Land Academy Show

Part-Time Real Estate Investing | Land Investing (LA 1525) Transcript: Speaker 1: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Speaker 1: 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. Speaker 1: Today Jill and I talk about part time real estate or land investing. Let me tell you, we all started part-time. Jill DeWit: That's true. Speaker 1: With very, very, very few exceptions that I know of. We all started part-time until we made enough money and convinced ourselves that there's some longevity in it and we quit our jobs. Jill DeWit: Beautiful. Speaker 1: But I'm going to say this, if you start this right off the bat, because you hate your job so much and are consumed with trying to get to that starting line so you can quit your job, you're just causing problems for yourself. 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 and if you are already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Corey asks, did I send to escrow too early? I received a signed PA the other day. The signature had a small note under it saying that the owner was deceased, minor detail, right? PS- Speaker 1: Gets good though, this is a good start. Jill DeWit: Wait, this is going to be funny. It sounds funny. I haven't read this before. I'm just envisioning, sure we want to sell, we love it. PS, mom's dead. Here you go. Like we're not going to notice. Speaker 1: Figure it out. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Speaker 1: At least they told you. Jill DeWit: Well, there is that. And then just sign mom's name and pretend. Small note under it saying that the owner was deceased and that the person responding is a daughter of the deceased. The daughter didn't leave any contact info to reach her. I did due diligence on the property and realized that this is a very good deal. I signed the purchase agreement and also included a letter asking the daughter to contact me with my contact info on the letter and overnighted it to her on... This is all real time. This is a new. June 3rd. Jill DeWit: In the meantime, I went ahead and sent the signed purchase agreement to an attorney and started escrow. The letter was delivered on 6/4/2021. I still haven't heard anything from the daughter as of June 8th. The attorney got back to me today and told me that mother conveyed the property to her in a revocable living trust and left the daughter who signed the purchase agreement as a successor trustee. This is good. Speaker 1: Good start. Jill DeWit: Yeah. So in parentheses, it says we're good to go there. All of that to ask this, do you guys think I sent it to escrow/attorney too quick? Should I have waited until the daughter contacted me? Or would you guys have done the same thing I did? I got with a realtor that was recommended and he told me that he thought the property would sell quickly and it would gross a profit over $130,000. I love it. Here's my only thing, I probably would've done the same stuff. Speaker 1: I would skip trace this daughter and I would blow her phone up. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Just make sure. Speaker 1: Did you do it too early? No. You did everything right. Jill DeWit: So, and I imagine too right now, because you're having an attorney close the deal obviously. I think you're having an attorney close a deal. Is that what he said? Speaker 1: Attorneys are great at finding people by the way. Jill DeWit: That doesn't say it's nice. And let's see, in the meantime, I went ahead and saw the attorney and started escrow. Okay. So that's why I'm assuming they're doing the deal. So you're trying to reach the daughter and the attorneys try and reach the daughter. Pretty sure one of you is going to reach the daughter because what's needed from the daughter is, hey, by the way, we need to get your signature and where do you want your money to go?

The Best Way to Lower Your Seller's Price | Real Estate (LA 1524) 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 am Jill DeWit. Wait for it. Broadcasting from sunny Southern California. I had to say that. Can you see? Can you see? Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the best way to lower your sellers price. Jill DeWit: What? Steven Butala: I can't wait to. Jill DeWit: Why would we ever do this? Steven Butala: Hear how Jill does this also. Jill DeWit: What? I need to do it. How do I do it? We can help. We got this. I'll tell you why this happens too. Although, you probably know. Steven Butala: Before we get into it... Well, sometimes you send a letter out. The thing comes back and they say, "I got your letter and I do want to sell but this price doesn't work for me." Jill DeWit: No, no, no. I'm lowering their price of any one I offered them. Steven Butala: Whoa. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Hold on. Let me- Steven Butala: Yes. Set us up. Jill DeWit: Let me tell you what the show is really about today, babe. Jill DeWit: That's great. Steven Butala: You know what? Jill DeWit: That's awesome. 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. And if you are already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: I thought you were saying, "If you work for your spouse, you understand what just happened." I work with, not for. Jill DeWit: All right. Bobby wrote, "Hello, to this fabulous community. And thank you again for taking the time to read this. One area I'm getting hung up on is checking counties against the listed to universal rule. This usually kicks out otherwise great counties as they pass all other tests. Except that one. I thought I understood it but can someone please explain, in your words, and the overall importance of this test so I can be sure that I'm applying the correct logic. Thanks so much." Jill DeWit: Go. Steven Butala: Here at Land Academy, we have what is called a red, green, yellow test when you choose a county to send mail or zip code. And before I send mail out, it has to pass these three tests. And one of them is the listed to universal rule, which means how many properties are listed for sale on the MLS against the universe of like-kind properties in that county or zip code. So, there might be 50 pieces of property that are listed for sale and 5,000 pieces of property that are in the universe of just vacant parcels in that county. And you want that number to be low. Jill DeWit: I like that number. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: 50 to 5,000, I can do. 1,000 to 5,000, not so great. Steven Butala: Or 5,000 to 5,000. Jill DeWit: Really bad. Steven Butala: San Bernardino County California is like that. So, you don't want to generally send mail. In general, you don't want to send mail to where there are just tons and tons of for-sale property. And this statistic is designed to point in the direction of, don't do that. Jill DeWit: This is such a common thing. I love it. When you do this Bobby and you do it, just get into it. Figure it out and when you're staring and please pull at least zip codes or counties or something lined up. Two or three of them are going to jump to the top. You're going to go, "Oh, I see it now." So, as you're starting the process, we all kind of question it like you are but hang in there. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Today's topic: The best way to lower your sellers price. This is why you're listening. Jill DeWit: As I alluded to in the beginning, here's the setup. Steven Butala: I want to sit back and listen. Jill DeWit: Okay. This is fine. So, you picked a county. You did what Bobby said. You sent out your offers. You think you did a great job pricing your offers.

Jill Friday What Jill Looks at When Doing Deals - (LA 1523) Transcript: Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Hello. Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill Dewitt: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sweet Paradise Valley, Arizona. Jack Butala: Today is Jill Friday. It's called what Jill looks at when doing deals. Yesterday was my turn. I described how I see these deals correctly or incorrectly, but it works for me. Today's Jill's turn. Jill Dewitt: It's going to be fun because I think we have different ways, things that we look at first when the deal pops in. So this will be good. Jack 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. And if you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. Jill Dewitt: Sandy wrote ... Okay, let me just see what I've got here. Is that the question, and then a response? Jack Butala: There is a discussion in Discord, yeah. Jill Dewitt: So, a little thing going on. Okay. So Sandy wrote, "One of the reasons I joined Land Academy was to find something better than DataTree. My last group concluded that there was nothing wrong with DataTree and that the problem had to be operator error." That's hilarious. Jack Butala: Let's see what the other member John says. Jill Dewitt: Okay. John wrote, "I have noticed in some states that there's a discrepancy between what DataTree says and what, say ParcelFact shows for both owner name and mailing address. One state in particular is a pain in the rear that I work with. I try to step back and say, if I'm mailing 10,000 records and 500 are busted, it's no fun spending that money on mail, but it's a small percentage. In one of the training videos in Land Academy, 2.0, Steven said that something like if 80% of your mail is right, you're doing great. We get 1000 free records each month. Why don't you do a RealQuest pull on a county that you have DataTree records on and compare? You may find it's better than where you're working." Jack Butala: I mean, John, you're exactly right. And no, it's not user error for the most part, Sandy. I don't know for sure, but probably not, because DataTree is real easy to use. Here's the deal. These data aggregators, DataTree, RealQuest, and TitlePro247 pull data from assessor databases. And there are some places in the country, I'm going to give you a real solid example of a place in the country, which is South Dakota, for whatever reason is not interested in playing this game. They're not interested in providing data, or the data that they do provide is pretty substandard. It's very difficult to use if you're used to, let's say using data in Texas or California or whatever else. Jill Dewitt: You said playing this game. It's like, they're not interested in doing their job correctly. It's kind of what it sounds like. Jack Butala: No, I actually- Jill Dewitt: It's like they're not interested in inputting the information correctly. Jack Butala: There's a part of my personality that really respects that. They're kind of just putting their figurative middle finger up. Jill Dewitt: In what way? I don't know. Jack Butala: Just like- Jill Dewitt: They don't fill it in, they don't provide much? Jack Butala: This is not a priority for us. Jill Dewitt: Data? Jack Butala: We love living here. Maybe we live on a cattle ranch. We don't need to assess this property down to the letter. They're just not interested in providing the data. Jill Dewitt: Yeah, we'll get it recorded when we feel like it. Jack Butala: I don't know. It's not good for us, but personally, I kind of respect some of these counties that are like, "Yeah, I'm not going to be here on Friday." Jill Dewitt: You know what? You're right, because there are some counties that say, "We only update all our records once a year at the end of the year.

Jack Thursday - What Jack Looks at When Doing Deals (LA 1522) Transcript: Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey. Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk, we hope. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from perfect Paradise Valley, Arizona. Jack Butala: Today is Jack Thursday and it's called What Jack Looks At When Doing Deals. I will tell you what I look at, what I look like while I'm looking at deals. Jill DeWit: I'll tell you what you look like. Jack Butala: How I feel about it. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah. Jack Butala: What makes me livid. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah. Jack Butala: What makes me happy. Jill DeWit: What gets to me. Jack Butala: What makes me jump up and down. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Jack Butala: I'll tell it all. Jill DeWit: I love it. Jack Butala: For better or for worse. Jill DeWit: Uh-oh. Jack Butala: You decide if you want to listen to the rest of the show. Jill DeWit: That's right. For those of you who love a Jack Rand, this is for you. Jack Butala: Oh yeah. 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. If you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Aaron wrote, "In the meeting, I was asked to share some results. This is not a done deal by any means, but here's what I have to share. My second mailer is starting to hit out of state owners first. First response via email, I offered $4,000. The owner wants to get at least what they paid for it in the 1980s, which is $12,000. Both brokers I talked to today said the market has gone mad and they think they'll sell it in 30 days for $30,000 to $40,000. I have to dig into comps tonight and decide if I believe them." Love that. "I would love to hear how others are doing $4,000 and would have been about right on a lot with no trees in this area?" That was a little confusing there. Jack Butala: A little encrypted. Jill DeWit: But big picture is- Jack Butala: He's buying for 12, selling for 35. Jill DeWit: Well, right now he's offering four. The guy said he wants 12. So I have two things that I'd like to say first, please. Number one is, sometimes they're right. In this situation, if the guy just wants to go to his 12 out and you can confirm you're going to get $30,000 to $40,000 out of it, and then we'd have to discuss it and you're comfortable with that, I would do it. Jack Butala: So would I. Jill DeWit: My second comment is sometimes it's not right. I have had people that paid 12,000 for property years ago in the '80s, because of this mall or this airport or this freeway was going to come in and it was going to be, yay, the greatest thing, and then didn't pan out. So they have paid 12,000 for it and now it's worth two. I've had that. And they know that and I've had to remind them. They're like, "Yeah, I knew when I bought it that it was because of X, and that military base never happened." So there we go. I know. And so you have to explain that to them. So sometimes I just want you to know that just because they pay 12 in the '80s doesn't mean it's always worth money today. Go ahead. Jack Butala: I couldn't have said it better. I mean, I would've said- Jill DeWit: Oh, you would have said it better. Jack Butala: No, I mean, this is a great topic. Tomorrow's topic, by the way, is how Jill looks at deals. It's Jack Thursday, it's about me, not about Jill. Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. Jack Butala: And believe me, this doesn't happen often Jill DeWit: We should do this. We're going to make Thursday all about Jack all day long. Jack Butala: I sit next to Jill. That's what Land Academy should be. Jill DeWit: The guy next to Jill. Jack Butala: John F. Kennedy used to say, "I am Jackie Kennedy's husband." Jill DeWit: There we go. Thank you, babe. That's awesome. So what are your comments? Jack Butala: Today's topic? Jill DeWit: You have no other comments?

Creative Deal Structuring (1521) Transcript: Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hello. Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWitt coming to you from the job site in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Jack Butala: If you're watching this, not listening to us, we're starting to take delivery on all kinds of stuff that's happening to this rehab house that we're in. Jill: Yes, you're going to be watching mounds of Hickory, real wood flooring show up over my shoulder here in just a minute. Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about creative deal structuring. One of my favorite topics. 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. And if you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. Jill: Anne Marie wrote, general newbie question here. "I've been a member now for about seven weeks and I've spent many hours studying Land Academy, Land Investors, Discord, et cetera. I love hearing get the mail out from Steve and Jill. I've chosen my counties and have scraped the data of for sale and sold properties on Land & Farm, Zillow and Redfin. Is it naive of me to think I can get ahold of a good price per acre." Jack Butala: Price per acre. Jill: Familiar with that code. Thank you very much, sir. Jack Butala: How are you familiar with that though? Jill: That's awesome. Jack Butala: BFF. Jill: Are you familiar with some of the hand gestures I'm about to hold up? Jack Butala: Pretty familiar with OMG. Jill: Pretty sure. Yeah. All right. Are you familiar with BTW? Jack Butala: By the way? Jill: Oh, you are. Good, good. Wasn't sure. Jack Butala: Gosh. [crosstalk 00:01:49]. Jill: Oh, my gosh. Anyway, "Is it naive of me to think I can get a good price breaker comp to price my first mailer? I've averaged out the price breaker on all three platforms and have a good average. Is it unreasonable to price it for 20% of the average value? Please confirm it is better to be under than overpriced." Oh, heck yeah. Jill: Unlike our... What's that? Jack Butala: I don't know. Jill: I don't know What that is. Jack Butala: Unlike our choices where. Jill: Overdressed is better than underdressed. Got it. "I know the market very well. People are flocking towards these areas. There are few more properties sold than compared to list it." Jill: This is all great stuff. Jill: "I'm not sure how to check the wholesale for wholesale competition, but my state is X. I don't see a lot of the Thursday will you do this deals properties in this area? I'd love to know how to check that though, and I'd be more comfortable in negotiating up." Jill: Okay. Can we tackle these a little bit at a time? Jack Butala: You please answer all the questions you want. I'm going to answer the question about, "Is it reasonable?" Jill: Well, good. Jack Butala: "At 40%" Jill: You start with that one. I'll do the other stuff. Jack Butala: Is it unreasonable to price it for 20% of this average value question mark. There is no way, this question comes up all the time. The question is this, "I have a great price per acre. It's $1,500. I'm real confident in my data that in this zip code for properties that are between one and five acres, they've been listed and sold for an average of $1,500." Jack Butala: So it's real easy to get to that point. If you're new, it's time consuming, but it's not that hard. Then the question becomes, "How should I price my mailer? Should I price it at 20% of $1,500 an acre? 35%, 40%, 50% am I going to ruin my mailer at 20%? Am I going to ruin my mailer at 70%?" These are the questions that go through a new person's head, rightfully so. So they seek out an answer. I'm not saying anything negative against Ann-Marie here at all. I'm just using this as an example, because this is probably 50% of the new people that gets to the point where the sending a mailer out,...

Assignment Deals - Do We Do Them? (LA 1520) Transcript: Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Hello. Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Jill Dewitt: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from hot and not so perfect Paradise Valley, Arizona today. Jack Butala: Today Jill and I talk about assignment deals. Do we do them? Jill Dewitt: Oh I have a lot to say. Jack Butala: This topic comes from a lot of questions that we're getting about assignment deals, because there's always this buzz, not so much in our group, but this buzz about assignment deals. Jill Dewitt: On the planet. Jack Butala: And why they're... Jill Dewitt: The planet thinks they're awesome. Jack Butala: How you can make a fortune. Yeah. Jill Dewitt: I'm here to tell you they suck. Jack Butala: They do suck. Jill Dewitt: And I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to explain what this is. I'm going to tell you all the things that can go wrong. Jack Butala: That's excellent. Jill Dewitt: And why I have chosen to go, "Nope, not doing that." Jack Butala: I can't wait to hear it and I bet I agree. 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. If you're already with us in the Land Academy group, join us on Discord. You won't be disappointed. Jill Dewitt: Which is another way that we communicate. It's like We Chat or Teams or something. What the heck is discord? That's what it is. And it's pretty cool. Scott wrote, "Question for the land veterans in a situation like this, where the property just went back to the tax authority, is it worth it to pay the former owner a few hundred bucks and get her to assign you the right of redemption and a quick claim deed. Then someone could pick it up for basically the cost of the back taxes. Sounds like there's enough meat on the bone for the extra trouble." Jack Butala: May I? Jill Dewitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jack Butala: We do this all the time. I've been doing this for 25 years. There's all kinds of education out there about how to do this too. Do I think it should completely and totally focus on this? Absolutely not. Do I think you should focus on back tax properties only? Nope. But what happens is we send all this mail out and invariably someone calls you back. Usually on every single mailer and says, "Yeah, I'm going to let this go back anyway. I don't want this property. It's been five years. I haven't paid the taxes. Here's the APN. Well, you know the APN, you sent it to me on my letter. So knock yourself out. Maybe send me $500." Or maybe you suggest that you give them $500 to let you to undo all this mess for them, depending on how much back taxes there are, it may or may not be worth it. Jack Butala: It's just a math situation. If there's too much more back taxes than the properties, then you can sell it for, then it's not... Jill Dewitt: Then you walk away. Jack Butala: Right. There are people in our space, other people who have a land academy like environments, where they teach how to buy and sell land, that only focus on this. Which to think of silly. Why would you focus on just one small little part of the revenue stream? No, in the vast majority of these situations, we win, you would win as the investor because you're dealing with somebody who just doesn't care anymore. They already gave up, stopped paying the taxes and you have to solve their problem usually from a legal standpoint. The deed might be in a deceased mom's name. Jill Dewitt: Yeah. You got to make sure it's undoable and they're into it. Jack Butala: Yeah. I'm skipping along the top of this topic. Jill Dewitt: Because we have one right now, that's majorly hard to undo and they're not into it. It's a double thing working against us. So then you have to decide is my time worth it? Jack Butala: I put this in here for a reason, among many, many questions.

We Brought Back the Advanced Group (LA 1519) Transcript: Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt: Hello. Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWitt: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. Jack Butala: Today Jill and I talk about why we brought back the Land Academy Advanced Group. Jill DeWitt: I don't think it ever really went away. Jack Butala: It really didn't. Jill DeWitt: No, it was kind of just on a hiatus, and we'll talk about that. Jack Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWitt: And why it's getting big now. Jack Butala: Massive traction. Here's a hint, it has to do with funding. Jill DeWitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jack Butala: Funding new people's deals, and funding each other. 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, and if you're already a member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWitt: So there's two places you can connect with us is what that means. Okay, Nolan wrote, "I've sent out a couple mailers. I have had a few signed purchase agreements come back, and a good amount of leads I'm working through, but access to the land seems to be my issue. I do have a couple in the hopper I'm pretty excited about, but I'm waiting to hear back from a broker what they think they can sell them for before I buy them. It certainly takes time, and being new and in the weeds is tough, especially hunting for deal number one. It will come, I just have to keep at it." Nolan gave his own advice. Jack Butala: Self-motivation. Jill DeWitt: Exactly. I know it, I know what you're going to say, it's like when you're a kid, and you walk in like, "I know Dad, I know I'm wrong. I know I screwed up, I know I", whatever it is, "I wrecked the car, you don't have to tell me. The policeman already did it, we had a whole talk. I'm good." So that's kind of ... But you're not in trouble, obviously. Jack Butala: Everybody goes through this, that's why I included this. It's not a question, it's a statement. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. Jack Butala: And actually, this is his response to several people saying, "My mailers are out, I've got some stuff coming back in", it's just that oh my God moment, and we all went through it. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. And you're doing it. Jack Butala: So important. Jill DeWitt: Access to the land. That's fine. Jack Butala: Yep. Jill DeWitt: And you know what to do, Nolan. You know the difference between physical access and legal access, and I love that you're bringing in, if you're really on the fence, that's one of the best, safest things you can do is call someone really local to the area and just say, "What do you think? What could you sell this for?" Without telling them any of the backstory, just what do you think and how fas could you do it? And then you know, "Oh, I need to hurry up and buy this", or, "Oh, don't bother." Jack Butala: Today's topic, why we brought back the Advanced Group. This is the meat of the show. If I wrote this title, and I didn't, I would say, "Why we brought back the Advanced Group, which never really went away." Jill DeWitt: Yep. Well, maybe some people are on our staff are a little confused, and again, it never went away. We've always had the Advanced Group, but now we've added to it. We've added to the services, and the time, and the energy, and the group. So our Advanced Group was really a core, handpick, I want to give the back story. Jack Butala: Sure. Jill DeWitt: This was a core, handpicked group that started like 20 people that you identified as heavy hitters, like minded, sending out a ton of mail, buying a ton of deals, doing big numbers, big dollar amounts. People that we all need to kind of learn from each other, and again, it's still kind of handpicked who gets in the group, period. And if you're in the Advanced Group, you should know, you are handpicked.

Jill Friday - How We Failed at Hiring (LA 1518) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Friday. 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 pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today is Jill Friday. She's going to talk about how we failed at hiring, and bring it home this week. 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. And if you're already a member, please join us on Discord. This question is two parts. Jill DeWit: I see that. There's different dates, so this us going to be good. Steven Butala: So this is Austin asking a question on May 4th, and we'll read the question. Jill DeWit: Uh-huh (affirmative). Steven Butala: And then a million people in our group and outside of our group respond. Jill DeWit: As a follow-up. Steven Butala: Two or three weeks later, he gives us his decision. Jill DeWit: Okay, good. Okay. So this is Austin on May 4th. "Hello. I'm writing this in response to podcast number 1479 about recovering landlords." This is good. "I've owned a duplex for about 10 years. Cashflow is about $600 a month, depending on expenses. If I was to sell it right now, I could gross approximately $220,000 after paying off the underlying mortgage." I remember this, by the way. Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill DeWit: "The real estate fees and other taxes would still need to be subtracted. I'm not sure what this looks like tax wise, until I have a chat with my accountant. Would you guys hang on to this asset and let rents and equity just go up? Or would you sell it and take this money and apply it to property acquisitions? I could also do a cash out refinance as well. Thoughts? Thanks, Austin." And a lot of people wrote in on it. I think I wrote in on this too, if I remember correctly, and I know what I said. Steven Butala: Jill and I said sell it. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: The vast majority, if not every single response, and there were tons of them, said to keep it. Jill DeWit: Really? Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: Okay, so this is good. So here's the follow-up. Steven Butala: Bear in mind, it's cash flowing $600 a month. Jill DeWit: $600 a month. Not counting the headaches. Steven Butala: That doesn't pay our utility bill. Jill DeWit: And the alcohol that he needs to consume for the headaches that go with this. I would spend that $600 easy. Okay, so Austin wrote back on May 21st. "Hello. So my question made the podcast." Yeah, it did Austin. Yeah, episode 1501. And now you're back too. I don't know what episode we're on today, but anyway. "I would have responded sooner except I was out of town doing important rural land research." Good for him. "I was comparing different areas and how affluent the flavor of wine and how they influence." Excuse me, affluent. "I was comparing different areas and how they influence the flavor of wine and charcuterie plates." That's my kind of research. Steven Butala: This is the same type of land research we do. Jill DeWit: That's exactly what we do. "After listening to the podcast, I'm leaning towards selling, but for a slightly different reason than it being an underperforming asset. Allow me to go on a tangent for a moment. I work for a small company and my employer is retiring at the end of the year. My current company will shut down. I will have a similar W2 job tentatively lined up. I don't find my current work very interesting." Steven Butala: Amen to that. Jill DeWit: "While I was on vacation, a land buyer contacted me and I set up most of the transaction from my camp site. For the next couple of days, I rode around on a deal high. Many of you out there who have done deals already should know what I'm talking about. Doing land deals is much more interesting and fun than many W2 situations.

Jack Thursday - Why Concierge Data Will Change your Life (LA 1517) 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 darn near perfect Paradise Valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today is Jack Thursday, and I talk about why our product, Concierge Data, could change your life. Jill DeWit: It's changing my life. Steven Butala: I am your concierge data, by the way. Jill DeWit: Exactly. You have changed my life. 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: This is coming from mutual and consensual. Steven Butala: From yesterday. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Okay, Billy wrote, I am wondering if anyone has things to look out for in the Texas market. Steven Butala: This is a wonderful brief question. Jill DeWit: I like it. Steven Butala: Texas is an awesome place to buy and sell land, has always been, and probably always will be. It's a great place to do minor splits. It's a great place to have the freedom to, once you buy the property, to do stuff to it. So Texas has great- Jill DeWit: Even houses, for houses there, too. Steven Butala: Yeah, for house academy, too. There's a reason it's like number three moving-toward destination in the country. I'll tell you. There's a couple of things to look out for. The south western part of Texas on the border, Culbertson County and Hudspeth County specifically, there's a lot of property there and how it got subdivided. No one knows where it is, including the people at the county. And, the terrain itself is pretty awful. It's kind of like being on the moon, like certain places in Arizona. And, it's dry and it's barren. Jill DeWit: No one's going to bother you out there, that's for sure. Steven Butala: So, it's the kind of terrain that's in a lot of cowboy movies, that's where they die, because there's no water and they just can't get anywhere. Jill DeWit: That's as far as they got. Steven Butala: But the real problem is not that. The problem is that knowing they got subdivided so quickly and incorrectly, and probably with some not legally, that no one knows where the property is. It's very difficult to find. Outside of that, on Thursday when Jill and I do the Thursday Would You Do This Deal call, where members give us all these deals and ask us, "Would you do this deal?" Texas is- Jill DeWit: It doesn't come up at all. Steven Butala: ... strangely constantly absent, which there's 244 counties in Texas, the largest number of counties in a state. And it just, I have a feeling that we have some quiet members that are just burning it up there. Jill DeWit: That's true. And they're not talking about it. Steven Butala: In Texas fashion. I respect that. Jill DeWit: I agree, but there's a lot of great opportunity. An hour outside of Dallas, an hour outside of Houston, Austin, San Antonio, just outside those places, because there's so much going on. Steven Butala: Every deal I've ever done in Texas worked out great. Today's topic, it's Jack Thursday. Why concierge data will change your life? This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: Can you please explain what this is? Steven Butala: We are soon going to release a product called Concierge Data, that was at the dramatic request of our membership. Jill DeWit: By the time this airs, I think it's out. Steven Butala: Yes. It's a product that falls under offers to owners. And this is what it is. If you, for whatever reason, can't get an offer campaign out as a member or you haven't joined Land Academy because you're a Jill, but you don't really... You're just afraid to do a mailer, which I get, because I'm afraid of talking on the phone. This solves that. What it does is you can actually fill out a form, a real simple form on Offers2Owners and say,

Who Should I Hire First in 2021? (LA 1516) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. 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 pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about who should you hire first in 2021. This is a very popular question in our customer service Land Academy environment. How do I get that first employee? Jill DeWit: I'm excited. I have some ideas. Steven Butala: Me too. Jill DeWit: First, before we get into it. Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Investors online community. It is free, so I'm getting an account there. And then by the way, if you are a member, I know that we're beating a dead horse here, but I want you guys to get in Discord. It rocks. Steven Butala: John asks, "Can anyone elaborate and help me understand the paragraph from V26 May investors newsletter?" Steven Butala: We have a newsletter, Land Academy does. I don't know if it goes to everybody or if it goes just to our members. And so I write stuff in there, I'm a writer for the newsletter. And, this whole thing, I'm going to read this because this person was asking for clarification about what I said. A lot of years ago, I was with us listening to Larry King on this long drive. And he was interviewing William Shatner and of course, Star Trek came up and Larry King said, "Do you have these people that ever come up to you and ask you about Star Trek?" And he said, "Oh yeah, I have people on a daily basis." And, so they'd take a question from a caller on that switchboard. And the caller says, "What did you mean by... When you said XYZ in episode 14 in the third season of star Trek?" And, William Shatner blew his top. Jill DeWit: That's funny. Steven Butala: He said, "I don't remember." Jill DeWit: Why would they not have a better relationship with the Klingon community based on X?" Yeah. Steven Butala: He said, "Listen, asshole" I can't say that. I'm going to ask our guys to... He just blew his top. He said, "Listen, I can't remember even actually doing that show at all. Ever." Steven Butala: Are you writing down the time? Jill DeWit: Yes I am. Steven Butala: "I don't remember showing up for work for that entire part of my life, let alone episodes and what I said and the dialogue and all of that. And by the way, it wasn't me who said that it was my character." And, so he just went off and I don't know, I stopped the car. I was laughing so hard. Jill DeWit: That's good. Steven Butala: So, here I am saying and writing some stuff, then I'm going to try to translate that I don't remember saying it, right? Jill DeWit: Go for it. Steven Butala: He asks,, "Can you elaborate or help me understand what you meant?" And, what I wrote is this, "Here is what it can do for property investors like us after reviewing the entire 150 million unit data set, there's 150 million unit properties in this country, I would like to see properties with no improvement value, just land in zip codes, where the spread between the average completed sale value and the foresale values are the largest." Steven Butala: So, you've got really large for sale values and really low completed sale values. "This tells me where to send out blind offers. Then I would like to see within those geographic parameters, what acreage range is the widest. This tells me which owners or to whom to send blind offers after scrubbing down to this dataset, I'd like to know what the actual spread prices are. This tells me for how much to send each offer out how to price the offers." Steven Butala: That makes complete sense to me. Does it make sense to you? What he didn't include, and it's fine, is the context of what this was and what I said. And, this is my advice to everyone. Take four steps back and don't get all in the deluge of the data. Take a look,

The Employees We Can Live Without (Rants) (LA 1515) 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 pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the employees we can live without. Jill DeWit: Oh, I've got one. Steven Butala: This is our rant. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: It's hiring week all week today, all this week. Jill DeWit: This is going to be good. I'll tell you one employee I could do without, the kind that wants to replace me. Steven Butala: Who would ever replace you? Jill DeWit: Oh, wait, I'll fill you in. Steven Butala: Let's take a question before Jill's rant. It was posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. If you're already a member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Martin wrote, "A potential buyer reached out to me following my first mailer interested in selling their 0.5 acre vacant lot for $14,682. They informed me that they were selling not only the lot from my mailer offer, but the neighboring 0.5 acre lot. This is cool. I was informed that the additional lot has their deceased mother's hundred year old home on it and it was quoted as being uninhabitable. This is my first mailer and I'm diving into some unknown territory with potentially buying a lot with a home on it and I'd like to get some perspective from the group. The sellers informed me that both lots are off of primary roads and a three minute walk to a lake and both lots are in the seller's name." Jill DeWit: This is all good information. Steven Butala: This is really good. Jill DeWit: Yeah. So here are the questions. Steven Butala: This is a beautiful story. Jill DeWit: "Number one, pending I can get the home for a low price, is it worth it? I don't want to do a home flip as one of my first buys and would plan to list as is. Two, can I take the home straight title myself or do I need to hire a realtor once I get the purchase agreement back? Thank you to match your health, Martin." Jill DeWit: This is great. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? Steven Butala: Yeah. 99% of all cases with vacant land, if there's something on it, it's more valuable, not less value. I don't care if it's a blown out mobile home, it's better. The 1% where you don't want this to be the case is where there's something that would fall under EPA guidelines as toxic and it would require a cleanup. So if there's an old house that's fallen down on a piece of property that's a few blocks from a lake, you can tell that's a beautiful, beautiful story. It's a fantastic. With a vacant lot next to it? Jill DeWit: Yeah. Now you have an acre. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: By the way, now you have a full acre. One of them has a house on it. So whoever buys it can keep one, sell the other, keep them both, whatever. Steven Butala: Can you imagine a situation where a vacant piece of property would be more value than one with an old house on it? Jill DeWit: Nope. Steven Butala: Neither can I. Jill DeWit: Nope. Steven Butala: All the utilities are hooked up. There's probably a slab there. Jill DeWit: That's great. Steven Butala: There's all kinds of positive things that go with that. And people know that. This world, people who go on Craigslist or anywhere are DIY type people. They would love to get a really inexpensive old house and spent five years fixing it up. Jill DeWit: Someone's going to want that. The hundred year old home that's been there and the loving story that goes with it. That mom lived there for how many years. Maybe dad built it. Maybe grandpa built it. That would be so cool and someone will love that. Jill DeWit: Another thing is, too, by the way, you can do this whole transaction yourself. Just because there's a house on it does not mean you need an agent.

Our Favorite Types of Employees (Raves) (LA 1514) 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 sweet paradise valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today. Jill and I talk about our favorite types of employees. These are raves and it's a- Jill DeWit: Positive. Steven Butala: ...hiring week, all week. Jill DeWit: Yep. Employee, employer, I love that. This is going to be good. Things that we've learned that we can help you with. Steven Butala: Yeah. You know enough. Jill DeWit: Because we've done it wrong and we've done it right. Steven Butala: We're getting a lot of questions from our members about how to scale their businesses up. They're buying and selling land pretty successfully, and now they want to make it a career. Jill DeWit: They need to expand their team and hire people. 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, and if you're already a member, please join us on discord. Jill DeWit: Cool. Amir wrote, hi guys, thanks for the endless valuable information you give. I learn something new every podcast you post. As a beginner that aims to make relatively big deals, I want to buy between 30 and 70,000 and sell between 90 to $200,000. That's my favorite too. Steven Butala: That's what I want. Jill DeWit: I'm wondering, should I start with 10 to 20 small deals, buy in $3,000 in sell in the $10,000 range and then scale to the bigger ones or should I get familiar with the big ones right on my first mailer. Thanks at advance, Amir. You want to go first? Steven Butala: Yeah. A lot of people had a lot to say starting with our moderator, Kevin. Kevin, I can't thank you enough, by the way. And they all said go small first and I agree. I don't necessarily think you need to... And it's not because, here's why, there's two reasons. Number one, you're going to make some mistakes, everybody does. And the earlier you make the mistakes, the faster you're going to be successful. So you want to do that on smaller deals. You don't want to lose a lot of money. Jill DeWit: I'm not going to sweat about it. Steven Butala: I'm not necessarily saying you're going to lose money, but you might not do a deed right or you might not respond to a seller the right way, or there's just little things that happen. Jill DeWit: Really, that's stuff you can solve regardless of the deal. But what if you bought one wrong, I don't know, you overpaid for one big deal. So, that's my usual thing at the 10 out of the way. If they're 10 smaller ones and nine of them are great, and one you're like, oh, I totally screwed up and shoot. Technically I lost money on that one or I broke even on that one, but that's okay because the other nine make up for that one and now you got it. Steven Butala: And then my second and final point, which is I think incredibly important is you need to find out if this is for you. Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: So there's a lot of their sips. This isn't for everybody. It's a lot of work, it's extremely rewarding. I think it's a lot of fun. You might find out this is just no fun. Jill DeWit: We are weird. Steven Butala: I know. Yes. Land Academy is a group full of weird people that enjoy buying real estate and selling it for more. You get high off of it actually, just do so. Jill DeWit: Totally. Steven Butala: Here's another question here later in the week where we talk about the deal high. Jill DeWit: Can I pause for just a second here BEcause this is so good? Because we sometimes talk about this differently. We really have told people, Hey, go for it, whatever you want to do, you can just go for it. So there's no real wrong answer here. If you want to just dive in, go for the bigger deals, you feel real comfortable with them and do deal fundi...

Jill Friday - We Have Hot Water! Starting my House Renovation (LA 1513) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill, here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from happening Paradise Valley, Arizona. It's happening because we are here now. Everyone- Steven Butala: It's- Jill K DeWit: Excuse me. Hold, please. I'm not done. All of you 80 year-olds that are listening that are my neighbors ... Just kidding. Watch out. There's new kids in town. There's a reason we're here. We have no HOA so we're going to have some rocking parties. Steven Butala: We're the young whippersnappers. Jill K DeWit: Yes, we are. Steven Butala: We're the ones who are going to create the noise in the state. Jill K DeWit: Oh, it's going to be good. Steven Butala: We're the Gatsbys. Jill K DeWit: Our neighbors are going to wish we had an HOA. Just kidding. "Paradise Valley Police Department. Yeah, yeah, we know. Jack and Jill? Uh-huh, we're on it." Just kidding. Steven Butala: Today's Jill Friday and she's going to talk about how we actually have hot water in this monstrosity of a mess of a house that we just bought and how we're starting- Jill K DeWit: How we're starting some renovations. Steven Butala: Jill's renovation, I call it. Jill K DeWit: I'd like to add, too ... Here's what realistically happened because this is what happened at the beach. When you call the police department you might get a voicemail because they're at our party. Steven Butala: That's true. Jill K DeWit: That really did happen at the beach. Steven Butala: That's true. Those guys are great. Jill K DeWit: So, just be prepared. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on LandInvestors.com online community. It's free and if you're already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: Andrew W. wrote, "Hi, everyone. Question for you. We have a buyer who's interested in one of our properties and he wants to purchase but he stated they want to meet us, the owners, in person at the property to confirm before purchasing. Has anyone experienced this and know what to say or do? The property's out of state and if anything we could make the trip but wanted to see what others have done in the past. Thanks." Jill K DeWit: Well, one easy way to get out of it right now is play the COVID card like, "Oh, I can't. My wife won't go." Play the double whammy. "My wife is not into it and ..." What were you going to say? You're so serious right now. Steven Butala: I've done this ... Jill K DeWit: Have fun. Steven Butala: Here's why I'm serious, because this is a serious question. Jill K DeWit: Okay. I know that. You want me to answer? Because that's ... I believe it. I'm having fun but I wanted to lighten it up a little bit and [inaudible 00:02:30][crosstalk 00:02:30]- Steven Butala: I'm racking Jill's time. Jill K DeWit: And then I can reel it ... give a real. Steven Butala: This is not the first time. Jill K DeWit: You know what, Andrew. I accurately tell people I'm not there. I've had people say, "Are you going to show me around?" And I made a joke and I said, "Yeah, I'll leave a key under the mat," and then they didn't quite get it and I had to ... It's okay. The right people get it. But there's nothing wrong with that. You don't need to be there. You don't need to show the property. I'm just ... You have a lot to say. I can tell you're holding back. Steven Butala: I don't have a lot to say. Jill K DeWit: I'm honest about it. Steven Butala: I've three or four sentences. I've done this a handful of times and every single time it's a mess. Jill K DeWit: You show up there? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill K DeWit: Oh, I've never done that. Steven Butala: And here's what I've ... This is way early in my career because we were dying for sales and it was never ...

Jack Thursday - DataTree vs RealQuest vs TitlePRO (LA 1512) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today's Jack Thursday. I'm going to talk about DataTree versus RealQuest versus TitlePro. These are the three largest mainstream data aggregators. I'll really deconstruct them and tell you which ones are which and why. Jill K DeWit: This sounds so exciting. Steven Butala: What color is your nail polish today that you're going to put on your nails while I talk about this? Jill K DeWit: I don't have any. I'm going to run and get some here. I will have plenty of time to choose and paint. Jill K DeWit: Just kidding. 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. If you're already a member, join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: Sean wrote, "Which is more accurate for getting situs zip, geocode.io or DataTree? Jill K DeWit: There's other places to do those, too, by the way. Jill K DeWit: I ran the long [lap 00:01:09] from DataTree through geocode.io to get situs zip codes. Then I noticed DataTree already had the situs zip codes listed to download. I can put the two columns side-by-side and notice some discrepancies. Anyone have any experience on which one is more accurate? Jill K DeWit: Where to go? Steven Butala: Sean, this is the right way to do this, but as I'm going to explain here in a few minutes about sources of data, generally, the more urban the data, the more populated all the columns are because the assessor has a vested interest in getting to know properties more in urban areas versus rural areas. Why? So that they can charge accurate and, in a lot of cases, higher- Jill K DeWit: More. Steven Butala: ... property taxes. Steven Butala: This is a universal rule about data. This is a good question for today. The more urban it is, the more populated or accurate it probably is. When you look at data for LA County, specifically City of Los Angeles, I fall out of my chair at how amazing the data quality is, regardless of the source. If you go to rural, I'm not picking on any state in general, Indiana or anywhere, some rural counties in Texas, it's incredibly incomplete to the point where you fall out of the other side of your chair. You can't use it. I'll talk all about that. Steven Butala: The reason that you're getting discrepancies in geo zip codes is because you took a county or a city or zip code, whatever, that was really populated with zip codes, situs zip codes in DataTree. Then when you try to convert it over, there are discrepancies because geocoding is not perfect. It's just like everything. Does the discrepancies matter? No, it's all a numbers game. If 90% of it's probably accurate or higher, you're going to buy some real estate. That's the whole point here. Jill K DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: And I'll just say, the people that join Land Academy are incredibly intelligent. We don't have any control over who joins or who doesn't. Jill K DeWit: Well, we do. Steven Butala: We have control over who stays in the group. Jill K DeWit: There we go. Like, hold on a moment. Steven Butala: This is a crazy intelligent question, but I think that there are certain types of people that join Land Academy and just make it an academic exercise for them. Instead of, let's say, quilting, data analysis becomes their hobby. Jill K DeWit: It's good. Steven Butala: This is how people get divorced, by the way. Jill K DeWit: I thought you were going to say how people get rich. Steven Butala: No, just [follow 00:03:44] me on this. Steven Butala: Instead of keeping your eye on the prize, which is buying a piece of land and reselling it for more infamy- Jill K DeWit:

How to Find Real Estate Deals 2021 | Direct Mail (LA 1511) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Howdy. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Paradise Valley, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to find real estate deals in 2021. So is it any different than 2020? Is it any different than 1960? Jill K DeWit: No. Well, probably. 1960 was probably a lot of knocking on doors back then, but it could have been done the same way. 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. And if you're already a member, please join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: I'd like to talk about that here in a minute. Steven Butala: I will. I'll ask you questions. Jill K DeWit: All right. Jordan wrote, "When you guys are looking at Land Watch and Land and Farm, do you pay attention to the listings from other sources? It seems like a lot of the properties on listings from other sources are always a lot cheaper and more reasonably priced." Is that like on Zillow, where it's like FSBO versus agent listings? I'm not even sure what that is. Steven Butala: Jordan, this is a brilliant question. There are alternative sources, which I love, alternative sources to look at real estate that's for sale that's posted because people like us and people like Land Academy members understand it. You don't have to necessarily go through the MLS. So on Zillow, there's a category called other, and you should study that. On Land Watch and Land and Farm, those two sites specifically encourage independent postings for property. Jill K DeWit: I thought the whole thing is that way. Steven Butala: The whole thing is not that way anymore. They have what's called an IDX feed for each area, so- Jill K DeWit: They're pulling it in from MLS. That's taking away what it used to be. Steven Butala: Exactly. Exactly. It's just those sites, not so much Zillow, although it's true are all run by tech people in San Francisco and so they don't really, truly understand- Jill K DeWit: They're not investors. We happened to know that. We had a run in with them several years ago and they're like, "We don't really care who you are, what you do, or how much money you pay us every month. This is just the way it is." I was like, "Okay, noted," and then we've made our own site called LandPin. Steven Butala: Exactly. Jill K DeWit: So we don't need you guys then fine. Steven Butala: But Jordan's question is, is it pertinent to running data from a red, green, yellow test than from a.. Yeah. It's pertinent. I would absolutely look at it. Would I throw it into your pool of data and then take averages out and price it that way? No, not at all, but I really would use it to see what kind of activities there are and all that. This is a very good question. Today's topic, how to find deals in 2021. This is the meat of the show. Jill K DeWit: So I would like to talk about... I'm trying to think. So in 1960, I bet that was like the height in up and coming thing, was probably very classy and maybe they had the gold jackets back then. I don't know. Was it century 21 when they had the gold jackets I think? Steven Butala: I can tell you from experience. I bought a house in the late eighties personally, or maybe it was very early nineties and when I sat down with a real estate agent and I... Jill K DeWit: There's a book. Steven Butala: I put a yellow piece of paper, shoved a yellow pad and I said, "I drove the whole area where I want to buy a house, and these are all the addresses that have listings and here's the listing." I was creating my own MLS. I didn't know anything about this stuff. I was a kid. And she looked at me and said, "Whatever you choose to do, be for your living for the rest of your life,

Is it Too Late to Get Started in Real Estate? (LA 1510) Transcript: Jill K DeWit: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from pretty Paradise Valley, Arizona. That's a mouthful. How am I going to get that? I'm have to come up with some cute little saying with that. 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. And if you're already a member, please join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: Cool. Nolan wrote, "Hello, all. Curious to know how you include a second parcel in the original purchase agreement, if possible, meaning the seller wants to sell the property you sent the PA for, purchase agreement, but he also wants to sell another one that they own in this transaction. Do you typically just mail another PA for the second property, or can something be written on the original PA to include the second one. The seller is older and not very tech savvy for DocuSign. Thanks." You can, a hundred percent, just write it on the bottom. I just tell them, "Hey, if we change the price or something, cross out that price, put in the new price on there and initial it." Good enough for me. Steven Butala: And take a picture of it and send it with your phone, or have his grandchildren do that, or whatever. Jill K DeWit: I've done them all. Steven Butala: However, it works. Jill K DeWit: I have called on Saturday and taught them how to take a picture with their phone. I have waited for the grandkids to get home. Sometimes they have an old fashioned fax machine kind of thing. So there's lots of ways to get it back to you. You can just write it on there. It doesn't have to be... And even for escrow. I have two things I want to say on this. One is, if you're going to self close a deal, it's just, if you want to have it, it's only personal preference, you don't need to have this piece of paper. It's like your accountant's going to need to see it or anything like that at the end of the year, if you want it. But for escrow, most of the time, they're going to want you to have something opening up the transaction, showing that, "Hey, here's what I'm buying. I have a signed purchase agreement. This is the price. And moving forward." Thank you for letting me finish my sentence today. Steven Butala: The National Association of Realtors and lawyers in general, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fake you out, into believing that you have to sign your name 50 times to buy a piece of real estate and that you need them. Here's the facts. This came up in Career Path and we talked about it for a long time. And somebody in Career Path... These are extremely advanced, intelligent people in some cases, said, "What do you need from a legal documentation standpoint to close a deal?" To which I said, "A deed. You need to have the seller sign the deed over to you." Jill K DeWit: That's it. Steven Butala: That's all. Then the deal is done and it's legal. Jill K DeWit: It makes me nuts. I can't believe I've had to sign like COVID things and all that stuff for a piece of land, four states over that I'm never going to see, and I'm never going to even talk to that person. Steven Butala: That's right. Jill K DeWit: Why do I have to sign this? Steven Butala: So as far as the purchase agreement is concerned, it's only a guide for pricing. It's an agreement between the buyer and seller. You can do it on the back of a cocktail napkin. I've done many deals on the back of a cocktail napkin where two people have initialed it. You put the APN on there and the price and the time. Do you even need that? No, but it's just like an agreement. It's an agreement between two people. So as far as that purchasing agreement goes, if you have somebody who's not super elderly and understands how to use their phone,

Investing in Other Business vs Real Estate (LA 1509) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: I don't think it's Scottsdale, Jill. Jill K DeWit: Oh, I'm sorry. Well, let's just say- Steven Butala: This is new for us. Jill K DeWit: Well, I'm near Scottsdale, Arizona, we'll just say that. I'm sitting in front of what appears like, you know what it looks like? It looks like we're at a resort. Coming to you from the Camelback Inn Resort and Villas. Coming to you from Ballroom A. We should do that. Steven Butala: Jill and I are recording this week from a property that we purchased in Paradise Valley. Jill K DeWit: Thank you very much. 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. And if you're already a member, please use Discord, but don't overuse it. Jill K DeWit: Noted. Steven Butala: I'll leave it at that. Jill K DeWit: Noted. Steven Butala: This is a long story that's worth reading. I'd happily read it, if you'd like. Jill K DeWit: I like reading it. I will settle in. And you too should settle in, as I look how long this is. Tony wrote, "Hi everyone." Wait, wait. Was this in Land Investors or was this in Discord? Steven Butala: Land investors. Jill K DeWit: Okay. "Hi everyone. I just wanted to chime in, introduce myself. My name is Tony and I've owned and operated an insurance agency for the past 11 years with great success. Finally I got tired of the company that I was selling for and sold my agency about six months ago. Was in the process of trying to figure out what to do next when I came across a YouTube video ad for land flipping. I thought to myself, is this for real? Well as most of you know, research leads you down some pretty deep rabbit holes, and I finally came across Land Academy with Steve and Jill. Those guys really struck a chord in me, as I found them to be probably the most sincere and entertaining educators on the subject out there." Entertaining. Steven Butala: I'll take it. Jill K DeWit: I'm sincere, you're entertaining. We're going to change our ending. Steven Butala: I think it's the other way. Insincere? This is Steve and Jill. Insincere. Jill K DeWit: And entertaining. Insincere and boring. No, I'm just kidding. That's so cool. Thank you, Tony. All right. Back to the comments here. "As much as I've researched and tried to learn, and trust me, there's plenty more out there to learn, I was and still am a bit skeptical. One night I was talking about possibly doing land flipping at the dinner table with my family and my 15-year-old daughter got intrigued as much as I did. Afterwards, little did I know she started to watch Land Academy episodes on YouTube." You've got to be kidding me. Steven Butala: Entertaining teenagers. Jill K DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: It's something that Jill and I haven't been able to accomplish in our own family. Jill K DeWit: Wow. This is the only one. Steven Butala: Congratulations, pal. You have the unicorn. Jill K DeWit: Okay. "YouTube and started to learn on her own the basics of land flipping. She came to me a little over a week ago and said, 'Dad, we could totally do this.' She then went on to tell me why and she went into steps of one" ... I'm still flipping proud of her. Steven Butala: Me too. Jill K DeWit: I want to give this little girl a hug. Steven Butala: We should have her on the show. Jill K DeWit: She's so good. "One, researching counties. Two, pick a county. Three, get the data. Four, scrub the data. Five, send out mailers. Six, buy the land. Seven, sell the land. Eight, rinse and repeat. Now I'm sure to all the experienced land folks out there, this is way over simplified,

Jill Friday - Sometimes it Takes the Owner to Get a Deal Done (LA 1508) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: It's getting that way. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Today is Jill Friday. She says, "Sometimes it takes the owner to get a deal done." Boy, that's the truth. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: Sometimes the owner's got to get involved. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: Sometimes dad's got to get involved. Jill DeWit: Yep. That's what this is all about. Steven Butala: Is that what this is? Jill DeWit: That's exactly what this is about. You don't want to do it. I'm here to save you. If you think your staff's all idiots and no one can do anything, that's not true. Sometimes it just takes that extra whatever to get it, to get it done. Steven Butala: Before we get into this, let's take a question posed by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and if you're already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Andrew W. wrote, "Hey, everyone. I'm very interested in doing Land Academy. However, I'm not a citizen of the United States and was wondering if it would still be possible to purchase and sell land in America?" Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: "If anyone can answer the question for me, that would be great. Also, if possible, are there any particular issues that came along with not being a citizen? Thanks a lot, Andrew." I thought this was important because it hasn't come up in a while. Steven Butala: It's a great question. Jill DeWit: People don't realize that you don't have to live here and you don't have to be a citizen. You don't have to have a visa. You don't have to be a resident. You can be happily in, say, Ireland and do this. Steven Butala: This comes up probably once a week now, maybe once a month. But probably every couple of weeks somebody ask this question, whether they're in Discord or wherever, and we point them to the other people that are successfully doing this from other countries, specifically Canada and Ireland. We've got military people that are stationed all over the country that are doing it. I mean, all over the world. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: All of our VAs are in the Philippines, so it's truly a worldwide situation. Jill DeWit: Isn't that great? And it's funny, remember a long time ago we talked? One of the reasons we do what we do in the United States is the ease of it, but it's the ease of the data. And we were looking at doing this maybe internationally in Australia, because I think still right now it's the only other place that we can really get quality data and it's legal. Because we were talking about this with somebody in England one time, that version of the assessor and the owner data is not public information. Steven Butala: Yeah. We're very, very fortunate in this country. Jill DeWit: It's public information. Steven Butala: When the property got all subdivided or sanctioned, or whatever the verb is, by the federal and then eventually homesteaded out, I don't know why, but they just became a transparent ownership scenario. In most places in the world, it's the exact opposite. Nobody wants anyone else to know that they own anything. Jill DeWit: Or what they paid, or any of that. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: It's so funny that it's your home, but not your car. Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill DeWit: There's so many other things that it's not. Steven Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: It's real interesting. But luckily for us, it is. Steven Butala: Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be possible. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: I've spent a substantial amount of time trying to duplicate this in Canada and it's just not going to happen.

Jack Thursday - State of the Union - Do We Care About Lumber Prices? (LA 1507) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey, hey, hey. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. What the heck? Jill DeWit: I don't know. Steven Butala: Entertaining Land Investment Talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, and I apparently had too much caffeine. Steven Butala: Yes, you have. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Today is Jack Thursday. I'm going to do what our customer service people have requested. A State of the Union, real estate in 2021. For example, do we care about lumber prices? Jill DeWit: I have a lot of questions, don't worry. Steven Butala: Okay. Before we get into it, then, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. And if you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Corey wrote, "Good evening." Steven Butala: Sorry. Jill DeWit: When posting a deal on Land Tank or sending a deal to someone for funding, what info about the property is good to include, so that no time is wasted, to get a quick "yes" or "no" answer for funding? Of course, I know that the [inaudible 00:01:06] are important, but what else should I include? I love this question, by the way. I am new and I haven't bought any land yet, but I'm sending offers to ten to a hundred acre properties, because I know that there are plenty of people here that will fund a deal if it's right. P.S. Jill, I had to leave this in here. I absolutely love listening on Clubhouse. Steven Butala: You snuck this in here. Jill DeWit: I totally. Steven Butala: Jill has a love affair with Clubhouse. Jill DeWit: This is not me making it up. Corey really put this in here and I'm like, oh I am putting the whole thing. Jill DeWit: He said Jill, I absolutely love listening on Clubhouse for someone that isn't a member yet. I feel like I'm breaking the law getting all the info for free that you guys talk about on there. Of course, the podcasts on this site are great too. Thanks, Corey. [inaudible 00:01:54] this is awesome. Okay. I need to know how the property is going, how the property will be sold, how fast it will be sold and what the game plan is. So let me give you an example. So Corey, you come up with a beautiful twenty-acre property and whatever county and whatever price let's just say. Say it's twenty-acre property for $20,000. So not only do you give me the property details. If there's anything pertinent, I want that I found that there is a well, they used to have a mobile on there. Jill DeWit: I've found out that it just got rezoned to this. Something unique or cooler, something that's making you want, why we're doing this deal about the actual property. Then the other thing I want you to do is tell me about you. You're selling me not only on the property, but you're selling me on you because you're coming to me to money and you should be saying, here's how great the property is and here's how great I am. And here's what I'm going to do with this. So I need information that says, I've been studying this for six months. I've got three brokers lined up champing at the bit. They think it's going to sell within 30 days at three times our money and how fast can I do it? And I can, and I've got the title agent ready to go. I can do this in two weeks. That's the information I need. Steven Butala: Let me state the obvious. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: And put this sentence in there. I don't need anything from you guys except the money. Jill DeWit: Yep. Perfect. Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:03:36] We have not so much now anymore. We've had a lot big problems with that when we start started Land Tank and deal funding. Basically new people were just throwing a property in there. It's a great deal. I know it's a great deal and just handing it to us and expecting us to do work. Steven Butala:

The Power of Answering the Phone (LA 1506) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill, here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the power of answering the phone. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Nothing like a live person answering the phone. You need to do that, and I'll explain more in a minute. Steven Butala: Yeah. 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 if you're already a Land Academy member. Join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Sean wrote, "Have any of you ever had a title company refuse to close a deal because the sale price is too far greater than the county assessed value? This just happened to me with two different title companies. I bought a lot with a current market value of $10,000. I'm selling it for $5,800, but the county assessor data has it valued at 3,825. The title companies are saying they cannot issue title insurance on the property because the sale price is more than 50% above the tax value. Since when does a title company determine the value of the property?" Steven Butala: Never. Jill DeWit: You are correct, Sean. Steven Butala: You're correct to question this. They can't ... Jill DeWit: You are correct. Steven Butala: They shouldn't. There's something else going on. Jill DeWit: There's somebody with ... Is it a big ego thing? Steven Butala: If you're brand new at this or you're thinking about getting into this business, these things almost never happen. This is a strange anomaly that, Jill and I have done almost 16,000 deals combined in our career. I think something like this has happened to me maybe less than five times, but I'll tell you, yeah, I had a title person one time, after she did about eight deals for me, called her husband and said, "These deals are all coming in. We should just buy these ourselves, they're so cheap," and so she took a bunch of business away. Jill DeWit: That's, like, not legal. Steven Butala: I've had country recorders a couple of times refuse to record property that I bought because I was from out of state and they didn't want to sell property to people that were out of state, especially for an expensive amount. Jill DeWit: Hopefully that's all fixed by now. Steven Butala: Yeah, you can fix it. This, honestly, I would call a lawyer. Jill DeWit: I have an example, though. This is how I would explain it. We've all heard of this situation where a home was being sold for a price higher than it was appraised at. We've all heard of that. You get an accepted offer, the appraiser goes out ... Normally, this happens. Normally, you're buying a house, you're buying it for $479,000. The appraiser goes out. We always want it to be that price or higher. We obviously want it to be higher, right, because thinking, "I got a good deal," but it's funny how, "Gee, look at that, the appraisal came back at $479,000. What the heck?" Jill DeWit: Now and then, and I haven't heard so much now, but I think anybody over 30 has heard of this. Now and then you've had an appraiser goes out and then, like, "Oh, shoot, they only appraised it at 459," so you have to pay cash for that last bit if you really want the house. This, to me, is no different, absolutely no different. The title company's not going to go, "Nope, not doing it. Not taking it because it didn't appraise to what you're actually spending so we're not going to close the deal." They never do that. That's not true. We just know that, and especially, often if there's a lender involved, that's why you had to get it appraised, too, by the way, so the lender says, "Oh, we're only going to loan you up to the 459, because that's what it's appraised at." It's a hot market, we realize, you're buying it at 479. You get to pay that extra 20,

We Answer the Same 10 Questions (LA 1505) 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 Dewit. Broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how we seem to answer the same 10 questions over and over again. Jill DeWit: Oh, we'll talk about this. Steven Butala: I can't wait to record this episode-[crosstalk 00:00:24] Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: ... and that's the truth. Jill DeWit: You really are giving me the green light to talk about this? Yes, yes.[crosstalk 00:00:34] Give me the green light. Steven Butala: We are going to make sure we keep it humorous, even though Jill right before the show was said... She got a little heated. Jill DeWit: We're not going to name names. This will be good. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on a LandInvestors.com online community. It's free, and if you're already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Sandy wrote, "In Steven's state summary..." Remember this? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: I created a dictionary. Jill DeWit: He did. It went state by state about how the deals get done in that state. "... He indicates whether closing is done by attorney or title company. How do I know if I can do a self-closing, or if I have to close with an attorney/title? Am I able to self-close anywhere? Are there laws against self-closings? And if so, is that at the state- or county-level? Thanks for any help you can give." Steven Butala: Thank you Sandy, this is a great question. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: And it's not one of the same 10 questions that we constantly get. Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:01:35] Exactly. Steven Butala: Without exception, you can self-close in any state... That's the answer. Jill DeWit: Even New York? Steven Butala: Yep... There's huge misinformation about this out there. You can do it. I'm not saying that the recorder will allow you to record it. I'm not saying that if you asked title companies, they might say, "No, you have to get an attorney," and if you ask a lawyer, they might, because they've all been misinformed. Jill DeWit: Wow, that makes sense. Steven Butala: A long time ago. There was before... During homestead times, people would just walked in and do their own deeds. The recorder would help them. They didn't then-[crosstalk 00:02:20] Jill DeWit: That's what I was going to say. Steven Butala: ... lawyers got involved. Because there were so many mistakes. Or landowners wanted to protect their interests, so they got lawyers. So eventually then title insurance came in, and Escrow and all that much, much, much later. So no, you can close. Jill DeWit: This country was founded on that, is what you're trying to say? Steven Butala: Right, that's right. Jill DeWit: That we can do that. It's like saying, "Oh, I can't sell you a car because I'm going to go to jail." You're not going to go to jail for selling a car on Craigslist. You don't have to have a dealer's license.That's kind of what you're saying. Steven Butala: No, it's interesting you bring cars up. Because there's a huge number of laws associated with how many cars you can sell each state by state, before you become a dealer. I think in Arizona, it's six a year. And then on your seventh you have to get your dealers license. Jill DeWit: Because you're making it a business now, [crosstalk 00:03:07]. Steven Butala: Get this too, because Jill and I started a company called Car Academy, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Got all the way down to just about ready to release it, and found out that there's some pretty serious federal laws against using DMV data for any type of marketing. And when you think about it, we all own cars. I've never gotten a note that says, "Hey, you owner,

Cool Things You Find When You Dig a Little Deeper (LA 1504) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from awesome Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about cool things you find when you dig a little deeper into some of the Land Academy tools. Jill DeWit: Yep. Well, actually it's dig a little deeper and due diligence, and things like that. So we'll help you out. Steven Butala: All week. These are... Jill DeWit: Jill and Aaron topics! Steven Butala: They're customer service driven topics that, somewhat, clearly out of frustration... Jill DeWit: Jill and Aaron sat down, let's truth time it here! Jill and Aaron sat down the other day and said, we're picking the topics this week. And you said, go for it. 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. And speaking of cool things, when you dig a little deeper, join us on Discord. If you're a Land Academy member, it's turning out to be one of the most amazing tools or decisions that we've made. It's really helping a lot of people. Me included. Jill DeWit: Well, it's like Land Investors. It's another version of a way to get stuff answered really fast. Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: So the only thing that I have to say real quick is, the Search and the things like that, and Discord, are not like a website. So I think you should use both. So don't forget landinvestors.com. So, all right, this question, and this comment came from Discord, so Miguel wrote, "Any suggestions as to what I should be doing while waiting on my next mailer to hit? Thanks in advance." This is so funny. You get all excited. The mail goes out and now you're just sitting. And you're like "Should I just sit here and wait and watch the phone to ring?" Nope, you should be getting stuff ready to go. You want to talk? Steven Butala: Go ahead. I mean, I have a couple of things. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: But I bet mine are real different. Jill DeWit: Well, it was funny. One thing that one person wrote in there I've chimed in, which was right, they're like "Yeah, start picking the next County!" Steven Butala: That's it. That's my answer! Jill DeWit: Exactly. Start thinking for the next one, which is true. But the other thing you should be doing is making sure you're ready for the calls to come in. Do you know when the calls come in, the questions you're going to ask the sellers? Great. You know, go get my cheat sheet on Land Investors. Print that out. Have a couple of copies on your desk. Maybe 10, maybe 50. I don't know. So when the calls come in, you right away can grab that sheet and go all right, I know exactly what to ask this person when they call. Jill DeWit: Also, how's it going to flow? Where are you going to put all the information? Do you have a spreadsheet set up even just starting there? I would definitely just start with a great spreadsheet. Take the information that's on my cheat sheet (go to land investors and scroll down on the left!) It says "Jill's inbound seller checklist", something like that. Take those columns and make a spreadsheet with all of the state, County, APN. Because once you get all that stuff on the sheet, you need to put it into your spreadsheet. So you could start the process here of going through all the properties. You know, what's going to be next? Doing your due diligence. What's going to be next? Buying the property. What's going to be next? Posting the property. What's going to be next? Selling the property. Jill DeWit: So think ahead about the process, everything that you're going to do here and start building out your sheet and the columns. Think about... The area that you sent, by the way, you know you were searching for five acre properties in Northern Ca...

Jill Friday - Where Do I Start in Real Estate Land Investing (LA 1503) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today is Jill Friday. And, we talk about where do I start in real estate land investing? Jill's going to enlighten us, I'm sure of it. Jill DeWit: I got this. It's not hard. Well, there's a lot to it, but the steps to get started are easy. I will help you and I will lay them out. 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: By the way, in case you hadn't heard earlier this week, oh boy. Have we revamped and reworked, and you're going to see some changes physically, not physically, but on the website, physically. And, then in the way we run things with Land Academy Deal funding. We are partnering up and have partnered up with some heavy hitters and you really have no reason to not ask for money. We not going to make it super easy for you. We have so much capital behind us and decades of experience, as you already know. And we're here to help you get those deals done. So, don't wait, go to land investors.com. Click on deal funding, submit your deal. And, we will tell you what to do next. Steven Butala: You got a couple of deals you're not sure about? Submit them. We'll tell you whether or not we'll happily fund them. We'll tell you if they're good deals or not. Jill DeWit: Aaron wrote, "I caught a bunch of RV parks, lots in my data. The county has them at 0.9 acres, but they're probably 0.09. They do seem to sell for 10 to $20,000. Probably have rules like an HOA, anyone mail RV parks, or is it a waste of 50 cents?" Steven Butala: These types of properties, RV properties are what I call specialty real estate. I put them in the category of mobile home lots, mobile home park lots. Property that is zoned for a hotel, maybe any type of special use property. Zone for a cemetery. You'll find them a lot in urban areas where a city planner has gone through it there and said, "This is where we kind of want all the industrial areas to be. This is where you want the high end houses to be. The low end houses to be and, and on and on and on." That's what a civil engineer or city planner does. Steven Butala: I absolutely love these kinds of lots. They sing to the right person. They're usually... How many times if be driven down the street and seen a defunct trailer park? That's just waiting for somebody like us or you who's got some skill and some energy to go in there, put a sign up, put a shack up there and say, "Look, bring your mobile home." Or "We'll put a mobile home on here for the right person." So, I love specialization property like this, as long as it's super cheap. And, if you know anything about internet marketing, the more specialized, whatever you're selling is, the easier it is to find people in a specifically in that geography and that zip code with Instagram or Facebook. So, it pops right up while they're going through whatever. Jill DeWit: Ding ding. Steven Butala: So, hell yes. And you need a partner in this? Please call me. It's one of my favorite types of real estate. Jill DeWit: Thank you for playing Aaron. I have nothing to add. Steven Butala: Today's topic is well, it's Jill Fridays. She's going to tell us about where do I start in real estate land investing? This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: Okay. You stumbled across the show. You ran into somebody in Land Academy you're like, "Wait a minute. What the heck are you all talking about? How are you all making this money? Doing this stuff? What do you mean land? Okay. I want to do this. I really want to jump in." Jill DeWit: Let's hold on just a moment. Steven Butala: Good. Good Jill, thank you.

Jack Thursday - 5 Things You Must Know Before You Start Real Estate Investing (LA 1502) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, coming to you from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about, well, it's Jack Thursday. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: It's the five things you must know before you start real estate investing of any kind. I'm going to tailor mine a little bit to land, but it's really just being a general real estate investor. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: I think there's a little bit of a misconception about what this takes. Jill DeWit: Oh. I can't wait because I wrote down my own list. I had trouble coming up with five. I think I came up with four. I could have turned four into five. I thought, "Nah, I'm going to leave them condensed." Steven Butala: I came up with 40, but we'll just do the top five. Jill DeWit: Aha. But mine's also just general real estate investing. Mine is not necessarily land-focused. It's kind of anything. Honestly, mine can be any niche. Mine can be anything. Mine could be the top five things you must know to start X. Steven Butala: A marriage. Jill DeWit: Even that. Steven Butala: Go. Jill DeWit: No, I'm not going to share my list now. Steven Butala: Quick. Come on. Read it off. Jill DeWit: No. I'm not going to share my list now. Steven Butala: Top five things you need to be in a successful marriage. Go. Jill DeWit: It's the same list. I'm going to share it in a minute. Steven Butala: It's the same list? Jill DeWit: Oh, it's good. Steven Butala: You want to get into it? Jill DeWit: You're going to hear this. We're going to do this in a minute when we get to the topic. We're going to have you envision my list. Steven Butala: Right. Here's a new title. There's a new title, five things you need to know before you cross out, start fill in the blank. Jill DeWit: Start X. Oh, yeah. Steven Butala: Because that's how mine is too. Jill DeWit: Oh, mine could be a marriage. I'm going to use it. You know, I wrote it down as real estate investing, but we're going to sub marriage in a minute here and it's going to be funny. Steven Butala: Excellent. Jill DeWit: It's like Mad Libs. 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, and if you're already with us in Land Academy, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Hold, please. Before I read the question, I'd like to give one little thing too. Don't forget, Land Academy deal funding is bigger and better and faster, and boy, do we have money. We now have limitless money available and decades of experience, you can tell, look at us, to help you get deals done. Right? Steven Butala: Yeah. See this gray hair? Jill DeWit: Lots. So go to landinvestors.com and click on the Deal Funding tab today. Thank you. All right. Steven Butala: Nice. Jill DeWit: Where was I? Danielle wrote, "I have an owner who wants to sell and has three people on the deed. All three will signed." That is helpful. "She also asked to have three checks, one-third to each." Fine. "She also asked that I send them each a purchase agreement." Okay, Danielle. Now you're pushing it with me a little bit, but okay. Steven Butala: Well, they're pushing it with her. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: It's not you, Danielle. Jill DeWit: The other two are giving Danielle a hard time. I get it. "Should I list the property for the total amount? Should I list the property for the total amount on each purchase agreement or break it up into thirds for each person's portion? Or should I send all three a new purchase agreement, three places to sign?" I like that one. It's not that big of a deal. You don't even really need ... I mean, depending ... If you're going through escrow,

Real Estate Investing 2021 (LA 1501) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit coming to you from scorching Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Not yet, but coming. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: We'll be in a different state. Jill DeWit: It's probably 100 today. Steven Butala: We'll be in a different state for sure, when it gets real hot. Today, Jill and I talk about real estate investing in the year 2021, what's different about the past and what's probably coming in the future. Jill DeWit: You know what this is like, I remember when I was dating, newly dating, late teens, early twenties, and you're a girl, I'm a girl all hung up on a guy and my mom sat me down and said, "Look, don't get all hung up. You think this is it, this is the guy, this is what I'm going to do, whatever." Steven Butala: He loves me. But he loves me. You don't understand. Jill DeWit: It wasn't even that. I was too into him. But my mom's like, look, let me just share with us with you. The guy that you bring home at 18, 19, 20 is pretty different from the guy that you're serious about in 30, 31, at an age that you should be really getting serious. Steven Butala: Do tell. What are the differences? Because this is going to be the show now. Jill DeWit: All right. Want some truth time? Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: I may or may not have been in a punk rock phase at that age. I once had my hair done, came home and my mom cried. So I may or may not have dated a guy that wore more eyeliner than I did. And as you can see Steven wears zero eyeliner. So there's a little difference there. Steven Butala: I'm the guy she settled for. Jill DeWit: Where is eyeliner guy now, I don't know. Steven Butala: He probably looks like me, just a lot less money. Jill DeWit: That's true. So anyway, that's one really good example of what was then and is now, what you thought was important then and how it's the end all be all and what's really important now are different. And what's really going on in 2021 now with real estate and investing and everything, it's pretty darn awesome. And I'm glad that you're older and can handle it and you're ready for it. Steven Butala: I don't understand this. So is 2021 the punk rock guy or the old guy like me? Jill DeWit: 2021 is you. Steven Butala: Okay. Jill DeWit: Yeah, yeah, no, no. That was a year that I'm not going to call out, but it was way before 2021. When I was 20. Steven Butala: Okay, you're actually assigning a real year. I understand. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Yeah. 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. If you're already in our group, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: It was in the eighties. I will be truth. So, okay. Austin wrote, "Hello. I'm writing this in response to podcast number 1479." Do you remember that one? I do. Steven Butala: Oh yeah. I remember every single word. Jill DeWit: Me too. Steven Butala: I remember episode 10. Jill DeWit: I love it. "About recovering landlords." I do remember that. "I've owned a duplex for about 10 years." This is going to be funny. "It cashflows about $600 a month, depending on expenses. If I was to sell it right now, I could gross approximately $220,000 after paying off the underlying mortgage." Steven Butala: I'm going to stop you there for a second. Jill DeWit: Yay. Steven Butala: You would net 220, not gross. This is, oh my God, Jack, really, do you have to call us out on every little nitpicky thing, gross, net, please. Jill DeWit: He does. He does. Steven Butala: Well for the same reason that your mother stopped you from saying, ain't your whole life. Like I ain't going to eat my broccoli. Jill DeWit: Okay. You're picking on us, got it. Steven Butala: It's net, it's net.

Episode 1500 of the Land Academy Show (LA 1500) 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: Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale Arizona. Steven Butala: Today it's episode 1500 of the Land Academy show, and I am absolutely floored. Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: That you, the listener still listens to this. Jill DeWit: There's marriages that have not lasted this long. Steven Butala: Well, there's a lot. Jill DeWit: Exactly, especially during COVID. Exactly. Steven Butala: So we've decided we're going to kind of reflect on Land Academy and its members and what this group is all about. And the truth is, Jill and I have not talked about what this episode is going to be about at all. So- Jill DeWit: [crosstalk 00:00:43] I have some funny things. Steven Butala: ... I'm just interested or uninterested as you are. Jill DeWit: Ha, yeah. Thanks. 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. And if you're already a member, please join us on Discord to get your, all your questions answered in real time. Jill DeWit: To put your minute-by-minute land fix. Steven Butala: Or just lurk. Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. It's ... Let me warn you. It's nonstop. All I hear on his desk is ping, ping, ping all, and all day and all night. Steven Butala: It's the tool, the membership tool that I've been waiting for for six years. That's the truth of it. Jill DeWit: It's Jack's Clubhouse. Let's just call it. There you go. Steven Butala: You can get your answer. I don't care what you need, put it in Discord. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jeff wrote, "Hey guys, I'm buying a property through title and a survey is needed. There's also an heirship issue that the seller needs to work out. Do you do anything to protect against spending all that survey money and then having the seller disappear to fix their heirship problem?" Nope. You know what? I had to do this. Steven Butala: You would never get a survey before this heirship problem solved. Jill DeWit: Well, hold please. Steven Butala: There's two- Jill DeWit: I've had to do this. Steven Butala: Yeah, I understand. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: I'm not saying don't get a survey. I'm saying do not even start down the survey path. And so this is one of the five A's during due diligence. You need to make sure everybody's alive and the person who's signing on the deed is going to convey and all that. So there's an order in which this goes and it's an education and you need to make sure you can close the deal and people are alive and available to sign. And the chain of title is correct long before you start ordering surveys. Jill DeWit: That's correct. As I read it, I was thinking as I'm selling it, not as I'm buying. So yeah, no, you're right. Don't put any money into somebody else's property that they could go away, number one. But on the flip side, what I was starting to say, which I've had to do is there's properties that require documents in certain counties for certain green belt zones that every time it changes hands, you have to do stuff like that. I've done that. I've had to get things ready for when I sell it, knowing I'm going to sell it. And I don't wait for the buyer to come up, and then I start the process. I just got it out of the way because it was like a requirement. That's okay. Steven Butala: I don't want you to be afraid of things like this. Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah. Steven Butala: Especially if you're new, not all deals are like this. Most deals go really well. Really, they're very smooth, but people ask questions when there's issues. People don't ask this question, "Why is it so easy?" Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: It just never comes up. Jill DeWit: And this is usually needed. Most of the time, in this situation,

How to Get Your Deal Funded by Land Academy Deal Funding - Its Official (LA 1499) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to get funded, how to get your deal funded through Land Academy Deal Funding. It's completely official now. Jill DeWit: It's beneficial. It's now even better, right? It's huge and better. And I'm going to pause and have my little, I prepared a new little commercial spiel. So you tell me what you think. Land Academy Deal Funding, now with limitless money available and decades of experience to help you get deals done. Go to landinvestors.com and click Deal Funding Today. Steven Butala: I think I love it. So what does it mean? It means you should never have to worry about getting money to buy a property. That's good. Jill DeWit: And we'll talk all about that. Steven Butala: Yeah. 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. If you're already a member, please take advantage of the amazing conversations that go on Discord. Jill DeWit: Every minute. Nick wrote, "Hi, all. Just joined Land Academy. Pleasure to meet you. I'm particularly interested in the deal funding/landing tools and was curious, which you recommend. Are there other ways you can get all your deals funded? Thanks." Can we just roll this into the beginning of the show or into the whole topic of the show? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Because I don't have to answer it twice. Steven Butala: Today's topic, how to get funded by Land Academy Deal Funding. It's official. This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: Okay. So it's been a year and a half since we've had deal funding, roughly. It started after the second live event and it's come, and in that last year and a half, let's just say, we pretty much have limitless capital. So there's two things going on here. There's Land Academy Deal Funding. I'm going to tell you what they are. And then I'm going to tell you about LandTank, and then we'll talk about changes and all the great things that are available to you. So let's back up. Do you want to give the background as to why this exists? Steven Butala: Sure. Here's an eighth grade simple explanation about what this product is. Land Academy Deal Funding was put together by Jill and I originally so that you don't have to use your own money to do deals. Here's a real simple eighth grade example. You find a property because you sent mail out. You learned how to do it correctly. You learn how to price a mailer. You listen to Jill and all the programs and you engage the seller and bought a piece of property for let's say $10,000. You think it's worth 30,000 or 40,000. That's the typical Land Academy model 2021, but you didn't have the 10,000, nor should you have the 10,000. People feel really guilty about that. Like, I don't have enough money to do this. No, you just need to be real smart about sending out mail, answer your phone and create some deals. Steven Butala: And so we're here to fund that $10,000 and then split that profit margin. If it's $30,000 or $40,000, there's $20,000 or $30,000 of profit in that deal, we'll split it with you. We may split it with you for as much as 50%. So you take $15,000 out and you're off to the races, and then you can use that 15,000 for however you use it. We have people in our group that this is their whole model. They don't ever keep any money. So we're trying to make this really simple and very, very clear because what's happened is this. It's become a shark feeding frenzy of money people out there attacking Land Academy members to be their funder. And so what we've done is we've approached all these people. Now they're behind us and they're funding in a pool.

Jack Thursday - Unique Ways to Improve Your Land (LA 1497) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about unique ways to improve your land. It's Jack Thursday. Steven Butala: There's so many things, simple things that you can do to a piece of property that will set it apart from the five or eight or 10 other pieces of property that are maybe listed for sale in the area. We'll talk about simple, fast, cheap ways to make your property stand out on the internet against all those other properties. And keep you legal, if we can. Like meth labs, that will make you stand out. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: But that's not the best thing to do, I don't think. Although, it might sell fast. Jill DeWit: The caution tape and all the stuff from the police, that will make your property stand out. 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, and please join us on Discord if you're already a member. Jill DeWit: You should have called this, Unique and Legal Ways to Improve Your Land. Steven Butala: Yeah, but we'll address some of the illegal ones just because it's fun. Jill DeWit: Got it. Jill DeWit: Where's my question? Here we go. Lee wrote, "Hi all. I just turned down a deal that wasn't for me, but the seller has other property that could be for another Land Academy member. How do I go about it? Where do I post it? Thanks." Jill DeWit: You know what? That was a thing for the deal board. That was the original intent of the deal board. I was passing on so many deals that I'm like, Somebody should get this. I don't want it. It might be for somebody else because it's too small to ... fill in the blank. I don't know the area that well. Whatever it is. Usually it was too small money-wise and I'd throw them up there. I wouldn't use LandTank because that's not what that's for. Jill DeWit: What would you suggest? Steven Butala: I think this is chaos waiting to happen. Jill DeWit: There's that, too. Steven Butala: I think that if you go post it on a deal board, which I'm not recommending at all ... In fact, we need to stop talking about it on this show. Jill DeWit: That's true. It is going to go away. Steven Butala: We're decommissioning it. If you have another person in the group that you like, maybe you know their name. Kevin Farrell, who's our moderator, would be a perfect candidate for this. He does this all the time. He marks it up a certain amount and just passes on the deal. Marks it up a very small amount of money, less than a thousand dollars regardless of how large it is. At least that's what he reported to me the last time we talked about it, which actually several months ago. It's always better to go with somebody with a sentence like this, "Hey, Kevin," just like this, "I got this deal in. It's not for me. I know it's a good deal ..." Steven Butala: We get great deals in all the time, for some reason we just don't do it. Jill DeWit: I gave one to Aaron the other day to give to somebody. Steven Butala: Okay, good. Jill DeWit: We do do it. Steven Butala: Great example. Jill DeWit: Yeah, I did. I don't want any money for it. Jill DeWit: On Land Academy. I just gave it away. I just said, Hey Aaron, here you go. Give it to somebody you like. Steven Butala: Jill, what was wrong with the deal? Everyone- Jill DeWit: Too small dollar-wise. Steven Butala: Excellent. That's a perfect example. Jill DeWit: I'm not going to run up and down for $4,000, but somebody else would. Steven Butala: Excellent. Steven Butala: What I would do is personally reach out to somebody that you have some respect for in the Discord or the Land Investors,

Our Last Mailer Deconstructed-We Created a Quarter of a Million Dollars (LA 1496) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill- Jill DeWit: I was going to say sweaty Scottsdale, Arizona. Not to make you and the rest of the country mad at us, but it's 22% humidity right now which is pretty darn high for us. Steven Butala: High for us. At 95 degrees, it starts to get- Jill DeWit: A little bit... Yeah. Steven Butala: Start to have thoughts of Christmas. And these things happen when it's may. Yeah. Jill DeWit: I'm like, "I need to be in the pool right now." Okay. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how our last... well, we're going to deconstruct our last mailer and show you exactly how we made about a quarter of a million bucks on that. Jill DeWit: 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. And if you're already a Land Academ member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Mike D wrote, "Hello everyone. I've actually been a member since August 2020, and I've done 10 deals since then, mostly buy for two to 5,000 and sell for double. I'm starting to gain some momentum. And I'm looking to get some help from members on how to move forward with confidence. I would like to discuss a rather large deal for me, buy for $150,000 and sell for $300,000. And I need the assurance from people that have been doing this a while that it's a good deal. Where can I post the details so it can be discussed? Thanks." Aww. Steven Butala: Mike D., you've done every single thing right, every single thing. It's been about six months, less than six months, you've done 10 deals just like Jill always talks about, get 10 deals under your belt. Who cares what they look like? Who cares how much money you make? Just to see if this is for you. And now you're ready to make $150,000 on a deal. And this is a great question. It's actually my favorite question of the week. I would reach out. There's two or three places that we have set up for this to really get some traction for you and people like you. I would start with Discord. I know you're a member because I can tell on Land Investors. We also have something called Deal Board, which we're kind of phasing out, but our members- Jill DeWit: Because of Land Tank now. Steven Butala: Our members won't let us phase it out because they like it. It's like a bulletin board in a hospital for guitar lessons. Jill DeWit: Yeah, exactly. Steven Butala: And then there's Land Tank. I'm not so sure if you don't have a deal, that Land Tank is the best place if it were me and I can speak confidently. If it were Jill, I would post it on all three places just to see what would happen. Jill DeWit: But I do want to sign purchase agreement though moving forward just to make sure because no one really has a deal until we have that, then we can really talk about it. Steven Butala: If you have a signed purchase agreement and you think the numbers are 150 to 300 and you put it on Land Tank, it won't last three minutes. There's vultures and I say that in a good way, money people in our group that are dying to fund property. Jill DeWit: I would like to add a point here too. We don't always have to double our money. So think about the numbers you've been doing to this point. What if you do it all wrong and you buy it for 150 and you sell it for 250 or 225, those are still great numbers. Steven Butala: We do deals like that all the time. Jill DeWit: So don't worry. Don't stress. If you know going into it, "I'm buying it for 150 no matter what. I really made a mistake. I sell it for 200," you're still going to be just fine. Steven Butala: Yep. That's a big topic for last week that came up a lot.

The Mystery of Assessed Value (LA 1495) 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 DeWit broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the mystery of assessed value. Jill DeWit: God, this comes up often. Steven Butala: Yes. Why do you think it comes up so often? Jill DeWit: It's a thing. Well, because people need to have some way to value property. And when they're doing pricing and they're buying and they're selling, right. So we often go, "Well, what does the assessor say? Where can I find some numbers?" And the number that jumps up first, it's like, "I'm staring at it. I'm staring at the data. It's the assessed value." So that must be real, right? So it's always real, right? Steven Butala: I'll tell you what I think about this in a minute. Jill DeWit: Oh okay. Thank you. 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, and if you're already a member, please join us on discord. It's an amazing tool. And I get a lot of our questions, like the question that Jill's about to read, from landinvestors.com. And I see older, seasoned, amazingly successful members, piping in hard on landinvestors.com, but not discord. And I'm about to call him myself. Jill DeWit: What does that mean? Steven Butala: There's some older established people that have been with us for five years that don't know about discord. Jill DeWit: Oh, okay. You're about beating that dead horse now, by the way. So I think we got it. Steven Butala: This is such an invaluable tool. Jill DeWit: Okay, thanks. Jason wrote, "I have a deal that I have a seller willing to sell and a buyer ready to buy." Nice. "The buyer wants to go through title of his expense. My first thought is to do a notary close, get the land deeded to me and record it. And then...", Sorry, I lost the question. Steven Butala: Oh, I'm sorry. Jill DeWit: You're fine. Steven Butala: That was my fault. Jill DeWit: You got it. "And then go to the title company with the deed in hand and then sell to the buyer." I get it, and do title insurance then. That's what Jason's talking about. "So I disclosed this to the seller and he says, he's an investigator. And he asked..." Steven Butala: He's an investor. Jill DeWit: Oh, excuse me. Anyway, "...and he asked, 'Well, why don't I just assign the contract and then collect the assignment fee versus the double close?' I don't know why not, so, I wanted to ask the group. We all live in a different city across Texas. So I don't know if the assignment may be too messy for the seller, that I've already said I would just send a check for the notary close. Pros versus cons on the double close versus the assignment." So I'm going to go first, sir. Steven Butala: Actually, you can just go. Jill DeWit: You know what's funny? This has come up a couple of times in Clubhouse. Steven Butala: Jill loves Clubhouse. Jill DeWit: I do, just as much as you love discord. And it's interesting, but anyway, Steven Butala: Jill has her new baby and it's called Clubhouse. And she feeds it and pays tons of attention.. Jill DeWit: So do you, Mr... Yes. Anyway, it's not about me right now. So this has come up because a lot of people do this successfully. And it's kind of like it's given the wholesaling term a bad name. So you've got to be real careful here. So let me back up and just explain. So there's a couple ways to do this. So you bought a property, you're under contract, whatever it is to buy it, and you start shopping it around to some of your buyers and you find out, "Yeah, I want to buy it." And you're like, "Huh, okay, wait a minute. He's ready to go. And the seller's ready to go. I can just take a piece in the middle." That's what he's talking about doing an assignme...

Working with Your Spouse (JJ 635 / LA 1494) Transcript: Jack Butala: Jack and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Jack Butala: Welcome to the Jack Jill Show, entertaining real estate investment advice. I’m Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And, I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about working with your spouse. Jill DeWit: What could be more fun? Jack Butala: This is a topic I feel extremely qualified to discuss. Jill DeWit: Aw. Jack Butala: In public. Jill DeWit: It’s every day. Jack Butala: Unlike most of the topics we talk about. Jill DeWit: There’s a new surprise that just makes me want to do it more. Jack Butala: So, what should the title really be? Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh. Jack Butala: It should be Working with your Spouse- Jill DeWit: Without Killing Someone. Jack Butala: Working with your Spouse,- Speaker 3: Go ahead. Jack Butala: Without Killing Someone. Jill DeWit: Or, Yourself. Jack Butala: I think that’s how it should be, Work Without Your Spouse. Jill DeWit: Oh. Jack Butala: How did we end up like this? Working together? Jill DeWit: You know why? Jack Butala: What the hell- Jill DeWit: I have a lot to say about this. Jack Butala: We’ll get into it in a minute here. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jack Butala: Before we actually do get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the jackjill.com online community, it’s free. Jill DeWit: Okay, Rick G. asked, “Hi. I have a seller who will sell a 40 acre property in ___ County, Arizona, for $8,000.00, about eight miles from ___ city. The owner tells me,” he wrote, I’m not doing that on purpose, “roads are good enough to be traverse with a two wheel drive.” This is really good. “Planning to re-sell at $12,000.00, which should be more competitive than when I typically see on Land Watch for this county.” Aw, and he even included a satellite image of a property on this site. “I’m looking for a money partner to fund this deal, and split the profits 50/50. Here are the sample prices from Land Watch for this county on 40 acre properties,” and he puts $32,000.00, $25,000.00, $24,900.00, $13,000.00, $39.9, $24.4, $29.9 … do you want me to keep going, Jack? Jack Butala: No, it’s $30,000.00. $20,000.00-$30,000.00 comparison values. Jill DeWit: There’s one funky one in there for $13,000.00, so the lowest is $13,000.00- Jack Butala: Which is probably a Land Academy member. Jill DeWit: Right? And, the highest is $37,500.00 thousand dollars. Jack Butala: It might even be us. Jill DeWit: So, this is really, really good. Thank you for doing your homework. We all know he can buy it for $8,000.00. Okay. “Planning on posting this on the Member Deal Board, also, but I’m working with getting it set up. Please let me know if interested.” Jack Butala: I love it. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jack Butala: So, you did every single thing right here. This member did everything right. That’s exactly what we teach. For $8,000.00, and you have it by county, that’s a heck of a deal.

Jill Friday - Best Investors Know their Limits (LA 1493) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Happy Friday. Steven J Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale Arizona. Steven J Butala: Today, it's Jill Friday. And she talks about the best investors. Know their limits. Jill K DeWit: Yes. Steven J Butala: And my head's a little smaller because Jill- Jill K DeWit: Informed you of your limits? Steven J Butala: I mean physically smaller in front of this camera because she backed me up. So we're a little bit more equal. She said, "You know, they've been meaning to tell you your heads a little bit big because you're sitting too far forward", which prompted as you can imagine quite the conversation. Jill K DeWit: That's great. I thought you were going to say I put... Like, let's talk about your limits, babe. Steven J Butala: Oh we're going to talk about that in a minute. Jill K DeWit: Okay good. Steven J Butala: And your limits. Jill K DeWit: Oh great. Thanks. Steven J 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. And if you're already a member, join us on discord. Jill K DeWit: Okay. This is cute. So Luke, our infamous Luke Smith wrote, "Have you guys ever been pooed on by a barn owl? I went to get pictures of some land today that is covered in junk and try and figure how much it costs and clean it up and sell it. Looking into this slide sling blade" Steven J Butala: "Sling blade looking tool shed built on telephone poles, the owl came right at me when I was in the doorway, dumped white goo all over my hat" Jill K DeWit: The hat. Steven J Butala: "Front side of my shirt, backside, as well as my shorts leg and shoe. It got my dog, some of my dog also in the same second. Amazing load of crap right there. By the way..." This is a perfect Luke Smith format. Jill K DeWit: Yeah. Steven J Butala: "Got a commercial retail vacant lot under contract today, 54,000. By-side 135,000 south side, on land tank. Another land tank deal closes today. Buy for 55 south through title at 122." Steven J Butala: Even owl poop doesn't stop Luke from making money. Jill K DeWit: Not the good hat, not his favorite hat. Steven J Butala: A lot of people had some stuff to say, this is on discord. Jill K DeWit: Yeah. Steven J Butala: A lot of people had owl stories. So it turns out, I didn't know this until all this came out on discord that owls are strategic about who they poop on- Jill K DeWit: Oh, for real? Steven J Butala: And territorial and why. Yeah. Especially when there's dogs, they don't want the dogs around. Jill K DeWit: So, it wasn't a coincidence that he flew by and happened to release at that moment. Steven J Butala: Nope. Not at all. It was a full blown- Jill K DeWit: Attack. Steven J Butala: Dive bomb, fighter jet dive bomb. Jill K DeWit: All right. Noted. Yet another reason to not go out and look at your property. I'm poo free today. Steven J Butala: Yeah, me too. And he would've made numbers anyway. True. He likes the drama. Jill K DeWit: He does. Steven J Butala: And he likes to report the drama to us. Jill K DeWit: Yes. That's funny. Steven J Butala: Today's topic is Jill Friday. Best investors know their limits. This is the meat of the show. Jill K DeWit: Nice. Okay. So this came from, I was thinking about some of our discussions in career path. So career path is, This is our first time ever running it this year. It's a small elite group of 15 people that we do now once a quarter and take you from wherever you are right now to wherever you want to be personally. How's that? Jill K DeWit: So, one of the things we talked about, because there's some really awesome people in there. And I was just sitting back and thinking about how well everyone in this group kind o...

Jack Thursday - More Deals Less Work (LA 1492) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven J Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from awesome Scottsdale, Arizona Steven J Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how it's Jack Thursday, and more deals and less work is my current goal in life. Jill K DeWit: Yes. Steven J 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. If you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: I'd like to back up for just a moment. Jill K DeWit: Shouldn't that be everybody's goal? Steven J Butala: You know- Jill K DeWit: It's not just your personal goal. It happens to be mine, too. Steven J Butala: I know. It's Jack Thursday, so it's kind of about me. Jill Friday is tomorrow. Jill K DeWit: Oh, excuse me. Oh, it's about you. Sorry. Oops. Steven J Butala: Well, I'll give you an example where this should not be your goal. If you haven't done your first deal yet, this doesn't apply to you. You just need to get past that first deal. In fact, Joe Long said, get 10 deals under your belt, see if you really want to do this. But if this is now your career and you're full-time, this would absolutely be your goal. Jill K DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Totally. Jill K DeWit: Okay, Miguel wrote, I failed my first mailer. Jill K DeWit: He thinks he failed his first mailer. Let's see here. Jill K DeWit: I had co ... Oh Steven J Butala: I love to throw Jill for a loop on these questions because she doesn't read them before. Jill K DeWit: No, I have no idea. This is cold, in case you can't tell. In case you did not know, this is totally unrehearsed. Steven J Butala: In fact, this is the most that Jill and I talk to each other the entire week. Jill K DeWit: This is true. Only on Thursdays. Jill K DeWit: I had calls sent to my Google voice number voicemail, and I missed most of the calls. Won't happen again. I have PATLive now. No deals, no acceptance on any offers, but a few angry owners left messages. I offered 20% of the assessed land value per the data tree column just to get the mail out. Any tips from a pro are appreciated. Jill K DeWit: Well, [inaudible 00:02:04] without giving Miguel ... Miguel kind of knows. Steven J Butala: No, I do. Jill K DeWit: We've got a couple of things he already figured out. You want to- Steven J Butala: Here's the good news. Here's good news, Miguel, this failure is one step closer to success. If I added up all my failures, oh my gosh. Jill K DeWit: Sorry, I wasn't laughing at you. I was just giggling. Steven J Butala: One of my really long time friends for decades came to me and said, "Look, I've got this great business idea. I'm not sure where to start and I could really use your advice." And I said, "I'm happy to help you, but I will tell you, no one can turn a dollar into 50 cents like me." I said, of all the companies Jill and I have ever started and all the stuff I've ever done, the ones that we have right now are the ones that were leftover because they succeeded. Jill K DeWit: They made the cut. Steven J Butala: And they're the most recent. All the failures and all of that, we don't have a show about failing at companies. We have the Land Academy Show. Steven J Butala: Don't get discouraged. That's the good news. I will tell you, this questioning and the few points in here, I have to really seriously request, and please take this to heart, this is for everybody, you got to go through the steps, the Land Academy steps. You've got to go through the program. You have to participate in our Thursday calls. That's how you get the most up-to-date information on the tools that we use. You have to use the Discord, and you put this in Discord which is awesome.

Top Three Data and Pricing Tips (LA 1491) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven J Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And, I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny, I almost wanted to say Southern California, but I'm not there right now. It's just a habit. Sunny, Scottsdale Arizona. Steven J Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the top three data and pricing tips. Jill K DeWit: I can't wait. So, I'm sorry. Do we have three of each? Steven J Butala: Yeah. Jill K DeWit: Oh. Steven J Butala: My top three of each. Jill K DeWit: This is going to be good. This is important. Steven J Butala: This is crazy, crazy important. And it's an imperative step to, I think, being really successful at this. There's a bunch of steps, but pricing and data it's all centered around that. Jill K DeWit: Yep. Steven J Butala: So, before we get into that, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Landinvestors.com online community. It's free and if you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on the Discord. Jill K DeWit: Bobby wrote, "Hello land investors/Land Academy community. I hope you're all doing well. When scrubbing our lists, do you guys filter out owners who have owned their property for less than X, fill in the blank, years? For example, I am wondering if excluding owners who have owned their property for less than three years or whatever helps avoid wasting postage on those who just purchased the land and are less likely to want to sell. Money, saved as money earned, right? And postage is expensive. In the name of efficiency, what has been your experience?" Jill K DeWit: You want to go first? Steven J Butala: Yeah. I don't think money saved is money earned. I think money spent as money earned when it comes to the postage and all of that. Number one, number two, I don't know where this comes from. There's a whole handful, not a ton of things, but there's a ton of topics right now, somebody out there who's less qualified, way less qualified than us is saying to do some certain things just probably because they're real out about it. No, we don't. If this makes sense to you, here's a real answer. If it makes sense to you do it. We have never done that. Jill K DeWit: If it makes sense to you, I'm sorry. Don't do it. Let me save you. This is one of the things about us that makes us different. So many people are trying to save a penny and send only due back tax property or only do out-of-state owners or they think there's some magic to getting a really small whatever list and you know what? You're missing a lot of people. So, what I cannot tell you how much wonderful property I have bought from people who fit this mold. Jill K DeWit: Dad just passed on, probate was done. The property just got in their name a month ago. Everybody paid the taxes on it. It's all current. They just don't know what to do with it. And they just got my letter. You would have missed them. Oh, and they live in the same state. By the way they lived, they live in the same city as this property that dad had down the road and I'm buying it. They just don't want it. It's all about the situation. And you just can't assume one thing. You can't assume that because they're paying the taxes on it. They love it. No, a lot of people are paying the taxes on it because they didn't know they could not pay the taxes on it. That's the reality. Steven J Butala: Here's the big picture perception, my perception of what's happening with some of these topics, specifically mailer efficiency. And, then I'm going to follow it up with a incredible success story that happened to us yesterday in career path. Jill K DeWit: Okay. Steven J Butala: So, what you're really asking is Bobby, what you're asking is how can I make my mailer efficiency or my mailer yield more efficient? How can I send out less mailers and buy more property?

When to Perform Due Diligence (LA 1490) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hey. Steven J Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven J Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about when to perform due diligence on a land deal. Jill K DeWit: For every property before the mail goes out. Steven J Butala: This is a snarky little topic where we don't want you to waste time. We only want you to do due diligence on properties that have already- Jill K DeWit: I'm going to help you. Steven J Butala: ... pass the financial test first. Jill K DeWit: I'm going to help you. We got this. Steven J Butala: 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 if you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: Cool. Mike wrote, "Hi guys. I'm trying to conduct my due diligence on a property that I got a response on today." Steven J Butala: That I got a response on today. Jill K DeWit: Thank you. What the heck was that? Oh my god, could you imagine- Steven J Butala: If I conducted- Jill K DeWit: Wait, wait, wait I've got to say this. Could you imagine if we walked around like that in life? Steven J Butala: Let's do it. Let's do it all show today, on the whole episode today. Jill K DeWit: This would be so fun, like, hey, what do you want for lunch? What do you want for lunch? Steven J Butala: I'm sure there's people like that. Jill K DeWit: This is awful. Steven J Butala: Let's do it right now, annoying and funny. Jill K DeWit: It's annoying and funny. Steven J Butala: She says. Jill K DeWit: This is awful. That's a good one. Steven J Butala: Let's do it. Jill K DeWit: Do you remember that movie, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? That would be the way. If you go on a first date and you act like that, you announce whatever the person says like that with emphasis on all the wrong words too. Steven J Butala: Yeah. Jill K DeWit: Oh, this is good. Anyway. Okay, this is going to be funny. "I looked it up on the county assessor's website" ... I'm waiting for you to do it again. Steven J Butala: I'll do it at the end of the sentence for effect. Jill K DeWit: Oh, okay. Got it. "But it wouldn't pull up on the county map. It only gave a general area to look." Steven J Butala: A general area to look. Jill K DeWit: "No luck. I took the APN from the county data and I tried to look it up on the ParcelFact. Still no luck. Any suggestions on a workaround for this issue? I also tried calling county assessor, but they were not any help either. Thanks." County assessor, no help. Steven J Butala: So what's going on with Mike here, Jill? Jill K DeWit: Oh, this is totally easy. Okay. So he's just having trouble finding the APN. So sometimes it's a formatting issue. No big deal. You and I do ... Well, hold on a moment. I'll get to that in just a second. There's two parts of this question. One is I can't find the property because of my APN's mis-formatted, or something's on here wrong. I don't know what to do. So, the quickest, fastest, easiest way is to jump into something like TitlePro or DataTree, search by owner name. You have that. Or if you're staring at your purchase agreement back in the mail and you've got a reference number on it, maybe jump back into your master spreadsheet where you downloaded the data, look up and see what the correct formatting is somewhat. Usually it's in there. Like when you download the data, there's usually two ways of format APNs, and sometimes there's even an ownership number, depending on the area that starts with like an R one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You might be able to find it like that. Jill K DeWit: But my easiest way is just go search by owner last name, and then you can find it in one of the other sources and go,

Why are We Still Talking about a Secret County List-There is No Such Thing (LA 1489) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Good day. Steven J Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven J Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about why are we still talking about the Secret County List? Jill K DeWit: Really? Steven J Butala: There's no such thing. Jill K DeWit: Really. Thank you for listening. I had to push this forward as a podcast topic because I can't believe it's still coming up. Steven J Butala: There is no such thing as a Secret County List to send mail to buy property. Jill K DeWit: Right. We're going to explain where this came from, why it's popular, what it is, and what you should do to save yourself. Steven J Butala: It's frustrating a lot of people, and we don't want to see that. Jill K DeWit: Exactly. Steven J Butala: We want you to succeed. Jill K DeWit: Exactly. Steven J Butala: Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It's free. If you're already with us as a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. Jill K DeWit: Mike wrote, "I have been using the purchase agreement from Land Academy. I've recently had a seller call back and want to back out of the contract because he now wants to sell it to his daughter instead." If I had a nickel... Steven J Butala: Yeah, this is very common. Jill K DeWit: Uh-huh (affirmative). My brother, my mom, whatever. "I sent the contract to a lawyer here in Oregon, and this is his response below. I have the purchase agreement and it was signed by the seller and dated on July 15th." It's like valid until July 15, 2021. That's it. Okay. So I guess he copied and pasted there. Great. And then he goes on to say, "Has anyone else ever been in something like this? I could make a lot of money in this deal and I want to make sure it's worth it. I have seen Steve talk about how the PA is fine and sufficient enough to hold a seller to a contract. Any advice would be great." I would love to go first if I may. Steven J Butala: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I really shortened this. Jill K DeWit: Obviously. Steven J Butala: Out of respect for my co-host cause last week. Jill K DeWit: There were a mile long. Steven J Butala: She said they're too long. Jill K DeWit: Will you give me a real quick two seconds? What did the lawyer say? Steven J Butala: Well, there's a lot of money involved. He was going to make a bunch of money. Jill K DeWit: But did the lawyer have a comment? Steven J Butala: Yeah. The lawyer said you're out of luck. Jill K DeWit: Oh. Steven J Butala: And so did our moderator, Kevin. And so do I. That's what I say. Jill K DeWit: Okay. So here's the point. Here's what I was going to say. Even if the lawyer says a version of this: "Oh, absolutely binding. Here's what we do. You could expect these fees. It's going to take this long and you're going to get this deal." I don't want to be that guy. So I kind of don't really care what the lawyer says. And this came up, was it on a Thursday? It came up recently. Somebody asked me this exact question basically like, "What do you do?" You know, do you push it? Like, no, do you want to be that guy. Do you want to spend your time, your money, your energy chasing somebody down for a dumb deal. Jill K DeWit: I don't even care. I do not care if this stands up in court. Do you want to go to court over this? No, you don't want to do that. Yeah. My exact answer was, "I let karma work these things out." Totally fine. Steven J Butala: I could not agree more with everything single thing you said. We live in a world now where it's very popular on television, in the media, and even like in fictitious stories now where there's just a victim, and it ends up in a courtroom,

Jill Friday - Three Ps and What Makes a Great Land Investor (LA 1488) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today. Jill and I talk about... Well, it's Jill Friday and her three P's and what makes a great land investor. Jill K DeWit: Versus a good one. I think I did a week or so ago on Clubhouse and people were trying to figure out, "Hey, what's the difference?" Really, it came to be who are these career path people because they look at it for them as great, great investors because they're really putting the money and the time and energy into making this a really a career kind of thing. And so people say, "Well, they're obviously great investors. What makes them stand out?" All right, I'm going to put some thought into this. What do I think is the difference here? And then you and I talked about it and I did the first two, three P's, and you came up with the 3rd P, which we'll share in a few minutes. Jill K DeWit: And I did this little talk on Clubhouse and it was really fun. It was an open discussion as Clubhouse always is. It was super fun. By the way too, I'd like to note, thank you for my pretty flowers. For those of you who are watching us on YouTube right now, you notice I put some pretty red roses behind me that Steven got me for, what was the occasion? Steven Jack Butala: For no reason at all because I like to. Jill K DeWit: These are really nice. Thank you. So now that they look so pretty behind us, we should make this a thing. Steven Jack Butala: Oh, this is Jill's way of getting flowers every single week. Jill K DeWit: You better believe it is. Steven Jack Butala: Which I have no problem with. Jill K DeWit: Thank you. Steven Jack Butala: If there's a subscription flower service. Jill K DeWit: I'm sure there is. It's called 800 flowers. You could probably have different color roses and stuff. Do you want me to just do it for you? Steven Jack Butala: No, no, no, I'll do it. I'll go do it. I mean, I wonder if Amazon's probably got a floral component to it. 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. If you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. It's a tremendous tool to get every question you've ever had about this answered. And if you're just a lurker, it's a great way to learn through other people's questions. I'm on there all the time all day. Jill K DeWit: Okay. So this is a lengthy one. I'm going to go through the whole thing here, but it's a great question that we have. Yes. Jill K DeWit: Greg wrote, "Hi everyone. Another fun story to share with the group and looking for any advice. I have a property in blank that has no legal access. The road doesn't quite make it there that I sold/I'm selling on a land contract. Of course, I told the guy I didn't think it had legal access, but he wanted to buy it anyway for a low price. That was a year ago. So a month ago, I get a letter from the Property Owners Association indicating that the parcel has trucks and trailers and all of stuff parked on it and apparently it's in the middle of this association and the road that almost leads there is owned by the Property Owners Association, the POA. The POA asked for all the stuff to be removed within 30 days and to stop trespassing or they would call the sheriff. I told the guy that I sold the place to, again, it was under land contract and he wasn't too happy and has missed his March payment. I fear he's going to back out of the contract and I understand why. So today, I get a letter in the mail from an attorney in the state saying that they represent the Property Owners Association and they go on to say that all the junk is still on the property.

Jack Thursday - Mailers are Never Finished (LA 1487) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how it's Jack Thursday, how mailers are really, truly never finished like art. Jill K DeWit: Yes. Steven Jack Butala: At this point in my career, there's more art in doing a really good well-priced mailer, one's that's really effective than there is a science or technical talent. Jill K DeWit: You think so, really? Steven Jack Butala: Yeah. I think when a painter learns to paint, it's all about technical stuff. Or when you learn to play the guitar in the beginning, it's all about getting the techniques down. And further along in their career, it just becomes an art effort. Jill K DeWit: I understand. Steven Jack Butala: I don't know. Is it that way with your end of the business, you think? Jill K DeWit: Mine's all art. It's a little bit of both. Steven Jack 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 K DeWit: And if you're a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. All right. Doug wrote, "Hi, I'm in the middle of purchasing a parcel in North Carolina. To get an idea of what price I should sell it at, I'd like to talk to a local realtor to get their thoughts on what the parcel might be worth. Especially, is it a zone for agricultural use? How are you approaching realtors with this question, especially if you don't actually plan to work with them to sell the property?" Jill K DeWit: Well, first of all, I never let them think that. I let them think that I'm... which I really am. Because what if they really are awesome. I do let them think that I am interviewing them if they want to maybe sell my property and you get to know each other. They might be fantastic. Because I've had some guys that just blew my socks off. I've had some that didn't, but that's the whole point. Jill K DeWit: So number one, what you want to do is make sure you have it locked in. I want you to have it a signed purchase agreement. You shouldn't even doing anything without a signed purchase agreement anyway, because as far as I'm concerned, it's not a real deal. Anybody could change their mind at that point. You could speak vaguely enough that it's almost done, preferably you have it in escrow. That's my second thing. Jill K DeWit: If I'm that serious about it, I'm talking to brokers and agents trying to get an idea of what to sell it at. I feel pretty good about it and like, "Hey, I'm just closing on this," and then that's all I'll say. "I think I know what I'm going to do with it, but I'm just reaching out. You look like the expert in the area. I'm reaching out to find out what your thoughts are, what you think we could sell this for, and in what timeframe." Jill K DeWit: The other thing I also tell agents and brokers is, "Hey, I'm not that guy. I'm not holding out for retail, by the way. So I hope to be your favorite person. I really want this to go within 30 days. So be aggressive. Tell me what you really think." Steven Jack Butala: I also think you should explain to the person that you're happily, we'll pay them 10%. But you want to feel like you got all of it. You got the service that you needed, that the buyer's a correct buyer. And that the person really did put a lot of work into it, unlike most residential real estate agents who don't understand what work is. Jill K DeWit: You're bashing on them a lot this week. Are you okay? Did you have some run in? Did a real estate agent rear end you, and I don't know about it? Steven Jack Butala: You know what happened, why I'm real down on real estate agents? Somebody in a Land Academy Discord group asked, they said, "Look,

Land Academy Members Overall Deal Quality is Now Amazing (LA 1486) Transcript: Steve Butala:Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit:Howdy. Steve Butala:Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investing talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit:And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. What was the long pause there for? Steve Butala:I forgot my line. Jill K DeWit:Wow. Steve Butala:I've said it 1,485 times. Jill K DeWit:1486, okay. Sorry. Steve Butala:Today Jill and I talk about how the Land Academy members, their overall deal quality is now amazing. Yesterday, we talked about at the end of the show, every Thursday, Jill and I have a member call. It's a webinar. It began a lot of years ago. We're on episode, I mean, it's thousands of hours now. Jill K DeWit:Every week. Steve Butala:Every Thursday. And it began as a continuing education product a lot of years ago where I would just sit and talk. Jill K DeWit:Answer questions. Just answer your questions about things, rant here and there. Steve Butala:And it evolved over the years into us giving our opinions about members deals, whether they should buy it property or how much they should sell it. Or just a general question forum. Jill K DeWit:We have the Land Investors online community, which we're going to talk about here in a second. And I'm going to read a question from there, which is great to write things in, but sometimes you need to see things. It became a, you know, especially visual became, you know what, here I'll show you what I do kind of thing. And then it evolved into the call and the what are you want to call it? It's a tool that it is today. The resource. Sometimes it's more entertainment, entertainment and information. Entertainment first I think. And then information second. Steve Butala:And Jill and I treat the deals as if they were our own. So we would look it up, do the due diligence, check the floodplain, check the pricing, as if it was our own deals. Jill K DeWit:Yeah. It's every Thursday. I love it. And it's funny because now it's a thing, I know people are just, I'm sure there's people that may or not be doing as aggressively doing deals, but they're on every Thursday call because it's just so funny. And we can share things because it's not edited like iTunes and Spotify. Steve Butala:It's not necessarily rated Google like this show is. Jill K DeWit:And all the places that you get this show, so we can kind of really cut loose and be silly and have fun. It's hilarious. And there's interaction. Steve Butala:It's very real. 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. If you're already a member, join us in real time on Discord. Jill K DeWit:Greg wrote, and this is going to be a little bit lengthy, I'll let you know now. "So the way I look at pricing is you can't make everyone happy with the same pricing at X dollars per acre. This is because the values of the properties in any sample, regardless of the size will vary. So let's assume a normal distribution. You can one, set your price based on the lowest junk you can find on the web. And most of the calls you get back will be from owners of the lowest priced junk in that sample and perhaps a diamond. Downside is you self-select to the junkers and lose out on the larger number of nicer properties in the higher value in that sample." Steve Butala:Before you go on to number two, he's dead right, Greg and this is why I chose your question. And this is how we used to do it. This is how in the early nineties, before we had all this information, before there was a Zillow or Trulia or realtor.com or any type of real comparison value online mechanism that you can get real time like you can now, that's what we used to do. Jill K DeWit:Thank you. Steve Butala:Did I wreck your rhythm? Jill K DeWit:No, it's okay. "Number two, set your price based on the mean value in that sample,

The Story of Two Broker Opinions (LA 1485) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the story of two broker opinions. In life, sometimes brokers don't agree. Jill K DeWit: It's funny. It's funny how you reach out- [crosstalk 00:00:20]- Steven Jack Butala: Sometimes couples don't agree. Jill K DeWit: Not us, other couples. Steven Jack Butala: No, it's peaches and cream with Jill and I, every minute. Jill K DeWit: Steven, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. The way you just cheerily jump out of bed every morning and are always just smiling and never serious, just giddy. Steven Jack Butala: Especially during the COVID. Jill K DeWit: Yeah. Oh, that was my favorite time, I love that quality time we got to spend together. Steven Jack Butala: Nobody, nobody likes work Steve, especially Jill. Jill K DeWit: Exactly. I get to see it all. Steven Jack Butala: Everybody loves drinking Steve. Jill K DeWit: Oh yeah. Steven Jack Butala: But not work, Steve. Jill K DeWit: And spending Steve and rewarding Steve and like, sure, why not? Buy it Steve. Okay. Steven Jack Butala: Before we get into today, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's completely free and if you're already a member, please join us on Discord, it's a blast. Jill K DeWit: Austin wrote, flood pocalypse. Steven Jack Butala: This is the title of his question, flood pocalypse. Jill K DeWit: Flood pocalypse, I love it. "What do you folks do regarding your due diligence for flood plains? I found some info for the following designations. Holy moly. A, AE, A1-A30, AH, AO, AR, A99, V, VE, V1-V30. It's Greek to me... Steven Jack Butala: Me too. Not really. Jill K DeWit: ... If there's anything floody that comes up, do you pass or does it depend? Also, please share what tools you use. Thanks, Austin." This is very sweet. So, Laurie very nicely wrote, "hey Austin. As a rule of thumb, regulatory flood plains are unusable... Steven Jack Butala: Yep. Jill K DeWit: ... Other designations have varied implications depending on the place. I do a quick check using the FEMA flood map overlay, which you can find in neighborscoop.com and it's available on the fema.gov site, to see what others have done with land in the same flood designation areas. Is there a house? Is there a barn? Mobile? Crops? Boat tied up to a fence? If I want a purpose or I want to pursue the property, I'll call the county and find out what the requirements are, if any, to build in the flood plain. He didn't mention wetlands, there's still a hope, if the properties in the floodplain, wetlands hopeless. Best, Laurie." Steven Jack Butala: Couldn't have said it better myself. All of it. Jill K DeWit: Yep. Now, Kevin says don't mess with it. Steven Jack Butala: Kevin the moderator says, one short sentence, "don't mess with it." Jill K DeWit: So I guess- [crosstalk 00:03:16]. Steven Jack Butala: They're both completely right. Jill K DeWit: So, it depends on what it is, for me. So for example, I use neighborscoop.com, I have it open all day, every day. So, property comes in, I pull up my NeighborScoop and that's one of the things that I go through, my quick, little, five minute, phase one due diligence and I'll see if it falls under flood plain. And then, I'll start on, say it's a light purple and so I'm like, "all right, what else has been built in light purple? And when was it built?" Because that's the beauty of NeighborScoop, I can click on it and go, "all right, this isn't a flood pipe. Look, here's a house that was just built or a barn or something, in 2010, I can see it on there, I pulled up the property history, so it's no big deal. And they solved it.

Be a Producer Not a Consumer (LA 1484) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill K DeWit: Hello. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how I think you really should be a producer more than a consumer, which is a ridiculous podcast topic because you're consuming this podcast. Jill K DeWit: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:00:21] excited about that. I'm like, it's interesting when you wrote that down, you're like, "That's a great line." The other day, I'm like, "Where are we going to go with that?" So I do have some questions. Steven Jack Butala: Somebody in our land academy accountability group said, they typed this in and said, and so I really think that's good advice for, you need to be a land investor, you need to produce. Jill K DeWit: Okay. I have questions. I'll save them for the show. Steven Jack Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on our landinvestors.com online community. It's free and if you're already a member, please join us on discord. Jill K DeWit: You love the discord. Steven Jack Butala: I do love the discord. Jill K DeWit: Thank goodness that's not a drinking game. I bet it is actually. Steven Jack Butala: For somebody it is. Jill K DeWit: Oh my gosh. It started on our Thursday call and now it's just become a thing that we have a few keywords that we tend to maybe overuse. Like I've stopped saying dreamy, all of you. Steven Jack Butala: I have some too. Like tragic. Jill K DeWit: Tragic, yeah. That's a good one. Steven Jack Butala: This is a tragic piece of real estate. Jill K DeWit: Oh yeah. Steven Jack Butala: And you're approaching this in a very tragic way. Jill K DeWit: Exactly. Slopeyness. That's another one. So anyway, it's funny, it's turn into a thing and discord is one of the words. As is Clubhouse and we'll get to that later. Steven Jack Butala: Yep. Jill K DeWit: So Rebecca wrote, "Hi, all. Quick question I need advice on. I have a sold lot in North Carolina. It's closing on January 8th." This is a couple of weeks ago. "We had no idea if it was perced." Oh my gosh. Steven Jack Butala: Perced is a drinking word. Jill K DeWit: That's a drinking word for me. That is a trigger word for me. I've got to tell you right now. Steven Jack Butala: It is a trigger word for me, too. Jill K DeWit: I hate perc and any version of the word perc. So we don't even have a percolator coffee thing. Anyway, "Buyer was told to do her due diligence and sign a contract. Seeing they're responsible for all due diligence on the lot. The buyer never did a perc because- Steven Jack Butala: [crosstalk 00:02:19]. Jill K DeWit: ... because it would've taken too long. We're not going to hold a lot for her that long. Neither of us, nor the buyer knew if it perced. Today, randomly, some realtor who we don't know, just emailed us out of the blue and said, "oh, the lot does not perc." An old client of hers ran a perc test and it failed. I don't know who this realtor is or why she's contacting us. Should I just close it to the buyer. Please advise, please." You want to go first? Steven Jack Butala: Buck response. This is, in land investors- Jill K DeWit: [inaudible 00:02:50] people wrote in. Steven Jack Butala: Yeah, this gets great. I would not have put this in here if it's not fantastically entertaining. Jill K DeWit: You've got lines and lines here. I see responses. Steven Jack Butala: There's multiple responses, including our moderator. Jill K DeWit: All right. You want to read Buck and I'll read the back half? Steven Jack Butala: Buck response, "sounds like sour grapes." I couldn't agree more. I always refer buyers to the county septic department if they have questions about getting a permit. Getting this hearsay from a questionable source,

Jill Friday - So Much Fun Looking at Our Properties (LA 1483) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey. 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how it's Jill Friday and how much fun we have looking at our properties right now. Jill DeWit: Kind of eating your words. Steven Butala: I thought you said never go look at your properties. You should never leave your desk. Jill DeWit: Yeah, you lose money. Steven Butala: Well, this is the way we do it, it's kind of fun. 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. If you're already a member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Of Land Academy. That's right. Steven Butala: You will learn stuff. I learn stuff every day. Jill DeWit: Cool. Dave wrote, I've got several sellers lined up from my first mailing and I wonder which deed to create and mail to the notary for the transfer? The initial deal is from a seller who's owned the property since the early 90s, and the county website says he purchased a quick claim deed following a public auction. I just told him I would send him a deed to sign without bothering to figure out what kind of create. How do you decide which deed to use? I use DeedPerfect. Steven Butala: Whatever it spits out. Jill DeWit: Yeah. For the most part. For the most part, hold on a moment. Steven Butala: DeedPerfect is a site that we own. Jill DeWit: Let's just say, because most of the time, you do need to check and make sure, but usually most of the time it's a normal transfer. Where'd you go? And it's saying California. It's a grant deed. Other places, it's a special warranty deed. That's usually what we're doing. I'm not going to do another quick claim deed, that's used for a certain situation. [inaudible 00:01:52] back up, Dave, first just kind of researching, it's really easy to, research in google types of deeds and what they mean. Steven Butala: It's very state specific. Jill DeWit: You need to first understand what is a warranty, what's a quick claim deed, what's a trust deed. There's different kinds of deeds, treasurers deed. Just because they obtained the property that way, this is one of the mistakes that I made originally. I had a property, I'm looking at a treasurer's deed, and I was brand spanking new at this. And I thought, okay, you always copy the same deed before. So I'm redoing it and I called it a treasurer's deed. I'm not a treasurer, I don't do a treasurer's deed. So, you just need to understand what the deeds are, first of all, and who uses them. Steven Butala: Thank you for not asking me which one to use. Jill DeWit: Oh, you're welcome. Steven Butala: I really appreciate that you don't ask me that. Jill DeWit: I learned, I learned, like, oh, so I'm not a treasurer so you don't use a treasure's deed. That's just how they bought it. Now, when I sell it, now it goes to a special warranty deed. Say if it's that appropriate state, California might be a grant deed. So my cheat sheet, first of all is, I use DeedPerfect because for the 99% of normal transactions that you're doing, the deed is universal and it can be found in deedperfect.com. And we made this site to solve this problem for everybody. If you're a Land Academy member, it's free. Everybody else is like a hundred bucks. Rocket Lawyer, and those guys are like 200 bucks, or it's like a couple hundred bucks for one deed. Ours are $99, that's it. Steven Butala: We got tired of doing our own deeds. We were doing so many deeds that we said, you know what, we need to build a site and we're not going to pay Rocket Lawyer or whatever else. The way that those sites are set up, it's not set up for what we do. Jill DeWit: It's not to spit out a deed, I don't know what it's used for,

Jack Thursday - Just for Engineers and Business Owners (LA 1482) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sweet, sunny, Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how it's Jack Thursday, just for engineers and business owners. Jill DeWit: Bye-bye. Steven Butala: We have a tremendous number of business owners and engineers in our group, and I'm going to talk about why, and so is Jill. 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, and if you're already a member, I urge you to join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Okie dokie. Chris wrote, "Hi, my name is Chris B., and I've only been a member for maybe two weeks and I've watched all the videos." Chris, those are two weeks you'll never get back. Just kidding. Good for you. I am happy, you blew through that. "I didn't know if there was a place on the website to make myself available to fund deals. Any input is appreciated." There is. There's two ways. Steven Butala: Well, there's two that I know of, but let's see if they're the same. Jill DeWit: One is where you could be watching for deals via LandTank and HouseTank. When people need money, that's where they post them. And you can just go in there and grab them. Steven Butala: Get on LandTank and make sure that you turn your notifications on, because every single deal without exception, that goes to Land Tank, it gets gobbled up within minutes by other funders. That's one way. What's your other way? Jill DeWit: Well, every January, we put out a master list where we ... You'll get on the next one, Chris. We publish who you are, all your contact information, any details about how much money you're willing to spend per deal, how much money you're willing to spend in total. If there's any parts of the country that you like, any nuances about how much you're willing to help or not help or whatever it is, funding other people's deals. That's it. Jill DeWit: The other way I'd say put it in, maybe Land Investors? I'm trying to think where else he could- Steven Butala: Nobody listens to that funding deal, and it comes out once a year anyway. It's just cool to know that there's $100 million available to people who were in the Land Academy to do good deals. Jill DeWit: Well, I look at it. Steven Butala: So, it's a cool thing. I look at it, too, but it's once a year. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: There's a section in Discord called Would You Fund This Deal. And people who need transactions funded, us included sometimes. We do some deals that are so big that we don't want to bite it all ourselves. Steven Butala: There's a section called, Would You Fund This Deal. If I were you, and there's other people in this group that have no intention of ever sending out a mailer, they just want to fund other people's deals, which is fine. People from institutions and hedge funds and stuff, actually, are members. I would go be real loud about it in Discord and say, "I fund deals. And they better be damn good deals. And you better be really intelligent or else I don't want to work with you." And I would really be that clear about it. Because you will- Jill DeWit: Not you, Chris. You tell them that if you want. Steven Butala: Tell them. Yeah. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: You better be intelligent and nice and have only five star deals. Jill DeWit: Give us your checklist. Jack's like, "Here's what I expect." Come on, are we working together? Steven Butala: Between the two of us, Jill and I, I'm not allowed to fund deals. Jill DeWit: Correct. Steven Butala: Because of this attitude I have. Jill DeWit: Yeah. As you can see, he's still on step one of my 10-step anger program. Steven Butala: You know what the truth is?

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 Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about ... really, I talk about web scraping for accurate mailer pricing. Jill adds some flair to it. Jill Dewit: Truth time. This was my topic. I love this. Steven Butala: You like web scraping? Jill Dewit: Yes. I just said, "Can we please talk about this? I just can't talk about it enough." I think this is the greatest thing. Ever since I've learned this trick, I do it for everything. I web scrape to make sure I'm buying the right mascara, hair products. Steven Butala: You know what? Friday, tomorrow's Jack Thursday. Jill Dewit: Okay, got it. Do I get a Friday? Oh, I get my ... okay. Steven Butala: On Friday, it's Jill Friday. So much fun looking at our properties, so you can talk about- Jill Dewit: Okay. I can talk about that. Oh darn. Okay. Steven Butala: Yeah, so taking the [crosstalk 00:01:03] Jill Dewit: Fine. I'll let you have web scraping this time. I might roll that into mine on Friday. 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. Oh, and if you're already a member, you should join us on Discord. Seriously, I'm not joking. It cracks me up that a lot of people in our group aren't on Discord. That is 50% of the education value of being in Land Academy is Discord. Jill Dewit: It gets distracting though, because I mean, we have that, and then we have the land investors online community. Both are great. Both are great. Okay. Steven Butala: What I'm noticing since we started the Discord thing is that the people on land investors are all not in our group. Even though there are a lot of people that answer questions on land investors that are in our group, but the questions are from new people that are not yet members, but all the real questions and education goes on in Discord. Jill Dewit: Understood. Hello, Bobbie. Bobbie wrote, "Still new here and getting my bearings. First off blessings to you all, Steven and Jill and the entire Land Academy team." Thank you, Bobbie. Steven Butala: That's nice. I never get tired of hearing that. Jill Dewit: Aww. She says, "Thank you for creating such an amazingly helpful community and offering so much of yourselves to all of us. After a lot of research I have yet to stumble across this info. I just wanted to find out what's typical with regard to the purchase agreement when selling land. Is it as simple as using the same purchase agreement to buy it? If so, do you all have suggestions on any necessary modifications when converting the agreement? Thanks in advance." I use the same one. Steven Butala: Same one. Jill Dewit: It doesn't really matter. Steven Butala: If you go to offers, the number 2, owners.com, and you go to forums- Jill Dewit: Forums. Steven Butala: ... This is all free and it's all open to the public. Click on purchase agreement, and whether you're in the group or not, you can use it to buy and sell real estate, and here's why. Jill and I just bought a house. We're going to flip it, but it's an extremely expensive high-end house that Jill got for an amazing price. I have never ... And we got a mortgage on it, because it was less than 3%, because I couldn't make the math work otherwise. Steven Butala: I have never signed so many documents in my life. I bet we signed our names- Jill Dewit: Tell me. I know. A hundred times. Steven Butala: ... probably a hundred times. You know how many times we sign that purchase agreement when we buy and sell land? Once, and the seller or buyer signs it once. Jill Dewit: Right. I sign that, I sign off on one- Steven Butala: So it's just my way of sticking my middle finger up to real estate agents and the lawyers behind them.

Land Academy Career Path is Not Just for Pros (LA 1480) Transcript: Steven Butala:Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt:Hello. Steven Butala:Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWitt:And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala:When will we be back in California to do this? Jill DeWitt:I don't know. Steven Butala:In the middle of May. Jill DeWitt:Maybe. You'll be there and I'm going to go back for a couple of days in a week or so I think. Steven Butala:Oh, I didn't know that. Jill DeWitt:Yeah. It's on the calendar. Steven Butala:Today, Jill and I talk about how Land Academy career path, it's not just for pros. 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, and if you're already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWitt:You know what I should've said is I'll be back when it warms up. Steven Butala:Yeah. Jill DeWitt:It's been cold there, like not even 60. I'm like, no, I'm good. Ross wrote, "Hi everyone. I'm interested in possibly not selling a land property with seller financing, but actually buying one from a seller. My intent is to sell it though and, of course, when I sell it I want to write it into the contract that the seller will make whole once I-" Steven Butala:Will be made whole. Jill DeWitt:"I'll make him whole once I sell it, just like a traditional montage would be." Steven Butala:Mortgage. Jill DeWitt:Oh, okay. Steven Butala:It's okay. it's not you. Jill DeWitt:All right. Steven Butala:It's a puzzle. Jill DeWitt:Okay. Steven Butala:This question is written in puzzle format. Jill DeWitt:Oh, good. You're going to help put this all together. Thank you. "In order to be legal, I understand that my name needs to be on the title in order for me to market it for sale. Otherwise I'm marketing property that I don't legally own. So I'm not sure how, what kind of contract or deed instrument I should use in this situation. For example, I buy this hundred thousand dollar property from you, but you have to provide owner financing. I pay you $3,000 per month in monthly payments and when selling the property, the next buyer you'll be made whole at that point. Is this possible? Anyone would have a contract that could see or use or hire someone to write me the contract in the legal way? Thank you for all you do." Steven Butala:So what you're, if you do this and there's a contract in the Land Academy program, the first one, to do this. So it's in there. I don't recommend doing this at all. I think you're getting yourself into a mess, but if you want to do it, I understand. You're not breaking the law at all, in my opinion, you're not representing someone else in the sale of their property because what you're doing when you sign this is creating equitable interest in a property. And so if you buy the property on a contract, you own it. You just have a lien, there's a lien on it, just like you do with a mortgage. So if you go buy a house and Bank of America provides a mortgage for you, you will move in, paint it, do whatever you're going to do to it, clean it up, renovate it. If something goes sideways and you stop making payments, the bank comes and gets it. It's the same situation here. So I don't believe that there's any legal issues here with this at all. Steven Butala:You own the property. There's a lien on it. You have equitable interest. The real problem here is there's just a lot of stuff that can go wrong. Let's say you don't, if you don't sell the property, you're going to stop paying. So there's some huge financial concerns that I have. But if this is the way you want to start, knock yourself out. Jill DeWitt:Yeah, I'm not a fan. If it's that good, here's the bottom line, if it's that good, somebody will fund it, like us. Steven Butala:If it's a great deal. Jill DeWitt:Yeah. Say let's all back up for just a second here.

Are You a Recovering Landlord? (LA 1479) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWitt: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I are talking about are you a recovering landlord?]. Jill DeWitt: That's funny, because we have a few. Steven Butala: Since the COVID, it seems like it's optional to pay your rent now. Do you feel like paying your rent? Go ahead. If you don't, don't. If you feel like wearing a mask, go ahead. If you don't ... Jill DeWitt: Well, wait a minute. And if you don't want to fill out the paperwork to get rent aid, I'll do it for you. Steven Butala: That's what's so bad. Jill DeWitt: I feel bad for these poor ... No, it's true. The landlords are allowed to do it. Steven Butala: Oh, man. Jill DeWitt: It's like what's funny, with the person's permission. It's like, "Yeah, I'm too busy sitting on my couch. Will you do that for me?" Steven Butala: Never. And on top of that, institutional real estate companies, specifically class A apartment building REITs and stuff are reporting the best earnings ever, like record earnings. So I think some of the smaller landlords, some of these smaller apartment buildings in really specific states, California is one of them. California, New York and Michigan are having huge, huge problems with people not paying their rent. And every politician on the television is saying it's okay. Jill DeWitt: And it's extended again and again and again. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. I'm glad we're not in that business. 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. And if you are already a Land Academy member, join us on Discord. It's a party every minute. Jill DeWitt: So silly. Steven's Discord is my Clubhouse. Steven Butala: I love Discord. Jill DeWitt: I know you do. Ann Marie wrote, "I'm working my way through the course and also listening to the podcast while driving. I have a mailer question. I think I've understood to send a tri county area a 1500 unit volume of mailers with 500 to each of the three." Got it. "Then today the podcast was about getting really knowledgeable with one county and how to price it. Should I interpret this, that me, that I should send on my first batch to only one county with 1500 units going to the one county and drill down on two or three nearby counties and then go 500 each to those? Thank you." Steven Butala: This is all you. Jill DeWitt: Me, why? Why? You're the mail guy. Steven Butala: Because Jill and I- Jill DeWitt: Differ. Steven Butala: ... Jill and I are enjoying instructing our first career path class, Land Academy Career Path. Jill DeWitt: True. Steven Butala: And we divided the whole entire group, it's a group of 15 people, between brand new people and not brand new people. And the not brand new people could be, I've done anywhere between 10 or 20 transactions and I get it and I want it to be my career now, all the way up to I've done thousands and thousands of deals but I want to grow my business from 500,000 a month to a million a month. And she got the new people and I got the not new people. So, Ann Marie's a new person. Jill DeWitt: You're so funny. We might have different answers. This is going to be funny. Steven Butala: We do have different answers, and yours is the right one. Jill DeWitt: Here are my thoughts. Ann Marie, if you want to make your life easy, I really want you to send more mail to one concentrated area, so the offers you're getting returned are like kind. You're comparing apples to apples, not getting to know a new area based on what comes back. Are you sighing because you don't like that? Steven Butala: No, I'm not sighing. Jill DeWitt: You're breathing heavy like, huh. Steven Butala:

Jill Friday - The People Side of Real Estate Investment (LA 1478) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Friday. Steven Butala: Welcome to the LandAcademy show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona Steven Butala: Today. Jill and I talk about... Well, it's Jill Friday, and she's going to talk about the people side of real estate investment. Jill DeWit: What's this thing on my head? Steven Butala: Before we get into it and talk about the thing on Jill's head, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. And if you're already with us, check us out on Discord. Jill DeWit: Dave wrote, all right, so I have a question and a comment, it looks like. Dave wrote, "Anyone downloading Redfin data for their red, yellow, green test and finding days on market data to be arbitrarily and incorrectly set to 19 or 22 days on market for 80 to 90% of properties in a county. Not sure what's up with this, as I've tried several counties now, and I'm finding this for the listed data. When I go into an individual listing, they're showing the correct date of the listing, which is often sometimes last year, but in the data I downloaded, it's showing 22 days on market. Anyone else have this happen? At first, I thought it was just a bad county, but a few of them have been like this." Jill DeWit: So Chuck replied and said, "Regarding days on market and Redfin-" Steven Butala: This is days later. Jill DeWit: Okay. "I have confirmed that the data shown on the Redfin data download is incorrect as posted here previously. It is days since the property sold, not days on the market to sell. I called Redfin and they confirmed this and say that they're aware of the problem and it's being worked on." Got it. Steven Butala: Boy. This question could not be more inappropriate for the show title. There's nothing people business about this. It's all the tech side, the data side on mine. Jill DeWit: Well, I guess it's people, because Chuck is helping him. Chuck's like, "Don't worry about it. I called Redfin and I can help to save you some stress. They know there's a problem. And it's coming." Steven Butala: There's a couple of points here and we'll move on to Jill's happy place. Number one, Jill just made my point. The people component is the fact that we're in a community, we're all interacting together and solving each other's problems. I would have never caught this. Jill DeWit: And I wouldn't. Steven Butala: You know, I check days on market through two to three sources before we make a decision on sending mail somewhere. So kudos to both of these guys for figuring this out and sharing with the group and saving us a ton of time and energy and potentially some money loss on sending mail out to counties that we didn't have good data on. So thank you fellows. It's awesome. That's what this is all about. Jill DeWit: Tech support, Chuck. Steven Butala: Today's topic. It's Jill Friday. She's going to talk about the people side of real estate investment. This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: You brought up a good point as we were sitting down to record. And you said, the reason you came up with this title was so many brainy tech people in our group, and which is, like you, and you were saying- Steven Butala: Not necessarily tech people, just people with technical backgrounds, counting, aerospace- Jill DeWit: Numbers. Steven Butala: Yeah. Numbers. Jill DeWit: Analytical, research driven, staring at computers in dark rooms, kind of things. And not necessarily working with customers, at least in person or on the phone and things like that. And it was really nice, you said, I wrote, "Are they missing it? Are they missing out on this?" Because you had said you... will you back up and preface your whole thing again? Steven Butala:

Jack Thursday - You Have to Start Somewhere (LA 1477) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey. 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 Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about it's Jack Thursday, and you have to start somewhere. Jill and I just started doing Jack Thursday and Jill Friday, and all of our people, our Land Academy employees, love it. For some reason, it's generating a lot of questions. It's clarifying a lot of things in a human perspective, instead of talking about data and real estate and mail and stuff like that. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: So, you got to start somewhere. And this is a culmination of me being in this business since the early '90s and all this gray hair that you see, and then Jill and I starting Land Academy in early 2015, so we've got a good six years, a full six years of experience teaching people. I'm starting to feel like we know what we're doing sort of. Are you? Jill DeWit: Your hair is not that gray. Steven Butala: That's what you got out of that? Jill DeWit: That's what I got out of that. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com community. It's free. And if you're already a member, join us on Discord, please. Jill DeWit: Luke wrote, "Mailed a bunch of commercial vacant properties across a couple of states, most of all of the West," most all the West, maybe not all of the West, but in the West. Got it. "Boy, a lot of them accepted. I'm dreaming of building warehouses, fast food, Dollar General, tractor supply store, gas stations, auto repair shops, storage, trailer parks, medical, et cetera." This is all commercial stuff here. "Not much of any multi-family or office space-looking ones. I would've guessed it was going to be all office space-looking commercial land taking me up on my offers." Interesting. Jill DeWit: "Trying to ..." I already have some things to say about this, "Trying to verify lots of the pricing on these with third-party brokers. I think I'm in over my head. Looking for the sweet, obvious ones that are just priced way wrong. I'm sure they're in here." You know, it's funny. I was just reading an article on this, with the whole 2020, how the year went, everybody working from home and now staying at home. There's still a huge office component. I am seeing and hearing office space not going away. And if anything, it might even be maybe a little bit better because those dear sweet people who still want office space now are wanting more room. The days of cramming people in one room and cubicle after cubicle after cubicle might be gone. Steven Butala: I read a similar article that said, "We all know what happened in 2020. And despite that, institutional landlords, specifically multifamily, are killing it. They had the best year ever." Jill DeWit: Yup. Yup, so there you go. Steven Butala: So, where's the tragedy? Jill DeWit: I know. I love this though. So, what Luke is talking about is, "Hey, I went into it thinking I was going to get all the office stuff. I didn't, number one. Number two, this is such a new venture for me, so I'm just looking for the low-hanging fruit," which I totally get. And I'm sure they're in there. Yeah. Grab them and go and then figure it out. He's very good at that. That's one thing about this person. Luke's nuts. Steven Butala: Luke Smith. If you follow- Jill DeWit: He's like me. He's nuts. Steven Butala: If you follow land investing and the people that are involved, Luke's one of our- Jill DeWit: Long-time members. Steven Butala: He's number 22 or something like that. And he's taken Land Academy to a place I didn't even know where it would go, and he's fearless. And so he obviously said sent out a massive mailer to commercial property owners,

Interview with Long Time Member Matt Bailey (LA 1476) Transcript: Steve: Steve Butala here for Land Academy. Jill's not with us today. Lucky for her. She's actually out having some fun. So I wanted to take this opportunity, this kind of vacant opportunity to introduce, I think, a long time member, Matt Bailey, a member of Land Academy. Matt came to us from another member, Lori Phillips, who said, "Look, you got to, I just talked to this guy. He's been a member for a long time, a lot longer than I have. He's really got his stuff together. And he'd be a great guy to have on the show because I think a lot of new people specifically would get a lot out of this." We are Steve and Jill. Jill: Together we've been buying and reselling land since the 90s. Steve: Our data centric approach leaves our buyers asking, "How can you sell it so cheap?" Jill: Here on the Land Academy show- Steve: We answer that and more. Welcome, Matt. Thanks so much for being on the show. I'll start off right away and just ask you, how'd you find us? How long have you been with us? What are you working on? If you can just introduce yourself and give us a little flavor, that'd be great. Matt: Yeah, sure. So I've been at this for about four years now. I got into it, like I think a lot of people did, listening to BiggerPockets and then Seth had a podcast early on in there and I got started on his course shortly after I jumped in. And did your course. I think that both have a lot to offer. I'm glad that I had done both. And so, yeah, I mean, I've been with you guys for four years, working and lately really this year kind of scaling the company up. So now we have four full-time employees. Lori was the person who introduced us and suggested we jump on the podcast and I'd kind of come to her because I was working on trying to build the processes out, scaling the company, training. And I didn't really have a ton of time to price a mailer. And she had a bunch of mailers priced, but not a lot of bandwidth to do the overhead and the actual execution on it and that's exactly what my business is kind of designed to do. Matt: I've kind of built it from the beginning to be designed for scaling, so I focused a lot on business processes and developing a CRM with automations and stuff to kind of like help streamline everything. And that's how I started working with her. And I think we did like five or six deals off of that mailer. And, most of them have kind of come full circle now and yeah, I mean, it's just land's been pretty good. I'm really enjoying it and it's nice to be able to be on the podcast with you. Steve: That's great, man. So what's a typical deal look like for you right now with Lori or without Lori or what's a typical deal look like? Matt: Yeah. So, I started on some of the smaller deals and as I've done more deals, even though I built this for volume, I think that if you build your business from the beginning to be able to handle volume, you can do fewer deals and not have to work so hard on each one because all of your stuff is streamlined. Right? So, I started doing smaller deals and right now, my minimum threshold is $5,000 profit is what we're looking to do. So I'd say most of them are probably in that five to $20,000 range and we're starting to work on larger ones. So like I mentioned, I've got now four full-time employees that work with me and I know exactly what we're going to convert in the markets that we've done before if we mailed a certain percentage of offer price to these five to $20,000 deals, right? Matt: So I'm keeping those as the bread and butter, but I'm looking to scale up to larger deals, but I don't want to jump into those larger deals and find out that, okay, it turns out you convert one in 7,000 if you're trying to get more than a $50,000 profit or something. Right? And I assume that it's going to be closer to one in 1000 or 2000 or whatever it might be. So now that I've got all these people underneath me, it's like,

Pick a County and Price it - the Two Ps - PP - Its a Thing Now (LA 1475) 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 Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to pick a county and price it. We all call it the two Ps. It's a thing now. It just became a thing because it was born out of a discussion in Discord about- Jill DeWit: I thought you were going to say disgust. Steven Butala: Well, maybe there is. No. On somebody's part there might have been some disgust. It's just one of those things where it's so simple. We all know we have to do it, like exercising every morning, but it doesn't happen often enough. In my case, anyway. Jill DeWit: Would you just pick a damn county? Steven Butala: That's it. Jill DeWit: That's it. Steven Butala: And get it priced. Jill DeWit: That's it. People get hung up on that. Steven Butala: This'll kick your whole career off. Jill DeWit: Totally. And don't pick one that we've all talked about. Steven Butala: Well said. Jill DeWit: Now I'm done. We don't have to do this episode. Steven Butala: Before we get into it? 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, and if you're already a member, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: John wrote, "How soon should I expect to start hearing back from my mailers? The first one, 600-ish mailers, went out on March 18th." So, this is cool. So Leonard, dear Leonard in Ireland ... I'll weigh in on this too. Steven Butala: Thank God. Jill DeWit: Dear Leonard in Ireland wrote a response that we have shared here. I'll read that and then I'll give you my response. Jill DeWit: Leonard wrote, "You should get a response in a mailer, but I typically buy one in 1500 sent. If I get a high response, it can be less than a thousand units per purchase, but you may not get a deal in only 600 units. Depends on how much the area is mailed. Great start and look forward to hearing your first deal. Not to say it doesn't happen, I got my first deal on a 200 unit mailer." Jill DeWit: Two things are going on here. I'll let you handle the second part, which is the volume that he sent. I'll handle, the question is, did it hit? Is anybody going to call me? This happens every single time, including to Steven and I. We'll send out these mailers, we're like, "When's it going to hit? When's it going to hit? When's it going to hit? Did we do something wrong? Did we forget our phone number on there? Is our address wrong?" We go through all the possible scenarios. Or, "They all hate them. I did something wrong. Everybody's shredding them right now. I'm not getting a response." And then you watch, you wait two days and here comes a blast of response. It's always our first reaction that we just, we're like, "Oh no." The calm before the storm. Steven Butala: I take it even more seriously than Jill. I'm like, "Ugh, I guess my career is over." Jill DeWit: Yeah, "My pricing, I'm done." Steven Butala: I guess all the land that's ever going to be sold, is sold. Jill DeWit: Is done. That's right. We're done. No one's going to do this anymore. What have we done? Jill DeWit: Yeah, whatever. No. Steven Butala: I'm just joking. Jill DeWit: So funny. Steven Butala: I used to do that a long, long, long time ago. Way before Jill. I obviously stopped doing that. Jill DeWit: Tell me about what you think about the volume he sent though. That's the thing I want you to touch on real quick. Steven Butala: I think it's crazy. I think Leonard was very, very nice about it. Jill DeWit: He was politically correct. Steven Butala: I'm running out of analogies to explain this. Now I'm thinking it's might be biological, that makes somebody want to test this mailer concept.