Land Academy Show

Why Distressed Property Acquisitions Don't Work (LA 1474) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about why distressed property acquisitions don't work. It's a big pile of fiction. Jill DeWit: What? Steven Butala: And you've heard it. Well, we're going to reiterate. Jill DeWit: Wait a minute. Do you mean that I'm not the first one to find this boarded up house and this diamond in the rough that's just sitting there waiting for me? Steven Butala: Yes. You're not the first one. Jill DeWit: Darn it. Oh, come on. It makes me think of those two houses on Jolla Cove that had been there for years. I wonder if they're still there. They may or may not be there, but it was a good 20 years that they were boarded up in like some of the most prime real estate on the planet and I'm sure people went, "What," and tried to track them down. Steven Butala: Jill and I are staying in a VRVO for a few months while the house that we bought is getting all cleaned up and we're right next to a vacant piece of property that's fallen down in a really nice area of old town Scottsdale. You can walk to all the fun stuff and it's just dying to be renovated or torn down or whatever. If I had a nickel for every car that stopped there and they got a yellow pad out with some pen and paper- Jill DeWit: Write down the address. Steven Butala: Like it's 1983, I watched it all day long. I watched people just stop and take down the address and write stuff down on a piece of paper. 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 the Land Academy group, please join us on Discord. I can't stress it enough. Jill DeWit: He loves it. Discord's the new Clubhouse, in case you didn't know that. And those of you on the Thursday calls know exactly what I'm talking about. All right. By the way, I have not promoted Clubhouse really once here, so I don't [crosstalk 00:02:07]. I should. John wrote, "Question for all, but hoping to get Steven's input when he has time. For those of you with well-established internet presences that are linked to certain geographic locations, rural vacant land San Diego, LandStay, Phoenix for example. When starting a mail campaign in a distant state, do you start up both a new phone number and a new mailing address? If yes to either, when interested sellers are looking up in the internet, how do they say there's a Tennessee number based with a Phoenix company?" Oh, John, you know us. And that's me. Yeah. I have a lot to say. "And does this even matter? Thank you." Jill DeWit: Can I go? Steven Butala: Yeah. I think this is for you. And I did answer this in Discord and a bunch of other people did too. Jill DeWit: Okay. So here's the deal. I've never had someone that said, and if they do, it's like, "We have a Tennessee office. We're based out of Phoenix, but we have offices around the country." Oh, done. That's all I ever have to say. And it depends on how much mail you're going to send, how long you going to be in that area because once you start a new phone number, a new address, you want to keep it. So I don't think it's wise to have one address and one phone number in 50 states. I don't think you need that nor do you want to pay for that for years and years because the mail and the calls will still keep coming. You want to own these numbers and put them in. So what we do though, is if I know we're going to go on for a while and be there for a while, I'll do it. I'll bite the bullet. No, I'm going to keep it and I'll make it like a regional number kind of thing. So I might send, maybe the Tennessee number gets anything on the East coast, except for upper East,

How to Fund Deals and What You Should Look for if You're the Bank (LA 1473) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Friday Land Academy show. 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 how to fund deals as the funder and what you should look for in the bank roll. Jill DeWit: All right. Steven Butala: We're reversing the talk this week. Jill DeWit: How different deals, what you should look for if you're the bank. Okay, got 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 if you're already a member, join us on Discord for sure. Jill DeWit: Saba wrote, and I've got some comments it looks like too? Steven Butala: These are two really nice compliments about how these two new members found us and why they made a decision to join. It's not really a question. Jill DeWit: Okay, good. This is cool. Saba wrote, "It's nice to meet you all. I was trying to look up on Google how to use Google Maps and search for properties by APN, and I ended up here. After reading a few posts, I decided to create an account because you guys seem to have pretty interesting discussions here. I'm a real estate development professional with a decade of experience in a corporate setting, I've sourced multiple deals and processed entitlements for many projects. I'm currently helping a few clients with financial modeling, market research, and zoning research on a consulting basis. Some of my clients are not in the area where I'm located, so I think I may be able to find some good, useful info about how doing deals in various municipalities work in this forum. Feel free to ask me any question you might have. Thanks." How sweet is that? Steven Butala: You're in the right place. Jill DeWit: I'm going to use you guys for information for me, and I'm happy to share what I know. That's our community. That's awesome. RSally wrote, I hope I'm saying your names correctly, thank you. "Hello. So I'm just starting my late in life dream of buying, investing, and owning land. I found Land Academy on Instagram and I've already learned so much. I was about to start my coursework and get my real estate license. I know you don't need to have a license to buy and sell land, but for me, it's about gaining new knowledge. The coursework is a small investment for me to understand best practices, terminology, contracts, et cetera." Steven Butala: There's one more paragraph, but I'm going to jump in here and say that Jill and I have both been through the coursework portion of getting a real estate license with no intention of taking the test, just to learn very specific State-specific real estate laws and rules. And I think it's cheap. When I went through it, it was like four or $500 and it's intense. There's a huge legal component to it. Jill DeWit: It's like 60 hours for the course here in Arizona. Steven Butala: I learned a lot. It's really worth it. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Back to the question. He said, "My dream is to buy small parcels of land that have minimal deed restrictions to build and rent out or sell small custom modern cabins for city dwellers. I live in Philly, Philadelphia, and I'm fortunate to be a short drive to wooded land. Personally, all this started with my desire to have a few acres where I could have a small off-grid cabin and get away and let my dog run around freely. I guess I can have both, huh? Anyway, I'm excited to continue learning and hearing from all of you." Steven Butala: All of this started because I had a desire to have a small cabin on a small piece of property, 30 years ago. And here we are. Welcome everybody. Steven Butala: Today's topic, how to fund deals and what you should look for if you're the bank. This is the meat of the show. Steven Butala:

Why Having Someone Else Fund Your Deals is Smart - We Do it Too (LA 1472) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: I think it's sunny is the staple. Jill DeWit: Just leave it as sunny. [crosstalk 00:00:17]. Steven Butala: But it is sunny here, more than California. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: Today, jill and I talk about why having someone else's deal, why having someone else fund your deal is actually a good idea. In fact, we do it all the time. We actually seek out partners to fund some of our deals, and the short version is, it depends on the deal. 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, it's worth it. Jill DeWit: All right. So Andy wrote, and there's a note here that he's not a member, "In the process of browsing counties, I often come across areas where sorting low to high brings up similarly priced lots, but the acreage of the lots varies wildly. For example, I'm currently looking at a zip code in X state where half acre lots and 20 acre lots all seem to be in the 10 to $20,000 price range. I tend to avoid areas like this because of the huge discrepancy and it throws off my confidence in pricing. It would feel unwise of me to mail the half acre lots, offering 3 to $4,000, and then go on and mail 20 acre lots and offer the same amount. Any thoughts on how divided areas like this or how to get a better read? Do you ever just blanket mail a county with one offer price and then disregard acreage? Any thoughts? I appreciate it." Steven Butala: Always. What's important here is to get the mail out. This discrepancy in data, get used to it. This is one big... If you're a data person in another field or you're a retired pilot, or you got 30 years in public accounting, or you're a mechanical engineer, maybe you're retired. You know what looking at a data set like this and how frustrating it can be. And you've been doing it for decades. Welcome to Land Academy and welcome to real estate investing in general. Andy's already light years ahead of the clubhouse discussion that Jill was involved in this morning. Whereas they drive around and they'd look for dilapidated houses. They write down the address, they find the owner's name and they send them a kind little note saying, "Your house is a pile of crap. I'm happy to... Why don't you give me a call? I'll take it off your hands." Steven Butala: So Andy's already looking at data sets. He's realizing the data's not perfect. It's a little bit wonky and he's trying to figure it out and get into that real estate market through data, not through the actual real estate. So, if you're new and you're listening to these sentences that I'm saying, and the light bulb's going off over your head, this is for you. And expect some weird data because I know exactly where he's talking about him in New Mexico, and I know how I would do it, but it's all based on experience. So honestly, my opinion on this is just based on... Jill and I've done thousands of deals in New Mexico. So, in the beginning, this is frustrating for me, but not really. If you can crack through this data and figure it out, get it in a spreadsheet, go price per acre. Steven Butala: You're going to find similarities. You're going to dig through that data and scrub yourself down to a point where you actually do have confidence that this 20 acre property in this zip code is actually probably worth $12,000. So I'm going to go out. I'm going to offer everybody 2000 bucks. And so you have to just deconstruct the whole thing, chill out, get a good cup of coffee, make yourself a sandwich, turn all the lights off, spend three hours in a dark room,

Interview with Long Time Member Kevin Farrell (LA 1471) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill Dewitt: I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from Sweets. That's still Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today we have the greatest treat of all. We have a long time member, Kevin Farrell with us who is also Kevins- Jill Dewitt: Does consulting for us- Steven Jack Butala: Yeah, he does land academy consulting, he's a moderator in a couple of our forums on land investors specifically, and just always a treat to talk to Kevin because he brings a certain serious expertise, but also a certain sense of... I can't describe it. Well, you'll see it in a minute. This type of sense of humor, and this whole thing. Jill Dewitt: Welcome! We are Steven and Jill. Together, we've been buying and reselling land since the nineties. Steven Jack Butala: Our data-centric approach leaves our buyers asking, "How can you sell it so cheap?" Jill Dewitt: Here on the land Academy show- Steven Jack Butala: We answer that, and more. Steven Jack Butala: Kevin how have you been since the last Land event? Kevin: I've been well. I mean, the main word is "well" because we've gone through this crazy pandemic and you know, I'm glad I'm in the land business because I want to tell people that it has not affected my ability to acquire land or my ability to sell it, which is amazing. Jill Dewitt: I'm so happy. You know, I want to pause and say thank you, by the way, for all that you have done for us and our other members and the consulting and the hours and the time and the welcoming new people that you put in for us. I really, really appreciate it and I know it makes a difference and people connect with you. Steven Jack Butala: Yeah. Jill Dewitt: Thank you. Kevin: Yeah, thanks Jill. I appreciate it. It's I still enjoy doing it, so that's why I'm in there every day. Steven Jack Butala: Yeah. That's the same as for us here. I stopped telling people that the pandemic hasn't negatively affected us because they just... you never know how it's going to go. I don't want to, I don't want to make it seem like I'm bragging or anything, but we were just all really lucky. I can't think of anything else. Just purely lucky to be in this business when this thing rolled around. Jill Dewitt: That's true. Kevin: Yeah. Jill Dewitt: Right. Kevin: Yeah, thanks to this I don't [crosstalk 00:02:07]. Jill Dewitt: Catch us up. Steven Jack Butala: Perfect example. Jill Dewitt: Yeah. Kevin: Yeah, well, [crosstalk 00:02:15]. Jill Dewitt: What kind of deals are you doing? Catch us up in your world. Kevin: Yeah, I've been doing my version of the business, which is kind of laid back. When I speak with people and we're doing consulting calls, they want to know how much mail we send out, and what kind of targets to make. I said, "Well, I may not be your role model. I'm 64 years old, and if I work two days a week, that's a full schedule. I'm pretty good with that". We put ourselves in a position, financially, where our needs are not really that high, so I'm all about being comfortable with what I'm doing. I have also been trying to find my niche. I think all of us in this land business, we're always kind of trying to figure out where's our niche either geographically or property type. Whether it's desert or commercial or infill, et cetera, et cetera. I've learned some things. I've had some real good lessons the past year or two. Kevin: I would say the five anchor lesson is a big one that I want to pass on to experienced and new people. There's just something magic, Steve you've said it before. People want five acre properties. I don't care really where you are. If you're selling, what I call, small properties, if you're doing five acre properties that phone's going to ring more than if you had one to two acre properties or even 10 acre properties.

Land Academy Deal Funding 101 - How Deal Funding Works (LA 1470) 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 Dewitt, coming to you from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona. Soon we'll be saying a lot. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about Land Academy deal funding 101 and how deal funding works. Yesterday we talked about private equity and private lending and the basis of that and why I think it's the best way, we think it's the best way to raise capital to get deals done when you don't have your own money. Jill's going to walk us through the mechanics of when somebody sends her a deal, how she chooses it, how she analyzes it, why she says yes, why she says no. Maybe I'll actually submit a couple of fictitious deals to you and you can say, you're an idiot for this and you don't ever call me again. Jill DeWit: Yeah, I will happily play that game. Steven Butala: Or happily do this deal like right now. In fact, let's all stop what we're doing and fund it. Jill DeWit: Got 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. If you're already with us in Land Academy, join us on Discord. It's nothing short of amazing. Jill DeWit: Anthony wrote, "In using the red, yellow, green test, I have found massive differences in days on market. I searched and found the base formula for days on market. It's a 12 month sold overactive for sale, then divided by 365. So let's say there were 3000 properties sold in the last 12 months and they are 500 sale for sale now. So 3000 divided by 500 is six divided by 365 divided by six, we got it, is 60.8 days on market. Zillow, Realtor, and Redfin all have different numbers for days on market. How do you guys account for the variance?" Steven Butala: This is very, very important question and it doesn't just apply to real estate or days on market. Where you have data sets from different sources it's very important not to mix them up. However, let's just pick on Redfin. However Redfin came about having properties in their dataset both for sale and sold is the same for sale and sold. But if you just look at for sale property in Redfin and then sold property in Zillow, it's an apples to oranges situation and you're mixing up two non-life kind data sets with different definitions. I don't mean to nitpick here, but this is actually pretty important because you're spending money on sending mail out based on data. So it's very important to just apples to apples it. So great, Jack. Steve, why are they different then? The real question is why are there's three sources of data? Steven Butala: I kept them separate. They're apples to apples to apples, all three. Why are they so different? Because the sources of data for Zillow, Zillow brags about the fact that they have all kinds of data in their dataset for properties. They could be Jill and I posting a property without a real estate agent as a for sale for owner. They could be the MLS. There's all kinds of places that you can get data to do this. Redfin goes the opposite way. They only have datasets in very specific areas based on which MLS is. There's three or 400 MLSs believe it or not, little local ones all over the country that roll up into the National Association of Realtors. So there's only certain local MLSs that participate with Redfin. And why is that? Because Redfin is not really interested in rural areas. They're really interested in urban areas where there's huge high volume of transactions. Steven Butala: That doesn't help us as much because we buy rural vacant land. And where that line cuts off, just imagine a boundary of the MLS is all geography based. So where one ends and one starts could be in the middle of a zip code. It could be in the middle of a county. So there's really,

How to Use Private Money to Get Started in Real Estate (LA 1469) 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 Dewitt broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to use private money to get started in real estate. Jill just sat down. This is what happens. I do all the work, hours of work and Jill sits down at one minute till the time we're supposed to record and she says, "Okay, what's the topic? And how do I look?" And I say, this is the topic and you look great. And she gives me an opinion on the topic. And she happened to like this one. It's a 50/50 shot. Jill DeWit: That's kind of funny. Steven Butala: What were just doing before you got on the show? Jill DeWit: Oh, so I was on clubhouse. I jumped into this clubhouse group. It was real estate, just kind of like a real estate one-on-one and there were people in there. Everybody's trying to find houses to like rehab and rent them out. They're trying to buy them, rent them out. By the way, they're talking about some markets like Columbus I want to say and Indianapolis and these stupid places. It's so nuts. You can buy a house for like $40,000 and rent them out for a thousand. Steven Butala: That's what my sister does in Cadillac, Michigan. Jill DeWit: It's brilliant. They're figuring out these good areas, but where they're falling down is how to buy the asset. So that's where I chimed in and let them know how to get the data and what to do. So one guy said direct mail and you better believe I jumped all over that one. Steven Butala: Yeah. I think that rental model is compelling. If you can get a good management company and you can buy a lot all at once, it's still a lot of work. In the end, I would never pull the trigger on it just because land is our thing, but my sister's got 30 or 40, 45 doors she said the last time I talked to her in Cadillac, Michigan because her husband, this is what he does full time. Jill DeWit: He's kind of the management company. Steven Butala: He is the management company and he has patience. So I don't have any patience for that. Jill DeWit: Yes. No, we do not. What do you have patience for babe? Steven Butala: Land acquisitions and resales and teaching. Jill DeWit: Even then it better go quickly. Steven Butala: That's true. 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 with us already in the Land Academy community, please join us on Discord. It's gets bigger every day and I'm getting a lot out of it for sure and I know just based on the volume that our members are really... it's a new tool for us. It doesn't cost anything. It doesn't cost us anything and it doesn't cost our members anything and it's a great way to stay in constant contact with all of us. Jill DeWit: Cool. Johanns wrote, "I've done some research about closing costs, but most resources I've found are related to buying house using a mortgage and not buying vacant land without a mortgage. So what are your typical closing costs on the buy and sell side provided that A, use a title agency when both buying and selling the property B, use an agent to sell the property. Let's say you buy a property for 30,000 and sell it for 70. My questions are, what would be your average title agency fees when buying property for 30,000? What other closing costs are there? What would be your overall expenses when buying? How much does an agency typically charge? What would be the title agency fees and other fees on the sell side? Who has to typically carry the title agency fees on the sell side? I understand that it's negotiable, but what is standard? Who typically has to carry the agent's fees?" We're getting a little too brainy here, but I'll answer them. Steven Butala: Well,

Jill Friday and Her Take on Relationships (LA 1468) 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, coming to you from awesome Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about it's Jill Friday, and her take on all types of relationships. Are you looking forward to this, or are you dreading it? Jill DeWit: No, are you kidding? I love talking about this stuff. Steven Butala: She loves this topic. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Just actually thinking about it. Jill DeWit: It's important. I am write... I'm going to do it. I'm going to write a book series on these things, and I will tell you how it's going to come out. It's good. 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. Jill DeWit: Can you imagine? If I didn't like talking about relationships, I'd be pretty sucky in relationships. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: But like talking in general. It's kind of funny. Steven Butala: Yeah, it's something that you always improve on. Like I'm always trying to be better in any relationship that I have. I'm always trying to improve. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Is that obvious? Jill DeWit: It is obvious. Steven Butala: Is it really? Jill DeWit: It's appreciated. It is. Steven Butala: That's good. I didn't know it was obvious. Jill DeWit: Totally. All right. Johanes wrote, "Learning. If you want... " Lost my question here. Steven Butala: Sorry. Jill DeWit: Sorry. Steven Butala: That was me. Jill DeWit: Okay. I guess it's like, "I'm learning. If you want to use money partners, you have to use an agent, unless the money partner will market the property with you only acting as a bird dog." Steven Butala: Let me explain this. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: This is a legal question. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: And the question here is, do I need a real estate license? That's really what they're asking. Jill DeWit: Okay. I missed the whole preface to this. Steven Butala: The only reason that you need a real estate license... This is very important, if you don't know about this. Jill and I have talked about this a lot over the years. The reason you need a real estate license is because you are representing somebody else in the purchase or sale or lease of real property. It doesn't matter what kind. We don't need licenses at all, because we represent ourselves. It gets a gray area when you take on a partner. Steven Butala: And so, here's how you can completely and totally avoid any legal issue entirely. They are on the deed. So, if you're a money partner you're on the deed, and if you're the person who brings the deal to the money partner... We call that a manager in our... You know. There's the manager and the investor. We're the investor, because we put out the money. You're the manager, because you brought the property to us and you're going to manage the deal. You're going to actually buy it. You're going to sell it. You're going to deal with a title agent. If there is a real estate agent, you're going to deal with them, and on and on and on. Great. We're all partners, and we're all owners. Steven Butala: There are times where I don't think it's appropriate for a manager, especially if they're brand new and we don't know if they're any good or not... I shouldn't say any good. We don't know where they are in their land investing career, how educated they are yet... where Jill and I would theoretically just be the only ones on the deed, because we don't want to go through- Jill DeWit: Undoing anything. Steven Butala: ... undoing stuff. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And have any type of confrontation with their manager. We want it to be positive. So,

Jack Thursday and What Your Father Never Told You about Land Investing (LA 1467) 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 sexy Scottsdale Arizona. Steven Butala: Wow. How long have you been holding that in? Jill DeWit: I just came to me actually, just S word, S word, sexy done. Steven Butala: Today, when Jill's not horsing around, today, Jill and I talk about what your father never told you about land investing. this title I wrote, if you can't tell. 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: Jeff wrote, "Hey all. I'm sure this has been answered before, but if you have two comparable info lots across the street from one another, with the only obvious difference being that one is cleared and the other is wooded, is there typically a difference in value? In this case the cleared lot last year sold for $65,000. Just wondering if it's an apples to apples comparison." Steven Butala: This is a fantastic question. Reality-based question and an academic question. So if you asked an economist this, if you're not an economist and you're not an accountant, you would never know that economists hate accountants and accountants hate economists. Accountants say to economists, get in reality. Yeah. Great. You sit in your office all day and come up with these concepts. But in reality, I'm an accountant. I'm in there in the field and we're looking at stuff and how to make or lose money. This is an academic question. an accountant would say this, the price different, I'm sorry, an economist would say this, "At the price difference is how much it costs to clear the lot. That's the difference." An accountant would say, "No, you're an idiot. It's whatever the market demands. There could be some real value in a wooded lot, because you're just going to create clear a little part of it to build a house." So there's your academic answer and there's a reality answer. I personally probably price them the same. Would you? Jill DeWit: It's the funniest thing too. I'm like, I have to say too. It depends Jeff. So when you say infill lot, now I'm thinking house lots are not that big. If we were talking 20 or so acres, I'd want the wooded one. I think the wooded one would be more valuable than the barren one kind of thing. It's usually, that's how that goes, because you have a lot of options at that point. I totally agree with you. So in this situation, yeah, I would just be pricing it based on per acre average in the area. But my gut tells me that for a buyer coming in, having a cleared lot, if it's, again, I'm going to put a house there. It's somebody did the work. It's like someone poured a pad. Even if it's not exactly what you want to build your house, somebody started to construction and then they walked away. But they put in some of the infrastructure and poured a pad. That's worth something. Steven Butala: All true. It's interesting you ask this now because the properties that Jill and I are buying, we really look at this. Because we're improving the property to resell it and we look at the cost of how much it's going to get that property graded correctly and all of that. And that stuff's not insignificant. It can be expensive. But I'll tell you if two people drive their car up to a property and they see a barren lot or if they see with one with beautiful trees on it, guess which one they're going to choose. Jill DeWit: Then you have that. Steven Butala: Beautiful trees. Jill DeWit: There you go. Exactly. And they can decide where they want to put the house and position it and what trees they want to keep. So there's value there. Steven Butala: Today's topic, what your father never told you about land inv...

Pros and Cons of Leveraging Time vs Money (LA 1466) 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:Today, Jill and I talk about the pros and cons of leveraging your time versus money. 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. Seriously, join us on Discord. Jill DeWit:Okay. In case you can't tell, he's got a little bit of a thing for this Discord. It's a little unhealthy. There's no money involved. It takes a lot of time on his part. Just kidding. You love it. Steven Butala:Really Clubhouse? Jill DeWit:I was waiting for that. We each have our new favorites. Isn't that hilarious? I'm like, "All right, you represent us on Discord. You just have a blast. Let me know if there's anything interesting. And I'll take the Clubhouse thing and that's fun." So, it's perfect. Steven Butala:It's funny you bring up unhealthy because somebody said, and it turned into this huge thing. Somebody said, "I listen to X while I'm scrubbing data." And it just became a whole thing, and it unraveled about what people listen to and all their unhealthy weird habits about how they crunch data to get it ready for a mailer and when they do it and where they do it in their house. I listen to the band Tool extremely loud when no one else is around while I'm scrubbing data. And everyone's like, "You think that's weird, then," fill in the blank. Jill DeWit:That's hilarious. Steven Butala:It became this thing, like we are not healthy, normal people. Jill DeWit:That's true. Steven Butala:We're all these weird data people that are ... That's what I love about discord. And no one's afraid of that. We're all serious geeks, is what it is. Jill DeWit:Yeah. It's a support group. That's it. If you're struggling to find friends because you are weird too, you can find them in Discord and you can all just have a great time together. Mom, I have friends. Leave me alone. Steven Butala:Yeah. You know what it is? It's like this age, this is our video game. Jill DeWit:It is. Yeah. Steven Butala:The kids get on the line and- Jill DeWit:So they're playing with the thing and then the talking. This is your version of you're doing that while you're scrubbing data. Steven Butala:It's great. Jill DeWit:Oh, this is hilarious. The grown-up version of gaming with your friends. All right. Back to the question. Daniel wrote, "I'm in negotiations with a seller for a $1 million acquisition price for a bulk purchase of multiple properties. I need help pricing from a local realtor, but I'm hesitant to give them all the information since I do not yet have a signed purchase agreement. Is this something you'd be cautious with?" Yeah, I would. Totally. Steven Butala:Whatever you say, I'm going to agree with you on this. Jill DeWit:Get a signed purchase agreement. There's no reason- Steven Butala:Jill has a, and correctly so, has a peeve about not signed purchase agreements. You're not doing anything wrong in any way here, Daniel. It's a good question. Jill likes signed purchase agreements. Jill DeWit:Well, for two reasons. Here's reason number one. So Daniel, you're going to sleep better. I would even take it so far if you're really worried, take the signed purchase agreement, give it to an escrow agent and say, "Give me an escrow number. And even though we can all change our minds, I just want to have a number that it's started the process," because that's good faith moving forward. Steven Butala:This is extremely important, what she's saying, in my opinion. Jill DeWit:And as far as an agent's involved, you're in escrow. It's like a hands-off kind of thing. Even though all you have is a number and nobody's done anything,

Using Data 101 in Your Land Investing Career (LA 1465) 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 Dewitt broadcasting from special Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today jill and I talk about using data 101 in her land investing career. Special Scottsdale? Jill DeWit: I don't know. I'm just trying to think of a different S word. I had sizzling. Sunny I say for California. I said sweet. Today it's special. I'll come up with some other words. Someday it might be sucky. I don't know it. It won't be sucky. It's awesome. Steven Butala: Are you guys really going to talk about data again? Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: Don't you think you talk about data enough? I thought this show was supposed to be about real estate. Where's the ... I want to choose paint colors. I want to choose window treatments. I want you to talk about issue TV and buying a rickety, broken down house and making it beautiful. Isn't that what real estate is? No, it's not for us. Jill DeWit: Stop it. Just stop it. Steven Butala: It's not just it's about assessor's tax rules, and it might as well not be about real estate. In fact, what we should probably call this as a Data ... Data Academy is what we should call this. Jill DeWit: That's true. You are right. 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, make sure, put it on your list today. Join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: I'm making a note to talk about here, but on the topic, because it's important, but with this data. Okay, Doug wrote, "I've got eight siblings with 10 acre parcel each. All want to sell to me. They're all clustered together. Problem is, no access. Is this worth contacting a neighboring land owner to try and work out a deal for on an easement? Providing I can make that happen. I'd have to get a dirt road built to access the other seven parcels, and then build that easement into each of the deeds. Headache or goldmine waiting to happen?" This ties into the Luke thing yesterday. Go. Steven Butala: Run. Run the other way. Open the next signed offer and do that deal. That's my advice here. Jill DeWit: It's doable. Doug's not nuts, but are you saying because of the time and the energy and the costs and all of that? Steven Butala: Yeah. Yeah. Before ... I'll tell you, here's my serious answer. How much money are you actually going to make? If you're going to make a couple million bucks, okay, I get it. Then you can start down the year long path of how long this is going to take, and make sure that it doesn't stop you from doing other deals too. Jill DeWit: It's true. Steven Butala: This is a long, long path, and I've never ... I'll phrase this in a question. Have you ever had the sibling thing work out to your favor? Everybody signing at Thanksgiving kind of thing. Jill DeWit: A few times, but when there's that many it's hard. Steven Butala: It's the exception for sure. It's not the rule. Jill DeWit: Exactly. It is hard. Often one of them gets a stick up there or whatever, and they decide they don't want to sell at that price or something. It's really hard to get eight on the same page. It's very true. Steven Butala: Siblings are famous for fighting with each other at the time of parent's death. Jill DeWit: Oh, I thought you just meant in general. Steven Butala: Oh, they're famous for finding each other anyway, but specifically when everyone breaks the will out and says ... The worst thing you can do is Jill and I are going through this estate planning right now. The absolute worst thing you can do as a parent to your heirs is say, "The daughter gets 50% and the son gets 50%, and you guys work it out, knock yourselves out." Jill DeWit: Right. Whatever it is. I don't know.

Using WebHarvy to Collect Comparison Values on Zillow (LA 1464) 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 Scottsdale. Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about using WebHarvy to collect comparison values on Zillow. Jill DeWit: Oh boy. Alrighty, it sounds like, and we're out. I promise it's not that bad. This is a good thing, but it sounds like this is a big topic. Steven Butala: Today, we talk about how to make the best out of your new encyclopedia set. Jill DeWit: There we go. That's what this sounds like, "Today we're going to dissect and discuss your accounting," whatever. "We're going to dissect and discuss all the tax changes from 2021." Steven Butala: You know you've made it in life when you don't have to write the titles of your own show anymore. I'm not a writer on the show anymore, and I think that's great. Jill DeWit: That's funny. So, okay. Yes, I did have encyclopedias, by the way. I remember that. Steven Butala: So did I. Did you have World Book or Britannica? Jill DeWit: Britannica. Steven Butala: We had World Book. Britannica, that's why you're smarter than me. Jill DeWit: I didn't say I used them. We had them. Steven Butala: Mine were very, very, very unused. Jill DeWit: Remember you'd opened them up and the pages would just crinkle Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Because they were brand new. Steven Butala: Because it's brand new. I think it was a guilt thing. Our parents they had to get it because they wanted to make sure we were educated. Jill DeWit: They felt like they were better parents. Steven Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: Yeah, it's true. You had to have it as a parent. It was a rite of passage or something. Steven Butala: It was really truly just silly because any topic you looked up, there was a paragraph on its whole subject. I don't know, let's say you looked up turtle, and it's a tiny little paragraph. You didn't learn anything. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: All it did was say, "You need to go to the library and actually get a book on turtles." Jill DeWit: Right. Here's where the country is. Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill DeWit: Not going to tell you that much about it. Steven Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: Here's the brief overview. You know what? Actually, this is one of the reasons I like encyclopedias, it was a Cliff Notes to wars, countries, all of that. I'm all about Cliff Notes. Steven Butala: You'd look a country up and it's like, "Their major exports are shale and oil and corn." I'm like, "Oh, that's awesome. That's exactly what I needed to know about country X." Jill DeWit: Exactly. Population. This is funny. We should find some old, that'd be really good, like at Goodwill, it'd be fun to have an encyclopedia to show the kids. Steven Butala: These kids, I'm going to sound like an old man, these kids have no idea with Google and then with YouTube how ... Jill DeWit: Lucky. Steven Butala: ... far ahead and how educated they are at such a young age on anything, because I had a computer when I was a kid. I was real lucky, I always started with computers, and I said, "My dream one day is to have a computer in the living room, in the corner." There were no such thing as notebooks back then, or laptops, but to have a computer terminal where you could find out the answers to stuff when you wanted it. Jill DeWit: Is that why we had that computer in the corner? Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: That's exactly what that was. Jill DeWit: When we got together, there was a computer in the corner and I'm like, "Is that a timeout? Someone has to go sit there and stare at it?" Steven Butala: Yeah, your punishment is to go sit there and learn stuff. Jill DeWit: Yeah. That would be punishment for me. Steven Butala: Jill,

How to Jill-ify a Land Transaction (LA 1463) 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 to Jillify a land transaction. Jill DeWit: You came up with this. Steven Butala: This is a sentence Jill just said before we turned the camera on, just now. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: "Don't go all man on me and tell me the facts and the truth." Jill DeWit: Don't tell me about the year and the make and the model and why that car is dumb. That's not the point here. Steven Butala: What is the point? Jill DeWit: I was making a comment about the car. I was skipping along the top and you're like, "No, here's why this car's bad. This is what it's worth. This is what kind of mileage it gets. This is where it won't go." I'm like, "What the heck?" Steven Butala: Don't go up all man on me. Jill DeWit: Like, "That's not the point, at all." Oh my gosh, 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, and if you're a Land Academy member, please make sure you join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Aaron wrote, "Newbie, first mailer, stage question. Is ParcelFact or NeighborScoop required right away for due diligence? I've been looking up properties at assessor sites, and the owner info seems to be available there. Also, I think there's a site to look up FEMA flood maps, checking the parcel on Google earth is a PITA? I don't know what that is, but possible without tools. Steven Butala: Pain in the. Jill DeWit: Oh, now I know what that is. Steven Butala: Is a PITA. Jill DeWit: Okay, got it. I didn't know that. I hadn't heard that before. That's funny. Am I correct in that tools like ParcelFact and NeighborScoop are more for productivity? Can't DataTree do most of this as well. Steven Butala: Hold on a second, I have a lot to say about this. This is in Discord. Jill DeWit: Go. Steven Butala: And I answered it in Discord this way, and I'm going to answer it here as well. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: You don't need Land Academy, you don't need NeighborScoop, you don't need O2O, you don't need any of this. I never had any of it. Never. And it took me 20 years to get where I am. It can take you two months with all these tools. You have this podcast that's free. There's all kinds of free stuff. You don't need to join Land Academy. You need to look at Land Academy like an insurance policy. If you do join Land Academy and follow along here and participate and actually watch the program and ask questions, you're going to make a fortune. It's either going to click in place for you or it's not. So no, you don't need these tools. Good luck. Jill DeWit: I was not expecting that. That's like a speech you give a kid. You know what? Nope, you don't need high school, you don't need college. You want to drop out now? Go right ahead. Nevermind. Steven Butala: And eat nothing but pop tarts. Good luck, kid. Jill DeWit: Sit on the couch, buddy, but it's not going to be my couch. Good luck. Oh my gosh. Call somebody who cares. Steven Butala: I personally- Jill DeWit: That's awesome. Steven Butala: This is the truth of it. I don't want to mansplain anything. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah, that's right, don't go all man on me. Steven Butala: I'm trying to micromanage what I say. Jill thinks in sound bites. The shorter, the better. Jill DeWit: That was not in the book by the way, about me and my personality, but I'm still learning. That's good. Steven Butala: Today's topic, how to Jillify a land transaction. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: Would you like to man explain, mansplain? Steven Butala: I'm about to give you a bunch of compliments here.

How and How Not to Review a Land Acquisition Deal (LA 1462) 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: Oh, and I'm Jill... Steven Butala: What's going on? Jill Dewitt: I don't know. For some reason I was waiting, I was ready for what I was going to say after that I forgot about my name. I was focusing on what word do I want to use today? So I'm going to say, and I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sizzling, Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: It's perfect weather right now though. Jill Dewitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). 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 Dewitt: Isn't it funny when you live in some of these places, by the way, where the forecast doesn't change? I'm sure it's like that for some people in the winter, in some locations, like, "Well, and today's another cold one." Steven Butala: I moved to Arizona in 1994. And I can tell you very accurately that all the perceptions that people from Michigan have about Arizona and specifically Phoenix are completely incorrect. It's only old people live there, it's too hot all year round, you can't really, it's just so hot. None of those things are true at all. Jill Dewitt: That's cool. Steven Butala: And there are 10 other ones, but some of them are really derogatory, so I'm not going to... I'll stop right there. Jill Dewitt: Okay. Cool. All right. I'm not sure how to say this name [Sitoboh 00:01:18] wrote. Thank you both for providing insightful answers and guidance on last evening's accountability group call. Following up now on one of the topics discussed, accounting as a land investor. Within that topic, you Steve had spoken about the importance of setting up separate bank accounts and to never co-mingling funds. Would welcoming the opportunity to continue discussion here and potentially receive further guidance on handling bank and funds and bank accounts in the land business, tracking expenses and related areas of accounting within reason since this could be an entire course that you believe are important to an entry to mid-level land investor. That's a lot. Steven Butala: This is posted on Discord and what ended up I answered it. And I'm going to answer the question here, but more importantly, what ended up happening is that we have a member who lives in Salt Lake City, who's a CPA and has his family practice in California, so he quote-unquote escaped California a lot of years ago, more than 10 years ago. Good for him. We just did too. And this became a massive topic. And now this guy, I'd plug his name if I could remember it, is taking on new clients and customers and setting up bank accounts and helping people in our group. This is my point about Discord. It just became this topic. Then it turned into, "Hey, you got to read this book." And then we all... Did you see it? Jill Dewitt: No no. Steven Butala: Then we all piped in like, "No, you got to read this book and you got to read this book." So my Amazon cart's full of books, that members are saying, you need to read and you need to think about it this way. Jill Dewitt: That's really cool. Steven Butala: Here's what you do. Wherever your personal bank account is right now, go on there and open another account. It takes seconds. In most cases, I know for Bank of America it just take seconds. Jill Dewitt: Like a sub-account kind of thing? Steven Butala: Yeah separate account. And go fund it put some amount of money in from the other account. Whenever Jill and I start new companies, I always put $10,000 in there. I don't know why. Sometimes it takes a lot more, sometimes it takes a lot less. And then every single expense you incur, get checks, order checks and a debit card, and it doesn't have to be in an LLC yet. What's important is it's separate.

5 Land Investing Tools We Can Not Live Without (LA 1461) 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 Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the five land investing tools that we can't live without. Jill DeWit: Yes, this is going to be good. I have my list. Don't look. Steven Butala: Okay. Jill DeWit: Don't [inaudible 00:00:20]. Steven Butala: Okay, good. 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 a member, please join or participate in our strings on Discord. I promise you, you will not be disappointed. Jill DeWit: You're going to get immediate answers. I was telling someone about that the other day. I'm like, if you're struggling with anything. Steven Butala: Anything. Jill DeWit: And you're not taking advantage of the support that's there, you just got to throw a question and people will answer it. Steven Butala: Here's an example. Jill DeWit: That's kind of like, I can't help you with that. If you don't do it, don't ask. Steven Butala: I'm having trouble getting my first mailer out. I can't just pull the trigger. Can somebody please kick me in the butt? And everybody will sweep in, me included. I answer tons of questions in real time. Jill DeWit: That's good. Okay. Thomas wrote, I have sold many things online in the past and understand that there's no shortage of flaky people that call on items listed for sale. Steven Butala: We talked about this yesterday. Jill DeWit: I did not expect this with real estate though. I'm trying to sell my first two properties and I'm getting a steady flow of interested buyers, but all of them disappear after telling me how interested they are to buy. I'm now advertising on Craigslist and Zillow right now. The properties have good attributes, almost five acres each, and a price at half of what two and a half acre properties are. Is the issue my lack of reach in marketing or because they are desert properties where several others are being bought and sold? Steven Butala: This is [inaudible 00:01:45]. This is a classic. This is classic men mistake. I'm a man and I have made this mistake and sometimes make it to this day. You believe that the thing that you're selling is what matters. You believe that the mouse trap that you've built doesn't require any sales, and what really is happening here is, you're doing the first 60% of everything correct. And you're not doing the backend 40%. I would bet you a dollar that you are not having this conversations with these people and then saying, "Hey, what's your email address? I'll email you all the information right now, and included there is a link for you to put $500 down on the property so we can start the closing process, and somebody would buy it. That's all you need to do. It's not the posting is bad or the real estate's bad. It's the sales. It's the call to action closing part. Jill DeWit: We had someone on our staff who now is doing a different job, trying to help with this job for a while. And that's all they were doing. They thought they were just there to answer questions like customer service. Steven Butala: No. Steven Butala: I'm like, no, you've got to... Jill DeWit: You're there to sell it. Jill DeWit: Exactly. You've got to do a little bit more than just answer the question and go, is that it? Okay, well, have a nice day. Click. Hello? What the heck? That's not what this is about. That's right. That's where it is. Okay, good. All right. Take care. No. Steven Butala: It's interesting, most real estate agents are like this too. They just don't... They just wait. Okay, thanks. No, you've got to send... You need to... Jill DeWit: Work. You've got to work a little bit. Steven Butala:

What Makes a Good Land Internet Posting (LA 1460) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Howdy. 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about what makes a good land internet posting. Jill Dewitt: I have a good list here. Steven Butala: I will tell you the single best and most important thing about a good land internet posting is posting it. Jill Dewitt: Is it exists. So that's step one. Steven Butala: I made people buy property and they forget about the sales part. 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 a Land Academy member, please join Discord. It's becoming an irreplaceable, essential tool, in my opinion, for being a Land Academy member. Jill Dewitt: It's funny that though, I was talking to somebody about this recently, about posting property and you can't sell it if no one knows it's for sale. And then number two, I was mentioning using Discord as a way to get some quick feedback. If you want some feedback on your posting, throw it on Discord and everybody will [inaudible 00:01:09]. I said, "You put it on Discord and show what you've got going on there, trust me, you'll get 10 responses really fast about that's good, change this, whatever it is, you priced it wrong or whatever you need that..." Because everybody is so good on their [inaudible 00:01:24]. Okay, Andy wrote, "I understand that it means things can be built on it, but is this a legal designation or does it have something to do with soil utilities slope? Is there a good way to check for this and to get a good yes or no? Or is this something that is more of a gray area and it depends on the buyer's plan for the property? Thanks. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks, y'all." Steven Butala: I failed to put the title of the posting and what Andy is asking is what is the definition of buildable? He goes on to say what Jill just said. I understand that it means things can be built on it, but is this a legal designation? This has long been a misunderstood phrase. Is it buildable? This is what buildable means. It's not a legal designation. What it means is this, in it's current state, and I mean grading and everything, when you walk straight up and stand on the property, you can either start construction that day from a stick-built house or structure, or you can put a mobile home on it, which means this, almost all property, almost without exception, it's not buildable in its current state. Stuff has to happen, whether it's grading or checking to see if utilities are available or creating utilities. In a lot of cases, you do a septic in a well situation. Jill Dewitt: Zoning. [crosstalk 00:02:46] things. Steven Butala: I see a lot of new people and when I was new, I did this. My lawyer called me and said, "You need to stop this right now." In fact, our teenager who's selling property online right now, just saw this happen. It said, "A buildable lot," in XYZ city and it's not buildable at all. You should never use that phrase. You should say things like... This is timely, too. This is actually good for this episode. In your internet posting you just don't want to use the word buildable. You probably can say, "Look, it probably needs, in my opinion, it needs this, this, this and this to make this property buildable." And it's very close. You know, maybe it just needs grading. Jill and I just bought a piece of property that all it needs is grading for it to be buildable. Jill Dewitt: What we do in our postings, like on LandPin and everything, it says, "Time limit to build," which is usually none. But you can talk about that. And you can talk about what's allowed there per the zoning. Maybe it allows mobiles. Maybe it allows RVs.

Mistakes We Have Made in Land Investing (LA 1459) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the LandAcademy 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 mistakes we've made in land investing. And man, I have made some great- Jill DeWit: This ought to be funny. Steven Butala: Biblical mistakes. You know what? I bet my mistakes are way bigger than yours. Jill DeWit: You know, it's funny, I have one catastrophic mistake that we make all the time, seriously. And then I have mistakes that I've just talked to people recently about, and I will share those too. Steven Butala: Excellent. Before we get into it though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com forum. If you're already a LandAcademy member, please make sure you check us out on Discord, one of my favorite tools actually. Jill DeWit: Cool. Yeah. There's two places. So you can go on landinvestors.com and chat with everybody. That's free, you don't have to be a member. Or the Discord thing he's talking about, is for members, and that's super special and fun and fast. Steven Butala: It's my new favorite tool. Jill DeWit: It's hilarious. Okay. Levi wrote, "Hi everyone. They're still in escrow now, so I don't want to count my chickens too soon, but I just snagged my first two big time deals. They'll both end up being about $15,000 to acquire, and I think they're worth about $100,000 each, retail." Steven Butala: That's why we're here. Jill DeWit: Holy moly. "I will probably list them at 65 ish." Steven Butala: No. Jill DeWit: No, no. Let Levi go. Let him go. I'm going to share, it ties in today. "And move them quickly. They're both partner funded and it's also my first time doing that as well, working with an old childhood friend." Steven Butala: Excellent. Jill DeWit: "Cross your fingers for me because if the spread works out the way I think, that'll be the most money I've ever seen in one place in my life." Aww. Steven Butala: That's a great story. Jill DeWit: That ties into the show too. Steven Butala: And you're never going to get rid of that childhood friend when they get a check, they're going to be standing at your door. Jill DeWit: Yep. So here's one of the mistakes I'll give it. It's a prelude and it ties into what Levi just said, and it's a prelude to the show today. People often go in and retail price, and then they sit there and wonder why it doesn't sell. Well, congratulations, because you're retail price, you're one of however many there are in there. You got to stand out somehow, and it's usually price. It's price and reach, that's the whole point here. Steven Butala: It does tap right into the show. Jill DeWit: And you're going to totally, Levi's going to way double his money. If he wanted to move them for 35... What's funny is Levi's getting into the territory where if you price things too cheap, that you just try to really double your money and move on. Now it's priced too cheap and people think there's something wrong with it, and that's the funniest thing. Steven Butala: Yeah, the good news is that there's two. So I think you have the opportunity when you have two APNs like this, or more, to sell the first one at 40,000 and sell the second one at 100. So you recoup all your money, you get another mailer out, and you let the better of the two properties just mark it up. And if it's really, truly worth 100, sell it for 90. Jill DeWit: Not what I do, but that's okay. I like Levi's read too, both at 65 because they're worth 100 each and then let them go. Steven Butala: Today's topic, mistakes we've made in land investing. This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: We obviously see differently about these things, and there's nothing wrong- Steven Butala: No, I was just moving if forward because we're really...

Becoming an Influencer by Jill DeWit (LA 1458) 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Hey Jill. Jill DeWit: Want to see why we're laughing? Steven Butala: I just looked at Jill's notes and she wrote down this word, quesadilla. And we both just burst out laughing. I've never met anyone who writes down in their notes what they want to eat for lunch. Jill DeWit: Yep. That's right. It just sounded good, didn't want to forget. So I wrote it down. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about Becoming an Influencer, by Jill DeWit. I said this story yesterday, I'll say it again. A couple of weeks ago, we were standing in the kitchen and our number three kid, who's a late teenager said, ended a sentence with this, "Because, like, you guys are influencers on the internet." Both of us stopped and said, I had never thought of myself as an influencer. And he looked at us like, "People a lot less than you are influencers." I guess this is show 1500 or something. Jill DeWit: 1458. Steven Butala: 1458, so I guess we do have a lot of content out there and we are in our little land flipping niche, somewhat of a authority, but Jill's becoming more and more of an influencer, especially on Clubhouse. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: And what's happening is that, this is the reason I really wrote this title, more and more and more people are asking Jill to share and teach, really, how to handle these people on the phone. How to handle a seller on the phone, how to handle a buyer on the phone, basically how to have a personality to do this stuff more successfully. And I'll tell you what, she's a thousand times more qualified on this topic than I am. The second that Jill and I joined forces, I never picked up a phone again. I couldn't do it fast enough and more happily. Jill DeWit: Thanks, babe. 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 Academy member, please join us on Discard. Jill DeWit: Scott wrote, "Hello, Land Academy folks. I am putting the final touches on my first mailer, targeting properties between 5 and 20 acres, recreational land. I have done all the requisite research like the red, yellow, green test, etc. So I feel good about my county selection. However, I would like to send at least 2,500 pieces for my first mailer, but my chosen county has only just over 1400 records that meet my criteria. The neighboring counties don't seem strong candidates to add to my mailer in order to get to my target 2,500 units"- Steven Butala: Excellent. Excellent question. Jill DeWit: ..."so, here's my questions. Should I just go with the 1400 units in my selected county?" Steven Butala: No. Jill DeWit: "Should I add another county in the same state, but not neighboring, maybe an hour away? Or should I add another strong candidate from a county from another state? Thanks in advance." Steven Butala: Strong candidate from another state. This does two things. It gets you to that 2,500. Thank you for listening by the way, because we always recommend in the beginning to send out a bunch. 2,500 is good. Two things, add another super strong candidate from another state. This accomplishes diversity too, a diversification. So on a small chance that something weird is going on and there's a bunch of weird gas leases or something... One time I sent a mailer out in New Mexico and there's all these natural gas leases that stopped us from doing any deals there. So this will make you avoid that, and it's kind of an extra insurance policy. Diversification is always good in any type of investment. Steven Butala: And number two, it gets you to that 2,500 unit mark. And then, finally,

How much Available Investment Capital is Really in Land Academy Group (LA 1457) 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 sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today jill and I talk about how much available investment capital is really in this Land Academy group of ours. Lots. Jill DeWit: Yeah, that we know of, by the way. Steven Butala: I would actually say it's limitless for the right deals. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: It's limitless for great real estate deal. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: Before we get into it... Jill DeWit: Well now you've answered the whole... did the whole show. Steven Butala: That is pretty much... you don't need to listen... Jill DeWit: There we go. Steven Butala: ...to the rest if you... Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: ...don't want to. Steven Butala: Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members, LandInvestors.com. Our online community, it's free. And if you're a Land Academy member already, please join us on discord. Jill DeWit: Wouldn't it be funny. So did you hear the show yesterday? Yeah, it was three minutes long. Steven Butala: We should do that one time. See what people say. Jill DeWit: That would be funny. They would... I think they would think that's cute. Okay. So Chip wrote, "Hi land investors. I'm prepping for a mailer for large tracts of land that I will flip to a network of developers who focus on low density, large acreage land developments." Steven Butala: I love that. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: Low density, large acreage land developments are my favorite. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative) everybody wants that. Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: Does anyone have a template for a non-circumvent non-disclosure agreement. Steven Butala: An NDA. Jill DeWit: Right, or whatever it might be called. There you go. "The price point of these properties will be beyond my capabilities and quite a bit larger than many of the deals done within the group." Steven Butala: Well, this is a perfect question for this topic. Go ahead Jill. Jill DeWit: Gee, imagine how that happened. Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: Honestly, it was just pure luck. Jill DeWit: Oh okay. "My plan is to either do a simultaneous close or simply sign the contract to the end, excuse me, end buyer. These developers form a new LLC for each land track," which is kind of normal for that. "My concern is that when I present these deals to the buyer, they or partner of theirs will go around me and directly to the seller and then steal slash kill the deal for me. Does anyone have any suggestions or a template document that I could use for some level of protection?" You want to go? Steven Butala: Yeah, this has happened to me, and it's going to happen to you. So you just have to accept that. Ask them for an NDA, because if they are big developers and they're very experienced and it sounds like they are because they're doing a new LLC for every deal, they're going to have one. And so especially they're going to have one, if they give it to you and you ask them to sign it and they say no, it's like, why do they have have it. They make other people do it. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So it's not so much... I would actually get their NDA and then I would look out on the internet. I used to, when I was buying and selling long-term care facilities and brokering them, I would make them sign an open-ended agreement that says, look, you're going to pay me 2% of the transaction value of any deal I bring to you and I'm going to register each deal and you're going to sign it. Steven Butala: You're going to sign it. When I bring you the deal, you're going to sign that. Then you're going to pay me. After a while, they stop...

Breakdown of How to Hire Staff (LA 1456) 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 breakdown of how to hire staff. Super, super popular topic with our customer service people and on Discord. Jill DeWit: Do you know why this makes me so happy? Steven Butala: Tell me. Jill DeWit: Because that means so many people are doing it right, and they're getting busy, and they need help. Steven Butala: Oh, sure. Right, I didn't think of that. Jill DeWit: Yeah. If you're not thinking about hiring, you're not doing any volume. You're not busy, you're doing just fine. But this many people, this is such a hot topic right now. And I'm like, "Oh, it's going great for a lot of people." Steven Butala: This is the single most challenging thing in my career, is hiring people. And fortunately, now we've got staff now to hire other staff. And they're very, very good at it, much better than I ever was. Steve jobs said one time, if you do everything right in your career, at some point you will end up being a recruiter. And I think that's really telling. Jill DeWit: I love that. I agree. Steven Butala: We actually just recently put up a webpage on all of our sites about careers and our help wanted. Jill DeWit: I hoped it's to the public now. It's on landinvestors.com. If you go to the top and look at jobs there. And it's not just us, we have our own jobs posted, and it's a place for you as a member to for free post your jobs. Steven Butala: Does anybody use it? Jill DeWit: Yeah, there's actually other people on there. Steven Butala: That's great. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Totally. 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 a Land Academy member already, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Rachel wrote, "Hi all, I'm looking to join a mastermind group where I can contribute and continue growing as a land investor. Are there any groups willing to open the doors for one more? I can be reached here and we can also connect on Discord." Thank you for any consideration, Rachel. First I was going to say, Rachel, you're on discord, so you're a member. I hope you're in the Land Academy ladies group. So definitely join there, because we have people from, oh boy, all levels. Steven Butala: I'll tell you, that's free, and these women are doing deals together. Jill's a ringleader. And it's worked out. A lot of times you start these products and they just don't work. I don't know, three out of 10 maybe. This thing worked, this lady's group, they're kicking it. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's awesome, and it's fun. Steven Butala: Here's the thing, we've got the regular Land Academy, we've got Land Investors, we've got discord, we have Jill's ladies group, we have the accountability group. This is a closed group, we have to cap it. Then it's very, very popular, and it's hard to get into. Reach out to [email protected]. Jill and I are doing it presently, we're going to get other people to get involved, other members who've shown interest in teaching. And it doesn't cost anything, at the moment anyway, but it's hard to get into. I was actually considering doing two, so we'll see what happens. We have tons and tons of people trying to sign up for it. And then ultimately, we just started Career Path. Jill DeWit: It just recently launched by the way. What day are we airing.... This is Wednesday. Steven Butala: It's April 4th. Jill DeWit: Yeah, yeah. Steven Butala: When it starts. Land Academy Career Path is a paid-for 15 person cap, Jill and I'll teach the class. And at the end of it, you'll be selling the real estate you bought during the class.

Self-Discipline 101 (LA 1455) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sweet Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Oh, that's better. Jill DeWit: I don't know. It just came off, just came out. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about self discipline 101. It is not something you're born with. People think that. Jill DeWit: Oh, I have a ton of it. I'm happy to share. Just kidding. Could you imagine? Steven Butala: Yeah, we'll use ourselves [crosstalk 00:00:27]. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. Jill DeWit: Sure. Steven Butala: It's free. Jill DeWit: You know. Steven Butala: If you're a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Oh, I'm commonly going, "No, just put down the cookie. I got this." Steven Butala: This is exactly what happened a half hour ago. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Jill, will you please turn your phone off. Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah. Steven Butala: We need to record these shows. Because you're going to California tomorrow. We're not going to be in the same room. To her credit, she can't put her phone down because we've got a very successful mailer going on right now. Jill DeWit: It's so [inaudible 00:01:03]. Steven Butala: And she's like, "Listen man, you want to make money buying real estate today? Or do you want to record shows today?" Steven Butala: And I said, "We need to record these shows." So you're going to have like, 10 deals when we're done. Jill DeWit: I know, the mail's hitting, and it's awesome. Steven Butala: It is. We got three properties out of this mailer already, and they're ... Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative), phenomenal. Steven Butala: We'll make six digits on each of them. And I bet, there's probably like, 10 more. Jill DeWit: And nobody's mad. I'm really going to up my game, by the way. Side note, we're totally off topic. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: But I'm working on more content and to help everyone, because as time goes on, I'm getting better. And I can really help everyone here with these phone calls coming in. And winning them over in just a few sentences so they want to sell to you, and they're not mad. Steven Butala: Here's what I did on this mailer. It's a very low volume mailer, about a thousand units-ish. But I went in at about 60 to 80 percent of the retail value, because I know the area very, very well. And I know that ... I was just explaining this to somebody on Discord. I know how fast they're going to sell. Steven Butala: So think of it in houses, from a housing standpoint. If you live in a neighborhood where there's a lot of similar houses, and three of your neighbors sold like kind houses really recently for 300,000 dollars, would you pay 250,000 for the house across the street? Jill DeWit: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: Absolutely. And that's a pretty high percentage. That's 70, that's 85 percent of retail value. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: Because you know you're going to sell it really fast. And you know the neighborhood, and you know the whole thing. So, people were pretty surprised that I was talking about this on Discord, because there's always somebody in the group that says, "Oh my gosh, you've been telling us for two years just to do it at 25 percent." I said, "You know what? It's not engraved in stone." Jill DeWit: I know, it's true. Steven Butala: Going into a new market like we are still buying property from an old mailer. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I got a couple [crosstalk 00:03:01]. Steven Butala: We went in at 20 percent on that, and she's still buying property. Jill DeWit: Yep. All right, Jason wrote, "I have an accepted offer on a parcel in Blank County.

Your Income Directly Correlates to the Amount of Mailers You Send (LA 1454) 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 Southern Scottsdale. I have to figure this out. I feel so bad. I'm so sorry. I need to have a good [crosstalk 00:00:17] Steven Butala: It's not your fault if we change the script. Jill DeWit: Well, you know what, I'm not sure that sits well with me. It's not like it's not sunny and it's not like we're in Southern Scottsdale, but it's like, I need something a little catchier. So we got to work on that. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about your income is directly correlated with the amount of mailers you send. I got this topic from Discord. If you're in our group, you know all about Discord. We recently maybe a couple months ago set up, our staff set up a Discord account so we can in real time communicate with each other and ask questions. And somebody was talking about how much mailers they sent and it was a very small number. It was like 200 mailers a week. Jill DeWit: How are you going to make money off that? Steven Butala: I can tell you exactly where- Jill DeWit: How that's going to go. Steven Butala: Well, that person came from the land gig because that's he teaches that. He teaches, you and your family sit around the kitchen table at night and do about- Jill DeWit: Lick stamps. Steven Butala: 20 letters every day. And that may work eventually. But why wouldn't you just send out 5,000 letters? Jill DeWit: I know. All I can think of is the, well, we'll talk about it, the yield and you're scrambling for a deal. Steven Butala: Plus the COVID might be on those stamps. Jill DeWit: There is that, too. Steven Butala: And what your kids licking that stuff. 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 by the way, if you're a Land Academy member, you can also find us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Sounds like we get money from Discord, but we don't. Steven Butala: I love Discord. That's why I keep plugging it. Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: We have no financial affiliation, but I just, I love the, " Hey Jack, would you do this deal?" And it's like, bang, bang, bang. It's very quick. I just reviewed somebody in our group who's brand new. They did the Craigslist thing and the ebook. And they came up with 80 acres in downtown Sacramento and I priced it at about 10 million for each property. And which was a perfect pricing because I then, about 20 minutes later, found out it was listed on LoopNet commercial property. It's being used as agriculture, but it's a subdivision waiting to happen. And that they're listed for 22 million each. So I was right. At 10 million, we would've would've done okay. Jill DeWit: So what happened? Steven Butala: Well, it was already listed for 20 million. Jill DeWit: Oh, they can't still... They don't have an agreement. Steven Butala: This person and she did the right thing. She's just brand spanking new. She's doing the Craigslist thing. She just like, I tell everybody go on Craigslist, type this in. Jill DeWit: Oh, so someone said I want to sell. Steven Butala: The owner did. Jill DeWit: And she said, "I'll offer you 10." And they're like, ha ha. Steven Butala: He said I can live with 16. And so she reached out to me on Discord and said, "I don't usually reach out to you, but I'm brand new at this. And this is a $16 million deal. And you might want to look at it." Jill DeWit: You know, well, here's the reality is you can buy it for 16. Then you sell it for 17. You made a million. It really does make sense but- Steven Butala: Well, here's the, I'm just down on California's real estate market right now. But that's the truth. But and here's how it ended. I said, "We just do not ever,

How Many Offers Should You Really Be Sending per Month (LA 1453) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Happy Friday. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how many offers should you really be sending a month. And yesterday we agreed that- Jill DeWit: We'll do three levels, whether you're brand new, whether you're intermediate or just an average in this business and then your advanced/pro, what you should be sending. And like I said, we separately wrote down our numbers and we'll share them with you in a few minutes. Steven 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. And if you're a Land Academy member already, join us on Discord. I really mean that. If you're a Land Academy member already, this Discord thing was one of the best things that ever happened to this group. It's just real-time advice. Hey, should I be buying this property or not? Hey, I need a lawyer in Atlanta. It's pretty cool stuff. Jill DeWit: It is. Austin wrote, "Hello. After reading a recent post, I came across an affidavit of disclosure. I looked it up and it looks like Arizona may require this document when transacting land. For my Arizona transactions so far, I've conveyed the property to my buyers with a special warranty deed and an affidavit of property value. Am I doing the right thing or do I need to include this additional document to be above board? Thanks, Austin." Steven Butala: You're doing every single thing right. For Arizona, it just happens to be called an affidavit of property value. There's a lot of other ... By the way, this is all you need to buy property, two documents, the deed, and let's just call it an addendum because it's called different stuff in different states. It's called a P-Corp in Colorado. What do they call it in California? Jill DeWit: I can't remember. Steven Butala: The reason for this document is so that the assessor and the treasurer get a copy of it. Actually, I'm sorry. One goes to the recorder, the deed, and the affidavit never gets recorded. It gets walked over or sent to the assessor to notify the assessor that a transaction happened and so that it gets reassessed, most of the time, for the next year's tax rates, which gets communicated to the treasurer. Jill DeWit: Based on what you paid for the property. Steven Butala: Right. In some states, they don't do it at all. They used to not do it in New Mexico. I haven't done a deal there in a while, which was just slam that stuff out. You could do a deed in five seconds. But they require something now. Today's topic ... Oh, you want to answer this? Jill DeWit: No, no, we're good. Yeah. Steven Butala: Usually I just sit and listen to you. Jill DeWit: I'll be over here. Just let me know if you need anything. Steven Butala: Today's topics, how many offers should you really be sending per month? This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: This is your inventory. This is why you are in business. This I would argue is the number one thing. You can't buy any property to sell any property to make any money if you don't have any deals coming in, and you don't have any deals coming in if you don't send out any mail. So this is crucial. And I see people often make mistakes and it's one easy little fix. They're sending too little. You can't send 100 a week. You can't hand-write them. Actually today, by the time this airs it'll be last week, I'm going to talk on Clubhouse about the difference between the number of deals that we get sending direct mail versus driving for dollars, even pre COVID. Let's just say pre COVID, you can go knock on anybody's door, introduce yourself, hand them a card. And you're trying ...

Transcripts: 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, and I don't know where we are. We've been doing this for several years. Broadcasting from sunny southern Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about housing versus land investing in 2021. You guessed it. You should be doing a version of both. Jill DeWit: I'm sure you're going to tell us all about that job. Steven Butala: And where you should be doing 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. Jill DeWit: Mitch asks ... This is a long one, I'm just ... Hello. I'm currently working on purchasing three properties from a church. The deeds that I received from the county seem to be written well, and are all in the same format. It sure seems like a nice, easy purchase. The properties are currently written to be owned by the Episcopal church in blank state. My question is: who is able to sign the new deed once it's written, since it's owned by the church, instead of an individual? I asked a representative from the church dealing with the transaction if they know who signed the original deed, but they were unsure. I'm currently a grad student, so I'm in the process of saving up to join Land Academy and have some extra capital for my actual mailers and deals when the time comes. My question is, for someone who's totally new to this, how would you recommend someone who has a couple of months to prep to make the most of their time before diving in? Jill DeWit: So there's two parts, one's how to handle the deal, and then some other parts here. Steven Butala: I'll do the first one. Jill DeWit: Okay. I'll finish the whole thing, and we'll go back. What's your recommend who has a couple months to prep, make the most of their time before diving in? What are some of the good resources to really map out this process, and maybe even get the feel for searching, scrubbing, and playing with some data? I'd also be super grateful to get the chance to speak with someone who's been through it to see how they learn those first few steps. Steven Butala: That's what I was going to say. Jill DeWit: In any case, it'd be a pleasure to be here and excited to start. Thank you very much and wishing everyone the best. Cheers, Julius. Cool. Steven Butala: Boy. What a good attitude. Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:02:20] Let's go. Oh. Is it Mitch or Julius? I guess it's Julius. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Sorry. Steven Butala: Maybe I did it wrong. Jill DeWit: That's okay. Cool. Steven Butala: This whole business with the church thing, when any entity, other than an individual, John Smith or whatever, owns a piece of property, you need some backing to identify, and to tie into or desk audit to check to see if they are able to sign on behalf of the entity, whether it's an LLC, a trust, whatever. Jill DeWit: A church. Steven Butala: In this case, a church. All churches are by default, this is interesting, all churches by default are deemed by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but they don't have to fill out any paperwork and file it. They're just deemed that. There's a charter somewhere or something like that that says, "Hey, this" ... It's usually the pastor actually or- Jill DeWit: Or the board. Sometimes you have to be a member of a board. Steven Butala: It might be a board. In some cases- Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: I doubt it. Jill DeWit: I've had a few where they knew, and they had the document, and they could send it to me. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Most of them they do. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: That's always been my case. Yep. Here's a copy of the document. It shows this is the primary for the board, the secondary for the board, they both sign it- Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit:

Transcripts: 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 sunny, Southern Scottsdale. Where it's got a cowboy vibe around here. Let's just tell it like it is. Steven Butala: Whenever Jill goes into any new environment, even if it's very temporary, she has to dress the part. So, she's got... Like if we go skiing, even though she doesn't ski [inaudible 00:00:31], she will get all the outfits... Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: If it's a six day ski trip, she's got six outfits, six new outfits. Jill DeWit: If we were in Japan, I'd be wearing a kimono right now. Steven Butala: We're no stranger to Scottsdale. We lived here together and separately for years, years and years. We never had cowboy boots. Jill DeWit: First separately, and then together. Steven Butala: We never had cowboy boots, never had hats or anything, and now she's got all that. Jill DeWit: Totally. Steven Butala: What's all that about? Jill DeWit: Got them in Utah, which is really funny. Park City started the whole thing. It's just cool. I love it. I enjoy this environment. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talked... And she doesn't find the cheap ones. Jill DeWit: Come on. It's not like I have 10 of them. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the top five mistakes new land investors make. This is going to be an interesting show. We all went in separate corners and listed the top five separately. So, I have no idea really- Jill DeWit: It's going to be fun. Steven Butala: Yeah. I wonder how much they overlap. I bet not at all. Jill DeWit: I bet they do. I bet there's total overlap. 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 a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Luke wrote, Hey guys, hope everyone is doing well. Just curious, how many of you send just the purchase agreement in the mailer from offers to owners, to the title company / attorney versus closing with another version of the purchase agreement. Perhaps even as far as the state or the realtor version of a purchase agreement. I only bring this up because many attorneys have sort of chuckled at my purchase agreements I've used when I was wholesaling houses, as if to say they were short-sighted and too basic for such an agreement. It sounds like they chuckled at it, but they took them, which is kind of funny. Just wondering if the one used in the mailer is more of a barometer of testing the willingness of the seller. Then from what you utilize a more detailed and professional purchase agreement. Thanks. Steven Butala: I'm going to answer this, all right? Jill DeWit: Sure. Steven Butala: When I started this, I sent a scaled down version of the purchase agreement that we use now, which is literally half of a page to my lawyer. And he looked at me and said, "this is the greatest thing I have ever seen ever." Total binding legal document with parameters for both parties and a timeframe. I think whoever said this, they're not laughing, Luke, because it's not comprehensive. They're laughing in a manner that's like, congratulations, you guys are doing this the right way. I don't want to say you're getting away with it, but this is thought out, it's a binding agreement. It does the job. People sign it and send it back. And it's a single page. It's very clear. I want to buy a property, here's the APN, here's the legal description for the price within this timeframe. And here's how we're going to do it. Everything else in life is complicated as hell, everything. Jill DeWit: I agree. Steven Butala: Why does a real estate deal have to be complicated. Jill DeWit: The answer to the question is no, we use the exact form. That's what I sent into a title company or attorney. And they're like, okay, here we go.

Transcripts: 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, southern Scottsdale. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about How to Take Full Advantage of Land Academy Membership. I can't. Jill DeWit: What? What? Steven Butala: My first reaction to this whole topic is, "This sounds like a sales pitch. I don't want to do it," but it really ... But then I started thinking about it. I took some notes. I'm like, "Wow." Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's for the people that are here. This is ... Sorry. If you're not a member, this'll still be beneficial, I'm sure. But if you are a member, this is going to be very beneficial, especially if you're a new member, because there's a lot of moving parts. So we're here to kind of describe the components and tell you how to best take advantage of everything we have. Steven Butala: And how to use it. Yeah. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). 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: John wrote, "I'm about to close a deal tomorrow, and I understand I have to register the property, which takes up to several weeks, as I was told at the recorder's office in Los Angeles. How can is sell it in the meantime?" Okay. I'm reading it as when he means register, it's going to [inaudible 00:01:16] recorded. Steven Butala: Recorded. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Yeah. And John's not a member, so it leads me to think he's new. You can, especially ... I know this property's ... Yeah, it's in LA. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: You can just record it online. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: You can do it within seconds and get a ... They literally stamp the deed. Now, they actually have a sticker with a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional bar code or a QR code, so they can file it correctly. It's called book and a page, and once you have that, you own it. So if they're several weeks behind, they're not behind on ... It's called Simplifile, and you can e-record it, so that doesn't ... You just got a recorder that is a government employee that doesn't want to do it fast. Jill DeWit: Here's the thing, too. No matter where you are in what county, this is pretty much universal. So you've got the deed, it's signed, you're sending it in for recording, and you're just waiting for it to come back to you. I would totally go ahead start marketing it, start doing everything, and selling it because you could sell it and do another deed. And while you're waiting for this one to come back, you could be sending it in for the next person to own it. It could hit 10 days, 10 whatever-it-is later, 10 hours later from when the first one goes in. It doesn't matter, as long as they're recorded in order, and that's really kind of the gist of it. So don't worry about that. I would not wait for, "Okay, I sent it and to be recorded however I'm doing it." Steven Butala: Yeah. Just sell it. Jill DeWit: "Wait for it to come all the way back to me before, now, I push the button and go to try to sell the property." That's so much valuable time that you could be done and moved on and have the cash. Steven Butala: Exactly. Jill DeWit: Good question. Steven Butala: Today's topic, How to Take Full of Advantage of the Land Academy Membership. This is why you're listening. Jill, you have notes, I see. Jill DeWit: I do. I wanted to cover everything that there is. There's a lot. When we first launched this in 2015, there was one thing, education, and that was it. And it wasn't even online. It was in DVDs which, oddly enough, I have about five sets. Steven Butala: Why is that? Jill DeWit: Because we just ... Okay. Since COVID, we've all decided we don't need our sweet little office that we had in R...

Transcripts: 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... Where am I? Steven Butala: Central- Jill DeWit: Arizona. Steven Butala: No, sunny Scottsdale. Southern Scottsdale, actually. Jill DeWit: Well, do we say southern... Okay, there we go. From sunny Southern Scottsdale. Okay. Here we go. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the right kind of buyer to sell from, and we don't talk about ending a sentence with a preposition. Jill DeWit: I was going to say. Oh, look cute it is, our bikes are in the back of the frame. I like that. There's my new bike and your new bike. That's so cute. 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: Jack, I think it's okay. I'm not... I'm pretty sure your English teacher is not listening. Steven Butala: I bet she's not either. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: You know what my English teacher told me? Jill DeWit: What? Uh-oh. Steven Butala: "Why are you going to go to college? That's just... Just so you can beat your head against the wall and when you stop, it makes you feel better?" Jill DeWit: No. Steven Butala: I swear. Jill DeWit: Who told you that? Steven Butala: My high school English teacher said that. Jill DeWit: Why? Steven Butala: She's just an old, cranky lady and she didn't think I was smart. We all have stories like this. Jill DeWit: Okay. I never had that. That's kind of interesting. I'm sorry. Steven Butala: Well, you're a happy, nice person, and you were probably a good student. Jill DeWit: Maybe it's all true. Okay. Got it. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Okay. Mike wrote, "Hi guys. I'm getting a great response from my first mailer. One of the responses is a lady who has 23 acres and willing to sell. However, it turns out that she has another 84 acres that is connected to the 23 acres that she also wants to sell." Good problem to have Mike. "The only thing is there are three homes... " Wow "... included." Again, not seeing a problem. This is great. "Two houses and one mobile home. There are three other family members on the deeds." Here it comes. "All of which are willing to sell also." Okay, doing great. "On top of this, the total of 107 acres and divided into nine different parcels, three of which have one of the homes included. Leaving six vacant parcels. I needed advice. Does all this strike you as a huge mess or huge opportunity? Thanks in advance for the input." Steven Butala: You go first. Jill DeWit: Opportunity. Steven Butala: Massive opportunity. Jill DeWit: Holy moly. Steven Butala: Here's what's funny about this. I chose this question in part because there are two members of the advanced group that answered this question in Land Investors, and also our moderator who is a very active land seller. And all three of them said, "This is a huge mess." Jill DeWit: They did? Steven Butala: "It's complicated." This person isn't a member. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: They're just part of the [crosstalk 00:02:55]. Jill DeWit: Mike's not a member? Steven Butala: Mm-mm (negative). Jill DeWit: Okay. Got it. Steven Butala: And so they said, "No, you're too new and this is too complicated. Don't do the deal." I'm like- Jill DeWit: Or bring somebody on like us and we can do it with you. Steven Butala: I would immediately get with... One of the members is Lori Phillips and she didn't say don't do it, she just said, "This is too complicated for you in the beginning." Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: What I want you to do is reach out to her or somebody in the advanced group. Jill DeWit: Seasoned. Steven Butala: Or us. Jill DeWit:

Transcripts: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Hey, welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today. Jill and I talk about where to start when starting a business and without fear. Jill DeWit: What is this? Steven Butala: So it's not just about starting a land business. It's just basically starting a business. I think this confuses a lot of people. For other people, it's just very natural. It's a logical extension to having a W2 job. But this is really just about that initial twinge like, "I really want to start a business and I don't want to do it with fear. I want to know that it's going to work within reason and I just need a first few steps to check it out." Jill DeWit: Perfect. 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: Buck wrote, "I have a buyer who wants to immediately move his RV onto a property where I'm providing owner financing. The county requires that septic be installed and that he have a temporary use permit for the RV to be legal. The buyer says he'll get the permits. What would you do?" Steven Butala: Run the other way. Jill DeWit: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second. Steven Butala: I would never allow this. Jill DeWit: Why not? Steven Butala: There's too much legal issues. Jill DeWit: No, no, no. Oh, owner financing. Sorry. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: That was my thought. I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Where are you going with that?" I had to take a step back and realize it's owner financing, because most of what I do is cash. Steven Butala: You bought a $10,000 property. You posted it for sale on Craigslist for $2,000 down and $150 a month for 15 years. And you calculated on your little calculator that you're going to make about $22,000 on this deal when it's all paid off. And so you're jumping up and down around the kitchen. Well, the fact is that a very material percentage, more than 50% of these properties, when they get sold, you get the down payment, they make five payments, then they go dark and you just never hear from them again. And so there's something wrong. This person has a lot of money to do all this RV stuff and these improvements, but they don't want to buy the property outright. There's some issue there. Jill DeWit: So that's what you'd do. Number one, you say, "Look, owner financing, I'm not comfortable with this. Can't do it. You want to buy it cash from me, now it's yours and everything's on you. Knock yourself out." That's the first solution, is right there. And I would even say, "Look, here's the deal." Most people do that. When the people that I've seen, they have a cash price and they have a seller or an owner financed price, and it'll be obvious, you cash out, it's definitely cheaper. So if you don't even have that, offer them a great cash price. "Look, I'll give you a 20% discount if you want to just buy the property and then it's yours and then I won't have a say in it. You can do whatever you want." Steven Butala: Jill's an expert at this. I've heard her on the phone. If you've got to list a property for, here's my example, you bought it for 10, just say you sell it for $15,000 or $18,000 cash, and if the property is worth 50, he'd be shocked at how fast whoever they are can come up with their money from their relatives or whatever else just to get them into the property, all of it. Jill DeWit: Right, they really want it. Steven Butala: As an owner with no liens. Jill DeWit: But I agree with Steven. I mean, the bad news is it's just too much that I could be liable for and I don't want to do that. I don't want the county calling me saying, "This guy's out there. He needs to move it." And it's mine, so I'm responsible to get somebody out there to ge...

Transcripts: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey, hey, 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 southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about what to do when you can't find a dataset for a mailable county. Jill DeWit: I'm going to sneeze. Nope, we're good. Sorry. I'm like, "Oh, oh, can I talk?" Steven Butala: This week it's like most popular questions week. "Jack, I can't find this dataset. I could find it for the county over. I can't find it at Redfin and I can't find it in realtor.com, but I know it's in Zillow. What do I do?" It's a very valid question. It's like looking at chocolate cake through glass. It's like, I know it'll work. I have all the answers actually. Jill DeWit: I have never heard of that. What is that, like up against the window? I want the chocolate cake. What? That's funny. Did you make that up or is that a thing? Steven Butala: Yeah, just now. Jill DeWit: Oh, that's good. Very good. Steven Butala: I just watched this video on YouTube. Jill DeWit: Chocolate cake through glass. Steven Butala: This guy sits his toddler down and puts a ... Did you see this? Jill DeWit: No. Steven Butala: It went viral. Sits his toddler down and puts a bowl full of Skittles or M&M's, a big bowl, like big as their head. And says in the nicest way, "Oh sweetheart, I've got to take this phone call. Don't don't eat this. I'll be right back." And it goes on. She only can take it for three minutes and it's just pure torture. And she's tiny. She's really little. Jill DeWit: That's not nice. Here's the grown-up version. Oh, I put down a bottle of scotch and there's a little a bit at the bottom, all of it's gone. You're like, "Oh man, I wish I hadn't even thought about scotch. Now, I'm thinking about scotch. We don't have enough scotch." Shoot, I could see you trying to get every last drop. Steven Butala: Well, I think there's a lot of grown-up versions of temptation that we could talk about too that, you see it, but you can't have it. Jill DeWit: Hello. That's not where I was going. Well, yeah, yeah. Okay. I get it. Let's get to the show. Steven Butala: So, back to data. 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. Jill DeWit: Julius wrote, "Hello everyone. My name is Julius and I'm just jumping into land investment, 100% fresh." I like that. It's a great way to put this. "I've been thinking about it for my own personal property purchases for a while now, but after some research, I found this business model to be rather incredible. I'm currently a grad student, so I'm in the process of saving up to join Land Academy and I have some extra capital for the actual mailers and deals when the time comes." Thank you, Julius. You're doing it correctly and I really appreciate that. Steven Butala: Me too. Jill DeWit: "So my question is this, for someone who's totally new, how would you recommend someone who has a couple of months to prep make the most of their time doing so before diving in? What are some good resources to really map out the process and maybe even get a feel for searching for, scrubbing and playing with some data? I'd also be super grateful to get the chance to speak with someone who's been through it to see how they learn from those first steps. In any case, it's a pleasure to be here and very excited to start. Thank you very much and wishing everyone all the best. Cheers, Julius." Well, he's already in the right place. Steven Butala: Yeah, that's what I was just going to say, that he took the first step. And then there's a bunch of people in Land Investors that go on to say, "Hey, give me a call. I'll tell you exactly what to expect and what to do," other members. Jill DeWit: That's so nice. Steven Butala: And the moderator too.

Transcripts: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California . Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the types of blind offers to send and the types not to send. Jill DeWit: Oh, I have a list. Believe you me. Steven Butala: This is one of those topics that just gets a little passionate about, and I love it. Jill DeWit: Well, only because we've done it all. I mean, I can honestly say, we haven't been doing this... Well, you, because you're much older than me, since the '90s, and tested every possible thing. There's a reason why we got to this point. The reason why we're successful, is the reason why our community is successful, and we all have the secret, and I'm happy to share it. Steven Butala: Awesome. Jill DeWit: For $10,000. Just kidding, I want to share it right now today. 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 a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: James wrote, "I'm in one of the states with a lot of rural lands and with thousands of lakes." Well, how lucky are you, James? You're bragging a little bit, and I think that's awesome. Steven Butala: You can brag, but those lakes are frozen, right now. Jill DeWit: Oh, well, there is that. Steven Butala: I'm from a place like that. Jill DeWit: Okay. "I ran the red, yellow, green test, and many of the counties look like good spots to mail. My problem is, it's hard to find any good average for the pricing, because of all the lakes. On a coastal lake are often higher priced, where a half mile to mile away are much cheaper. I was thinking I need to use in-fill lot pricing, but even on the zip code level, there's a lot of price variability. Do I have to price APN by APN? Or is there a way to price to get me in the ball park of a decent sized area?" This such a good question, because this is stuff that we talked about in the show yesterday. That's a common thing here, if you're doing an area like where we're sitting in Southern California. Ocean front and on the west side of PCH is a whole different pricing point versus one mile or even half mile or even yards away. Steven Butala: James, this is a question I asked myself, even today. I'm working a certain, very specific area in a specific state right now, and I looked at and studied and studied and studied pricing variances based on attribute, that's really what the issue is. And the red, green, yellow test, was designed to solve that for you. So, even in a rural area, if you take each zip code, if you're lucky enough to get the data and drop it into the red, green, yellow test, you're going to see where property is selling, and where it's not. So the theory is, property that's close to the lakes and cheap or cheaper, will sell faster. And then, so you can price that that way, so that's one way to look at it. And then if that's the case, and it almost always is, it's pure supply and demand, pricing and supply and demand go together. Steven Butala: Then you can extrapolate that and run the data sets that way, based on what you find from a zip code standpoint. But zip codes don't often comply with, let's say, shoreline, so what do you do? You have to pretty much run an APN scenario, and I just did it. All of this is more theory than reality. The fact is, if you stick 42 fishing lines in the water versus three, you're going to catch more fish and some of the fish that you catch are going to be small, and you're going to throw them back, because you don't want them. Some of the fish are going to be awesome, you're going to keep it. And some of the fish are going to be, you're going to shake your head and say, "This might be a record for this lake, for the biggest catch of all time,

Transcripts: 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: I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the first 10 weeks of our Land Academy Accountability Group and how much of a success it has been for our members. I'm surprised by this, like always. Jill DeWit: We're halfway in, right? Where are we ... I don't know what weekend. Steven Butala: We're on session six of 10- Jill DeWit: There we go. Steven Butala: ... or seven of 10 actually. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: It'll be almost done by the time this airs. Every single time Jill and I start something new, some little subsection based on what people ask for, I don't think it's going to work. That's just how my personality is. Jill DeWit: I was going to have a different answer. Go ahead. Steven Butala: Every single time, Jill's like, "Oh, I'm so excited. It's going to be ... Everyone's going to love this." And that's what ends up happening. Most of the time, not all the time. Jill DeWit: Here's my takeout. Every time we start something new, it develops into something else new. Steven Butala: Then we have to do more stuff. Jill DeWit: So instead of one new project, then we have three. It was so sweet, I had Kristin and I had a consulting call the other day. And it was very nice, the first few minutes she said, "Look, I own my own business and I'm just getting started in this. How the heck do you guys do what you do? I can't believe what you do." And every time I hear that, I'm like, "Yeah ..." First of all, thank you, Kristen. And yes, I am that tired. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: It is a lot, but it's all good and I'm very happy and we have a great group. And so I'm inspired just to get up every day and do it again. Steven Butala: Deal funding really helps deal. Deal funding allows us to do a lot of real estate deals without doing a tremendous amount of work. Jill DeWit: That's true. [crosstalk 00:01:38] help. Steven Butala: So for years and years ... I mean, we still do tons of our own deals, but we've got a good staff in place so it's not that bad. Jill DeWit: It's true. Steven Butala: We still do it. Jill DeWit: I know. We do it to ourselves 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: Thomas wrote, "Hi, everyone. My partners and I are active since about a year ago and currently operating in X state. We made multiple acquisitions so far and I'm very enthusiastic about the process. We started off in a lower price range in X County, and are now dealing with gradually larger and higher value properties that range between 10,000 and $20,000. However, we've noticed big price fluctuations depending on the attributes, specifically trees. It seems that land with trees on it is disproportionally more valuable than land without." I'm sure in this area, it makes a difference. Jill DeWit: "For instance, we recently bought a property with a tiny forest on it for $6,800 and sold it for $20,000 within a matter of days. While the treeless properties, we can often sell with up to a 50% profit margin. A few days ago, we received a signed purchase agreement for a seven acre property with lovely mountain view for $14,000. According to our research and comps in the area, we estimate a conservative retail price of about 25 to $28,000." So 80% of the lowest price comparable in the area. These are all making sense to me. This is great. Steven Butala: So far, so good. Yeah. Jill DeWit: "Nevertheless, it neither has electricity nor trees, but it's located near a creek." I'm good with all of this. Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: "A local land investor who we sold properties to in the past and sometimes consult with about our new acquisitions,

Transcripts: 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 Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the pros and cons of using your own money for land flipping. Jill DeWit: Let's talk about the pros and cons of going back and forth from state to state. It's a little nutty. Truth time. Before we recorded this, we went through, I don't know, how many hours setting this whole thing up now, because we're half here, half there, but at least we're set Steven Butala: I think we have two pretty permanent studios now. Jill DeWit: Yeah, now we do. It took a little while. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about... Oh, I already said that. Before we get into it, though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Okay. Corey wrote, "Good evening. I received a response from a potential seller. I sent an offer to him on 40 acres. He replied saying he has an additional 40 acres for sale right next to the property I sent an offer on. Both properties and landlocked, but the timber company that owns the last next to the parcels allows access. Is this something you guys would move forward with? It seems good to me, but this is only my second positive response I've gotten from this first mailer. Let me know. Thanks." Steven Butala: Well, two 40-acre properties at the right price, Corey, would be fantastic. Jill DeWit: I agree. Steven Butala: I think that this is a perfect example of how you can make a true success story on rural vacant land, buying rural vacant land, with just jumping over one little hurdle. So, if the timber company is going to allow access, all you need to do is get it in writing, and then maybe cut them a deal. So, the more contact that you can have with people in and around the property where you're taking a look at it, where you're considering buying, maybe it's with adjacent property owners in this situation, if you can take two 40-acre properties, buy them for a very small amount of money, create access, that's what you're actually saying here, that's the improvement. I mean, wouldn't you rather do that with a few phone calls and probably a $1,000 attorney bill than renovate a house or renovate an office building? Jill DeWit: Right. I love this. Steven Butala: I think it's a great position to be in. Jill DeWit: I love it. You touched on something that I'm actually putting a lot of energy in right now and writing a bunch about, is about relationships. So much of our business is not just our offers and how well it's done and the data and what you do, and getting them in the right people's hands, but making these transactions happen because we can forge these relationships with these people. Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: If you didn't have a good relationship with the seller, you wouldn't know about the property nextdoor, number one, and then he's sharing great information with you about the lumber company, and then you have the opportunity now, Corey, to reach out, like Jack said, to the lumber company, get a relationship and a dialogue with them going, and say, "Hey, let's make this work for everybody. I just need to get to these properties. What's it going to... I'll do the work and I'll pay for the attorney. How is it going to go best for you?" and I'd have a hard time saying no to that. It's awesome. Steven Butala: Yeah. I wonder how... He says the timber company that owns the land next to the parcels allows access, quote-unquote, so I wonder how he knows that. Did he talk to a neighbor? Jill DeWit: I bet he's been driving over their land for a long time, and they never said boo, and there's no fence. That's what it sounds like to me. Allows access, to me, I could be reading this wrong, but it sounds like there's a path,

Transcripts: 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, are you a one deal a month or a one deal a day kind of investor? Jill DeWit: You to do our answers now, or you want to save it for the show? Steven Butala: I think everyone can pretty much guess. Jill DeWit: Okay. Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to count down. I'm going to do three, two, one. And then you either say month or day, depending how you feel. Okay, ready? Three, two, one. Month. Steven Butala: Both. Month? You're a one deal a month person? Jill DeWit: Boy, if I had my way, I'd be- Steven Butala: Are you serious? Jill DeWit: We used to ... that's why I wanted to do this. Steven Butala: Wow. I'm both. Jill DeWit: I would love to do one stellar deal a month. I think that would be awesome because then I can goof off the rest of the time. Steven Butala: I understand that goof-off point, but you're just putting your eggs in one basket if it doesn't work out. Jill DeWit: But I have 12. I have more going on. Let's be honest. Because you know what? I'll have a rotation of many in the pipeline at the same time. But, hey, between one deal a day and one deal a month, I'm leaning towards month. But as I say that, I'm eating my words a little bit because I do say volume a lot. Steven Butala: I just think that you got to have 10 or 20 really good deals in the pipeline. And some months you're going to close 10 of them. Someone months you're going to close two. It's not often that you would close- Jill DeWit: All the bigger ones. Steven Butala: Yeah. It's not often you're going to close 20 a day. But the point is- Jill DeWit: But you have. Steven Butala: ... we all have met people. If you're in this group, you know people that are one deal a day kind of people, and you know people that are just one deal a month. That's it. I'm good. I want to make a couple hundred thousand bucks. Jill DeWit: This one's been one deal an hour. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: It's a little nuts. Steven Butala: It's not that I want to do the deals because I've done that. My time for doing deals is over. My job is to keep everybody motivated and paid and happy and healthy and working in an environment they want. And generally being kind of, hopefully, a leader and not a pain in everybody's butt. Jill DeWit: He's become the HR department. Just kidding. I'm joking. 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: You know I was teasing? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Okay. By the way, if you are a Land Academy member, don't forget you can find us on Discord. Jesse wrote, "I'm new to Land Academy, just about ready to pull the trigger and lay down my money. In the interim, I figured it would be a good idea to brush up on my Excel skills. Does anyone know of a good online course that is applicable to the data analysis used here at Land Academy? I did a search, and the only one I found mentioned was it at ... " Is it Udemy? Steven Butala: Udemy. Jill DeWit: Udemy. Steven Butala: Like university. Jill DeWit: Okay. "I had someone else, not Land Academy, suggest DataCamp. Does anyone have any experience with DataCamp? Thanks in advance." Steven Butala: There's a lot of places to learn things like this, and I think it's great that you're trying to learn more. I would start with Khan Academy, K-A-H-N. Jill DeWit: That have Excel stuff? Steven Butala: They have everything. I mean, I have never ... and it's all free. It's a foundation. Now they raise money, people donate. It's been around for a while. It was originally designed to help young people from not affluent areas who didn't have access to learning how to c...

Transcripts: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt broadcasting from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to develop the skills that you may be missing to have a successful company like Jill talked about. I'm sort of wondering this about you actually. Jill DeWit: It's a long process, but I'm going to share all of it today. Steven Butala: As we talked about yesterday at the end of the show, Jill and I host an accountability group. And go ahead, Jill, explain the backstory with this. Jill DeWit: Yeah, so it's our first ever Land Academy official accountability group held by Steven and I, and it's free and voluntary to anyone that enrolled. It was like November, December, last year kind of thing. And we started in January, kicked off in January. So we had a really good question last night or the other night, which was, "I've heard you guys talk about how having a past life or being a business owner in some form was a good indicator who's going to be successful in this world." Jill DeWit: And so we answered that question and then the person said, and I'll give you the quick answer, which was, "You can afford it. Tenacity. You know how to solve problems. You die trying. You're going to kick [inaudible 00:01:31] high water. It's going to be successful." If you've done that, then there's not much you can't do I think, so stuff like that. And then the person said, "All right," and there's a lot of other things. They said, "Okay, well, how do I develop the skills that I'm missing then to be that person?" And that's what we're going to talk about today. 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, if you are a Land Academy member, don't forget. You can reach us on Discord. So Anthony wrote, "I have been seeing a lot of posts like does anyone know of a good photographer in X, Y, Z County? I was thinking we could add state and county sub farms to the resources forum, so we could share resources by county rather than having to post requests for providers in the general forums. Then, we can share who is good in each county and who we should avoid." And I personally think this is a great idea. Steven Butala: That's good, but I have a 180 degrees different opinion. Over the years, Jill and I have created forums and we do have forums in Land Investors, in Discord and a knowledge base that I think we're transferring through different... well it's knowledge based. The software that it's being used on is obsolete, so we're moving into another one. And the heartache that it causes, if you go say in X, Y, Z County, I've got this great person who can close deals. I have a great lawyer, closes deals all over the state. They're based out of this county. It's going to become obsolete fairly quickly, number one. Number two, we're going to get a call from that lawyer that says, "I'm getting all these calls from Land Academy members and they're not asking me the right questions. What they're asking me is, where should I send mail, things that I've never heard of before." And so it's title mind all over again. Jill DeWit: I was only talking about photographer. Steven Butala: And I think photographers get obsolete too. The best photographers I've ever had, the times that I've gone to use them again, they're gone. I just don't think- Jill DeWit: That's fair. Steven Butala: It's like saying air table is the best CRM. It's not. It's really good for us. We love it. Jill loves it. It's pretty. She says it all the time. Apparently, that matters to her and that's fine. Whatever it takes to get deals done. I just don't think that sharing this type of information... and this question is appropriate for this topic today.

Transcripts: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Jill DeWit: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land, investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt coming to you from sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. Jill DeWit: Where am I, where am I, where am I? Nevermind, I'm looking straight out a window staring at a big cactus, but every now and then you forget, and these old habits, you just- Steven Butala: Well, we've been saying sunny Southern California for about- Jill DeWit: A long time. Steven Butala: ...two, at least two years. Jill DeWit: Wait a minute. You know what's funny? We started this in Arizona. Steven Butala: I think so, too. Jill DeWit: I wonder what I used to say back then. But now we're here, that's funny. Went to Southern California and now we're back. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about boondocking on your land. What the heck is boondocking? It's when somebody that you don't know at all is driving their RV around because their employer lets them use their laptop to work anywhere they'd like now. Not lets them, but he's forced to because of the COVID or whatever "de jour" problem there is. Jill DeWit: That's cool. Steven Butala: And he's on your land. Is that good or bad? And can you do it if you have an RV on other people's land? We'll talk about that in a second. 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: And if you're a member of Land Academy, by the way, you can also catch up with the [inaudible 00:01:24]. James wrote, "Hello in Texas, a real," excuse me. "In Texas, realtor.com does not have data on rural counties. Steve mentioned that this should not exclude you from going after rural land. Anyone have a manual way to pull data in the red, yellow, green test and figure out which rural county is best? Assuming that days on market is the most important indicator, pulls data on all property types, including housing, which may skew results for land. Also, Texas land seems more expensive, like $9,000 an acre retail, than most of the two to $3,000 retail deals that you have here around in Land Academy. Does it matter as long as the land is retail for the price on the various websites, such as Redfin, Zillow, realtor, et cetera?" Take it away. Steven Butala: Well, this is the third or fourth time I've answered this. And I think at least two times, maybe three times from the same person. This is not, there's no equation. And if you think like in math, in high school or college, where you figure it out and you've got it and that's it. Every single county is different. The states are different. You have to feel your way through this and figure it out. And data is readily available for certain product types like houses in certain areas like urban areas. When you get out into rural areas and you start changing product types, like land, like we all buy and sell, you're going to get a different result. Especially in Texas, Texas is famous for not reporting the completed sale and everything that surrounds it, including and most importantly price. So yeah, you're going to have a tough time completing an OCD complete, I'm going to write this down. Red, yellow, green test. This topic comes up a lot for new people and I'm trying to drive this point home. Jill DeWit: There's no secret. We're not holding you back. We're not holding back. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: There's a special way. Steven Butala: The reason that some people do extremely well with this, us included, is because we have an open mind when we go into a dataset and we say, "It's not complete. I'm going to have to fill in some gaps here. I'm going to have to guess over here, I'm going to have to take the data that I have," which could be 50% incomplete. Look around surrounding counties. Look at housing data, call the 7-Eleven clerk. I'm not sure what you need to do,

Transcript:Steven Butala:Steve and Jill here.Jill DeWit:Yee-haw!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... What's a great Western term?Steven Butala:Sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.Jill DeWit:Okay, we'll go with that.Steven Butala:What's a good Western term?Jill DeWit:I don't know. I'm trying to think of a good Western description. Dusty, dusty, Scottsdale, Arizona.Steven Butala:Dusty boots Jill today.Jill DeWit:There we go. We actually took our car, truth time. We went up to parts of Northern Phoenix area-Steven Butala:Carefree Cave Creek.Jill DeWit:... Carefree Cave Creek.Steven Butala:Looked at ranches.Jill DeWit:Driving all over in dirt and four wheel drive. And think of this. We have that. And my beautiful clean car was like a dusty mess, but it was cool. And I wore my cowboy boots. Very proud of them.Steven Butala:Today Jill and I talk about what we learned in four weeks of hosting the Land Academy accountability Group. Take it away, Jill. This is the first-Jill DeWit:We missed the question.Steven Butala:Oh, no, there isn't a question.Jill DeWit:Oh.Steven Butala:That's what we learned about.Jill DeWit:Oh, okay. [crosstalk 00:01:03] topic. I'm all goofed up.Steven Butala:Jill and I, we started, decided to start an accountability group because our members were like starting these little groups on their own and they were asking us to attend and we did and it was kind of just a talking session. So we decided to bring, it's all free for members or for certain members that sign up at a certain time and it's working out great. I really think it's or at least our members are-Jill DeWit:I have results to share.Steven Butala:Yeah. Okay. 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, if you are a Land Academy member, don't forget, you can find us on Discord. Patterson wrote, "Howdy Accountability Group. Heidi and I are behind sorry for that. It keeps us from contributing to the calls in here." This must be from Discord?Steven Butala:Yes.Jill DeWit:Okay.Steven Butala:Yes, it is.Jill DeWit:We have-Steven Butala:There's a specific Discord Accountability Group too.Jill DeWit:OK, cool. We have a lot of time blocked out this weekend to work on getting caught up. Anyone else struggling to keep up and interested in, perhaps jumping on Zoom call this weekend to discuss the red, green, yellow test, test for reason, data polling, data scrubbing and work you've done to date. How cool is that?Steven Butala:And of course, a lot of people responded.Jill DeWit:Aw, that's nice.Steven Butala:And so I wanted to put that in here because it's a study group just like in school.Jill DeWit:That's one of the things I was going to talk about here on my list. Let's jump into it.Steven Butala:Today's topic, what we learned in four weeks of hosting the Land Academy Accounting Accountability Group. This is the meat of the show.Jill DeWit:I want to start right there. So, because it's a small group, it's not a hundred, it's a small contained group. Everyone found us or joined up with us within a 30 or 60 day window. Can't remember what it was. So everybody's really on the same timeline. And that has really encouraged like this, will have great open communication because no one can say, "Oh, I did that two years ago." Everybody's at the same point, like, "I haven't read that. What was that? Or how, what was your take on that?" Just like you said, being in a class, being on the same page, it'd be hard to talk to someone who's in their masters in accounting versus I'm just taking the first class. The master's in accounting person is going to be sick of my questions and bored and I might not even be comfortable enough to ask them, even if they weren't, I might not be comfortable enough to ask that person questions because I'm like, "Oh,

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 awesome Scottsdale, Arizona.Steven Butala:Today. Jill and I talk about Land Academy membership versus owning a franchise couldn't be more different.Jill DeWit:But sounds like, well, hey, wait a minute though, well, Land Academy to be an investor, right? So it's really kind of about being an investor versus this business... What business do you want to be in? You want to be an investor, which is what we teach you how to do and set you up for, versus owning a franchise, which is kind of, they teach you how to run, let's just say it's Cold Stone Creamery. You even go to Cold Stone school, and then you have your business. But there's a lot of different things going on.Steven Butala:We teach you how to get free, and autonomous, and independent, and happy and done. We don't have our hooks in you forever, like, let's say, Cold Stone.Jill DeWit:Well, we'll talk about that because I made a list and you're tying into my list. I'm trying to just state the facts, man.Steven Butala:I'm not talking about you.Jill DeWit:Okay.Steven Butala:I just, I'm not a huge franchise fan.Jill DeWit:No 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.Jill DeWit:I'm here to tell you, truth time, there's one and only one franchise this person likes to go to, and it's Wendy's.Steven Butala:Just because I want to eat for free?Jill DeWit:No, just the chilies. No, not because you want to eat for free, I'm here... it's truth time. You're like, "I don't like that, I don't like... " You don't like the franchise, anything, but you're like, "I do like Wendy's Chili." How's that? Okay.Steven Butala:Let's see. If you had a franchise, it would be a Zales Jewelry or something.Jill DeWit:No. What would my franchise be? Oh, Nordstrom.Steven Butala:Yeah, that's for sure.Jill DeWit:Well, it's not a franchise-Steven Butala:I know, I know. Neither is Zales-Jill DeWit:Oh yeah-Steven Butala:... I'm just joking around.Jill DeWit:I don't know what my... Maybe subway? No. I have to think about that.Jill DeWit:Okay. Herbert asks, "Hello. I know this isn't our typical vacant land leasing, single family convo, but I would like some help clarifying some things, and figured what better place to gain information about this topic than from our super knowledgeable and amazing group here at Land Investors?"Jill DeWit:Okay. Herbert, are you trying to get brownie points? Because you're winning. It's working.Jill DeWit:All right. I'm pretty new to real estate in general, never owning a home before. So I'd like your advice on the process slash plan of action for acquiring a four unit, multi-family property to serve as a primary residence. I plan to purchase the four units by using an either FHA or FHA 203(k) loan to renovate, and then live here in Miami, Florida.Jill DeWit:My questions are, number one. Am I correct to assume that our direct mail approach to acquiring real estate is also the best way to acquire my first multi-family deal for a primary residence?Steven Butala:Yes.Jill DeWit:What are some of the differences in the approach that I should be aware of?Jill DeWit:Number two. Will House Academy teach me how to acquire multi-families as well as single families?Steven Butala:Yes.Jill DeWit:Steven. Ready. Go.Steven Butala:Yes, but I have to tell you, I think you're on the wrong path here.Jill DeWit:Ah, uh-oh. Well, like you said, Herbert, you really want to pick the brain from the knowledgeable, amazing group here at Land Investors. And one was going to really pick apart your thing, and I'm sure he's right.Steven Butala:You got to live somewhere, I understand that. I'm quoting my friend, Jill. You got to live somewhere. Recently... I got a speech on this.

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 awesome Middle Arizona. Since I was-Steven Butala:Scottsdale.Jill DeWit:It was so politely, which it was pointed out to me yesterday. What's with the Southern, I'm so used to saying Southern.Steven Butala:Yeah.Jill DeWit:Right, so that's why.Steven Butala:Sunny Scottsdale.Jill DeWit:Sunny Scottsdale, I'll change the script.Jill DeWit:That's good. Cool.Steven Butala:Did he, Jill and I talk about Jill's recent successful 11th hour land upsell. I could, could be. Couldn't be more proud of her.Jill DeWit:Thank you very much.Steven Butala:We had, many, many, many times it happens, you have adjacent property, you buy two properties, contiguous two or three or four properties altogether. This, these two properties that we Joe and I happened to buy really recently generated a ton of interest. And so well, I'll ask her about.Jill DeWit:I'll explain it in a little bit.Steven Butala:Before we get into it. Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the land, investors.com online community. It's free.Jill DeWit:Ross wrote "Hi guys. We're in the process of hiring staff. And my question is specifically about an acquisition manager and a sales manager. Do you think that these two positions should be equal compensation or is one position deserving higher pay? Thanks".Jill DeWit:You wanna go first?Steven Butala:You're like pitting us against each other,Jill DeWit:Huh.Steven Butala:Cause I think there's more way more value in the acquisition process and less value in the sales manager, but...Jill DeWit:And I feel the opposite.Steven Butala:I'm confident. She feels the opposite.Jill DeWit:Yeah exactly.Jill DeWit:So then that way equal pay.Steven Butala:I'll tell you Ross, I'm not sure that you want to outsource both of those at the same time. Nothing happens. There's nothing to sell. Unless somebody bought something at a great price where there's built in equity and then the sales happens automatically. So if you are, if you are and have been the acquisition manager, which Jill and I both kind of do in our, in our life, our professional land life, you're just shoving it off to salespeople. Basically, they're just posting it and taking calls and saying, this is how you pay, or this is how we're going to close. So I think the acquisition manager, hopefully it's, you should stay on and you should get not managers, but assistance to help you post stuff and, and kind of train somebody and guide them along. And I'll tell you what worked for us, is hiring family members really early on at this point. Cause you can, they're going to not, you're going to have a 'tiff and some stuff's going to happen and they're not going to leave and go screaming off. And it was just worked out well for us.Jill DeWit:Well, you have the trust factor and all that too. So if you've got someone, that'd be a good someone who wants to learn and get in this with you, which I'm sure someone wants, you start making a few dollars. There's going to be family members that come, come forward.Steven Butala:Yeah.Jill DeWit:And say, what are you doing over there?Steven Butala:Or a spouse.Jill DeWit:Aha, and want to help? That's a good idea. I love it.Steven Butala:It's philosophically. Let's say it's not land business. Do you think acquisitions, like an investment banking they're paid equally. [crosstalk 00:03:04] If you see a bifurcated investment bank without acquisition, people are going to find properties, companies to buy and people are dealing with selling them, dealing with it.Jill DeWit:Right.Steven Butala:It's challenging enough. I was in investment banking. I was always on the South side.Jill DeWit:Well, I was going to say in, I think in the majority of organizations, the salespeople are paid the most. They get these rocking commissions because they sell...

Personal Career Advice from Steven and Jill (LA 1437)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 Dewit, broadcasting from awesome western southern Arizona, not western as in western southern, I mean kind of western cowyboyish around here.Steven Butala:Yeah. I think it's central Arizona, don't you?Jill DeWit:I don't know. I would say southern, I don't know. Because I can drive to the border in a couple of hours, so that's why I feel like it's southern. So I don't know.Steven Butala:Today, Jill and I talk about your personal career advice from both Jill and I.Jill DeWit:Now I took this a little bit career and because I heard personal, so I put career and like a life advice. I came up with three-Steven Butala:That's how I feel too.Jill DeWit:Okay, good. Because it always does tie together.Steven Butala:Professional career advice would be something like ...Jill DeWit:Get a recruiter.Steven Butala:Don't wear high tops.Jill DeWit:Don't wear high tops?Steven Butala:Yeah, it's work.Jill DeWit:Would you ever? Do you own? Have you ever owned?Steven Butala:Yeah, I'm sure I did.Jill DeWit:Really?Steven Butala:Yeah.Jill DeWit:I never did.Steven Butala:Not like the ones that the kids wear now.Jill DeWit:Okay. The kids.Steven Butala:Not the $500 ones, I'll tell you that.Jill DeWit:Okay.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:And by the way, if you are a Land Academy member, check us out. You can reach us on Discord to.Jill DeWit:Kevin wrote, "Hello, land investors. My name is Kevin, I live in New Jersey, about 20 minutes outside of New York City. I currently own two single family homes and properties. Here it's expensive, but can be found if you look hard enough. We purchased our investment property for $160,000, put $40,000 into rehab and did a cash out refinance at $200,000. Our tenants pay $2,100 a month, which gives us, excuse me, cashflow of about $250 a month and the house is valued at $350,000."Steven Butala:That's a good start.Jill DeWit:This is great, "Our personal property costs $260,000 and it's valued at $325,000 currently, although we're in the process of fixing it up to force value. Taxes in this area are killer, with it being over $6,000 on each of the properties." I'm sure that's a year.Steven Butala:New Jersey has the worst taxes, highest tax rate in the country.Jill DeWit:Worse than California?Steven Butala:Yeah, by far.Jill DeWit:Got it. Okay. "We want to continue to buy and hold properties, but it requires a good amount of cash on homes in this area. We're not quite at the point of feeling comfortable investing in buy and hold properties out of state. After hearing about the podcast through a book and listening to Steve and Jill, I believe buying and selling land will give us a cash infusion we need to further our long-term goals." This is great.Steven Butala:Boy, whoever you guys are, you're smart.Jill DeWit:"Right now, my biggest question is to figure out where do we begin with my mailers. The U.S. Is a large place, lol." That's true.Steven Butala:All right. So you're smart and you understand real estate. That's the good news, Here's the bad news. We're going to have to undo a little bit of this. I hope you don't deal with the real estate agents. I almost want to say Kevin, that you might want to take a look at a, we have another product that Jill and I never talk about called House Academy. If you go to house academy.com and take a look around there, it's going to really sing to you. These properties that you can successfully clearly renovate, you need to be finding them cheaper. So imagine this $160,000 hot property, you bought it for 80,000 and put 40 in that cap rate at $2,100 a month is fantastic. So you're on the right track,

Transcript: Steve Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt: Hey. Steve Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWitt: I'm Jill DeWitt broadcasting from beautiful Southern Arizona. Steve Butala: Today, jill and I talk about Structuring Infill Lot Development Deals with Home Builders and it's Infill Lot. I-N-F-I-L-L. It's pretty funny, because I've heard people call it infield. Jill DeWitt: Oh. Steve Butala: And, inful. Jill DeWitt: Inful? Steve Butala: I-N-F- Jill DeWitt: F-U-L? Steve Butala: Or, something. F-O-O-L. Jill DeWitt: Infilt? Infold? Unfold? Steve Butala: So you're filling in a lot between two houses. We'll talk all about that. There's a deal we're involved in that's pretty pertinent, but before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWitt: Hey, by the way, if you are a Land Academy member, you can also find us on Discord. So Julius wrote, "Hi everyone. My name is Julius, and I'm just jumping into land investing 100% fresh. I had been thinking about it from my own personal property purchases for a while now, but after some research found this business model to be rather incredible." Steve Butala: Good. Jill DeWitt: Yeah, you're right. "I'm currently a grad student. I'm in the process of saving up to join Land Academy. I have some extra capital from my actual mailers and deals when that time comes. My question is this. For someone who is totally new, how would you recommend someone who has a couple months to prep make the most of their time doing so before diving in? What are some good resources to really map out the process, and maybe even get a feel for searching for, scrubbing and playing with some data? I'd also be super grateful to get the chance to speak with someone who's been through it, to see how they learn from those first steps. In any case, it's a pleasure to be here and very excited to start. Thanks very much and wishing everyone all the best. Cheers, Julius." Oh. That's awesome. You want to answer first? Or, you want me to answer? Steve Butala: Yeah. I mean, Land Academy is very much like Alcoholics Anonymous. Jill DeWitt: Oh my gosh. Not at all what I was going to say. Steve Butala: You're in a group, and there's some steps to complete before you can get a chip. Jill DeWitt: Move forward. Steve Butala: Instead of getting a chip, you get a big bank balance. Jill DeWitt: Or a deed. Steve Butala: Then, if you're lucky, you can find somebody who will, on a personal one-to-one basis, mentor you. Just like AA. Jill DeWitt: Like your sponsor. Mentor. We call it mentor, some call it sponsor, pick a word. Oh my gosh. Steve Butala: Jill's going to answer. Jill DeWitt: Well, I was going to say, you're doing everything right. Start communicating. Steve Butala: That's what I think too. Yeah. Jill DeWitt: Communicate with everyone. Okay. Yeah. If you don't know Excel, get to be a wiz in Excel. You don't have to know exactly what we're scrubbing, just get really good at maneuvering and not looking at the keys when using Excel. That's a lot of it. Just, I think that there's so much out there. Listening to this show is one. There's so much free content that you and I put out over the years now, five going on six years, that you can really get a lot of information right there. I would just spend time listening, watching, following, writing, communicating, then you're going to get a real good idea. Enough that you think, "I got this," but wait for it. Then, when you're ready and you join, it's going to put all the little moving parts in place. You're going to know, "Oh, I put this before that, then I do this. That's the nuances. I really need to know about that," because it's impossible here for you and I to really... We do, but it just puts it all in place, then spills it out. Steve Butala: I can tell how this is written, how you're presenting yourself,

Blast from the past June 2016: Removing Risk from Your REI CareerJack Butala: Removing Risk from Your REI Career. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It's super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening.Jack Butala:Jack Butala for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about removing risk from your REI career. Great show today, Jill. Before we start, let's hear some funny stuff.Jill DeWit:It's interesting that I am still surprised by the things that come out of your blog sometimes, Jack. What were you checking for titles today?Jack Butala:What?Jill DeWit:I'm not sure those will pass the ...Jack Butala:My gosh.Jill DeWit:Who's in charge of when you write a blog and you title ... Is there an FCC? Who's in charge of that kind of thing? I happen to,Jack Butala:You mean the boredom-Jill DeWit:... catch you.Jack Butala:The boredom factor?Jill DeWit:No, no, no, no. I caught the ... I was lucky enough to sit in on your marketing meeting today. You guys are running through some title checker thing which I thought was really cool. I was just a little surprised by how far south you two took it looking for titles is what I'm trying to say.Jack Butala:What did you hear?Jill DeWit:I heard things like strippers. I heard things like how horrible it is to be Italian.Jack Butala:It's not horrible to be Italian. It's great to be Italian.Jill DeWit:No, wait. Not horrible, but what was the word? Shucks, I forgot what the terminology was.Jack Butala:Italian people, at times, communicate through yelling. I'm softening it for the show.Jill DeWit:You were working on something like a blog title and print titles. That's what I caught. I was just like ... I can't believe I'm still surprised by what you guys come up with.Jack Butala:I'm having trouble being Italian. That was one of them.Jill DeWit:There you go. It was really funny. All good.Jack Butala:Yeah, that is some funny stuff that we heard today.Jill DeWit:Yes.Jack Butala:Boy, if I knew that was the topic, I would have some [insane 00:01:40] one-liners. Anyway, let's take a question-Jill DeWit:That's why you don't know what's coming until I get to say that.Jack Butala:Let's take a question posted by one of our members on successplant.com, our free online community.Jill DeWit:Okay. Kyle says, "I'm just getting started in pulling my first list from Agent Pro. For property type, do I select agricultural/rural or residential vacant land?" Do you want to back up?Jack Butala:Can you take a crack at answering that?Jill DeWit:Well, I would like to back up and ask, if you would, Jack, explain what he's trying to do here for people that might be just joining in.Jack Butala:Yeah. There's lots of places to go get data. Most of them are ... Well, some of them are very credible. What you want to make sure about any data that you pull is a couple of things. One that it's fresh because properties get bought and sold all the time. If you have a database or a list ... If you're not accessing a database, chances are you have a list. A list can be old. It could be 20 years old, two years old, one year old. We don't know. It could be from yesterday. You want fresh data. The best way to do that is to access the database.Number two, you want that database for all product types, not just land, to have a assessed value. It's the way that you can really scrub your data down and send offers to the right people. This is for apartment buildings. It's for houses. It's for vacant land, all product types. That's how you gauge who you're sending a letter to and that's, in some ways, how you priced the offer. If you don't have assessed value, you're really taking a stab in the dark. What you're going to end up doing is wasting a ton of postage. A ton of money on postage.

Steven Butala:Steven and Jill here.Jill DeWit:Hello.Steven Butala:Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.Jill DeWit:And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California.Steven Butala:Today Jill and I interview Member Laurie Phillips. Laurie, welcome.Laurie Phillips:Thank you.Steven Butala:Give us just a little introduction and then we'll take this question. Tell us where you are and whether or not you're happy to be here at all.Laurie Phillips:All right. Well, I live in Richmond, Virginia and I've been here for a while. I'm happy to be here. I know that we've talked before. Some of the things I'm doing in my business, which is not very old, there are a little different than what some other people did. Might be interesting to hear what you think about it.Steven Butala:I can't wait to hear. Everybody who's different in this group seems to do extremely well. You take the basic stuff that we offer-Jill DeWit:Yeah.Steven Butala:In the environment and then make it your own.Jill DeWit:You make it you're own.Steven Butala:Yeah, exactly. Hey, before we get into it though let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.Jill DeWit:Brandon asked, I'm a new member based in Atlanta, Georgia. Three weeks old and I'm trying to choose a market and ultimately do my first mailer in Alabama. I'm considering the following counties, low population density but near a city, low population density and days on market, less than 100 days. I've searched the forum... They've searched and the forum doesn't seem to have much conversation or topics about Alabama. Can anyone speak to their experience working Alabama or any of these counties?Steven Butala:Laurie, I chose this question because you actually answered it in the forum. I think better than I ever would have answered it. Do you remember this question?Laurie Phillips:I don't. Yeah.Steven Butala:That's great. You want to take a shot at it?Laurie Phillips:Why don't you go ahead and read what I wrote? I answer a lot of questions in the forum. I really enjoyed it and they make me think. I don't recall this one.Steven Butala:Go for it. What you said was Steve spends a lot of time addressing this topic and maybe you should listen to him. I'm paraphrasing. I'll find the question though.Jill DeWit:That's awesome. That's hilarious. Trying to find it here.Steven Butala:Here it is. You got it.Jill DeWit:There we go.Steven Butala:Do I read it, Jill?Jill DeWit:Will read. This is good. Hi Brandon and welcome. I'm pretty new to... This was months ago. After a lot of overthinking, should I mail to this particular vacation county? Even though it's five hours from a population area, et cetera. I went back to Land Academy 1.0 and followed Steve's instructions exactly for picking a new County. I decided being new wasn't the right time to be creative. His process didn't involve minute analysis.Jill DeWit:Just pick a county, follow the process, have some data to support your choices and mail. That's what I did but you may have more knowledge of the areas or REI in general. Take what I say above with your experience in mind. Let me keep going.Steven Butala:No-Jill DeWit:Okay.Steven Butala:She goes on to say-Jill DeWit:Yeah.Steven Butala:The real clear message is here and I can concur exactly. Get the education under your belt. Get that mailer too under your belt and adjust and do the research. But you got to get it out the door, right? The truth is, I have to get a mailer out the door and I'm two days late on it.Jill DeWit:Yes, he is.Steven Butala:This is just-Jill DeWit:That's true.Steven Butala:It happens to everybody. Today's topic interview with member Laurie Phillips. This is the meat of the show. All right. I can't wait to hear it. Laurie what's... When did you join? What's your experience been? Then, how did you veer off into your own direction?Laurie Phillips:All right. Well,

Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California and awesome, cool Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how income and property taxes work in your land business in 2021. Why? Because all week this week, Jill and I were talked into talking about the most boring things possible in the land business. What's not boring in the land business, making hoards of money. Jill DeWit: Boy, am I excited about this show. Steven Jack Butala: If I could write a topic and no one had any say in it, specifically our customer service people, here's the topic. This is how much money you're going to make next month. That's a whole topic. Jill DeWit: Oh, this is good. Do you know what mine would be? Steven Jack Butala: All you got to do are these three things and that's it. That's a whole topic. But no, we have to talk about taxes today. Jill DeWit: Wait, wait, wait. I want one. Mine would be, this is how to replace your income times two and cut your hours in half. I will show you. Steven Jack Butala: Here's another one. What to do with all the time that you're going to have when you're rich. Jill DeWit: Or what boat works best in X conditions? Steven Jack Butala: I like those. Let's take a look in Jill's garage. That's another show. Jill DeWit: That's right. That's perfect. You know what's funny? Seth did this a couple, like a year ago. Seth bought a new big house in Michigan, right? I don't know if you saw this, Steven. Steven Jack Butala: No. Jill DeWit: Okay. So Seth, bless his heart, got a new house in Michigan and he gave a tour of the house walking around like a selfie tour on his phone. And I'm like, this is hilarious. And I bet a lot of people were very intrigued by that though. He went through the living room, the kitchen, you could see the kids' toys in the corner. It was the funniest thing. And he goes downstairs, like it's a Michigan basement, and that's where his office is and it's really nice, and he shows the layout and everything. And I thought that was funny. So I'm wondering, should we do that, when you talked about the garage thing? We don't need to see the garage, but I don't know, maybe somebody would like to see the garage. It's kind of funny. Steven Jack Butala: Yeah. The garage I'm okay with. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Jack Butala: Because there will be 16 not so inexpensive cars in there when we're done. Jill DeWit: We'll work on that later. Okay. So did you set me up for the question? Steven Jack Butala: So 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 a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: I got so excited getting off-topic because we're both avoiding this topic. Steven Jack Butala: Actually, I should have said this before we started being negative, but I can save you some money on this episode here, I think Jill DeWit: Bob wrote, "Hey, Land Academy folks, we're wanting to bring on someone per task or on a part-time basis to help us get our mail out consistently. My wife, Carly, and I have scaled our business over the past year and it's currently more than we can keep up. If you have a knack for data, but don't like the rest of the business, let me know and we can chat further. Experience with RealQuest, compiling comps, pricing, and data scrubbing is a must. Here's my cell number. Evan, if you want, you can text me for a faster response. Thanks." There you go. There's Bob's job posting for the board. Steven Jack Butala: Bob, I just posted this exact job, exact job on the job board on Land Academy or Land Investors, so touché. If you get a good person, let me know, Bob. Today's topic, how income and property taxes work in your land business in 2021. This is the meat of the show.

NEW Land Academy Job Board (LA 1432) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Jack Butala: And me from Arizona. Today, Jill and I talk about the new Land Academy/Land Investors job board. I am personally ridiculously excited about this. There's not one lick of sarcasm or non-truth to what I said. Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Jack Butala: I have long, long said the most challenging thing in any business, including this, is staffing. Jill DeWit: Yup. Steven Jack Butala: We've got a huge group of people that know this business, and they're entrepreneurs. I've actually posted jobs up there myself. Jill DeWit: Yup. Three of them on there right now are ours. Three of the job postings are for some part of our company. Steven Jack Butala: If you're a member or even not a member, and you're looking for a job in this industry, we are hiring. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). 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, and if you're a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Nick wrote, "What's the best way to handle a potential seller who refuses to accept or deny the amount of the offer, but insists on me sending her the comps of how I came up with the offer, before any further conversation? She wants to sell, but won't say anything about the offer price without comps. 'I send dollars, not comps,'" in quote, Nick wrote. Steven Jack Butala: That's my little comment. I send dollars, not comps. Jill DeWit: That is so funny. Sometimes, Nick, people get a little confused about who you are or what you do. I've had that. I've had people, four from mailers from years back, calling me and asking me questions like I am the county. What the heck? They get kind of demanding too. I'm like, "What are you talking about?" "Hey, I need to know what you guys show for this, that, and this." I'm like, "Well, how the heck do I know? I just sent an offer to buy your property." The first thing I would do would be to educate her on who you are, and what you do, and what you're happy to do. I would just stand firm, honestly, Nick, on this one. I would say, "Look. My name's Nick. I own nicksLand.com. Check me out. There's me. Yep, that's me with my dog. There's my wife and our baby," whatever it is, "camping. We buy and sell property. I sent you an offer. If it works for you, great. Please, sign it, send it back. If it doesn't, I wish you all the best." "But I need comps. I need comps." "You know what? You could reach out to maybe ..." I guess now I'm talking myself out of it. She could reach out to a local agent. Maybe that's what you should say. Let's be honest. "You can reach out to a local agent. They could probably help you with something like that." Now, we do run the risk of her reaching an agent, and the agent saying, "Oh, I can sell it to you for this." You know what? Then let them do that, honestly. But most likely, especially if it's a small whatever property, the agent's going to go, "You're who? You want what? It's how much? No. I'm sorry. That's not what I do." She's probably going to really hit a wall. If it's a smaller property, like less than $10,000, a lot of agents, "Do I want a commission on $10,000? Am I going to make 600 bucks, maybe a thousand, when I'm doing deals where I can make 50,000? It's not going to be worth my time." It's probably going to go like that. Steven Jack Butala: If your seller knows the word comps, which stands for comparison values, by the way, you're not going to do a deal with them. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Jack Butala: They have a bunch of experience in real estate. They want a current comparison value driven price.

Start to Finish Documents Needed to Buy and Sell a Parcel of Land (LA 1431) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt: Hi. Steven 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 sunny Southern California. Steven Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about start to finish documents that are needed to buy and sell a parcel of land. Again, this is a requested topic by our customer service staff because a lot of people are asking about it. Jill DeWitt: I'll make it really easy. I promise. You know what's funny? I made some notes here and I'm thinking about what are all the documents? It sounds like, "Oh no, this is going to be hard," but it's actually very easy and there's not a lot. And I'll explain each and everyone and let you know what's important. Steven Jack Butala: Good. 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 a Land Academy member already, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWitt: Kyler wrote, "Has anyone had a title company refuse to handle your closing because the purchase price is three times lower than the assessed value? Only two title companies in this county and they said they can't do it. Never heard of this. With that said, if anyone knows a normal title company in Northern blank state, please refer them." That's the stupidest thing I have ever, ever heard. Could you imagine? Steven Jack Butala: I responded to this. I actually responded to this and what I said, I'll say it here again. I've been dealing with this in some way my entire career, whether it's a know-it-all title company or real estate agent that gets wind of the deal and says, "You know what? For that, I'll buy it," or, "Hey, I can even do better than that," or somebody's sister-in-law says, "What do you mean you're selling that property for 10 grand. I'm happy to buy it from you for that. Don't give it away," so this is part of this business and it needs to be accepted and dealt with. And probably you just need to accept it. Jill DeWitt: It's amazing. It's almost like I want to say to the title company, "Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. What should I be buying it for? What the hell? You shouldn't be involved in it at all." It's like- Steven Jack Butala: In small counties, I know this from personal experience, all the title agents talk to each other, regardless of the company that they work for. The people at the county talk to the title companies. If there's HOA's anywhere, they all talk to each other. Jill DeWitt: All of four them. Steven Jack Butala: And date each other. Really I mean it. They're married to each other or their sister works there or something crazy like that. Jill DeWitt: I would just like, go find an attorney then. Go rogue, find another way to do this. If you need title insurance, do you even need title insurance, Kyler? I would maybe get the deal done and then after the fact. That might be the way to do it, close the deal, get it done then saying, "Now let's get title insurance." Steven Jack Butala: That was exactly my final point like, is it really that necessary? Jill DeWitt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Jack Butala: Get it. Buy it. It's over. Now get insurance and you don't need to do that at a local company. You can cross state lines on that. Today's topic are start to finish documents needed to buy and sell a parcel of land. This is the meat of the show. Start us off Jill, what's document number one? Jill DeWitt: Okay. The first document in our business is a combo document. It goes out in the mail. It's a cover letter, introducing ourselves and our mailer and a purchase agreement with the offer price. So that's it. It's mailer/offer, which includes a purchase agreement. Do you want me to keep going? Steven Jack Butala: Yes, please. So they sign the document. Jill DeWitt:

What is HOA and Why it Matters in Land Investing (LA 1430) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hi. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about what is an HOA, and why does it matter in land investing? I hate them. Who doesn't? Jill: I know. Who wants more people involved telling you what you can and cannot do with the property that you own. By the way, they don't own it, you do. So I have a lot to say about this. Steve: I do, too. I have to tell you, I've always had this weird fascination with somehow requesting that clinical psychiatrists or psychologists do a dissertation on certain topics. And this has always been one of them. What psychologically makes someone choose, forget about the money, [crosstalk 00:01:02] make someone choose to start an HOA? Which I get, because you make some money. But more importantly, why do you seek out to live in an HOA or seek out some type of a land where there's more rules, not less? Is it better that we have more laws in life or less laws? Jill: I was just thinking that. Working at an HOA has got to be like the IRS. There's really no reason anyone's going to call you happy. They're calling you to find out what's the stupid rule, or why did I get fined? Steve: What's that movie, when the kids were little? It was a cartoon about the bunch of animals are living in the back of the woods, and they in they're all hibernating. And they woke up out of hibernation and there this massive subdivision where they used to live? Jill: Yep. Steve: What's it called? Hedge ... Jill: I forgot, and they went through the fence. Steve: Over the Hedge. Jill: That's right. Steve: Over the Hedge. Yeah. Jill: Okay. Steve: And there was this character in there, this woman who was the classic real estate agent/president of the HOA. And they took it to extremities where she would measure the length of everybody's lawn and then send them notes. Do you remember that? Jill: No. I mean, I do remember that movie, but I don't remember it in that level of detail that you have. I do not recall. That is so flipping funny. I love it. Steve: 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: Kristen wrote topic idea. Why do responding sellers have property with no physical access, or in a flood plain, and what to do about it? Oh, why do responding sellers have property with no physical hazards or a flood plan? What to do about it? I know new sellers shouldn't be buying these, but it's pretty much all I'm getting. Yeah. I like that. That's a good idea. Can we do that one day and really dive deep into it? Steve: Yeah, we can dive deep. I can give you the 32nd overview here, too, if you want. Jill: Go for it. Steve: Sellers almost always don't know about their property. They've inherited it. They've never seen it. I mean, back me up here or correct, Jill, probably 80% of the time, they have no idea about the property. Sometimes they live adjacent to it and that's a different story, so they don't know. No physical access can be remedied. It's not that complicated. You just need to get the right people involved and make sure that there's a ton of profit margin on it, because it takes a while. And if there's a process, then it's possible. The floodplain scenario, they're not going to know. It's only relatively new to land ownership that we can click on these FEMA maps at places like Neighbors Scoop, and just within seconds, see if the property is in a flood plain. Jill: Right. Steve: So even two years ago ... I mean, even now, if you go on to fema.gov and try to find out if a property ... it's a big, huge, massive process. So, that's not their fault at all. And what do you do about it? You just work through these things where you adjust the price.

Post Transaction Communication (LA 1429) Transcript: Stephen Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Stephen Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Stephen Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California, for me. Stephen Jack Butala: And Arizona. Jill DeWit: Anyway. Stephen Jack Butala: Today Jill and I talk about post-transaction communication and we're also trying out new software. So we'll see how this goes. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Stephen Jack Butala: Sometimes it's appropriate, I think, when the deal is all done to talk to a seller. And when a buyer buys property, it's appropriate post transaction to talk to them too. Jill is going to tell us all about it. Although my personal opinion is that it's not that common, but we're going to find out from the expert. 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 a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord, which is getting more popular by the minute. I'm happy to report. Jill DeWit: I saw you in there just a little while ago. Lucas wrote, after five months, 4,000 letters, and five completed assignment deals, I finally got a deal that I was able to self-fund and now it's under contract to sell. It feels great. Stephen Jack Butala: It's a beautiful way to say it's working. Jill DeWit: Exactly. My offer was for a property that was already listed. The seller and I couldn't agree on a price. However, he had a tiny parcel in a nearby county that he was also wanting to get rid of. It was so tiny that I wasn't sure if anything could be done with it, but it was right downtown in a nice community directly off main street. City zoning allows for trailers and modular homes, so I went for it. We agreed on a price. Closed quickly. I put it up for sale. I put up a for sale sign and it was under contract to sell within a week. Never even had time to get my posting online. Bought for $3,800 and sold for $9,000. Now I have enough cash to go back and try some deals that I missed from my first mailer. Again, I owe a debt of gratitude to this community. Your examples, keep us going. Thank you. How cool is that? Stephen Jack Butala: It's kind of a mic drop posting. Jill DeWit: Exactly. So it wasn't really a question. It was really like, hey, here's my story. I love it. I'm so glad, how great is that [crosstalk 00:02:39] Stephen Jack Butala: Congratulations Lucas, that's fantastic seriously. I'm very conscious now, Jill of the words that I use, because yesterday we had our Thursday webinar and some of the members reported... Our regular members reported to us that they have a side drinking game going on because it's kind of at night, based on the words that Jill and I say probably too often. So I just said fantastic and I know that's one of the drinking words. Jill DeWit: Yep. Okay. Everyone now you got us started. Now we're going to come up with our own drinking game. Stephen Jack Butala: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:03:20] I mean, this airs at 3:00 PM. So I hope there is not that much drinking, but if you're listening to this at nine o'clock, as Jill says, drink yourself silly. Jill DeWit: Yep. Exactly. Stephen Jack Butala: Today's topic, post-transaction communication. This is the meat of the show. So like I said, in the intro, Jill, when do you think, is it appropriate? Or do you have communication right now with anybody that consistently they like to do as a friend, that you've done a deal with either on the buyer or the seller side. Jill DeWit: Yes. Stephen Jack Butala: You really do? Jill DeWit: Only one and it's a personal transaction. That's the only reason why. Stephen Jack Butala: Like a primary residence? Jill DeWit: Yes. Stephen Jack Butala: You're not going to tell us? Jill DeWit: And she happens to be the lender. So right now she's my best friend. Stephen Jack Butala: Oh,

Red Green Yellow Test for Picking a County Explained (LA 1428) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Jack 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 beautiful central Arizona. Steven Jack Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the Red Green Yellow Test for picking a county explained. We don't have a lot of dart boards in our office. We don't do a lot of guessing about real estate and whether we should buy it or sell it or where we should send a mailer. Jill DeWit: I wouldn't mind a dart board in our office, but for a different reason. Here's what I think about what this person told me. Steven Jack Butala: There's some politicians I'd like to put on a dart board- Jill DeWit: There we go. That would be nice. Steven Jack Butala: ... But we'll talk about that later. 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: Mitch wrote, "Hello. So my first mailer did not get the response I was hoping for. I mailed one acre properties in Mojave County, Arizona targeting Meadview- Steven Jack Butala: Meadview. Jill DeWit: ... Meadview, and I didn't get much response. Luckily I was able to purchase three properties, but all were from the same seller. Other than that, I had only two calls come through, one being a hate call. I understand that this county is a highly competitive market, which could be the reason I didn't get much response. However, I'm concerned that my pricing was way off and this is the reason I didn't get any takers. I priced my property at $652 per acre. Now I'm getting ready to send another mailer to Santa Cruz County, Arizona targeting Rio Rico's zero to two acre properties, and I was wondering if someone could give me any advice on pricing so I can hopefully get more response." Steven Jack Butala: Oh, you're going to get some advice from me in a second here. Jill DeWit: I've been waiting for it. I'm holding back, I know. "I know this is more of an art than a science, and I need to fail to learn, but I'm worried my whole thought process on pricing is inaccurate. Thanks in advance for any advice. Mitch" Steven Jack Butala: Mitch, this is not personal. I'm only responding to what you're saying here to help everybody who's listening to this. Jill DeWit: But put your face mask on. Steven Jack Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Put your helmet on. Steven Jack Butala: Not going to use your name. I'm just going to assume that you're just somebody. This is not personal. You cannot send a mailer out for $652 for a piece of property and expect to get anybody to respond. You just can't. Those days are gone. They were gone in 1975. Mojave County in Arizona is the county that I chose to, as an example, in both of the programs both the Cash Flow From Land Program and then Land Academy 1.0. 2.0 is about infill lots, so I used another county and I say, all the way through the programs, please don't mail Mojave County. Please don't use this. I'm only using it as an example. It's not the place to do this. Meadview itself is becoming a subdivision of Las Vegas. In fact, Jill and I just bought a mobile home there. I don't know when. It was like three days ago. We paid 5,000 bucks for it; it's worth 40, on a one acre property in Meadview. Santa Cruz and Rio Rico, you just stop. There's 3,144 counties in this country. There are 13 counties in Arizona. They are grossly over-mailed. The same thing with Nevada. We have these Thursday calls and I have never been so proud as the last probably five calls that we've had. People are mailing counties that I've never heard of, and they're killing it. They're killing it especially on the East coast. This goes for everybody. Stop it with Arizona. It's over... And he even bought three properties. So it's not like you're not going to buy property.

Good Bad Ugly About Land Sales on Terms (LA 1427) Transcript: Steven J. Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven J. 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 Central Arizona. Steven J. Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. About land sales on terms. You can sell a property for cash, buy for $50 sell it for $100 or you can sell it on terms, buy for $50, $10,000 down, $1000 a month until you pay it off. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven J. Butala: Who doesn't want to have more money in their bank account? Who doesn't want to talk less on the phone and listen to [inaudible 00:00:40] get to know your tenant. Jill DeWit: We'll talk all about that and more. 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 Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Greg wrote, this is a long one, bear with me. "Hi everyone. Love to get your feedback on this one. I have a desert junk property in New Mexico, bought it for $1,600, six months ago and it's not selling. I'm about to unload it at $3,200 to a fellow and I haven't signed any papers yet." Steven J. Butala: I don't know how that's losing or failing, but okay. Jill DeWit: I know. And that's not junk to me. Steven J. Butala: We don't use that word. Jill DeWit: Exactly. "A couple of days ago, a guy called me claiming to be an attorney and offered to buy this parcel from me for $2,000. Claimed to have tracked me down from the previous seller. I told him I wanted $3,800 and he proceeded to tell me that this property was subject to a quite a title that he and his family were working on. Something about it being sold incorrectly 50 years ago." Steven J. Butala: Lies. Jill DeWit: Wow. That mean? Steven J. Butala: All lies, [inaudible 00:01:48]. Jill DeWit: Yeah. "I thought that was strange that he offered to buy it, combined with a quiet title information. I gave him my address and told him he was welcome to send any claim or action my way, but I haven't received anything yet. It's only been a couple of days." Steven J. Butala: This is the last you'll ever hear of this. Jill DeWit: "So my question is, should I say something to this guy who now wants to buy it, should I say nothing since I've seen nothing in writing, or should I not sell it and sit on until I hear something from the quiet title guy? I don't want to mess. I'm thinking to just sit on it, low value, not a finance problem for me, instead of risking a sale and an unhappy customer. Happy to hear your advice, Greg." I know what I'd do. Steven J. Butala: Go. Jill DeWit: Ignore the call. It's amazing that he even found you and tracked your number and everything. I don't believe it too. Steven J. Butala: I'd chill for about a week. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven J. Butala: And I wouldn't... And then I might... I would actually research. With resources that we have at Land Academy, you can go look at the chain of title. Jill DeWit: Sure. Steven J. Butala: Here's the thing about New Mexico- Jill DeWit: Do your homework and make sure. Steven J. Butala: Specifically New Mexico. Long before I met Jill. I was on the auction circuit in my car, in my SUV, six months a year. And I spent a lot of time in New Mexico going to auctions and buying property and selling it on the internet. And every third auction that I would go to in New Mexico, someone would stand up right before the auction and give us a big, long speech about how we're terrible Americans and we stole all this property from Mexico. And how dare we buy any land in New Mexico. That's what this is related to. This is some kind of meeting that either native Americans or Latinos have organized and there's to call them land owners and something like that.

Simple Ways to Improve Your Land so it Stands Out Online (LA 1426) 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 central Arizona. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the simple ways to improve your land so it stands out online. I was just thinking about Arizona and yesterday we were talking about how happy you are, because you've got a personal assistant and everything. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah. Steven Butala: I could be not be more happy in my life then right now. I know this is like the happiest I've ever been. Yeah. Jill DeWit: Really? Really? Steven Butala: Arizona rocks. Jill DeWit: Because you're not in California? Steven Butala: Yes, that's part of it. Yeah, Jill. That's part of it. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: And I just feel understood here. And I feel like there's camaraderie and the people that are here want to be here and they believe in everything. In California, since March, half the people you talk to are disgusted and they can't leave. We're fortunate that we could leave. Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: And it's too bad because they have family and jobs or whatever or businesses. We have a really good friend who owns, two friends, who own a bunch of restaurants and they're really struggling. And they're real upset with the way the decisions that are being made. And we're just so fortunate that we're not subject to that. So I'm happy too. It's not just you. Jill DeWit: Oh good. I'm glad. 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 a Land Academy member already, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Chris wrote, "I've been a member since July 2020, and I have yet to send out a mailer. I had several unforeseen events happen that drain the bank account, but I'm now at a point where I'm ready to send out a mailer and pick a county. My question is if I only have $5,000 to $10,000, would it be better to buy several cheap desert properties or send out a mailer in a more expensive, less competitive area and use LandTank to deal fund? By doing the latter, I would be using the $5,000 to $10,000 to solely send out mailers and buy data. But on the other hand, it may be better as a beginner to send out my first mailers to an inexpensive desert area and fund the deals myself so there's less risk for my first few properties. Any advice or thoughts?" I know what my answer would be and I bet it's the same as you. Steven Butala: We have the exact same answer on this. Go ahead. Jill DeWit: Go big. Use it on the data. You use it on the mail. Don't worry about funding the deal. I'll buy it. Steven Butala: You need to forget about... Think of it like this. You're never going to pay for a property, but what you need to do then is find some great property at fantastic prices. Jill DeWit: Get to know the area. Steven Butala: Your job for the next six months, Chris, is to understand data, get into the whole mailer part and understand how to answer the phone and generate some great real estate deals. Forget about the money. I truly, truly mean that. I just had a consulting call with a guy that said they have limitless money for this. They joined the... they actually... He scheduled a- Jill DeWit: Consulting. Steven Butala: ... consulting call with me and at the end of the call, and I said, "This is how you mail. This is what you do with urban counties." The whole thing. And I said, "I got to tell you, man, I don't believe we're ever going to send out a mailer at all. I don't think you're actually paying attention. And I think you're making so much money as a lender, as a partner to other Land Academy members, why would you?" And he said, "Thank you. That's kind of what I wanted to get out of this because I...

Transcript Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hi. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from awesome, Southern... Are we southern or central area? Steve: Central? Jill: Excuse me. Awesome, Central Arizona. [inaudible 00:00:16] I have got to figure that out. Steve: Our elevation's 1500 here. In California, we were at elevation number... Like one foot. Jill: There we go. Steve: You know how you obsess on- Jill: I do obsess on that. Steve: On the weather and stuff? Jill: And GPS and all that. Steve: I have elevation issues. I put elevation in every single one of our land postings. Jill: [inaudible 00:00:38] you remember, you used to have that thing... And it was dialed into satellite stuff? Steve: Yeah, the weather... Jill: Yeah. And it would tell you all kinds of cool... The barometric pressure and things like that. I'm going to get one of those again for the new house. Steve: I think that you can get... I like the one that goes on the roof, where you don't need the internet. Jill: This one didn't need the internet too. Steve: So you install a little thing that goes... You ever see those little... Jill: A little gyro thing? Steve: Yeah. Jill: Oh, well you can do that if you want. I don't need that. Steve: [inaudible 00:01:09] Jill's out, if you have to install anything now. Jill: Exactly. Steve: Do you ever notice how girl products are just like open it and plug it in? And it's clean and pretty and simple and you don't really get any real information or the meat of anything? But- Jill: Why is this a bad thing? Steve: They're happy. Jill: It should work. I should open up and plug it in. Steve: I think I just described Apple computer. Jill: It's like a bathroom scale and should be able to just do it quickly. Not have to program the whole thing. Steve: Before Jill starts to talk about women's weight. Today, Jill and I talk about introducing Land Academy accountability and women's groups. 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: Okay. James wrote, "Hello. When filling in the red, yellow, and green tests in the equity planner, which filters are used for land and farm to get land postings and Redfin [inaudible 00:02:09] data?" Assume on Redfin for [inaudible 00:02:13] data, you only select land for the last three months. And for land and farm, no houses and undeveloped land. However, the numbers from these filters are very different than the numbers in the example Jack uses for the equity planner. And I want to make sure I'm doing this right. Steve: You're doing it right. James, I can tell you haven't filled this out before and by this question, you are going to be wildly successful at this. Whenever I get questions about equity planner, data scrubbing. Like yesterday, the school district thing yesterday was nothing short of amazing. I didn't make enough of a big deal about how positive that is like Jill did. So I'm doing it now. The answer is this. When you have a lot of data available, i.e. You have an urban county or a zip code that you're sending it to, then use it all in from one source, probably Redfin. You're not going to get the data that you need in realtor, all of it. And you're not going to get all of the data that you need in Zillow. You are going to get it in Redfin. The bad news is that Redfin's coverage doesn't... Rural counties are not a priority for them. So you're doing it right. I can tell. In three months is great, that's actually what I use. It's interesting that you say three months, because that just made sense to you and that makes sense to me. Jill likes 30 days, but there's not enough data. You can do it back three years if you want on Redfin, that's, that's not apples to apples. Because real estate market was not the same thre...