Land Academy Show

1.25 Acres vs 40 Acres to Build Equity 101 (LA 1058) 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 California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about one and a quarter acres versus 40 acres to build your own equity, 101. What the heck does that mean? Is that even a sentence? Jill DeWit: More importantly, the question should be saying: Jill, how do you keep up with this guy, and what is he talking about? That's what goes on. I'm the interpreter today. Steven Butala: You have a lot of choices about what types of property to buy and sell. You have a tremendous amount of control over your real estate investment career, mailer by mailer. So that's what this show is intended. It's intended to inform you, or to encourage you, to look at what different types of property to buy, and specifically land, and how it fits in your equity plan. Jill DeWit: You know, that's good point because some people think that they heard about a deal. I'm an investor. I need to make every deal work and try to get this done. I just heard about this job. And there's $30,000 in it. We've got to figure it out. No, you don't. Pick what you want to work on. You really do have the control. And you'll get there faster, by the way, if you calm down and focus on something, and do it right and well. Steven Butala: You should always have, we'll get into it here in a second, but you should always, always, always have an acquisition criteria. That's what's so beautiful about sending these mailers out because that is your acquisition criteria. And someone, theoretically in a perfect world, is going to sign it and send it back, and you're going to check to see if it fits your acquisition criteria. Opportunism is out there. So when I hear the word opportunistic, that's a really negative thing for me. What do you think- Jill DeWit: I was going to say too, that's a very big word. Steven Butala: Opportunistic to me is, I'm open for anything, man. I'll take a look at any deal. Just send it over. I think that's the worst thing that could happen. Jill DeWit: That's wrong. Steven Butala: And that's going to end in a fiery ball of tragedy. Jill DeWit: Could you imagine if you went around that way? I mean, you could maybe research three deals a week trying to figure out that area and that thing and that market because someone threw something to your way, versus we send out mail and review three deals in 15 minutes. Steven Butala: That's right. Jill DeWit: And then we move on. We're buying it or we're not. And then we move on, and there you go. Steven Butala: So I'll paint the perfect picture of your acre and a quarter operation and your 40 acre operation, and maybe even your like 4,000 acre operation, and why you should never do that. 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: Armin says, "Many of the properties I acquire are [inaudible 00:02:59] lots with several homes in the area. There are at least 200 people driving by every day, and I think a sign can make a difference. How do I put up a physical for sale sign on my property? Is there a cheap and easy way for me to create a sign, have someone plant it on my property? Steve talks about using WeGoLook to have someone visit the property to click photos. But isn't it equally important to have a for sale sign for those tha...

Deals Dont Close Themselves (LA 1057) Transcript: Speaker 1: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Guten tag. Steven Butala: Welcome. You look up different ways to say hello? Jill DeWit: I only know about four in case you haven't noticed. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how deals don't close themselves. Jill DeWit: Oh, I wish they did. And it's funny how many people think that once you just get the ball rolling it's just going to happen. Yeah, yeah right. Steven Butala: Jill and I have actively chosen, we can choose what to work on. We're at that point in our career. We can choose to develop new websites that we can sell to private equity companies, which we're doing. We can choose to work on real estate deals, which we're doing. What we've actively chosen for the next few months, to sit in an office together, for better, for worse. And I create and generate real estate transactions and Jill does them. And what I've learned, and then thus the title of this show, is how much freaking work goes into purchasing a piece of property. Just on the phone and there's a lot of time and a lot of manipulation and just a lot of stuff to do to get somebody to sign, to get a deal done. Let's just put it that way and we'll talk all about 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. Jill DeWit: Daniel shares. "Hi everyone. I know that the majority of the people in this community sell land for cash and I usually do as well. However, I have a piece of land in Utah that I'd like to sell on terms. I'm hoping that someone can share a good template for a land contract that they're using. Cheers, Daniel." Well, that's probably in chapter eight, nine. I don't know. Steven Butala: Yeah, there's- Jill DeWit: We have one in there. Steven Butala: Yeah, in the cash flow ... The original program, Cash Flow from Land program. There's contracts. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: It's all at the end. There's a bunch of agreements and tools and a dictionary and all kinds of stuff. But I'll tell you this, I'm glad you mentioned Utah because every state's very, very different on this topic. And as people get more creative from how they invest in real estate, us included, there are more and more rules being developed state by state. So check Utah and they may say, I'm sure that they're going to have a lot to say on how you sell a property on terms. Steven Butala: For example, we used to do a lot of term sales in Arizona and California and they're so dramatically different, and Colorado. Really dramatically different on how you're supposed to sell property on terms. So step one is not so much a contract. Step one is to really pull the statutes and talk to some people who are already doing it successfully. Which is what you're probably doing here and glad. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Did he stop it? Deals don't close themselves. This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: You were talking to the intro, you heard ... It was making me think of the call that I had with the sweet lady named [Mai 00:03:15] yesterday, who you heard about oh, six phone calls back and forth. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: "How about this?" "Okay, I'll talk to my husband.

Its Time to Hire AGAIN (LA 1056) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show with my microphone in front of me now, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt and I came fully prepared and we are broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today's topic, Jill and I talk about how it's time to hire again, all caps. Jill DeWit: Do you want my notes are? My notes I made to myself, it's a happy face and then it's a sad face and then it's a happy face and I'll explain that in a minute. Steven Butala: I'm going to quote Steve Jobs here, at some point in your career, if you do everything right, you become a full time recruiter. And we are very close to that point, if not there. Yeah, we're there. The only thing holding us back from making $1 billion literally is good talented people. I never that would [crosstalk 00:00:54]- Jill DeWit: And 10 of them. And 10 of them. Okay, before we get into it- Steven Butala: Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it's free. Jill DeWit: Crazy day for you here. It's all good. Marcus says, "What would you do if you only have $2,000? My capital is tied up in another property and I want to stay active. I could, A, keep saving and mail when I have more. Or, B, mail for cheaper lots a and partner on accepted offers. Or, C, by over the counter lots and Ebay them. Option B has been my goto since I got started and after 4,000 offers since, since March 2019, and only one deal," I don't know what that's about, "I'm not too fond of trying it again." I'm totally confused. "But this time I'd be mailing for properties with an acquisition price under $10,000." Oh, because he probably couldn't afford it. That's why. Steven Butala: Oh, I see, he went real specific. Jill DeWit: Got it. "Not 30,000 plus dollars like I've done in the past." So it sounds like couldn't do that many. So okay, let me back up. May I dive in here? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Okay, so my goal number one is not to tie all your money up in one deal. I really want you to have... Because it's probably a bigger deal. And then you have all your eggs in one basket and you're just sitting there watching that one deal and you have to wait for that one deal to close before you have money to do more. So if you have $6,000 please buy six $1,000 properties. Because, hopefully, one will close tomorrow and one will close on Tuesday, one will close in a week, one will close... and then the two others will closed right after that. And who cares at that point because you're already putting that money that you've already made back into play and and now you're rolling. What do you got? Steven Butala: This is a very intelligent question. This Friday we have scheduled, we haven't recorded it yet, a show called Equity 101, how to build equity 101. So I want you to take a couple of steps back and get your head kind of... put your academic hat on, your drawing board hat, not your implementation hat because this is an implementation question. But I think the answer to the implementation question lies in the academic part of this. Steven Butala: If you have $2,000, your goal should be to create 4,000 and that's it. If buying over the counter property and selling it on eBay is the fastest way for you to do that, then do that. If buying a $4,000 property, go back to your mailer, go through your phone messages and stuff and finding a property in there probably you could breathe some life back into and buy,

Why Delinquent Tax Sellers are Problematic They are Dead (LA 1055) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hola. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about why delinquent tax sellers are problematic, and it's usually because they're dead. I actually have a lot to say about this topic. There was an interesting lawsuit in Arizona, very recently, less than 12 months ago. I'll talk all about it during the show. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: When people have passed away and they're the sole owner of a property and they have heirs, it's very difficult now in some states to foreclose without giving notice to the heirs. That all changed less than 12 months ago. I'll give all the details on the show here. 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 DeWit: Nick shares: "I plan on using PATLive for my second mailer." That tells me he got overwhelmed the first time, which is good. "I found it difficult to answer calls at work. With PATLive will I be able to call sellers back after work hours? Will the sellers find this unusual to receive calls after normal work hours? I don't want to give the impression that I'm a part time land investor, which I am. Or am I overthinking this?" Steven Butala: So there's a ton of answers on this question. Jill DeWit: Can I give mine first? Steven Butala: Yes, I would love for you to, and then I chose one of the answers [crosstalk 00:01:31] Jill DeWit: Okay. First of all, just so everybody knows and is clear, PATLive is a great solution and we really encourage people, especially in situations like this where you can't hire someone, maybe you don't have the budget to hire someone to answer your phone, or you are working a job. We have a great deal that we offer to our members, its 20% off. Which, by the way, I have to say, that's the most I could get out of them, is 20% of their normal rate. And so then what they told me was so cool, they said, "We'll give you 20% off if you want to keep 5, 10, 15%, give them whatever discount you want, you can do it." Jill DeWit: But you know what, we're the kind of people, this is how we roll. We give our people the full 20% off. I don't get anything from it. I want our people to be successful and it's a good deal. Steven Butala: Land Academy was put together by Jill and I to help people. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: To provide the data and the tools that we use to be successful buying and selling land. It's not a profit center for us, it never will be. The real benefit that we get out of it is providing these tools to you and educating you so you and I can go be business partners together long term and make tons and tons of money. Jill DeWit: Ding ding. Steven Butala: And so there's lots of people who have a different take on this out there, I'm noticing recently, that feel like they need to somehow participate in this from an education standpoint to their own benefit. And so it saddens Jill and I, quite honestly. Jill DeWit: It does. It's not the right reasons. Steven Butala: Yeah, we look at this like a .org and we always have. Jill DeWit: It was a .org at one time. That's true. Maybe we should go back to that, we still have it. Okay. So here's one of Nick's comments from one of our members...

Feels Like 2010 All Over Again (LA 1054) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how it feels like 2010 all over again. Jill DeWit: I can't wait to explain what's going on and how ... I got to tell you, it makes me so happy. Steven Butala: Give us a little insight about what the show is, Jill. Jill DeWit: Okay. Basically, we are hiring and building and growing, I should say, our land investment team. And to do that, it involves you and I getting pretty active in it again and showing our staff ... This is what we do for Land Academy ... but showing our staff, "Here's how we do it. How we get the deals done. How the call should go." And by doing that, we're showing up at the office every day and doing the work right there with them. Steven Butala: Exactly. Jill DeWit: And I forgot how much fun this is. Steven Butala: Me, too. Jill DeWit: And I'm sitting there scratching my head, and I'm sure all of our staff is like, "Holy cow, these guys are good." So I know we'll [crosstalk 00:01:06] Steven Butala: Oh, I'm sure they're not saying that at all. Jill DeWit: You don't think- Steven Butala: I think they're saying, "The owners are in the office again, so that takes all the fun out of it for me." Jill DeWit: Well, the point is we know what we're doing, and we'll share more. Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, let's take a question by one of our members in the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Leonard asks, "Hey, everyone. I sent out my first couple of mailers. I plan to soon have a couple parcels of land with an acquisition price of roughly $6,000 per property. I plan on closing with title. Question one, how much of a marketing budget should I estimate for the different purchase prices? The sales prices will likely be between 14,000 and $19,000. Would this justify listing on the MLS?" You want to answer that first? Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: Okay, let's- Steven Butala: Your marketing budget is a variable cost. That's the good news. It's not a fixed cost. So you can plan on simply spending your cost for the MLS. And potentially, because agents are constantly in the MLS, you might have to pay 3% on the buy side, so that's what I would budget. Everywhere else should be just about free. I'll tell you right now ... Because I posted this question and read it before you did. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: Get your Facebook up and running and your Facebook groups going. We sell a lot of property in Facebook groups. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: So go ahead, Jill. Jill DeWit: That purchase price, depending on the area, even if you just put one of your properties in the MLS, say that you have several in the area, it'll drive them to your website, and you'll get your point across if you have a couple. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: And you can do these flat late listings anywhere from ... It's typically $95 to $295 is what it's going to cost. Steven Butala: Or in the high end, maybe four. Jill DeWit: So depending on the area.

When to Negotiate with Land Sellers NEVER (LA 1053) 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 sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about when to negotiate with the land seller? Never. Jill DeWit: Right. Well, I remember we were talking when we were in the kitchen writing our topics, and I don't remember even why this came up, but I'm thinking this is important. Everybody thinks that we should negotiate. You should be good at negotiating. You should read negotiating books. I'm like, why? Steven Butala: Even when you're this far along in your career, I catch myself not taking my own advice, and this is one of the things that I find people in our staff doing and I do it myself. I negotiate too much instead of just saying, "You know, that's it." Jill DeWit: Not going to happen. Steven Butala: Jill's famous for saying, "I love this asset at $22,000, but at $28,000 I hate it." Love it at 22, hate it at 28. It's up to you, Seller. Jill DeWit: By the way, this is going to come into play later on today when we have a meeting about a certain asset that I don't like the price, and you're trying to make it, you want to negotiate. I don't want to negotiate. I want to move on. 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: T Kyle asks, My first mailer went out on July 13th, 1500 letters to two different counties. Here's the response. This is so good. He got one "You're a loser" email in quotes. "You're a loser," got seven or eight "Take me off your list" calls, three counter offers that were way too high, one yes, but I priced way too high so I had to decline, two acceptable counter offers but the sellers ghosted me, and one negotiated sale that I will be closing on this week, hopefully will net me $10,000 in profit. That is so cool. That's this quick little down and dirty recap. Steven Butala: Exactly what you can expect. It sounds like he may be even priced it a little bit too high his first shot around, he or she. So do you think people go into this with the realistic expectation of what's going to happen in a mailer? Do you think we- Jill DeWit: Yes. Steven Butala: I'll turn it back around on us. Do we prepare them for what's really going to happen? Jill DeWit: Yes. Steven Butala: Because this is it, I think. This is an incredibly accurate recap. And I bet this is about a week old at least. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So this is probably times eight, so hopefully he's got four or five other $10,000 net properties in there, which is the type of mailer that happens to us. Jill DeWit: That's a good response for a 1500 unit mailer. That's a good response of a week's worth of activity. After three weeks it's a lot more and he's probably got a handful of deals now. So I think it's great. And I do think that we do, that's why we're here. I feel like that's my job. And that's the whole thing about Land Academy. We are here to properly convey what this is. I don't want to tell you this is easy. Everybody can do it. Piece of cake, whatever. No, I really want you to know what you're getting into because the right people will come into this with the right attitude and the right expectations and kill it. Steven Butala: Exactly.

Best Decisions You Can Make in Land Business (LA 1052) 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 Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the best decisions you can make in your land business. You were feverishly scribbling. Jill DeWit: I do. Steven Butala: Sometimes she scribbles before the show. Sometimes there's just like eh. Jill DeWit: There's a lot of thought. Steven Butala: It's the Steve show. Jill DeWit: Sometimes there's no thought. Yep. And sometimes I just say, "Yeah, I'll interview you." Steven Butala: Kidding aside, we've been doing this now almost 25 years. And I tell you, there's two or three things that I... There's some... I can save you a bunch of time, I think. And I'm interested. We never share each other's opinions about what the show's about. So let's see if they're the same. Jill DeWit: Right. It'll be fun. I have my ideas. You have yours, so we'll see. Steven Butala: Exactly. 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: Kevin shares, he's one of our moderators. I went a whole year answering my own phone. You can do it, but you have to be available. People don't like to leave voicemails. They want to talk to a person. The best decision I've made in this business- Steven Butala: All right. Here we go. Jill DeWit: ... was getting an answering service. I don't answer any calls. They all go through the answering service. Then I call back the ones I need to speak with. Huge time saver and this came from a... This was actually a response to a question that someone was putting in. They're like, "Hey, how important is this kind of a thing?" And that was Kevin's response, which of course, ties into our show today. I love it and I totally agree. And I know we're on the same page on this. In the beginning, it's good to get a feel for it. If you can answer your own calls, answer them all. If you have a missed call, call them back and call them back fast. If you have a day job and you can't quite can't do it, at all, then I would try to hire that out. Even if it's somebody that you know, inexpensively, because it's so important to get a voice on the other end when these people get your offers and they call back. After that, they might not take your call, lose interest, and you miss some stuff. Steven Butala: It's imperative. Excuse me, it's imperative to answer your phone. What I love about Kevin's statement here is that he did it for a year for himself. And then he made a decision because now he understands what goes on with these calls and the types of calls that come in and the concerns that the sellers have. So he spent a year collecting information, mentally, before he tasked himself to sub it out. And I think, even now, we just hired a new transaction coordinator, which was our original boots on the ground. He is in the process of answering these calls himself, which is tedious- Jill DeWit: It's eye-opening. Steven Butala: Tedious. Eye-opening is a great way to describe it. Tedious and time consuming and, at first glance, it's this is a waste of time but- Jill DeWit: Valuable. Steven Butala: It's a real solid experience. Jill DeWit: It is. You need to know where these guys are coming from.

The Rental Trap Defined (LA 1051) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the rental trap defined. Jill DeWit: Do you want to give the background on why we're talking about this? Steven Butala: The question that we should, the daily question is all about somebody who's in the rental trap and trying to get out. Jill DeWit: That's going to set up the show. Okay. I didn't know that. Steven Butala: Have you ever paid rent? If you've ever paid too much rent, you know what the rental trap is, but we'll talk all about it in a second and my suggestions on how to get out of it, like tomorrow. Jill DeWit: Right. And as you can tell, this is all around someone talking about being an investor in our world and posting a question about being in the rental trap in our world. Steven Butala: 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: And here it is. So Sean asked, "Bottom line is that I can't make great money." Steven Butala: "The bottom line is that I make great money." Jill DeWit: Okay, "But I can't afford to buy real estate in the city I work in. I'm stuck in the rental trap and it feels just like that a trap. I started looking to buying land and what it could do for me and I found Land Academy. I'm looking forward to starting on this land buying and selling business as soon as possible." Steven Butala: Excellent. Again, like I talked about, we're actually filming the back, behind the scenes kind of about this podcast, and earlier Jill and I were talking about this and I said, "This is a perfect Land Academy member." Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: They're doing well financially. They're already having some success in their life, regardless of whether it's a great job, or you own another company, but those types of people seem to be the superstars in our group. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: They're really familiar with the nuts and bolts of how to run stuff and be successful, and they had what it takes or have what it takes to do something else. And now they're applying all that, their personal style of how to do this with buying and selling real estate and they're just killing it. Jill DeWit: Well, and they're simply just looking forward. They're not just sitting there working their day job thinking, "Well, I guess this is it." I mean, a lot of people that's what they do. But to be sitting there taking a step back going, "All right, I'm actually doing okay. I need to be doing something else because I'm not getting ahead like I should. There's more." Steven Butala: Right. So the rental trap, in my opinion, is this the meat of the show? Jill DeWit: Go for it. Steven Butala: This is the meat of the show. The rental trap, the technical definition of it is this. When you are renting and the percentage of your rent is, as a percent of your income, is more than 20%. That's actually my recommendation. It should never be more than 20%. So how do you do this if you live in a very expensive city? Well, you have roommates. Or, "Oh, that's great Steve, but I have a family and I have three kids and I can't just go have roommates.

No One Understands Land (LA 1050) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how no one really understands land Jill DeWit: And no one really understands women. I had to get that in there. Steven Butala: Is that how this is going to go? Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:00:23] set this up. Yeah. Well, I think when I wrote the ... I don't know when we were doing the topics if I wrote a [inaudible 00:00:28] like that. That was your ... I'm being funny. I'm trying to be funny. Steven Butala: So yesterday's episode was called What to Expect From Your First Mailer and all I kept thinking was that silly book when you have your first baby, what to expect when you're expecting. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: But I actually held that in unlike what just happened with you. Jill DeWit: Oh, sorry. I guess you're a better person than me. Steven Butala: No, not that. Just no. No. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: But now I know how it's going to go, so I'm just going to let it all out. Jill DeWit: Oh okay. Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Ben shares, "I finally got a good response to a mailer I sent out but everything coming back is either wholly covered or partially covered in wetlands." Interesting. "I have no idea how to price this or if I should even bother since it's not buildable. Any suggestions on how to come up with a value for wetlands or do you just automatically turn them down? Thanks." Steven Butala: It's one of those topics where I stared at it and I said, "Should I include this? Shouldn't I include this?" We haven't talked about wetlands in probably two years on this show. Wetlands are a property that is either intentionally designated by a municipality, like the city of Los Angeles. There's big expansive open spaces of real estate that ... specifically close to Marina Delray, that have been designated as wetlands either for environmental reasons, like there's special ducks that live there, or it's real estate that needs to be included in the development from a drainage standpoint and all that. A lot of reasons for wetlands. Jill DeWit: Is it like corporate engineering too? Steven Butala: Yes, yes, exactly Jill. Explaining how that all works is beyond the scope of this podcast but if you're into it you can get into it on Google and find out what it's all about really quickly. Steven Butala: And then the other type of wetlands is what you find in Florida, which is just marshland. It's bayou type stuff and there's not as much in the West coast, but there's tons in the Southeastern part of the country. And that over the years people have figured out it seems. They'll build on floating houses or they'll adjust to the environment so there's a lot of regulations this day and age, both environmental and just building code stuff that unfortunately make it harder for people that are creative and how they want to live. They make it harder, so. Steven Butala: Wetlands themselves, to answer the question directly, we don't buy at all. And if you made a mistake and sent out a bunch of mail, and we've all done something like this,

What to Expect on Your First Mailer (LA 1049) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven 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 sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about what to expect on your first mailer. And usually I come up with these topics by myself in a dark room somewhere and Jill just plops down and does it with me. But today, and actually this week on all five of these episodes, we've got our camera guy, Daniel filming a behind the scenes, you know, video/I don't know what it'll end up being. We never know when it's going to end up being. Jill DeWit: It'll be good. Steven Butala: So you should check it out. The episodes may make little bit more sense when you see the back, behind the scenes part of it. Before we get into the topic today, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Sean asks, "My first mailer went out on July 15th and I have started receiving my first calls today. So 10 days later.". Steven Butala: Perfect. Jill DeWit: "I have a Vember number that I'm forwarding to PATLive. So all my calls get automatically recorded in Vember. Based in the seller responses so far, it's safe to say I didn't overprice." Good for him. [crosstalk 00:01:15] That means good response. "Oh, I didn't over price. Does that mean it's a lot of not happy people?" Steven Butala: Well this whole today's topic, well let's just say it. Today's topic is what to expect from your first mailer. This is kind of what triggered it all. So congratulations on getting your first mailer out. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: That's the hardest part. Jill DeWit: That's good. Steven Butala: Getting the first mailer in the mail and then beginning to deal with it and develop your business from there is what this is all about. Jill DeWit: And I think it's cool that he's recording all the calls so you can go back and listen to them later and get better with what he's doing over time. Maybe you get better at the questions that he's asking based on the seller responses. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: I think that's all. Or even just to laugh at later because I'm sure you have some good ones that are coming in. Steven Butala: Yeah. We do the same thing. We record everything. We use a system called ... What's it called? Jill DeWit: It's ... Well, streams and I can't think where it comes through, but Pentara. Steven Butala: Yeah. Okay. This is the meat of the show. So it's 19 ... No. For you, it's like 2008-ish. Jill DeWit: For me? Steven Butala: Yeah. So I'm going to ask you a question. Jill DeWit: Oh, okay. Steven Butala: It's 2008. the first mailer goes out that you and I have done together. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And so what's going through your head? Jill DeWit: Bring it. I'm not scared at all. I'm like, "I want to see this in action." I was never afraid of it. I'm like, "Bring it. Make my phone ring" and I've always been like that. "Make my phone ring." Seriously because whatever it is, I'll do my best to turn it into something. That's always how it's been. And if ... And it's funny because I really do set out, make it my goal.

Why HouseAcademy Launch was so Successful (LA 1048) Transcript: Speaker 1: Steven jewel here. Hello. Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Speaker 2: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California Speaker 1: Today. Jill and I talk about why, how's academy, why the launch was so successful? What do you think? Really quickly Speaker 2: I will [inaudible] Speaker 1: Buyer's ready to go. That's what I think too. Okay. That's exactly what I think. I think people in our land academy for things and that's people in our Atlanta Academy group. We're just ready to expand into a different product type and add it to their business. Is that what you mean by ready to go? Yup. Awesome. Me Too. Speaker 2: I'll elaborate one way. How often is it that we agree on this show? Look at us. We've come a long way, baby. You know what it's like. It's like we could read each other's mind. Gosh. It's like every man's nightmare. I'm going to, next time I'm going to, next time I say oven. Yeah. I know exactly what you're thinking. You're going to go spoil. I hope not. Yeah. Speaker 1: 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. Jeremy Ass. Speaker 2: I'm an ex. Pat. Been living around Southeast Asia for the past few years and really don't have plans to be in the u s for a few more than a few weeks a year. Is there anyone else here that operates from outside the U s I'd love to hear what road bumps you have had due to location. This biggest ones I'm currently predicting have to do with paying for the land. The advice I hear is to send out a mobile notary with a deed and a cashier's check, but not being the U s I'm not sure how I would actually mail the note or a cashier's check. Thoughts on this or anything else that might be missing. Speaker 1: It's interesting we had this topic yet on our Thursday call last week, Thursday webinar and Joel answer, you know, go ahead and answer it because I am Ireland. My advice, yeah, it's going to be very shortened and at the end, indifferent. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yours is very different than mine. Well [inaudible] my advice was do like this person's doing and put a note in land investors and talk to other members because we've had several of their members that have done this successfully. So, and the Nice thing is you can get a, you can get a mail place in the United States like a remote nail place, so your mail looks like it's coming and going from the U S and they'll bundle it up for you. We'll even open it and scan it for you. So it takes a lot of that part out of it. But there are a few things like this like, okay, how am I going to get money over there real quick? I mean you could maybe wire money. It does. There's just some tricky issues and I know everybody has different ways that they do. I'm trying to think what else I, what else did I say about it yesterday? I already for the, there's Speaker 1: A lot of ways to address all the little tiny things that need to go on in the land transaction from another country. But here's the way they address them all in my opinion. Get yourself a partner that's in state side and who's close to a bank branch and cut them in on the, maybe somebody that's retired, maybe an old buddy something where you guys have a joint bank account. And he's, you know, understands computers and how to print stuff out and, and that is easy, you know, that is the absolute best way. So I'll tell you. So here's an example. I mean, I see how I run these companies could be run from anywhere cause I don't actually do any of the real work except for like the stuff that I on a computer. So I can do this from Japan easily. [inaudible] Cause I know store the bank anyway, we did that on purpose, right? So you don't,

Working with Your Spouse (LA 1047) Transcript: Speaker 1: Steve and Jill here. Hi, welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala and I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Hi, Jill and I talk about working with your spouse. Speaker 1: I love it. I have never seen you feverously scribble notes before an episode like you just did just now. I have a lot to say, so this is either going to go really well for me or not. It's going to go just one. We felt our group took a while. That's it. You've got to find your group like a decade. I can help. Yeah, 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. Tabitha shares new member here. I've decided on two counties to mail, but wondering has anyone used the data list they downloaded for county more than once for a mailing for instance, or if I choose to only mail one fourth of the list after it's been scrubbed, but say the remainder to mail a month or a couple months later, is that feasible? Yes. Or does the data change rapidly enough that it's worth pulling and paying for the data? Again, for rural vacant land, you're going to be fine. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: In fact, real quest itself, we're a licensed provider, shows you how the age of the data exactly for houses. If you wait in a, in a real Hyde style, real low days on market area Speaker 1: Yeah. Can you go turn that fan on? Yes. In a real low days on market area, Speaker 3: You're going to see exactly how many d properties are turning. So if you've got a universe of properties in a zip code that are like a 5,000 and you've got two or three or 400 turning every month, which is substantial percentage wise, you might want to refresh the data and here's why data's real cheap. You don't have a line of data's 10 cents through us. You're not going to find it much cheaper than that. Right? What's expensive is the mail. So you don't want, you don't want to let this data kind of age on your desktop in excel for too long because now you're wasting 55 cents to send a send out an offer to somebody that's no longer there versus just 10 cents to to get you know, to purchase a data and keep it [inaudible]. Speaker 1: So what do you think? I think, let's just say if she did it within 90 days. Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. I mean for houses you gotta be for houses? No, I think you need real fresh data for rural vacant land, I really think you can get away with you can get away Speaker 1: Voter data a little longer. Yeah. So I think that's a really good question. And so we will do that. Like, like, you know, you don't want to send out 8,000 at once. Maybe you can't handle that, you know, volume wise, but maybe you can do chunks of 1500 at a time and have the next six weeks. You don't have 1500 drop in 1500 job and then play with it. And you'll know next time. Yep. I can more, I should pull less. No kind of thing. Speaker 3: Earlier on in the life of this podcast, we were really advocated sending out 1500 units a month. Right. and [inaudible] yeah. Well yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I really we're experimenting personally in our own company sending out 20,000 units all at once and it's actually working out pretty well, but we're really well staffed. Speaker 1: It's so nice. The more that you send out, I will say this, the more you send out, the more deals that come back, the more you get to review at that one time and pick the top five or 10 or whatever you could afford or handle. That's the best. So I love it. And now deal funny, you can handle more, but just more. Speaker 3: We're just on vacation. A couple of episodes. We were talking to a guy, we were talking about it and we got like a VRVO with another family. So it was a house and the backyard was a source...

Replacing Yourself by Job Description (LA 1046) Transcript: 00:00 Steven Butala here. Hi. Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala and Jill dewitt broadcasting from sunny southern California today. Jill and I talk about replacing yourself. Job description by job description. What real quick, what's the very first, without thinking about job description, the job that you want to replace yourself with, like ready, go transaction coordinator. Aw. How about you? Data scrubbing. Data scrubbing. Like replacing me. Like if I did this, if I was a one man show, I would quickly say that's not your, not your best talent. And I would sub that out. I gotta tell Ya. We'll get into it here in a minute. That's why we're together. I don't think you should sub that out. No, no. But I'd have a partner. Okay. So hold on a moment. Some questions, man, that scares me. You know why? Cause it's, that's my thing. I know. That's why I have you see, it's easy for me to say that cause I haven't had to get that into it. 01:00 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. 01:08 Let me get, let me clarify by saying that doesn't mean I'm not involved in picking the county pricing, the offers, getting into it like that. It's just the, the meat and the potatoes. You just are, you're, you have a Ph d in excel and you just whizzed through it and you make it look fun. You don't want, can I change my answer? Sure. Sales. Thanks. 01:29 I can't, I'm not good at that. I mean, I'm good at it. I don't like it. I don't want to talk to people on the phone, see if they want to buy the property or post that property on all over the Internet. Those are things that need to be outsourced, I think. And I'll tell you, if you talk to probably most of our members, I think they'd probably say, what are you talking about? That's the reason why I'm successful. Like our advanced members are all on the phone. And their personality is a reason that they, they're successful. Okay. 01:54 So we'll talk more about this. Nice here ongoing with that. Okay. Brian Ass. Well, I'm not exactly what you call a quickstarter. After much research and trying to figure out which course I wanted to take or if I wanted to wing it, I decided to join land academy. This is nice. This is, this is good. This is a huge first step for me. I found out about vacant land a couple months ago on a podcast. I think it was bigger pockets and I was instantly interested in it and began consuming all that I could to try and find out how to get started. I researched three other courses and while all three were less money, it didn't feel good about them. Too salesy, too much upselling, too slimy feeling. This is so cool. But after listening to about a hundred episodes of the podcast, emails with land, Academy support and even Facebook stalking the other members for reinsurance, this is, wow, Brian. 02:55 I'm so happy. This is great. I ultimately decided land academy was the bass and I was going all in. If you know me, you will know. It was a tough decision to join. I inherently doubt everything too. I doubt that it work. I doubt myself doing it. I doubt I worry when I worry. I do research, but at some point you just have to stop doubting, worrying, and reading and you have to jump in. Tonight I jumped to say, I'm excited about this. This is giving me goosebumps. I'm like, whoa. I'm just say that I'm excited about. This is the understatement of the year. Pay for publicity and publicity. So good. Like I told a family member, I will either fail miserably or I will succeed far beyond my expectations. I now have a monitor. I now have a monetary motivation staring at me,...

Real Estate Product Type and Financial Goal Setting (LA 1045) Transcript: Speaker 1: 00:01 Steve and Jill here. Good day. Speaker 2: 00:03 Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala and Jill dewitt broadcasting from sunny southern California. Today Jill and I talk about real estate pro, a real estate product type and financial goal setting. Speaker 1: 00:18 This is sounding like a real exciting show. Boy, I can't wait Speaker 2: 00:24 every week we have webinars for Land Academy House Academy, and for our advanced group members. And this came up in great detail last week. You know, and people were shocked because I think people's schedule, uh, set up budgets just like I want to make a a hundred grand this year instead of really getting into an about product type and setting the gold per product type every week. How many levers it back into it. So I'll cover it all. I know it's Boring Gel, but it's important. Speaker 1: 00:55 I have to tell you, I took no notes. I'm gonna just ask questions before we get into it. Speaker 2: 01:01 Okay, that's perfect. Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Is this a real name? No, I don't think so. Speaker 1: 01:12 Okay, but somebody put it in there like that. I copied and pasted it. Okay. Do it has in there. Wait a minute. If it was real well I haven't, I know of there's like, there was a, um, this is funny cases. Really good to, if you know who this is, you're going to go, how the heck do you know that one, Jill? But from the 80s there was a actor slash dancer who did a break dancing movies and it was Adolfo Shabu Quinones. This is coming from, I can't remember what happened yesterday. I know. I just heard cause I rivers watching. I had a couple of friends that really likes the breakdancing and I watched the movies with your friends, your friends. Like the Lord knows I can't dance so I couldn't do it. But anyway, it was a, it was a thing in the 80s right? For five minutes. So yeah, friends like to consume alcohol too. Don't there. Who? My friends, my car friends do. Speaker 1: 02:18 I have a friend who likes to watch break dancing. I'm, even though I've memorized it, right? The actor's name from the 80s it's all your friends. I'm sure it's right. So, uh, shabu says asking for a friend. Just kidding. Okay. Who has hired a transaction coordinator? I was looking, I've hired good ones and not good ones. I was looking to see if anyone would mind sharing their TC job description with me. Right now I am a one man show, but I'm trying to get an idea of what I could expect. Should I locally post a job for a transaction coordinator out of the public in my, out to the public in my area. I understand that. I will train them for my own specific systems and needs, but I wanted to get a real feel for what a land investors centric transaction coordinator job description might look like. I happen to have one of those. Oh by the way, I have a lot of stuff to say. I appreciate any guidance or advice or if you wouldn't mind emailing, emailing me one or if you know one posted online, I'd really appreciate the assist. Thanks in advance. Speaker 2: 03:25 Do you have a job description memorized? Cause I know you guys just sent all that out. Speaker 1: 03:29 I do not. I do not. I'm yours Speaker 2: 03:33 cause I have a lot to say on this. This is so important. This is a great question. And it,

Managing Your Business on Vacation (LA 1044) Transcript: Speaker 2: (06:06) If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in Apple Podcasts . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on Apple Podcasts. My staff and I read each and every one. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me directly at [email protected]. The BuWit Family of Companies include: https://BuWit.com https://offers2owners.com https://landinvestors.com https://landacademy.com https://landpin.com https://parcelfact.com https://countywise.com https://deedperfect.com https://ownersdata.com https://houseacademy.com I would like to think it’s entertaining and informative and in the end profitable. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Member Nick Sliger Shares House Academy Success Stories (LA 1043) Transcript: Steven: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hi. Steven: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. Today, we have Nick Sliger. I think Nick, you've been a member for since when? Sliger: About two and a half years. I think I joined in 17, or maybe ... I think I joined in 16 right at the end of the year. Steven: And I'm pretty sure you were at the last last live event, right? Sliger: I was. I'm coming back again and I'm looking forward to it [crosstalk 00:00:26]. Jill: Exactly. Steven: Give us a little background on how you found us and maybe what you did before you started buying and selling land? And tell us why it's working or not working? Sliger: All right, cool. I was in the fitness industry. I have a background in kinesiology. I was a sprint coach for awhile and worked in health clubs. And I guess the story goes, I was looking at how bad food was. It got me into gardening, which got me looking into wanting to farm, which took me to wanting to figure out how to buy some farmland. Sliger: Watching some YouTube videos came across a guy that bought this cool little farm from a back tax over the counter sale from a county. I started looking into that. I joined another program. Did that educational one, but I was still looking for some more information. And as I was looking around trying to learn, I came across you guys. It was back when you guys were giving away a free acre in Cochise County with a signup. Steven: That was a long time ago. You've been with for quite awhile. Sliger: And I signed up and got that one and that was my first one. I followed your guys advice. I did the $1, no reserve, 30-day Ebay. $3.99 doc fees. I sold it for $4.20. I got $8.19 out of it. Jill: Perfect. Sliger: That was pretty cool. One to get me going. Steven: Was that your first deal? Sliger: That was my first one. I didn't technically buy it by source in any mailers or anything like that but I got it with the program and I sold it. And that was my first one. [crosstalk 00:01:55] Steven: My first deal. You remember the first girl you kissed. Sliger: Exactly. Steven: And the last one. You recouped almost all of the purchase price for that program, right? Sliger: Yeah, a huge amount. And I remember listening to your podcast back then you were always saying that, "Don't quit your day job until it's costing you money." Well, I was in between jobs right then and I was actually looking to start a little farming business. But I put that on hold and I started this land business. But I started to go through and buy some more properties it pretty quickly ate up all my acquisition funds. Sliger: And as I extrapolated where my money was going, I had determined that I needed to go back and get a regular job or I was going to spend through all my capital just paying bills. I went back and I got a job, just a couple months after I started, and I've been working that though the whole time driving a truck. But my goal is to quit that here soon. Hopefully, within another property or two I'll be in a position to end that. Jill: You're close. Sliger: I want to join the 33%. Jill: Yay. That's so good. I'm so glad. Steven: I'm so glad it's working out for you. Jill: Well, I'm glad that you did the right thing. You went back and said, "All right, I want to do this right. And if I have to get a day job for a little while, fine. It'll pay the bills.

Value of our Weekly Member Webinars (LA 1042) 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 sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the value of our weekly webinars. Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. I have a lot to say about this. Our members have a lot to say about this. We have some people that are like... We get a lot showing up on these calls. I mean, it's very common to have over 75 people on these calls every week. And they are, they're faithful and they're there- Steven Butala: and they're doing deals. Jill DeWit: I know. And there's really something to be said for being... It's like having a meeting with your peers every week. It really gets you going, gets you motivated. That's one of my things. So we'll talk more. Steven Butala: Yeah. I have two major points to. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: I'll just give you a heads up. Number one is this really is what separates us from everybody else in this space. Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: And number two is that we can't fake it. We know what we're talking about. Jill DeWit: It's true. Steven Butala: You can't fake this stuff, the answers. And if we don't have the answers and we don't sometimes, somebody else in the call does from the advanced groups. Like, "Oh yeah, I just went through that. This is what you do." Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: We're actually buying selling real estate, a lot of us, in this group and I think that's what separates us. Jill DeWit: I agree. 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: Jeff asks, "I've been adding different land investor tools on Google sheets and now it has three worksheets. One detailed ROI calculator and footage per acre calculator, Two, comp calculator, which is a basic way to get the averages and do the data entry. Three, payment comparison allows you to see and compare up to three different seller financing terms. Here's the link." How nice is that? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: I haven't checked the quality on it, but that's my point. Actually, I put this in here and so if you want the link and you want to go check this out, it's on a Google sheet. Everybody can see it. Jill DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: Check it out on Land Investors, just keyword search this. Jill DeWit: Talk about the value of our group. Steven Butala: That's why I put it in there. Jill DeWit: Holy Cow. Jeff, that was really nice to share that with everybody. See, and that's the thing, that's tied into this whole thing. Steven Butala: Yeah, that's why I did it. Jill DeWit: Thank you. I mean, that's the value of our calls and you just said, "You want to get to the meat of the show and then I'll start talking?" I'll keep talking. Sorry. Steven Butala: No, why don't you say it today? T Jill DeWit: Today's topic, the value of our weekly member call, member webinars, excuse me. It's a member call slash webinar every Thursday. This is the meat of the show.

Member Bei Zhang Shares House Academy Success Stories (LA 1041) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk with member Bei Zhang, who shares her Land Academy success stories and maybe some potential failures. Well, let's see what we talks about. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Bei, am I pronouncing your last name correctly? Jill DeWit: Bei Zhang. Bei Zhang: Yeah, Zhang. Exactly right. It sounds like Jong. Steven Butala: All right. Awesome. Tell us a little bit ... In the pre-show, Bei, you were talking about how you just got back from China. That's super interesting. Tell us what happened. Bei Zhang: Yeah. Well, this is a special trip and me, my mother-in-law and [inaudible 00:00:42], my nine-year-old daughter, and then also our nephew, we all come together to Beijing to meet my parents' side. So spent two weeks there and visited the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, those parks ... It's fabulous. Yeah. It's fun. Jill DeWit: Wow. I'm jealous. Steven Butala: So it was all just a social fun trip. No work? Bei Zhang: Yeah. I tried to cut off my workflow. I try to forget there has work, just fully enjoy my trip. So customer who leave the voicemail to me, I feel bad. I never really returned a call. Yeah. Jill DeWit: You have to do that sometimes. That's okay. Bei Zhang: Yeah, sometimes. Jill DeWit: That's not your norm. I know it. You have to really ... We have a trip coming up actually soon. By the time this airs, we'll be back from the trip, but ... Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Actually, we'll be on the trip. I don't even know. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Anyway, we're going to go to Santa Barbara, and I'm really trying to orchestrate it so I don't have to do that much. There's always something I've got to check on, a few little things, but if I could do an hour a day, then it's perfect. I'm okay with that. Bei Zhang: Yes. Steven Butala: How does real estate work in China these days? Jill DeWit: Yeah. Bei Zhang: I think it is highly regulated by the government. So the government, they're really involved in the lot of those policies, so I think you have to have a very deep relationship with someone in that industry, in the government, to help you. It's not like everyone has an equal opportunity. That's how I feel. Steven Butala: Okay. Jill DeWit: Wow. Bei Zhang: Yeah. Steven Butala: I just read that Chinese individuals buying residential real estate in this country dropped off this year by like 30%, and everybody wants Florida because it's inexpensive. Jill DeWit: Really? Steven Butala: But for some reason ... I don't know if it's the local economy there. Do you have any insights on that? Bei Zhang: I think it just like the price are very high in those cities. [inaudible 00:02:43] ridiculously high. You think about how much you earn versus your salary and then housing price, the ratio is really high. Not like in the U.S. Your salary, you add together in the middle class, probably, I don't know, six years.

Infill Lots Explained (LA 1040) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the topic, Infill Lots Explained. Jill DeWit: I'm trying to think about how can I make a funny topic out of this and you really kind of can't. Steven Butala: I'm trying to think about that too. Jill DeWit: Like a little more entertaining. Steven Butala: That's exactly the same thought I just had. Jill DeWit: So the three of you that are listening, because you saw the title, good for you. Everybody else said, "Pass. I'll wait till the next show." Steven Butala: Everybody else is like, "I hope they're entertaining again." Jill DeWit: Yeah, what the heck. Steven Butala: A few of them are like, "Let's just watch these guys fail." Jill DeWit: Yeah, there we go. Steven Butala: It's like watching a car accident. Jill DeWit: This is good. Like a car accident. "Look at these two clowns trying to make infill lots entertaining." Entertaining real estate investment talk, except for today. Just kidding. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Ben shares, "I have two adjoining parcels under contract in Virginia. One is owned by my contact, the other, he owns 75% of, the other 25% does not have a clear ownership. His dad is the last in the listed owner, but he died after we divorced and remarried." Oh boy, this is going to be a good one. "The lady he married died several years ago, and no one has any clue who her heirs are, if any. I have talked to the contact several times and he really doesn't know. Apparently, he didn't really know his step mom, much less her heirs." Jill DeWit: "Title insurance won't insure with, and at this point I'm stuck. My title company isn't offering any ideas-" Steven Butala: Surprise, surprise. Jill DeWit: "But it seems like the scenario has come up some times. What ways are there to deal with this, if any? Here are the numbers. The deal is 87 acres, purchase price of $60,000.00, and we're looking at doubling our money on the flip, so it's worth putting in the effort." Ah, you wrote in it. Did you write this answer in the thing, or just no? Steven Butala: I paraphrased. Well, let's just say Kevin and I had the same opinion. Jill DeWit: Oh, all right. Steven Butala: Kevin, the moderator. Jill DeWit: Right. So here's Steven's answer. "Benjamin, you should call an attorney. They will need to do a quiet title suit. Yeah, it will probably cost $2,000.00-$3,000.00 and takes three months-" Steven Butala: Six months. Jill DeWit: Six months. "That will clear all of the possible errors and give you a clear title." That's worth it, man for... Let me think. Spend $2,000.00 or $3,000.00, wait three months to make $60,000.00. Yeah, I'd do that. Steven Butala: So would I. This is a great situation you've found yourself in, because even if somebody did get get there before you, they probably walked away cause it's just too much work. It's not too much work for us. It's not too much work for the people in Land Academy at all.

Top 3 Reasons New Real Estate Investors Fail (LA 1039) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the top three reasons new real estate investors fail, in our opinion. And I have to share with you, we are pre-recording these episodes because we are happily taking a vacation, a well-deserved vacation, in Santa Barbara the week that these air, or I guess the week before. Jill DeWit: No, the week these air. Oh no, it was the week before. You're right. I'm all confused. Steven Butala: See this big smile right here? See it? Jill DeWit: So who knows where I'm waking up right now and what we're doing right now, but we probably just had a week of craziness. Steven Butala: Yeah, after this is airing, that's exactly it. Jill DeWit: Exactly. 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: Marcus asks, "I've been pricing by zip code and when looking at comps, sometimes there are parcels in different towns, but the same zip code. However, these are parcels in a different county." That's nutty. Steven Butala: It happens all the time. Zip codes are for the post office. The county is for government. Jill DeWit: Right. "So my gut tells me I'm overthinking this and just price by zip code anyway. This happens because when getting comps, I'll put X county in the lands of America, et Cetera, and make a list of the prices and acreage for each zip code. Then when I download data for the county, I find new zip codes for which there were no comps. So I go back to the land-" Steven Butala: This is very intelligent. Jill DeWit: "-Websites, put in that zip code and bam, there are comps for those zip codes which are located in other counties. I feel like I'm doing something wrong here." Steven Butala: You're not. You're not doing anything wrong. Jill DeWit: "It's been a long week. Sorry, if none of this makes sense." This is awesome. You're good Marcus. That's so darn funny. Jill DeWit: Alright, so Kevin our moderator, responded already and his reply is, "Marcus, I used to get hung up on finding all the rights of cuts of pricing in a county. Here is the easy way that I use now. Download the data, sort by zip code, copy that zip code column into another tab. Remove duplicates. This is your list of zip codes to price. Then I just go to LandWatch or realtor.com et cetera. Plug in the zip codes and one at a time, get the comps." Jill DeWit: Does that make sense to you? Did I answer your question? Sure you did. That was a good quick tip. Steven Butala: I completely agree with Kevin here. I believe that I knew there's a larger string that goes on that we don't have. It's beyond the scope of reading this here. Poor Joe, you know? Jill DeWit: Yeah. and our listeners. Steven Butala: And the fact is this person's... It's rural vacant land. If it was [info lots 00:02:59] , I'd have a different answer. They were trying to cash a [info lot 00:00:03:02] mailer. In rural vacant land, the chances are of having a materially different price per acre with comparison values and everything. When half of a zip goes in one county and half's in the others is very, very, very small.

Why is There So Much Unwanted Land (LA 1038) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Friday. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about why is there so much unwanted land out there? Jill DeWit: Lucky for us. Steven Butala: Like yesterday, I've always wondered, you know, this is the kind of stuff that we end up talking about at cocktail parties. Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: Because I really think this is misunderstood. Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: Yesterday, too. I think that land itself is misunderstood and how much money you can make with land. And I think that it just centers around this word unwanted. It's shocking, staggering how much unwanted property there is out there. Jill DeWit: I want it all. It is not unwanted here. Steven Butala: There's something like 80 million vacant properties in this country right now. And so that's a lot of real estate at unwanted prices. Garage sale prices, a lot of it. At least half of it is that a garage sale price. Probably 10% of what it could potentially be worth, so we'll talk about it here 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: Marcus says, "Hey all, can you spreadsheet programs like Excel to be programmed to automatically scrub data? I think it would be great if I could enter in a bunch of words like school, township, cemetery, et cetera, and have the programs search the downloaded owner records and automatically delete every row that contain at least one of the keywords." Steven Butala: As you can imagine, there are a lot of responses to this on the Land Investors forum and Joe Martin, one of our advanced members, is gonna put a presentation on at our live event on exactly how he scrubs data. It's literally the push of a button. I've created systems like this too, and it's pretty amazing. The reason that we don't teach it and don't spread it around ... I actually don't even personally use one. I really want to still manually go through there and look at it. The reason is because I think you need to learn how to do it. I think if there's an easy button to all this, that's not good. I think you're going to miss so much. Scrubbing data manually is how you learn. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: That's the talent in this. There's a lot of things that go on. A Lot of moving parts to this business, but it starts with choosing a good county or choosing a good zip code. Getting that data in a format that you can use it and create a mail merge, and then getting the stuff out of there that doesn't make sense. Otherwise, you're sending tons and tons of mail out. That's inefficient, so this is a great intelligent question and yes, there's an answer and yes, we'll be talking about it in great detail in October. Jill DeWit: Right. There are some things that break, like you were just saying. There's some things that you can do to speed up the process for you that Joe is going to talk about at the event. But the other thing is you just got to get good at it too. If you're trying to do a workaround, I don't want you to do workarounds. you know what I'd rather you be doing right now? Spending time to not use a mouse in Excel. You think I'm kidding? Steven Butala: That's right, Jill. Jill DeWit: I'm not kidding...

Why Land is Overlooked as Investment Opportunity (LA 1037) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven 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: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about why land is so overlooked as an investment opportunity. I've been wanting to do this show for a long time. Land is so misunderstood even by people that have been in the real estate business as investors, or in some capacity of, very successfully, commercial real estate. Everybody looks at land like, "I don't know what to do with it." Jill DeWit: You know what? I think women are also misunderstood. I can't even say it. I'm not sure what to do with it. Steven Butala: That's a topic for a whole additional podcast. Jill DeWit: There we go. Steven Butala: Understandingwomen.com. Jill DeWit: That's right. Why are women ... I'm just kidding. Steven Butala: 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: Okay. Travis shares, "I'm looking to team up with people to tap into those counties with near inaccessible data that, as a result, don't often or ever get mailed. If you found a county which has quality data, but it's just not easy to get into a succinct mailer format, I want to know. If the data is solid and online, for example, they have a GIS or a tax record system, but you can't find it on Teleport or CoreLogic for whatever crazy reason, I can parse it, format it, scrub it, and mail it." This guy is great. Oh, my gosh, this is so funny. "If the data is not online, but Susan at the county can email it on Tuesday or even snail mail it, let's partner up to grab it, sort it, clean it, and send it. Steven Butala: Who is this guy? Jill DeWit: I like this. This is great. "I've got a knack and the computer skills for making that data pretty and getting it into a mail merge format. Give me your messy data. Macros, scrapers, scripts, formulas, whatever it takes, if there's a large enough payday potential, we can get that data formatted. In exchange, I'm looking to partner on mailers and deals, since I, too, am in the business of parcels for paper. Reach out to me and let's head off the competition. You find them, I'll scrub them, and we'll split the profits. Don't let, 'It's too hard to get this data,' get in the way. Let's charge through it together and we'll figure it out. Send me a message on Land Investors or shoot me an email at Travis," and you can go get it online. "I'm looking forward to hearing from you and wish you happy hunting." How cool is he? Steven Butala: Travis, here's my email. It's [email protected]. That's the one that you should use. I have a list of counties that I know fit into this criteria perfectly. Jill and I have way too much acquisition money these days, even after all the deals that we're funding. I'd be happy to finance the whole mailer, if you just orchestrate taking the calls, doing the data, and then popping the properties that come back in into deal funding. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: I can list the names of counties right now and where they are in that situation. We don't have the time. I can do this, too. I have actually the same talent that you do. I'm probably an older version of talent in how I do things, which is good for you and not for me, and I think we could make some magic together, actually, with Jill answering the phone and our staff right now.

Member Kevin Farrell Shares Land Academy Success Stories (LA 1036) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And, I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I interview member, Kevin Farrell, and he shares his Land Academy success stories, and hopefully, a little bit of his background. And, he's ... I can't wait to talk to you, Kevin, because you're not just a regular Land Academy member. You're nice enough to be the moderator on land investor sites. And, [crosstalk 00:00:30] a bunch of stuff to ask you. It's awesome. Jill DeWit: Yep, thank you Kevin, glad you're here. Steven Butala: Yeah, so Kevin, tell us a little bit about [inaudible 00:00:38]. Kevin Farrell: All right, I'm glad to be here. When 2016, I had determined that I wanted to get into real estate investing, and I was looking really hard at small, multi-family, small apartment buildings. I was hanging out on Bigger Pockets, and discovered Seth Williams over there. And, I thought, well, the land thing sounds pretty interesting. So, I started researching land. And actually, Jill, I don't know if you remember. While I was on Bigger Pockets, I was looking for ways to get tax delinquent lists for counties, and you piped in over there and said, "Hey, you don't need to do that, because you're going to miss a lot of deals." Jill DeWit: Exactly. Kevin Farrell: And so, you and I scheduled a phone conversation. We talked, and I ended up joining October, 2016, something like that. And at the time, we were running a pest control business in Indianapolis. And, that was my full-time deal. So, I knew this was going to be part-time for awhile, and we reached that point in 2018 in the spring. We decided if we're going to go full-time with land, I just can't do the pest control work anymore. Kevin Farrell: So, we sold that business, and that's ... It's easier to say than it is to do. It takes awhile to get everything together and wrap that all up. We sold that business, and at the same time, we had an opportunity to buy the condo that we're in now for cash. And, we sold our home. So, that whole summer was just kind of like, a real long train wreck thing. Kevin Farrell: I wasn't sending any mail out. We had properties and inventory, so I could sell a few here and there, but from June until October, we didn't work on the land business. And so, that's just devastating. So basically, we rebooted our land business toward the end of 2018. Kevin Farrell: Really, the first quarter of this year is when we're really trying to hit the numbers that we're working on right now. And, what I'm doing is, even though I don't meet these goals every month, I'm trying to send out 3,000 offers a month. And, I'm purposely targeting areas that are higher priced. Some of these are east of the Mississippi. The personality of these counties and the way people respond is totally different than rural, vacant desert property out west, so the numbers are lower, I think. Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kevin Farrell: The response rate is lower. That also meets my needs. My wife and I concluded that we weren't very good at building a really high-volume business, working with smaller properties, but actually, you know, trying to do 10 or 20 deals a month. We failed that. Kevin Farrell: But, we're pretty good at doing some larger dollar deals. I'm fine with doing three or four that make 10 or 20 K a month, and that's what I'm working towards right now.

Planning for Your Family Legacy Like Saras Farm (LA 1035) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Good day. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Steve: and I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Jill: Today. Jill and I talk about planning for your family legacy, like Sarah's farm. Steve: Who The heck is Sarah? Jill: Sarah is our niece and this is because of a story that I heard, and I was talking to your sister yesterday and she was sharing with me Sarah's farm, one of their properties that they purchased, and I thought this was really, really cool and I want to talk about it more. Steve: If you're a regular listener, you know this, but my middle sister is... It lives in Trevor City, Michigan, and she's extremely successful residential real estate agent. She's actually the single only residential real estate agent that I enjoy spending time with. Jill: That is true, well hey wait, there's two. Steve: Oh yeah. Jill: Well we have two, we have one more local. Steve: Yeah, and so she's been accumulating property. She pours a lot of her money, the commission money that she earns ,into buying properties, and I think she's up to what, 20 or 30 or something? Jill: 20 doors. Steve: And so one of them is Sarah's farm, which I think... Tell the story. Oh no, okay wait... Jill: We'll save it for the show. 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: Mike L. asks, "Hi Steve and Jill, I recently sent out a mailer and have been getting calls back. It's exciting, but everyone wants more than we are offering. I'm okay with that, but I'm having trouble properly assessing the true market value against the land flippers on LandWatch who are properly following your advice and to price less than the cheapest listed seller to move land fast. We have no seller lists yet and we have priced well enough it seems, but we can't move much higher if I'm basing the sales price off the lowest seller. I can find... The lowest one I can find on LandWatch. Have you or others had any experience with this? Is it worth acquiring with the expectation that the sales price will fall more towards the average low? Steve: Yes. Jill: Usually other flippers or the one or two that are viciously low. Please help. I've got an example below if my question didn't make sense. Steve: It makes complete sense. Jill: I'm sorry. I'm going to say what he put in here too? This is so cute. Oh, this is a good... hey, good way to do this. This is how you get on this show. He put hashtag podcast question, hashtag love the show hashtag. I'll put whatever I have to put here to get on this show, hashtag you just told us to do something like this to get your question on the show. Mike. Hashtag Mike, you did great. Steve: That was hilarious, Actually. Jill: Perfect. Steve: I didn't even realize that when I put this question in here. Jill: That was so good. Alright. Do you want me to read the example? Steve: He says, "For example, we listed a property for $750 and they made an offer for $750 and the guy wants four grants. So the cheapest on LandWatch is 2,500 everybody else falls into the four to $5,000 range for the same property that's in a planned urban development. That's east coast, east coast speak for mash plan community.

How to Be a Land Investor with a Day Job (LA 1034) 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 Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how to be a land investor with a day job. Jill DeWit: A lot of people do it. Steven Butala: I know. I saw you scribbling and scribbling [crosstalk 00:00:18] notes before the show. Jill DeWit: I have a lot of notes. Steven Butala: I think this topic was a Jill written topic, and I think it came from an interview we did last week. Jill DeWit: Or, maybe it's because I had this job too. Steven Butala: You had a job once? Jill DeWit: I had it ... Well, yeah. But there was once upon a time I was doing this with a day job, and it was comical. Steven Butala: [crosstalk 00:00:36] remember that actually. Jill DeWit: I had two desks back to back. It's very true. I wish I had a picture of that, I probably do somewhere, where I had the desk in front of me where I was doing my primary work. And then the phone would ring and I whipped back around and I had a makeshift desk. Not even a real desk, but just kind of what I can throw together behind me with another computer, and I would answer the phone. Steven Butala: I remember that. Jill DeWit: And help the buyers of the sellers, or whatever it was, at our land business, until the day came that it didn't make sense for me to do that anymore. Steven Butala: I remember being shocked and amazed at the stuff that you were coming up with during that time. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: There are some people, if you've been in this business for a while and you've had employees or worked with partners, there's some people that, you just don't have to explain stuff to. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: And Jill is one of those people. Jill DeWit: You know what else, I was just naturally excited. And I see that now too with new people coming along. It's fun when they get into it and go, "This is actually cool," and they learn how to do it, and they're ... especially watching their bank balance, that that for me is very motivational. Steven Butala: Yeah. Speaking of fun, this question was posted by Joe Martin, who's one of our top performing members in the advanced group. Jill DeWit: And he's fun. Steven Butala: And this is all retro back to when he joined, and he just got done with his first mailer. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: Let's take a question here before we get into the actual show. Jill DeWit: Cool. All right, so Joe Martin from our online community at landinvestors.com says, this is from February, 2018, this is good, "Hi all. I wanted to provide an update on my first mailer. I joined Land Academy as a silver member in mid-December, and my first mailer went out the first week of January." Jill DeWit: "Last week, I received a call from a seller and his message was clear, 'I accept your offer.' During due diligence, I found out that he owned four more properties in the same area. I called them back to discuss the other properties and he agreed to sell them all." Jill DeWit: "Now for the best part, I have purchased five parcels, three 39.

33% of Our Members Quit Day Jobs to Invest Full Time (1033) 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 Jill Dewit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about our current flip tool line up. Years and years and years in the making and it all comes down to this. We have developed, just through the nature and the course of improving our own land flipping business, all these tools. When we started Land Academy everybody said, "Well, can't we use that tool to do it?" Through over the years, since 2015, Jill and I have web enabled our tools for everyone to use in the group and that their response has been fantastic. So Jill will get into in a second. Jill DeWit: It's going to be good. Some of them, we are licensed providers and I'll share that. And some of them that we flat out created because they didn't exist, and we needed them. Steven Butala: There's a lot. We charge, in my opinion, a very small subscription fee to access all these tools that we've been developing. I've been developing since the 90s and how to use them, with the education on how to use them. Jill DeWit: And it's not cheap. Steven Butala: It's worth spending an episode on. Let's put it that way. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Yeah. Before we get into it though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and before we get into Jill, I'm going to tell you it's lengthy. Jill DeWit: I took a deep breath and then he goes, "Before you start." Ah, okay. Steven Butala: If we had any formal in front of the camera or radio audio training, none of this would happen. Jill DeWit: Thanks. Okay. Can I go now? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Okay. David says, "Hey, all I'm a terms guy that loves selling property on terms. I've been putting my foot into the water for larger properties. However, my comfort is with the stuff that's less than $15,000 and I've had a lot of success there and I want to continue to scale that income. I've had a ton of success on Facebook, buy and sell marketplace and continue to market there. I have VAs, virtual assistants, hired to help with that. Had plenty of success on lands.com, Land Century, et cetera, and I have Vas to help with that. I'm trying to continue to scale up and each of these places has a limit to them, but in reaching times the number of potential buyers or the number of posts you can make without getting your accounts slapped, your hand slapped or doing paid traffic. So trying to figure out how to continue to scale up. I think Craigslist could be the answer. Jill DeWit: On the other hand, where I've had the largest amount of frustration has been on Craigslist. There's so many moving parts and I know that other people have had massive success there. I've even talked to some land specific... taken some land specific courses on Craigslist to try and better master it. I that we've made some progress, but I'm still not satisfied with my stick rate. Probably around 60 to 70% and I get a few responses that are mostly tire kickers with a buyer that comes in every few months. The people who are crushing it seem to get an 85 to 90% stick rate and are selling properties left and right using Craigslist." Steven Butala: A stick rate is, I post a piece of property on Craigslist and it doesn't get taken down, 85 to 95% or 90% of the time.

Our Current Flip Tool Line Up (1032) 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 Jill Dewit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about our current flip tool line up. Years and years and years in the making and it all comes down to this. We have developed, just through the nature and the course of improving our own land flipping business, all these tools. When we started Land Academy everybody said, "Well, can't we use that tool to do it?" Through over the years, since 2015, Jill and I have web enabled our tools for everyone to use in the group and that their response has been fantastic. So Jill will get into in a second. Jill DeWit: It's going to be good. Some of them, we are licensed providers and I'll share that. And some of them that we flat out created because they didn't exist, and we needed them. Steven Butala: There's a lot. We charge, in my opinion, a very small subscription fee to access all these tools that we've been developing. I've been developing since the 90s and how to use them, with the education on how to use them. Jill DeWit: And it's not cheap. Steven Butala: It's worth spending an episode on. Let's put it that way. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Yeah. Before we get into it though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free, and before we get into Jill, I'm going to tell you it's lengthy. Jill DeWit: I took a deep breath and then he goes, "Before you start." Ah, okay. Steven Butala: If we had any formal in front of the camera or radio audio training, none of this would happen. Jill DeWit: Thanks. Okay. Can I go now? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Okay. David says, "Hey, all I'm a terms guy that loves selling property on terms. I've been putting my foot into the water for larger properties. However, my comfort is with the stuff that's less than $15,000 and I've had a lot of success there and I want to continue to scale that income. I've had a ton of success on Facebook, buy and sell marketplace and continue to market there. I have VAs, virtual assistants, hired to help with that. Had plenty of success on lands.com, Land Century, et cetera, and I have Vas to help with that. I'm trying to continue to scale up and each of these places has a limit to them, but in reaching times the number of potential buyers or the number of posts you can make without getting your accounts slapped, your hand slapped or doing paid traffic. So trying to figure out how to continue to scale up. I think Craigslist could be the answer. Jill DeWit: On the other hand, where I've had the largest amount of frustration has been on Craigslist. There's so many moving parts and I know that other people have had massive success there. I've even talked to some land specific... taken some land specific courses on Craigslist to try and better master it. I that we've made some progress, but I'm still not satisfied with my stick rate. Probably around 60 to 70% and I get a few responses that are mostly tire kickers with a buyer that comes in every few months. The people who are crushing it seem to get an 85 to 90% stick rate and are selling properties left and right using Craigslist." Steven Butala: A stick rate is, I post a piece of property on Craigslist and it doesn't get taken down, 85 to 95% or 90% of the time. Jill DeWit: Exactly.

Benefits of Networking at Live Events and Online Webinars (1031) 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: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the benefits of networking at live events and online webinars. I have to tell you, before we get started, I didn't believe in these things. It's the truth. I didn't want to have the first live event that we had. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: It turned out to be just a smash hit. Jill DeWit: It's funny. I'll have to share. We scheduled it, then we unscheduled it. We were doing it, then we're not doing it. We're doing it, we're not doing it. Then we're like, "There's people coming." I said, "Steven, we have to do this. There are people, they bought plane tickets." He said, "Fine." Then, in the end, we did two last year, and it was a hit. Steven Butala: Huge hit. Jill DeWit: Huge hit. Steven Butala: The people that were involved in those events, we'll get into it [inaudible 00:00:56]. We'll tell you why they are doing so much better in their careers than they would have done just on their own. Us included. We're doing partnership and deals with a lot of the people that were at those events. Jill DeWit: I think that's the point of this show. It's the results that we did not even expect that came out of that. Steven Butala: Hey, 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: Kevin asks- Steven Butala: This is a share. Jill DeWit: Or shares, excuse me. Steven Butala: This is Kevin Farrell, our moderator. Jill DeWit: Kevin shares, is this a warm fuzzy thing? Steven Butala: Yeah, it is actually. Jill DeWit: Since it's a share. Steven Butala: Kevin is so diligent and he's so bright, and such a good writer. He's a moderator on the site for us. He's also an active member. He really has something to say here. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: It's very valuable. Jill DeWit: Hi everybody. I have run into counties where it's very hard to use their data. I am also seeing this problem when helping others make sense of out of their data. I will try to break down what good data and bad data looks like. This is good. Jill DeWit: Bad data. Zero percent on improved returns with parcels with houses on them. You think that would make sense. Vacant land returns parcels with houses on them. Acreage is incorrect in the data, and many records have no mailing addresses. Comps vary widely starting low and jumping up rapidly, like one thousand dollars, two thousand, 25 hundred dollars, 45 hundred dollars, eight thousand dollars, 12 thousand five hundred dollars, 19 thousand dollars, 50 thousand dollars and up. Variation in comps does not seem to be related to the location or zip codes. Jill DeWit: Usually these things happen in counties with no GIS system available. That's a little tip right there. Steven Butala: Yeah. Hold on one second please. That's the key. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: You can separate, if you want to skip along the top on this, and really, you're kind of a weekend warrior investor.

Tax Lien Investing Explained (1030) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about tax lien investing explained. Yesterday we talked about tax deeds, today we're going to talk about tax liens. Jill is just as underwhelmed today about this as she was yesterday. Jill DeWit: They are really good ... It's good. I mean, when you get going, if you're looking for another way to find some properties inexpensively, roll them in, these are all good things and you should, no matter what, know about them. When you see transactions come through, you see a treasurer's deed, you know what it is and things like that. Steven Butala: In our little investing operation, Jill learns about it, once it hits our system. She doesn't know how it gets there. She's more involved in it than that, but she doesn't care I'll say. Jill DeWit: Back in the day, how about that? Steven Butala: If stuff hits the system, hits the CRM and it's in an acquisition process, it could be a tax lien, it could be a tax deed, chances are it's from the mailer. Like 90% of them are from the mailer, but once in a while, a lien foreclosure like we're going to talk about here in a second, or a tax deed hits it. The profit margins on those are extraordinary.r Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: It takes a lot more effort and a lot more time, and quite honestly, a lot more raw IQ score to get through the tax deed and tax lien process as it does to send out mail. The point is, she doesn't care. She just has something to sell and she sees how much it costs and she's like, “Well, yeah. I can sell it for more than that.” Jill DeWit: The last time I checked, because that's your role. It's part of why we have a beautiful thing. That's your thing. Steven Butala: We have a beautiful thing together, Jill and I. Jill DeWit: We do. No, honestly, I know about them. I know how to do them, but I don't do them. That's kind of your side of the sheet. My side of the sheet is all the other stuff. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Hey, before we get into it, let's take a question, a very, very lengthy question potentially, posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Lou asked, "Hi all. I just downloaded my first data set. Yay. The only problem is that there are no mailing addresses on the spreadsheet. Did I do something wrong? Luckily, this county had only 500 people that met my criteria, so I'm only wasting $50, but I would much rather get a list with mailing addresses in the future and not waste any money. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you, Lou." One of our moderators, Kevin, responded right away. "Lou, that is a real disappointment. In the future, you should spot check the data before downloading by clicking on a few of them at random and then copy the APN. You can look up each sample and make sure that the mailing addresses are included in the assessor data. Some counties have really bad data." That's the point here, and some counties may withhold mailing addresses, so it's real. Steven Butala: That's exactly right, and then there's one more comment here, but the fact is this. RealQuest, and DataTree, and everybody else on the ChannelPro 24/7, they're data aggregators. That's what they do. They don't create the data.

Tax Deed Investing Explained (1029) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, Entertaining Land Investment Talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about Tax Deed Investing Explained. Jill DeWit: You know what? I have been really looking forward to this show. Steven Butala: Why's that? Jill DeWit: I was actually being sarcastic, sorry. Steven Butala: Go ahead. Jill DeWit: I'm happy we're doing it. It's a very great way to do what we do, however, it's not my most exciting thing. Steven Butala: Jill gets to take a break and- Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: ... read a magazine- Jill DeWit: Pretty much. Steven Butala: ... during these kinds of shows. But what I'll tell you what I'm going to cover here. One of the greatest things about tax deed and taxing investing, is that if you're just starting out, or if you run a Wall Street fund, they're great vehicles, by any measure, to make a ton of money. Specifically as you're starting out, it doesn't take any money, you can literally buy a couple of tax deed property and own a property for 2 or 300 hundred bucks or less. Double your money, double your money and pretty soon you're on your way. So it's a huge, huge opportunity. It's also pretty complicated. So if you're a relatively intelligent person and you figure this stuff out, utilize the resources all over the internet, including ours, there's not a lot of competition. I'm going to read you the stats and stuff once we get into the show, they're pretty staggering. Jill DeWit: So is it safe to say though, if you're just starting out, this takes a little bit of work. Steven Butala: It's going to take- Jill DeWit: You may not want to start here even though it sounds attractive. Steven Butala: Let's just say, if you have a full-time job, and a couple of kids around the house, like all of did or do, it's going to take you about six months of research before you actually start writing checks- Jill DeWit: There you go. Steven Butala: ... on both the buy side and the sell side and that's if you're doing everything right. [inaudible 00:01:57]. I don't want to scare everybody here, but real estate investing is not for a C- high school student. Jill DeWit: That's really good, and it's true. 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: Danny asks, "Hello, I just heard shocking news that Zillow requires proof of ownership, such as a signed warranty deed or county tax record with my name, in order verify the submitted listings. I recently succeed in getting a bunch of option sales for the first time, and I do not own anything yet. I want to market the property first in order to purchase them eventually. Jill DeWit: Here are my questions. Number one, what are the ways I can market the properties for option purchase if not Zillow? Number two, they mention that if I want to market properties I do not own, I need to use MLS in order to post it on Zillow. Is having a real estate agent or getting a license by myself an inevitable element of option purchase? This is a lot of work he's looking [crosstalk 00:03:06]. Steven Butala: All the shows this week have pretty detailed...

Why Aren't You Rich Yet (1028) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the topic why aren't you rich yet. Jill DeWit: Did I come up with this, or you come up with this? Steven Butala: I did. I went back and forth on it. I'm like you know, but we need to talk about it. Jill DeWit: But, and I'm going to not soften it, but I have a spin on it that I think you'll like. Steven Butala: Okay, good. Jill DeWit: Okay 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. Jill DeWit: Edgar asks, "A seller contacted me about a house that is a tear down that he inherited. Comps are all over the place, but the home isn't really worth much. The land is zoned for multifamily and I need help analyzing this. I'm almost inclined to offer $120,000 just for the land, but then again, I don't want to scare off the seller. Anyone interested, I'd be more than happy to provide the property address, et cetera. This will also be a great partnership offer, so anyone with this kind of capital would be great, and either tips and hints will be greatly appreciated." I like these. Steven Butala: Edgar, I'm not picking on you, but I chose this for a reason and it's not pretty. Jill DeWit: Uh oh. Steven Butala: This is exactly why people fail at doing a real estate deal and they get out of this business forever, and it's tragic. Every week people come to Jill and I and they say, "hey, I got this deal," and it's all over the map. I've been approached by people that have land in Costa Rica and stuff. This deal wasn't generated from a mailer, meaning you didn't go through it. This is data week, by the way. This is the last part of data week, last episode. Steven Butala: When you put a mailer together, and if you do it according to how we teach it and how we mentor it, there's a tremendous amount of brain power, and knowledge, and tools, and access to tools, and assessor data, and all kinds of stuff to ensure that you're not going to fail. That there's pricing methodologies and comparison values and all kinds of algorithmic, incredible intelligence that goes into pricing a mailer so that when somebody opens their mail on their kitchen table in the morning and they're having a cup of coffee, and it says, "Hey, I'd like to buy property in Nevada or wherever for $32,314.18." That's not an accident. Steven Butala: When I hear a question like this, "Hey, my buddy called and I got this property, he inherited it, he doesn't understand, and I'm thinking about $120,000. What do you think?" That you're setting yourself up to ridiculously fail. Jill DeWit: Exactly right. Steven Butala: And it's insulting. It's insulting to everybody who is a professional real estate investor. They're just kind of tick, have a beer and throw a dart at the board and $120, $130, $140, $95,000, I don't know. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Edgar, I'm not picking on you specifically, I'm just saying there's way more into it that goes into this than just picking a property and trying to see what happens. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: In fact, I would go so far as to say this, and I'm not saying it to you,

Complimenting Data Results with Offers to Owners (1027) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about complementing the data that we've been talking about and the data results with sending offers to owners. All of this data discussion this week and all this data analysis, which everybody in this group loves so much, me included, is for nothing if you don't actually get an offer campaign into the mail. Jill DeWit: If you don't use it, basically. That's [crosstalk 00:00:42]- Steven Butala: If you don't use it. Jill DeWit: That's right everyone. You have all this data. What are you going to do with it now? Steven Butala: It's like getting a PhD in whatever and then just going to work at McDonald's. Jill DeWit: Right? We know people that have done that, right? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Oh, gosh. Steven Butala: For whatever reason, that's just their own- Jill DeWit: It's true. Steven Butala: I don't know. Jill DeWit: That happens. Steven Butala: Hey, 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 asks, "I just tried to get the new RealQuest to get data and it tops out at 1,000 units. I reviewed and re-watched Steve's video, but I can't find an option to request more. Has anyone else had this problem?" This is good. There's a little buoy. This comes up before. I'm going to answer some of the responses here and then I'll save a little bit more too on [inaudible 00:01:31]. Steven Butala: This is an extremely popular question. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Kevin, one of our moderators responds. He says, "Hello John, this is a common question. Log on to RealQuest Pro and click on the upper right hand corner. Click on preferences. In the box about halfway down you'll see a maximum number of records to retrieve per search. Type in the number that you want up to 25,000. I have mine at 25,000 all the time." Here's the reason why. When you're going and downloading the data, that's when the clock starts ticking if you will. The records that you pull, what you're charged for per line. We cap it at 1,000 so you don't accidentally as you're playing around and you're learning, and you're new, and you're just in RealQuest Pro for the first time, we don't want you to accidentally download way too much data and then be stuck paying for it. So that's why we cap it as 1,000. Jill DeWit: Then we know too, when we know you're in there, you can get in the back end of that and alter it. You're learning it and you know what you're doing and you can change it to the level that you want. Some people put it at 5,000, some people put it at 10,000. And like Kevin, just leaves it at 25,000 because he just wants to be able to pull whatever he wants. He knows how to do the math when he's doing it and what he's going to get charged. What I was going to say too is, if you go to your new member guide, it's explained there, and then also on landacademy.com, on the little buoy in the, I think it's the bottom right, but there's a little help buoy you can put in there. Steven Butala: There's a buoy everywhere. Jill DeWit: RealQuest records and the information will pop right up for you.

Our In-House Title Escrow Company is COMING SOON (1026) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about our in house title escrow company that's coming soon. Jill DeWit: Coming back soon. Steven Butala: And it's not, not that, it's nothing new for us. This'll be our third launch of our title and escrow company. Jill DeWit: You think it's three? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: You think so? Steven Butala: We had to turn it off twice because it was so popular. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: We weren't staffed up right. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: It was priced a little bit incorrectly. Jill DeWit: Too low. Steven Butala: And we just didn't have the right people running. Jill DeWit: We got bombarded. I didn't have enough people running. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: I had the right people. I didn't have, I didn't have 12 of them. Steven Butala: Exactly. It turns out our members, well, we'll talk about it in a minute. Jill DeWit: 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. Jill DeWit: Jason asks, "When you're creating your mailer, how do you send offers to the owners of the property?" All right. He's clearly new and just found us. He's asking the right question in the right place. So that's good. Steven Butala: Picture a spreadsheet with a thousand lines in it. Every single line in that spreadsheet represents a piece of real estate. And in each line there's lots of columns. There's a the first name of the person who owns it, the second, their last name, the address of the property, the address of where the tax bill goes to, how large it is, how many acres,- Jill DeWit: Zoning. Steven Butala: How many square foot and on and on. Three hundred actual pieces of, lines of, columns of data that are associated with every one of those lines. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: You take that thousand line spreadsheet and you merge it in what's called a mail merge into Microsoft Word. So you take Microsoft Excel document into a Microsoft Word document. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And you merge them together and all the variables, the size and the person's name, there's constants and variables inside the Microsoft Word document. So now the end result is, without getting into tremendous amount of detail, a super long pdf that's miles long with perfect offers that have diff... Every single offer has a different name on it, who it's addressed to, a different assessor's parcel number. And so if you go on YouTube and you look up mail merge 101 or how to do a mail merge or what is a mail merge? There is incredibly, an incredible amount of free and valuable information about how to do this. Jill DeWit: Right. What you are doing is creating unique and personal offers to each and every property owner. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Because that's what sings to them. Let's be honest,

The Roll Data Plays in Property Acquisitions and Sales (1025) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve & Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the role data plays in property acquisitions and sales. Jill DeWit: I would like to just point out that we were talking about this topic and what Steven was thinking when he wrote this topic the other day and my comment was, "Why am I here today?" Steven Butala: Well, why am I here then? Jill DeWit: Why am I here today? Steven Butala: Why do you need me? Jill DeWit: Exactly. I'm just here to... I'm here for moral support. Steven Butala: Jill, you make this whole thing work, trust me. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Without you, I'm just a guy in front of a camera talking about real estate, and nobody wants that. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Investors dot com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: All right. Paulani asks, "Has anyone ever sold a note before? Let's say that you're having a tough time selling a certain property for cash, but you sell a property under contract for terms. Package up that deal and sell the note to get your cash price. Example: You're trying to sell a property for $5,000 cash, but you're only getting people interested at $8,000 on terms. Once the property's under contract, sell the particular property at the terms price and then sell the contract to an investor to get $5,000 cash price. Has anyone ever done this? If so, what are the pros and cons to doing this?" Steven Butala: Paulani, you're a genius. Jill DeWit: That's good. Steven Butala: I've done this many times, there's people in our group... Jill DeWit: Sure there are. Steven Butala: ...that do this. This is their business model. They pay cash for a piece of property, double the price, sell it on terms really quickly, but here's... there's only one thing I have to add to your logic. There are two things that a note buyer looks at when they assess that note. The credit-worthiness of the person who's making the payments. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Oh great, everyone loves their credit score. So that can be a big problem, especially with people who are buying rural vacant land on terms. And number two, the age of the note. In my experience... I've done this many times. We don't do it anymore. We're cash buyers and sellers. What they want to see is a six month flawlessly paid-for, on time, note paying payment schedule at bare minimum. Steven Butala: If it's two years, you're going to get... if you have a two year payment schedule, you're going to get a much more attractive discount rate to you, meaning if it's $8,000, you could sell the note for a lot more than five. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So, just do a little bit more research. Maybe a day's more of research. But you've got a great concept. Selling property on terms is way, way easier than selling it for cash. Jill DeWit: What I would do is I would look at who my buyer is first and ask them what they want, because most of the times, the reason we're selling these properties on terms is because they can't qualify,

Data is Your Crystal Ball (1024) Transcript: Steven Butala1: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala1: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from the sunny, Southern California. Steven Butala1: Today, Jill and I talk about how data is your crystal ball. Jill DeWit: It is. You know what I wrote? I wrote down, "Don't guess. Use data." Steven Butala1: Exactly. Jill DeWit: That's my big ... I have more to share though. Steven Butala1: Me too. There's data for acquisitions. We use data for making acquisition decisions. We use data for deciding where to send offers to owners, and we use a tremendous amount of data in the sales part of it, so I can't imagine doing this without data, and I think during the 80s and 90s or up to the 80s and 90s, it was kind of just a dart board. Jill DeWit: I have to say. Jack used data for everything, and I have to ask. Did you use data to find me? Steven Butala1: Maybe. I don't know. We'll talk about that in a minute. Actually, I think I might have. Jill DeWit: I'd like to know how you use data for relationships. I'd like to know how you use ... Because Lord knows you'd use it for every other major decision, which is actually good. You use data for cars. You use data for houses. You use data for almost having a child. For children. Steven Butala1: Well, I'll tell you what. If I analyzed all the data about whether or not to have children, the outcome would have been different. Jill DeWit: Yeah, you failed. I won't say you failed on that one, but maybe a little more research would have been appropriate. Steven Butala1: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Michael asked, “Hello, community. I am as green as they get and looking for some advice. I've been researching land investing for a while, and I'm convinced it would be a great opportunity for me and my family. I have not pulled the trigger on starting yet, though, and I need some help getting over paralysis by analysis.” Data comes in there. Jill DeWit: “My situation is this. Our family will be moving to a different state in two years. How much of a hassle is it to start a company like NLLC in one state, acquire the assets, and then move to another state? I've read about domesticating your LLC in a new state, but I was wondering how much of a hassle that was. That said, I get it, that I don't need an LLC to start, and maybe this is my reptile brain holding me back from what's possible. I really don't want to wait two years before starting this journey. Talk some sense into me, please. Many thanks, Michael.” Jill DeWit: That's a good one. Steven Butala1: It is. There's two, a direct question about LLC's here, and then there's a serious underlying question here. Jill DeWit: Uh-oh. Steven Butala1: Number one, let's be super clear on this LLC thing, and it comes up a lot, and it's a very good question, and you're very, very new, and thank you for letting us know. You can have an LLC and operate in another state all day long. Large corporations for tax reasons and a lot of legal reasons had Delaware LLC's or Nevada LLC's. For those two states, specifically, you don't have to disclose personal members. A company can own a company, and there's a lot of advantages. So, get that out of your mind. It's not like a driver's license where if you live in California,

Are Land Acquisitions Seasonal (1023) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about are land acquisitions seasonal? Jill DeWit: Are they? Steven Butala: I don't really think so, and I know you do. Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah [inaudible 00:00:22] been the opposite. Steven Butala: What? Jill DeWit: Wait a minute. You're the one who used to think that it stopped over the holidays, and I used to have to talk you out of it. Steven Butala: We'll talk about it in a second. Jill DeWit: Oh, he's changed. He's come over to my side now. Steven Butala: I think there's opportunity all the time. I don't however, I do see huge dips in land sales during holidays and stuff. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: Jill disagrees. Jill DeWit: We'll talk. Steven Butala: I think houses sell like hotcakes during those... We'll figure it out. Jill DeWit: We'll talk. 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: Marcus asks, "I offered $73,000.00-" Steven Butala: $73,632.00. Jill DeWit: $73,632.00, okay. Steven Butala: $73,000.00 dollars actually. Jill DeWit: Okay. "I need funding for 59 acres in east central Tennessee. The owner inherited the property and accepted the price on LandsofAmerica.com," the land selling website, "In the town that this parcel sits, there are 11 comps in the 50-65 acre range, and the cheapest being $125,000.00 for 58 acres. So I'm thinking there may be a way to get this done. However, near the road the property surrounds a trailer that sits on it, on its own two acres, and it appears that the owner has made a mess." Jill DeWit: Okay, so we have a couple of things going on here. Number one, we're talking about just the offer price and what's out there available so I'm going to address that first. If the cheapest out there is $125,000.00 for the similar size, similar property, area, and you've looked everywhere and you've come up with at least 10 comps let's say and this is the cheapest of those 10, I still want to be under that one. So you need to get it at a good price that you can make enough profit and be under that. Jill DeWit: In this situation, if you're buying it for $73,000.00 then you're not going to double your money because you're not going to be under it. But maybe you'll be happy making $30,000.00, and that would work. Steven Butala: Like I said- Jill DeWit: Buy it for $73,000.00, sell it for $103,000.00. You're cheaper than everybody else out there. I'm good with that. Steven Butala: Me too. Jill DeWit: The second thing is that the property surrounds a trailer. That's very interesting. So it's not actually on the property, but nearby, somebody made a mess. You know, how do I think about this? Not too much. Steven Butala: I read this that somebody's making a mess on his property. Jill DeWit: It's near the road... However, near the road. The property surrounds a trailer that sits on its own two acres-

How to Foreclose on a Land Tax Lien (1022) 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 the beach in sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to foreclose on a land tax lien. This background that we have and our little beach house here in this beach community out of Los Angeles couldn't be more inappropriate for this topic. How to foreclose on a land tax lien is maybe like one of the most boring things we could possibly talk about, yet maybe one of the most profitable, and then the stuff going on behind is like all fun and games [crosstalk 00:00:37]- JilL DeWit: Hilarious. Steven Butala: And horsing around. Who cares about taxes? JilL DeWit: For those of you who do not see this on YouTube, you're just watching or just listening or Spotify or something like that, it might be worth checking out the YouTube channel just so you can get a little glimpse of what's going on behind us and I'll explain the bicycles and the yelling and the frisbees and the noise behind us. It's good. Steven Butala: If you foreclose on several tax liens this month, this is where you hang out. JilL DeWit: Oh, that's true. There you go. This can happen to you. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. JilL DeWit: Cody asked, "We have a property under contract to buy, but part of the heirs cannot be located by a closing attorney, and the other relatives do not know anyone from that side of the family." Well, that happens. Steven Butala: This is a very, very, very appropriate question for this topic today. JilL DeWit: Yes, this is good. Steven Butala: This is why, this story that Cody is telling, this is why that properties become in this tax situation that they're in, and this is why they're foreclosable. I'll get to that in a minute. JilL DeWit: "Is there a service or an investigator that you have used to track down heirs and see if anyone is still alive on record? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated." This is in North Carolina. Steven Butala: Good. North Carolina is a very good tax lien foreclosure state, by the way. What Cody is asking is, "Look I've contact"... he's sent a letter out or offer out, it got accepted, it got signed, and the seller says, "I would love to sell you this piece of property, but you got to find the other people because they're on deed and I know they're alive." Cody hired somebody or he's asking if he can hire somebody to close the deal and to find the heirs and get everybody ready to sign. The answer is no... the answer is yes, you can absolutely hire somebody to find all these people. It's called skip tracing or private investigation, and here's the tools that most people use. Steven Butala: You can use a very glossed over service called Salesgenie, you can use LexisNexis, which is what most lawyers use to locate people to serve them, TransUnion, the credit score company, has a tremendous database on skip tracing. You need to find somebody. You can do it, but here's my real answer to this question. Why? Why wouldn't you just purchase... What you need to do is accomplish equitable title, which means you have an interest in the real estate and then you can go through a foreclosure action [crosstalk 00:03:17]- JilL DeWit: There you go, but then it's [crosstalk 00:03:17]-

Member JT Olmstead Shares Land Academy Success (1021) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve Butala here, welcome to the Land Academy Show. Today we have JT Olmstead, a long time member, I think, JT, right? At least two years? JT Olmstead: Sorry, I think probably a year or so, actually. Steven Butala: A fellow Arizonian, right? JT Olmstead: I am, yeah. Phoenix. Steven Butala: Awesome, man. Steven Butala: Just before the show you were saying you just took off for about a month, and you've got just a crap load of stuff to do because you just got back. JT Olmstead: Yeah, that's exactly right. Got to catch up on all of it. Steven Butala: Tell us where you were, and what you were working on? More importantly, after that, tell us ... It makes us all feel better when really successful members go through pain, so I want to hear your pain today. JT Olmstead: Yeah, I'll deliver on that. JT Olmstead: I like to take vacation. I think the thing that attracted me to Land initially was the fact that you can do it on your own schedule and on your own time. That really ... I took advantage of that, took the last four weeks off. Took some family travels, went international and domestic. Steven Butala: So, you said Oregon and London? JT Olmstead: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yup. A nice mix of personal and business, just good to get out, reset your mindset before you get back to the grind. Steven Butala: Awesome, man. What are you working on land wise or house wise? JT Olmstead: Yeah, on the land front, right now a mix of things, actually. I'm spending a lot of time vetting other people's deals, I've got a couple of deals I'm funding for other people right now. Steven Butala: Great. JT Olmstead: Working on funding different deals for myself, and bringing outside investors as well, so a mix of stuff we're approaching. Steven Butala: You know, that's fantastic. I didn't actually realize that. I love that you're doing that. Steven Butala: We run out of money, literally, every month funding other people's deals for what we've allocated. I wonder if there's a way we could make some money together on the funding side, because we get more deals in than I know what to do with. JT Olmstead: Yeah, honestly that's the thing I love about land is the fact that there's so many opportunities going around, you've just got to find the right way to either partner them or find a way to keep those deals moving. Yeah, I'm definitely actively looking for people to fund at the moment. [Land Tank 00:02:06] has been a fantastic tool for that. Steven Butala: Okay, great. You are using LandTank.com as an inflow, or a source of inflow, anyway? JT Olmstead: Yeah, yeah. Some of my deals ... I just funded one this morning, actually, right off Land Tank, so Land Tank has been good. Just the community, in general. Steven Butala: Great. We're going to release House Tank here in about 60 days. It's being developed right now. It's the same kind of thing for houses, and it's the same financial structure. We review a deal, we decide to fund it 100% on loan to value plus closing costs as a 50% partner. We haven't done as house deal on our own yet, but we've got a lot of financial backing to do it. I don't know, is that something you want to dabble in? JT Olmstead: Yeah, houses are an interesting option. I love the fact the buyer pool is so much bigger, and the turns are a lot quicker. They're also a much higher price point, right? Steven Butala: Yeah. JT Olmstead: My typical land deal is somet...

How to Sell and Record the Same Day (LA 1020) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how to buy, I'm sorry, how to sell and record the same day. Jill DeWit: What does that mean? Steven Butala: Go ahead. Jill DeWit: Can you explain what that is? Steven Butala: Sure. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: So in every real estate transaction, you purchase a property and then you have to get it recorded at the county. You do some marketing, you resell the property to the new buyer and you have to record it at the county. It just... I think it goes without saying, the faster that this process happens, the better. So what Joe's done and, and what we do now almost regularly because of, I think electronic recordings... Is that what this is about? Jill DeWit: Yes, it is. How are we doing here today? Steven Butala: Exactly. Jill DeWit: Let's take a moment. Before we talk about this for just a second. How are you? Steven Butala: I'm great. Jill DeWit: Okay, good. Steven Butala: What does that mean? Jill DeWit: Well, you wrote the topic and you're checking in with me. I'm just making fun. It's good. Steven Butala: I, you know, the whole, actually, the deeper meaning to this is that the faster the real estate deal, the better. Jill DeWit: Yeah, definitely it is. Steven Butala: To get all philosophical about it, the velocity of money is very much alive and well and at work churning real estate deals. But there's a lot of details that are involved when you're doing this deal, like recording the same day. Some of the backend administrative stuff is really what can drag a deal out, not so much the robet, supply and demand. Jill DeWit: Let's talk about, let's do the question. Steven Butala: Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Jill DeWit: All right. Steven Butala: Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Daniel asked, "What flat rate MLS providers have you heard ever... Have you used that were a value to your land sales? I've heard of the following from other land investors. We have brokerdirectmls.com. I like them. Congress rail with t.com. I like them also, please share your experience." Jill DeWit: Okay, so what this is is in land sales when... Depending on the price point, you may or may not want to do this. So let me just start with that. What it is, is putting your property in the MLS. Back in the day, you used to have to list it with a broker or a realtor or some kind of agent to get access to get into the MLS. And then they would, part of the deal is automatically they get a piece of the action, they get a commission. Jill DeWit: So that would obviously if you have a $2,000 property, a couple of things would make it not cost worthy. One, they don't want to do it because on the commission on a $2,000 property is not much. And B, you only have a $2,000 property. You don't want to give up part of your commission from what you're selling. If you bought it for 500 and you're selling it for 2000 and you have to give 600 to an agent or something,

Land Sales and Social Media Tips (LA 1019) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here! Jill DeWit: Hi! Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show! Entertaining land investment talk! I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about land sales and social media tips. Jill DeWit: Okay I wanna pause for just a moment. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: For years now, we've been telling you we're recording in sunny southern California and I'm sure you're like "yeah right." Steven Butala: Yeah. That's... Jill DeWit: And now we can actually show you and prove it. Steven Butala: And we have been recording here, but we made some studio changes. Jill DeWit: In dark cave. Yeah. Steven Butala: Welcome to our new studio. Jill DeWit: Yup. This is gonna be fun. Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, lets take a question posted by one of our members on the Landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Tanner asks, "Hey everyone! I have finally sent out my first mailer about a week ago. I'm looking for feedback on what I should be doing in this period before the calls start coming in. I've been working on getting my online presence up and visible, but I feel like I should be doing more. Should I be researching for my next mailer? Any tips are greatly appreciated. Thanks!" Steven Butala: And before Jill answers there are many, many, many, comments on this question on the forum. Jill DeWit: Already, yeah. Steven Butala: And a lot of different... because this is a big topic. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: You know? I remember when I sent out my first mailer in the early 2000s and, you know, what you're waiting for, that two weeks it takes before you submit it to offers for owners and then you're just waiting and you start to doubt yourself. You know? Jill DeWit: Painful. Like, did it do it right? Is it wrong? Did I hit the people? Oh my gosh! Are they all going to not hate me? Whatever. Steven Butala: So what we say in the program is take those two weeks and really take a look at what you look like on the internet. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: And really make sure that whoever is answering your phone, hopefully its you in the beginning, that's all squared away and [crosstalk 00:01:50] Jill DeWit: Tested. Make sure that's good. I would even start getting ready to collect posting property, that's a good thing too. Once you get your internet and your website and your presence ready to go, you can also be starting to create some postings of popping the property, because you already know you you've sent out for all the five acres and, you know, X Y Z county, and what you're going to be buying and selling. So you can kind of get that pre rolling. Steven Butala: Exactly. Jill DeWit: So, good stuff. Steven Butala: Anyway, there's some fantastic advice on the internet. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Today's topic; land sales and social media tips. This is the media that's shown. Jill, I know you're an expert on this south side of this so tell us. Jill DeWit: All right. Well I made some notes as I usually do. So here's the thing first I want to talk about our mistakes because that's,

When to Use Escrow for a Land Deal (LA 1018) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy day. 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 celebrate Jill's birthday with you. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: And we talk about when to use escrow for a land deal. Jill DeWit: Yes. Well, that's secondary. Steven Butala: Happy birthday, Deal. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Happy birthday, Deal? Jill. Steven Butala: Oh, wow. That was subconscious. Happy birthday, Deal. Jill DeWit: Yeah. What am I getting for my birthday? Steven Butala: Happy birthday, wife deal-machine. Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh. You are the lucky recipient of a five-acre property. Steven Butala: That's exactly not what you're going to get. Jill DeWit: Oh, I like this. Steven Butala: There will be large gemstones involved. Jill DeWit: Oh, I like it even more. Thank you. Steven Butala: As always. 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: [Armon 00:01:00] asks, "Hi, everyone. I've in the land business for a year, and recently the transaction volume has been picking up significantly." Love it. "I've been ignoring my social media and online presence." Steven Butala: Uh-oh. Jill DeWit: I understand that happens. "I personally do not enjoy using social media." Steven Butala: Me, either. Jill DeWit: Right? "But I know how important it is for this business. Since I'm running this business alone, I'd rather focus all my time and attention on doing deals rather than digital marketing." Steven Butala: Amen, brother. Jill DeWit: Yep. "Do you know anyone who can manage my online presence for me? Everything from customizing my website and updating it with properties I have for sale, to posting on my Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn every day. I want to have a hands-off approach here. Any suggestion of people I can work with or ways I can go about doing this?" Steven Butala: Go ahead, Jill. I want to hear what you have to say about this. And then I'm going to tell a story about what happened to us in the beginning. Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah. That's a good story, too. All I can say is hire. Just kidding. We actually have, technically, three people working for us that do different versions of marketing and social media and such. It's hard to do. It's hard to find the right person, too. Took us a while to hire and get the right people, but we have them now. And even then there's always tweaking. Steven Butala: Right around 2010 when Jill and I ... It was a little earlier than that. We realized the social media thing's not going away. The internet is the way to do all of this stuff, but you can't be consolidated into one tiny little operation like I had on my own. So what did we do? We looked at our phone and who our friends are, and we started to interview people that had social media jobs in our little social, personal network in Scottsdale. After about the fourth interview of people that had, "I managed Facebook for the local utility," kind of thing, we would sit down, buy these people lunch or drinks or whatever-

How to Set Up a Land Sales System (LA 1017) 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 the sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to set up a land sales system. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: It's the same way as you set up a land acquisition system and I'll tell you what, here's the whole key and the whole takeaway from this episode. Whatever you do, do the exact same thing every, single time. It's the same thing with acquisitions and sales and setting up businesses and all of it. Find out what works and do the exact same thing over and over, but be open to adjusting it. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: If, for whatever reason, you need to. Jill DeWit: You know you just brought up a good comment, and I love that. Once you figure out what works, you are nuts if you don't repeat it for all kinds of things. We do it now for businesses. We're having Land Academy became House Academy became things I'm not going to share right now. Steven Butala: You can share it. Jill DeWit: Well, um... Steven Butala: Go ahead. Jill DeWit: Car Academy. Steven Butala: We are launching Car Academy within 90 days. Jill DeWit: Because once you know how to do this stuff, and it works, it's profitable, you have the following, you have the trust. You've got all the hard stuff out of the way. And the system, you have a system for how to do these things. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: You're nuts if you don't repeat it. Steven Butala: And it's a marketing system, you have employees that are already sitting there doing customer service or whatever. Jill DeWit: Right. A billing system. A communications system. All of that. Steven Butala: Exactly so you just build on it. Jill DeWit: Yup. Steven Butala: Same thing with sales system. And Jill's going to get into a bunch of details here in a minute on what works and what doesn't. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, we'll take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Danny asks, "Hi. I've just found out that 350 of the 500 lists that I pulled from RealQuest, I'm sure he means lines of data, I'm sure... Steven Butala: That's right. Jill DeWit: ... ownership records, have no legal description. Also, some of them start with "created from split of parcel" or "par1", like parcel one, do you scrub them or keep them? Steven Butala: Thanks in advance. Steven Butala: We keep them. A lot of people had a lot of stuff to say in the forum and I choose not to ask Jill to read it here, but they all said some version of this: Absolutely, keep them. If I had to bet, I would say this is a Texas mailer, and possibly, maybe New Mexico. For whatever reason the legal descriptions are not as... seem to be optional for the assessor. Here's the thing to remember about RealQuest data tree and Title Pro 247, we're licensed providers of all three. Steven Butala: There's a reason we just don't focus on one. We have all three just to crosscheck things and make sure that it's okay so chances are you'll, if it was real important to you,

Member Justin Sliva Shares Land Academy Success Stories (LA 1016) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Welcome to The Land Academy Show. Something a little bit different this Wednesday. We've got Justin Sliva with us just coming off of some bear hunting. I want to hear all about bear hunting, raising little kids, and then ... Because I'm sure, in this order ... Jill DeWit: I got one. Steven Butala: What's going on with the deals that you're doing? Jill DeWit: Oh, and the latest car purchase. Justin Sliva: Okay. Bear hunting. Well, we went to an amazing place in northern Ontario, Armistice Outfitters. Great group of guys. They have a concession for 20 miles of all the bear in that area. So 11 hunters went up. We were the third week of ... Hunter season's three weeks long. Our first night to hunt, and eight of the 11 ... Sorry. Six of the nine hunters that went out got a bear, ranging from the size of 80 pounds to 325 pounds. Jill DeWit: Wow. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Fast forward, the next day I go back out in the morning, sit up in a tree, because I wasn't one of those. Jill DeWit: I was going to say [inaudible 00:01:00] Justin Sliva: Wasn't one of those, so I go back out to my stand where we'd seen a lot of bear, or they'd seen bear on camera. Spent about eight-and-a-half hours in a stand. Don't see a bear. Then the next day, I go out for two different stints, four hours and four hours. Don't see a bear. See how this going, right? Jill DeWit: Yeah. Are they hard to miss? Justin Sliva: No. They're big and black. They like to growl at you and sniff, and stuff. Day three goes by. Seven hours in a stand. No bear. So I'm getting a little frustrated. Day four comes up. I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to this one stand." We have camera time that he's been there at this time. Slide up there. 15 minutes after I told myself, "I'm going to leave, because I haven't seen a bear yet," there's black ... At this time of year, there's black flies and mosquitoes up there, so they're just swarming nonstop. If you know what a black fly is, it looks like a little flea, but bigger. Jill DeWit: Whoa. [crosstalk 00:02:06] Justin Sliva: I'm in a full gillie suit up in the stand. I see like something kind of just shoot by my left eye, so I'm like, "Oh, okay." So I look down and I'm kind of back between some trees, back in a cut, and all of the sudden, this big, brown, cinnamon, black bear just like ... He looks at me, I look at him. My gun's sitting across this way. I'm like, "This is the bear legends are made of." If you get this bear on your first bear, you never hunt bear again. You just brag about it. So he looks for me, I look at him. We have like this moment of clarity of like, "I'm here to take you." He's like, "Ah, crap. I wasn't supposed to come here today, but I accidentally popped in, and you're here. This isn't good." I hit the safety on my gun and go to point, and he just dove into the bushes, and I couldn't get a clean shot. Jill DeWit: Oh, man. Justin Sliva: So 11 hunters went on our hunt that week. 10 of them got bears. One of us didn't. Yeah. So expensive camping trip. I went with my biological father, my brother-in-law, and my biological father's hunting buddies. He's a world-class hunter. He's hunted all over the world. So I got to spend some time with him, got to know him. But I look at the pictures of the trip they went on and the trip I went on. They were totally different. I sat in a damn stand getting rained on the entire time while they were doing world-class fishing. I mean, they fished for northern pike and walleye.

Are You a Failure? (LA 1015) 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 sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about are you a failure? Jill DeWit: I would love to know who thought out this topic and like, I've got to hear what this is, besides us? I'm like when I saw this title, I said, "Well, I've got to see what this is. This was good." Steven Butala: You know what sentence Jill just said right before he started the show? Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: "I had a lot of hair and a lot of boobs." And my immediate thought was, that immediately makes you not a failure. Jill DeWit: I can't believe you shared that. That's exactly what I said. Thanks so much. Steven Butala: Everything's fair game in this studio. Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. Yes. Don't hold back. Don't hold back Steve. Steven Butala: She's at Jill's end. You can turn the show off because you're not a failure. Plus, you can talk on the phone and you have a huge awesome balance sheet. Jill DeWit: I didn't know where you were going with it. He was awesome. But you know, you have some huge, awesome things about you, also. Steven Butala: Awesome. Like my personality? Jill DeWit: It is. It's your smile? Steven Butala: There's anyone. Jill DeWit: Your willingness to help. You're open at your door. Always open attitude. Steven Butala: I wonder what our staff really says, like, "I'm not going to talk to him." Jill DeWit: Don't make dad mad. Steven Butala: Don't go talk to him. Jill DeWit: I'm not doing it. Steven Butala: I'll flip you for it. How about we just do it our way and see what happens? That's really what I think happens. Jill DeWit: You know what they do? It's like throw it in and run. Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: It's like I bet they that. I'm sending him the email at 4:55. Bump. Gone. Steven Butala: First I got kicked out of the office, then I got kicked out of the office building, and I'm actually next week on my way to having to work at home now full-time. Jill DeWit: It's not a bad thing. Steven Butala: Because they just don't want us, they don't want me there any longer. Jill DeWit: That's not true. Steven Butala: Yeah, it's absolutely true. It's totally okay. Jill DeWit: It's just different. Steven Butala: It's totally fine. It's still, every guy my age that's listened to this completely understands what I'm talking about. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: And every woman who's listening to this is disgusted by it. Jill DeWit: It's like when I first went in the office, it was you, years ago, you, Skylar, and another person, who's first initial starts with an M, and there was no laughing, no talking. Then I'm like, what's going on here? Steven Butala: Yeah. That was really out of your- Jill DeWit: Yeah, really kind of serious. And I'm like, this is like, do you guys do anything for fun? It's not supposed to be fun. Steven Butala: That was about 10 years ago.

The Deals We are Doing Right Now (LA 1014) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill, here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit. Broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the deals we are doing right now. Jill DeWit: That's nice.[crosstalk 00:00:15] Steven Butala: It's a little bit different today. I'm going to basically interview Jill- Jill DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: About the transactions that we're doing, and planning on doing. Jill DeWit: Cool. I was just going to say its nice cause it's now July! We're over the, for those of you who don't know this, it's a thing called June Gloom. It's real. The struggle is real. You know. Steven Butala: I think the technical term is marine layer, but we'll go with that. Jill DeWit: June Gloom, we call it June Gloom, and it's over now. Steven Butala: Oh it's we. It's we. See, I'm still not a Californian. Jill DeWit: That's not what your ID says. Jill DeWit: What does your ID say? Steven Butala: It says Arizona. Jill DeWit: Uh-oh. Steven Butala: So does my tax return. Jill DeWit: Uh-huh. Okay. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, lets take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Abhinav asks, “Hi Guys. My understanding of the consideration amount on the deed was that it's the same as the sales price. But, I keep seeing deeds with consideration amounts as ten dollars, which is obviously not the sales price. What am I missing?" Steven Butala: This is, uh. Jill DeWit: Abhinav, you are correct. Steven Butala: We haven't answered this question in quite some time, and it defies common sense, so it's a good question. Jill DeWit: It is. Steven Butala: Every deed that I've ever seen, whether it's any type of deed; grant deed, quick claim deed, warranty deed. Starts off like this, “for good invaluable consideration of, ten dollars or one dollar or some nominal amount, usually ten or one for some reason," Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: “We the grantors, Steve and Jill Company, grant to you, the grantee, new buyer, the following property.” And then there's a legal description. Steven Butala: So what is this business with the one dollar, ten dollar scenario? If you go way, way back, and I researched this a long time ago to answer this question several years ago, people used to convey property back in the day. Back in like homesteading times. For good invaluable consideration of anything. It could be like love for my child. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Steven Butala: So, that's just stock. And I've actually, way back in the day, made the mistake of putting the sale price in the actual deed. So I think it's something that maybe we've all done or thought about doing, or wondered, but this is a great question. Jill DeWit: It is. Steven Butala: Just leave it the way it is. Jill DeWit: Yep. [crosstalk 00:02:29] Copy it exactly. Steven Butala: And when in question about any of these deeds, and how to do a deed, I take the Jill route.

Key Components of a Perfect Land Listing (LA 1013) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Friday. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala- Jill DeWit: And I Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the key components of a perfect land listing online. Jill DeWit: That's a mouthful. Steven Butala: Here's the good news. Jill DeWit: It's good. Steven Butala: Of all the stuff that you think you need to learn, this is maybe one of the easiest things. Why? You just go copy it. Go copy it from us. We have 25 years of experience. That land posting that we have is not by accident. It contains all the stuff that a seller needs to know to either buy it or [crosstalk 00:00:42]- Jill DeWit: Make a decision [crosstalk 00:00:42]- Steven Butala: Make an offer. Yeah, make a decision. Jill DeWit: Exactly. This whole week, by the way, I hope you've been taking a lot of notes. I was just thinking about it. Really tried to sit down and come up with some topics about sales because we don't talk about sales because it's just natural for us, but this whole week has been why it comes natural for us. I hope you are taking notes and you got it. Today is one more day that you might want to jot a few things down, I hope. 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: Aiden asked, "Hello, Land Academy members. I'm glad to say my first mailer is out and I already got seller responses." Steven Butala: Excellent. Jill DeWit: "Can anyone recommend a good title person in the Eastern Desert area of San Diego County? I'm trying to see if it would be a good idea to flip or wholesale a couple of deals that have already come back after a lot of hate. Wanting to move forward. Thanks." Steven Butala: This is a great... one of the many, many questions we get and comments every day that we get on the forum, and I included it here because I know that it has been answered on the forum- Jill DeWit: Oh, good. Steven Butala: And I'm not going to announce the best title agent, but if you want to find out who's buying and selling property let's say in the San Diego area, go check it out. Go check it out on landinvestors.com and they'll figure it out. There's a guy there named Luke Smith, you may have heard of him, with ruralvacantland.com. I'm not plugging anything, he's just a really [crosstalk 00:02:14]- Jill DeWit: One of our members. Steven Butala: Active, good members. He's got San Diego all locked down, so- Jill DeWit: He's got- Steven Butala: Reach out to him on ruralvacantland.com. Today's topic, the key components of a perfect land listing. This is the meat of the show. Steven Butala: You can go first if you want. I can reel off mine. Jill DeWit: A perfect land listing, this is something that you're putting on your website and then you're pretty much copying it everywhere else that you're promoting your property. Before you go and copy and paste and share and link everything to the planet to your posting, you want to make sure you have every little detail in there so people can when they find your property easily see everything they need to know about the property so they can make a decision and ideally without needing to call you or ema...

3 Ways You Know a Buyer will Buy Your Property (LA 1012) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve & Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from Sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the three ways you know a buyer will buy your property, what do they do? What do they say? Do they laugh at you? Jill DeWit: That's not one of them. Steven Butala: Do they call you a name? No, it's none of that stuff. They have a chequebook in their hand. I'll tell you that. Jill DeWit: I'll tell you what, that you know what? I'll tell you what it's not. It's not a tire kicker. When they start asking a million questions and they're ridiculous questions that are already in the posting. That's a tire kicker. That's not one of them. But in a minute, I'll tell you the right way. Steven Butala: I've been a real estate acquisition expert in some capacity my whole adult life, and I take that very seriously. I take real estate sales with a grain of salt and a dash of cynicism. That's right. This is the Jill show today. Jill DeWit: Wow. Oh my goodness. 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: A grain of salt and a dash of cynicism, I'm going to remember that one. Steven Butala: I just made that up. Jill DeWit: That's very good. Steven Butala: It's an original Stevens. Jill DeWit: I love it. All right, Jeff asked, how do you handle the Mexican standoff Wooden Pine property? He put that in quotes. I just bought my first two parcels and I had a mobile notary hand over the check when the deed was signed. This made sense to me because there's a trade happening on the spot. However, when I'm selling land, hopefully soon, do I trust the buyer with the signed deed or do they trust me with their money? I just think the sign Purchase Agreement first, and this document creates the trust for the rest of the transaction. Do they send the cashiers cheque first and then I send the deed Do you want me to go? Steven Butala: Yes. Please, you're an expert at this. This is a very good question and it's not an uncommon one. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah. It's interesting and I'm wondering why Jeff is second guessing himself, because you should be walking around knowing that you have this item for sale. When they buy it, they pay for it. No questions asked whether it's a checkout online with their credit card, they send you a cashier's cheque money, order wire the money because it's so big, whatever it is. That's just how it goes, and then you do complete the deed. Why do they feel so good about you? Where's this? Why am I not hesitating? Because they can look you up. You have a track record, you're transparent, all your social media and your website all go point in the same direction. You know that you are a seller of property, and there's nothing to think about. It'd be like, I don't question other things online. I'm trying to think of good example. Jill DeWit: But we're online nowadays we're online buying things all day long and I don't question it. I get in a car and drive to a restaurant trusting they're going to be there. Because I see it, seriously. Because I see their online presence. I see them on Yelp, I see their website, I see a map, I trust that they're there. It's the same thing for you. Steven Butala: We've been buying stuff online,

Member Andrew Peacock Shares Land Academy Success Stories (LA 1011) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I speak with member Andrew Peacock to find out how he's using Land Academy to his success. I'll tell you, we just spoke with him early, a little pre-show discussion, and sounds like this show might be a little bit more appropriate for House Academy. Jill DeWit: I know. This is very cool. Steven Butala: We'll see. This might be a House Academy Show. Jill DeWit: I love it. Steven Butala: Tell us please, again, Andrew, when you started with us and how it's been going for you. Andrew Peacock: Sure, yeah. I started with you guys November of 2016 and I kind of fumbled around a little bit and started sending out mailers. I actually received the first I think ... Jill, you were doing a promotion. Get a free lot. I got a lot in Cochise County and it was awesome. I actually put it right up there on eBay. I did a little eBay auction and I sold it for I think it was 950 bucks and it was for me proof of concept. It was that thing where it's literally you hear this, we're going to sell land. We're going to flip land. I've never heard of it before. For me, that was the thing that grabbed me. I've always been an entrepreneur from the start. I never really knew what it was. Actually I play professional football. A lot of those guys in the locker room, they were real estate investors. A guy by the name of [Ryan Brolls 00:01:39] handed me that little purple book, I Risk That, Pore That. It literally opened my eyes. Andrew Peacock: It put a name to what I felt like I was. I started searching for little things I can do on the side. I came by another land podcast. We won't speak of his name. I know that's a joke that's been going on for forever. It wasn't complete for me. It didn't have all the things I needed. I just felt like it wasn't it for me. I kept searching, found you guys. Literally just from the time I started listening to the podcast, it was it. I knew I was home. This is funny because I think Jill a couple podcasts back you were talking about the transition of your microphones and your technology and all this stuff you guys are using. I've heard all of it from the start, from the finish. I definitely related with that. Jill DeWit: You could hear the firetrucks in the background. Andrew Peacock: Oh yeah. I remember that. It was funny. After the football transitioned to pharmaceutical sales. If you know that job, you're literally in the car for 400 miles a day. I was introduced to podcasts. I literally self taught myself everything I needed to know. With that early technology, I would have to adjust the volume a little bit. Steven Butala: You know what? I'm sorry. Andrew Peacock: Oh no, you're fine. Steven Butala: I take personal responsibility for that. Right around show, I don't know, 998, we figured out the technology. Andrew Peacock: It's all right. That's all right. I listen to every single show. It was that self taught education through you guys, your podcast. I did it part time. The entire pharmaceutical, this was 2017. I did part time land and then I woke up around the 4:30 range. I worked on the land for about four hours, get in the car, drive, come back home, 4:00 PM, work until 8:00 PM on land. That's just what you have to do. That slowly took over the pharmaceutical salary. I made the leap into the houses. Literally it's the same concept.

Why Land Resellers Buy from Us (LA 1010) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala- Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about why land resellers buy from us. We have a whole website called LandStay.com and the slogan is, "Land acquisitions for resellers", and it's been this way for years and years and years and this was not intentional. Jill DeWit: Let's just cut to the chase. It's me. Steven Butala: It's The Jill Show. Jill DeWit: Come on. No, no, I'm just saying, why do they buy from us? Because they get to talk to me. Steven Butala: Oh my gosh, Jill. Jill DeWit: I'm just kidding. Steven Butala: That's hilarious. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: You know it's probably not completely not true. Jill DeWit: It doesn't hurt. Steven Butala: There's probably some truth to that. Jill DeWit: I got to tell you, people call and there's a woman on the other line it's like, "oh okay." Sometimes it's hard to get them off the phone. Steven Butala: Here's a one reason, it's cheap. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Isn't that funny? Steven Butala: It's cheap. Jill DeWit: It's hilarious. That's one thing that I'll never get tired of that question, "What's wrong with it?" I'm like, "Nope, nothing wrong with it." Steven Butala: Yeah. Just nope? Jill DeWit: Yeah. No, I seriously, it's like it's nothing wrong with it. If you would like me to add more to the price so it really is more in line with all the competition, I am happy to. Steven Butala: We have a- Jill DeWit: And then they're like, "oh no, no, no. Caught it." Steven Butala: Over the last lot of years, Jill and I have developed a lot of one liners about the top six or seven questions that we get... Jill DeWit: From the buyers Steven Butala: ... from people. And we only get them once because that put it's all to rest and you know what, we'll answer them in just a minute here. 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: Jason asks, "I'm very frustrated. Is there a simple video tutorial that someone has made that will walk you through the simple formulas and steps it takes to work with data that we are using in the business. I've edited my data down by going through and looking for government owned properties, Indian land, non-taxable land etc. I've done this manually. I know there's a better way. I've tried to watch the video to keep up with Jack. As he goes through adding a column, I can do that and then adding a reference number and a column for each row of data, but it bounces back and forth between him and the slides. I'm having a hard time following. OMG. Is there a better way? I've never had to use Excel and I can "guaran-dang-tee" you that my kids will learn to use this. I'd scream and kick the dog if I thought it'd help." Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. Steven Butala: Okay. Well this takes me right back to 2014. Jill DeWit: This is here, Steven. Everyone breathe, breathe,

5 Best Places to Sell Land Online (LA 1009) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about the five best places to sell land online. Jill DeWit: I wonder how different our lists are going to be. Steven Butala: I wonder, too. I do know this for sure... Jill DeWit: What? Steven Butala: They've changed over the years, the places to sell land, and they'll change over the next few years. Jill DeWit: You know, just like everything. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: I swear, that's like the number one thing that's on my mind all the time, is that whatever it is, it's going to change tomorrow. And if you can't roll with the punches... I don't care what business you're in... you're not going to make it. Steven Butala: You know, I ask myself, honestly ask myself that all the time. Like, am I changing enough? Jill DeWit: I am. My hair's darker. Steven Butala: Am I changing enough? Am I eating too much? Jill DeWit: Am I changing enough? Am I- Steven Butala: Am I exercising enough? Jill DeWit: Well, you know what? Am I wearing the same shirt? Am I changing enough? That's good. Steven Butala: Am I drinking too much? Jill DeWit: Well, you have 10 of these, so it's okay. Steven Butala: It's an endless list of, "I wonder if this is going to be okay?" Jill DeWit: I think you're doing- Steven Butala: Are we doing enough deals? Do you do this stuff? Jill DeWit: No. I don't. Steven Butala: You don't? Jill DeWit: No. I do not have this conversation with myself. Steven Butala: I do it all the time. Jill DeWit: But that's a good thing. 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 I'll tell you this: It's multi... There's a lot of questions in there, and he numbers them for us. Jill DeWit: All right. Be ready? Steven Butala: We should answer them as we go. Jill DeWit: Okay. All right. Steven K. asks, "I'm gearing up to mail to lots with mobile homes, but I need to nail down how to price, as information I've heard on podcasts and Thursday online meetings has left me with some holes in knowledge of that. So, number one, if the home is newer, do you add value to the lot? I know in 1976, an alder cannot be financed through HUD, so generally they are without value. But if newer, I would think most owners expect a value to be given that includes the home." Steven Butala: Like with every single mailer, this is no exception. You can't please everybody. Like throwing a hook in the water, you can't expect the lure that you're going to use is going to work on every single type of fish. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So, while you're fishing for bass, with the lure or whatever bait you're using, there's a lot of other fish down there that are just going to swim right by. Here's how I mail mobile homes, and I say it right in the mailer: "We would like to buy your property, your mobile home lot.