a lot of that’s going to change, because it’s so much more affordable for employers. We’re employers in many, many companies, and we have a lot of people working for us. I never would have signed off voluntarily to send… All my greatest assets as a business owner all just went home. I don’t know what they’re doing. It scared the heck out of me, and I think probably 95% of them just passed with flying colors. They’re doing great. Their numbers are great. They’re probably happier, which means I’m happier. I see that trend continuing.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
And it’s more affordable. So, all of this is a perfect storm of buying rural, vacant land, or if you’re into houses, buying houses that are further out, for really inexpensive amounts of money. Then finally, and I alluded to it with recessionary unemployment, we will have… I think we do now have the largest amount of unemployment.

Jill DeWit:
Isn’t it one in five? I think I read one in five.

Steven Butala:
The Great Depression in 1929 wasn’t, not that high. We’re in the middle of it. What is it? We’re recording this on May 7th. It will air I guess next week. All those things add up to a huge, huge opportunity. Why? People need money too. So, this mail campaign scenario that we’ve developed in the Land Academy, House Academy members know all about, your yield, your mailer yield should dramatically increase. It should double at least because people just want money. Go ahead, Jill.

Jill DeWit:
And the old buyers are coming back. The old sellers, I should say, the people that told you to go jump in a lake six months ago are coming back. Now they’re like, “Ooh, maybe I should call that guy again.”

Steven Butala:
If you don’t have a specialization, you should find one and get serious about it. Put it as schedule, get the mail out, pick a location that you think make sense. If you’re in Texas and you like Texas, getting the outskirts of some of the bigger cities. I just used Texas as an example. Now’s the time to really, really specialize and really do it.

Jill DeWit:
I was going to add what we talked about the other day at the kitchen table, which is if you’re not working on something right now, you’re nuts. If you’re not using this time off opportunity to really come up with another way to put food on the table, what better use of your time?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
For a lot of people, they have the ideas, they have the knowledge, it’s all in their hands, they just can’t act on it.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
I’m just going to say you’re going to have to do whatever it takes to act on it. We were all there once. We were all afraid of making that first decision about buying that first property. So, my answer to that is buy a great property. Don’t make a wishy-washy decision. Don’t have any doubts in your head. Make sure it’s a fantastic property. How do you do that? You have a lot to choose from. Like Steven said, get the mail out there. I see a lot of people doing this right now, by the way.

Steven Butala:
So do I.

Jill DeWit:
Even in the last week, I was blown away at our-

Steven Butala:
Me too.

Jill DeWit:
We have a direct mail company called Offers 2 Owners. It’s offers and the number two owners.com, and I’m looking at the numbers of the mail that’s going out, not individually, but as a whole. I’m like, “Holy cow.” People are like, and they’re listening and they’re doing it and they’re getting properties, and that’s the best way and the easiest way to do this right.

Steven Butala:
Yep. I don’t have anything else to say. You said it the nicest way you could possibly say it. I had an old boss tell me one time, “This either happens to you by the time you’re 40 or not.” It was a guy-to-guy. I was young, really young. I don’t think that it’s by 40 by any stretch. I think now you can be 60 because of the way the internet is, but I do think that this is the sentiment from what he said applies here. You’re either going to do this right now or you’re not, and if you don’t do it right now, you’re making excuses for yourself. Jill’s just said it the nice way. I’m not going to be that nice.

Jill DeWit:
In other words, get off your rear and do it.

Steven Butala:
Yeah, get the mail out. As Luke Smith, one of our advanced members who has a show on YouTube, constantly says, “Just get the mail out. Then everything else falls into place,” because you don’t have a choice. If your phone’s blowing up, you’re going to have to pick some deals and do them.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Happy you could join us today. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we are right here on the Land Academy Show. Tuesdays and Thursdays you can find us on the House Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow the episode on the House Academy Show is called We Will Never Know the Very Bitter Bottom of This Recession. Why does that matter? It’s just another reason to sit around and wait to pull the trigger on something. You don’t need to know where the bottom is. It’s going down. Let’s just say that. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:
Cool.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
That was good. We got our point across. I hope we got our point across.

Steven Butala:
You know what’s going on in our life right now? We’re doing a lot of real estate deals, and so that leaves a little less time and energy for Land Academy.

Jill DeWit:
Everybody should have that, to be like, “I’m doing so many deals, that leaves a little less time for family.” Just kidding. “Or eating.”

Steven Butala:
Yep, exactly.

Jill DeWit:
“Or binge-watching.” There we go. That’s good.

Jill DeWit:
The Land Academy Show remains commercial free for you, our loyal listener. So, wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill. Information-

Jill DeWit:
And Inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at steven@BuWit.com.

The BuWit Family of Companies include:

https://BuWit.com

https://offers2owners.com

https://landinvestors.com

https://landacademy.com

https://landpin.com

https://parcelfact.com

https://countywise.com

https://deedperfect.com

https://ownersdata.com

https://houseacademy.com

I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.