The Land Academy Story
For more than a decade the buyers of our real estate have been asking “how do you guys buy property so consistently inexpensive that you can sell it to me for this crazy low price? Show me how…”
Land Academy is Steven & Jill’s way of answering this question and giving back. Scroll down to get a peek inside how it all happened.
November 1992 Believe it or not, Steven Jack Butala got his start in commercial real estate, including with nursing homes.
November 1993 Fueled by disgust for cold calling, Steven wrote a computer program to auto send blind offers via fax to apartment building and nursing home managers and owners.
November 1994 Steven became Vice President of acquisitions for a publicly traded nursing home chain in Phoenix.
June 1997 Steven is made partner at KPMG based on successful nursing home and assisted living facility acquisitions.
August 1998 Steven sells a regional long term care chain and netted about $500,000 (would become seed capital for land acquisitions).
January 1999 Steven purchased and sold 80 Acres in Arizona, which created about $10,000 of equity. This was when he officially contracted the “land” bug.
November 2000 Steven Purchases Property at Tax Deed Auction Resulting in $285,000 in Equity over 3 Months on eBay!
December 2001 Steven sent an automated fax to all real estate agents in Arizona trolling for land acquisitions. This created $1.2M in equity over 6 months.
August 2003 Steven attended monthly tax deed auctions in New Mexico and Arizona generating millions in equity.
November 2004 Steven discovered CoreLogic’s RealQuest and sent his first blind offer campaign. After generating millions in equity, he discontinued his attendance at the tax deed auctions.
December 2004 Over the next decade, Steven perfected the art and science of direct mail blind offer campaigns to land and SFR owners. This resulted in over $25 Million in equity.
November 2009 Jill was given 20 “Useless” NM land lots to sell on eBay after crash course by Steven. She ended up making $18,000!
November 2011 Jill convinced Steven to stick with it despite downturn. Jill bought 1100 properties at southern AZ tax auction, and made a whopping $500,000!
November 2014 Jill (as project coordinator) and Steven (as bank) flipped LAST house and concluded that more money is made when wholesaling to other investors.
November 2014 Steven & Jill create the concept of Land Academy and see the potential for other property types.
July 2015 Land Academy is born! We released our first program – on physical DVDs!
October 2015 Due to popular demand, Steven and Jill became on-air talent and released the Cash Flow from Land Show!
November 2015 In an effort to answer more questions, we launched LandInvestors.com as a forum-based site focused solely on land investing.
February 2016 After determinining we could get our Land Academy family cheaper prices if we negotiated with the data providers ourselves, membership was created.
July 2016 After years of the mind-numbing work of creating deeds in Word, we created a website to automate the process!
January 2017 Another tool anyone? In an effort to help members sell properties faster, land-selling site LandPin.com was launched.
July 2017 After two short years, we celebrated our 500th podcast!
September 2017 We learned that we can do mail cheaper for our members if we do it in-house! Thus, our mailing company, Offers2Owners.com was born.
February 2018 Instead of having to piece together different data sources, we create ParcelFact.com – an all-in-one parcel research and due diligence too.
August 2018 Still going strong, our podcast is topping charts with 800 total podcast releases.
September 2018 We decided to break the virtual barrier and hosted our first Land Academy Live Event in Southern California.
October 2018 Jill loves to teach! She launched her Facebook live series to help reach more people.
November 2018 As we learn, so do our members! We released a brand new program in 2018 to add to the Land Academy program family.
January 2019 Not having funds for a deal is a thing of the past with Land Academy deal funding. Find the deal and bring it to us, and we will “be the bank.”
January 2019 We released a deep dive into how to find, price, buy, and sell infill lots.
May 2019 At the request of our members, we created a site that enables our members to fund each others’ deals too!
May 2019 After Land Academy success, we finally released all of our SFR knowledge and House Academy was born.
June 2019 1000 shows and still going strong!
June 2019 As better tools become available, we update ours! ParcelFact gets a redo, updated views, and more.
October 2019 We loved meeting everyone in person so much last time that we did it again!
March 2020 Offers2Owners expands to offer first class mailing – making mail arrive faster and faster!
March 2020 We updated LandPin.com to make it even better, including upping our ad revenue to bring even more land buyers to the site.
March 2020 Offers2Owners continues to lead the industry by offering in-house neighbor letters as well as a brand new dashboard to house and track all of your mailers.
December 2020 Steven Jack Butala, Jill DeWit, our staff, as well as our collective Land Academy hivemind are all there to answer questions, share tools, collaborate, form partnerships, and more.
February 2021 Clubhouse is an audio-only social media platform. We began meeting there to reach more people about land!
March 2021 Concierge is the latest and greatest from Offers2Owners. Have you ever wanted an “easy button” for downloading, scrubbing, and pricing your data? Well, here it is! You don’t have to worry about spending countless hours scrubbing data and analyzing market prices anymore!
April 2021 At the demand of members, we created Career Path – an intenive 8 week program deisgned just for you. You will work alongside founders Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit to achieve your goals.
July 2021 Do you want more accurate data? Easier to use data? More recent data? We all do, so we officially partnered with DataTree for our data.
August 2021 An easier and faster way to get funding for your deals.
February 2022 We’re constantly updating our programs, and in 2022 we released a brand new program. This is a full redo and update to our original program including all of our new tools and updated market and pricing strategies.
August 2022 If you want to be able to set your mail on autopilot, ConciergeData+ is for you.
October 2022 Five sessions later and still going strong! We love the opportunity to work even closer to grow your business.
April 2023 Check back for our latest and greatest creation.
Steven Begins Career in Commercial Real Estate in Detroit
Steven Writes Computer Program to Automate Sending Blind Offers
Steven Becomes VP of Acquisitions for Chain in Phoenix
Steven Made Partner at KPMG
Steven Sells Chain, Netting $500,000 (future land acquisitions seed capital!)
Steven Purchased & Sold 80 Acres in AZ and Contracts “Land” Bug
Steven Purchases Property at Tax Deed Auction Resulting in $285k in Equity
Steven Sends Automated Fax to RE Agents for Land Acquisitions
Steven Generated Millions in Equity Attending Monthly Tax Deed Auctions
Steven Discovers CoreLogic’s RealQuest & Generates Millions in Equity from 1st Blind Offer Campaign
Steven Perfects the Art & Science of Direct Mail Blind Offer Campaigns
Jill was given 20 “Useless” NM land lots to sell on eBay after crash course by Steven. Made $18,000!
Jill Convinced Steven to Stay In Despite Downturn – Bought 1100 Properties, Made $500k!
Jill (as project coordinator) and Steven (as bank) Flipped LAST House Concluding More Money is Made in Wholesaling to Other Investors
Steven & Jill Create the Concept of Land Academy
CFFL Program is Released
1st The Cash Flow From Land Show Podcast Episode Airs
LandInvestors Launch
L.A. Membership is Released
DeedPerfect Launch
LandPin Launch
500th Podcast Episode Airs
Offers2Owners Launch
ParcelFact Launch
800th Podcast Episode Airs
1st LandAcademy Live Event
Jill’s Facebook Live Show Starts
Program Launch: Land Academy 1.0; Rural Vacant Land
Land Academy Deal Funding
Land Academy 2.0; Infill Lots Release
LandTank Launch
House Academy Launched!
1000th Episode of the Land Academy Show!
ParcelFact 2.0 Launched!
2nd Annual Land Academy Live Event
Offers2Owner’s First Class (First Class Postage Mailing) Released!
NEW LandPin.com Released!
O2O Neighbor Letters & New Document Dashboard Release
Land Academy Discord Server Created
Land Talk on ClubHouse
New Offers2Owners 2021 Product Released! Concierge Pricing!
Career Path #1 Launched
DataTree
New LandFunding.com Released!
Updated Education for 2022 Released! Land Academy 3.0; Catching Up With Land Academy!
New Offers2Owners Product! Concierge Data+
Career Path #5 Launched!
Land Academy Pro
