Land Academy Show

Fictional Real Estate Passive Income (LA 1008) 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 fictional real estate passive income. "What the hell is that, Steve?" Jill DeWit: I know, I'm kind of curious myself. Steven Butala: When's anything in your life ever worked out the way you wanted it to with you being passive about it? Jill DeWit: That's what you're talking about. Steven Butala: I'll tell you what's going to happen if your real passive in your marriage ... Jill DeWit: Passive ... Steven Butala: How about raising kids? No, no, I just ... Well ... Jill DeWit: We know those people. Steven Butala: Well, those kids will figure it out on their own. Jill DeWit: We know those people! Steven Butala: I know. Jill DeWit: I want to be those people, man. I'd like to be a passive parent. Steven Butala: How about school? Jill DeWit: I want to be the passive parent of the year. I want to get a shirt that says that ... Steven Butala: How about school? You just sit in the back, chill out, handing in your homework once in a while ... Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: No ... You can't just do that. Jill DeWit: It sure sounds good, though. A lot less work. Steven Butala: This word passive ... This word passive is very ... Well, there's probably some places on the planet that it's appropriate to be passive, like if you're a monk, let's say. But outside of that- Jill DeWit: You can't be a passive monk. Well how can you be a passive monk like, "I'm only going to talk when I feel like it?" Steven Butala: Yeah you're right. Jill DeWit: You can't be a passive monk even. Steven Butala: You're right. [crosstalk 00:01:24]. Jill DeWit: You've still got to commit to that. Steven Butala: So, it's official, there's no reason to be passive about anything. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Before we get into the show, even further than that, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Brandon asks, "Has anyone sent a bunch of micro-mailers in one mailer? How do you go through the data? I'm finding a bunch of small subdivisions that need to be priced differently than the next subdivision over. Each little subdivision in our area has about 400 mailers. So not enough to send on it's own. And it would take way too much time to do one for each area." Steven Butala: Ding ding. Jill DeWit: "Is there an easy way to do this? Do I just need to pull the data for each little area and put it into a spreadsheet and then keep adding an area to the list, and then price it all accordingly, and then send out one big mailer? It's the consistency that's killing me. In some areas, one acre is selling for $10,000. And then one hill over, one acre is selling for $50,000. So I don't want to price them all the same." Steven Butala: This is a PhD, or possibly a Master's Degree level question about offer campaigns and manipulating data so as to send offer...

How to Set Real Estate Investing Financial Goals (LA 1007) 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 how to set real estate investing financial goals. I just said, right before we started the show, is ironic as this is, because there's the word financial in the title, this is way more spiritual and way more inspirational than it is technical. Jill DeWit: I'm proud of you, Steven. Steven Butala: Wow. I just heard my mom talk to me there. I just heard my mom from the other side. Jill DeWit: You finally get it. Steven Butala: I made a potty. "I'm proud of you, Steven." Jill DeWit: That's awesome. "Next time get it in here. That's right. Aim for the Cheerio, sweetie." Steven Butala: Aim for the Cheerio, really? Is that how you do it? Jill DeWit: Yeah. When you're teaching a little boy to pee, you throw Cheerios in the toilet. Then he can sink the Cheerios. Steven Butala: I didn't know that. I just let the kids figure it out themselves. No aiming. Jill DeWit: That's hilarious. Yeah. I did, too. It's more fun. Steven Butala: Pretty much let the kids just raise themselves. Jill DeWit: Excuse me. As a man, it's it more fun when it's target practice? Steven Butala: I have no ... Jill DeWit: All right. Steven Butala: That kind of thing stopped being fun a long time ago for me. If I want to have some fun, doesn't involve that. Jill DeWit: Okay. Anyway. I am proud of you for not only picking, but entertaining this conversation. I know we have some good stuff to say. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members in the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. I have to say it, Jill. This is a very lengthy question. It's a very lengthy question and a story unfolds. It has a beautiful and happy ending, so feel free to paraphrase, but it's lengthy. Jill DeWit: All right. I won't give up. Steven Butala: And I'll help you. Jill DeWit: Okay. Hi, Abby. Abby wrote this. Abby asks, "Hi, guys. I wanted to send a neighbor letter to all the neighbors in a one-mile radius for a property that I want to sell in a not so rural area, kind of infill lots. Does anyone have a template I can use? Ideally, I want the neighbors to make me an offer, and then I pick the highest bidder." Jill DeWit: One of our members already wrote in and said, "Kevin ..." This is so fun, too. Any time you want, just go on our online community. You can easily keyword search and find these conversations. Put in like, "Neighbor letter," and it'll pop up, and you can read it. Because I'm sure since we recorded this, there's probably six more responses in there. Jill DeWit: But Kevin wrote, "Abby, I've had a great success with neighbor letters in non-rural areas. I don't ask them to bid. I tell them that I have purchased this property and plan to sell it for the wholesale price of X." Steven Butala: X. Jill DeWit: "Please contact me if you're interested in purchasing the property." I include the APN, the legal description, color map with the parcel outlined on the map. I keep it all on one page, including the map image.

Why Land Academy Member Jermain Hill Uses Deal Funding (LA 1006) Transcript: If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. 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 iTunes.

Top 3 Things to Review Before Buying Land (LA 1005) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill Dewitt. I'll explain in a second. Broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the top three things to review before you're buying land. Jill DeWit: I have... Sorry, I just had to do that, because I feel like I look like I have a lion's mane going on today, so that's where that came from. Sorry. Poor Steven's like, oh no. Now what? She's either hungry or tired. Let's see, Jill's punchy. She's hungry or tired or too much of the opposite. She got too much sleep, she's had too much coffee or sugar, something like that. Steven Butala: Maybe just plain entertaining today. Jill DeWit: That could be it also. 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: Chris C asks: Hey everyone, I'm still new to land investing. Just sent out my first Miller this week, but starting to target my next county for another mailer. Want to keep my pipeline full? Good. I have been using the data center from realtor.com and Redfin as shown in the training. It appears that those top two sites only have the top 1000 counties ranked by Nielsen. That presents a problem when evaluating smaller counties for rural land. Could anyone share additional websites or resources to find this data used in the red, yellow, green county spreadsheet? Or if some more experienced members have a more simplified method of evaluating target markets besides the red, yellow, green tool. Would appreciate the insight. Thanks in advance. Steven Butala: So Nielsen, if you were born after 1995, Nielsen is a rating agency. So it... You know how we can get analytics on everything now. I just press a few buttons and find out what people... how many likes we got, how many people viewed our stuff. That is a very new invention. Nielsen has been around forever and they originally started to rate television shows- Jill DeWit: Was it even radio before that? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Mine were in radio and then to TV and- Steven Butala: So they would literally come in your house and put a thing on top of your television set. That's what we used to call it, a television set. And it would monitor what shows you're watching and how... Look at your face. Like people would manually read it and say, you know... It was like a trophy, if you got chosen as a Nielsen family, that's what they used to call it. Jill DeWit: I didn't know it was a trophy. Were you- Steven Butala: Yeah. It's like I got chosen to be a Nielsen family. Jill DeWit: I never knew... Did you know anybody that did that? Steven Butala: Yeah! Jill DeWit: Really? Steven Butala: We never were. Jill DeWit: I never heard anybody- Steven Butala: So anyway, that's what the Nielsen... Now they've since expanded to a rating agency, and he's right. So Nielsen apparently has chosen for realtor.com specifically, and this doesn't shock me with realtor.com specifically, because it's real estate agents and a realtor association. So they're using some tool that was created in 1958 because they're from 1958. Anyway, if you go to realtor dot data... Jill DeWit: Don't hold back, Steve. I know you're holding back- Steven Butala: For some reason there's a thousand ...

Is it Wrong to Send Low Value Offers to Owners (LA 1004) 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, is it wrong to send low value offers to owners? Steven Butala: Is it? Jill DeWit: This is hilarious. Steven Butala: You know, you might offend somebody. Jill DeWit: That's so funny. I'm allowed to say- Steven Butala: Somebody might get angry with you about receiving an offer that's not up to their expectations. You might inconvenience somebody and put a little dent in their day. Jill DeWit: How is that possible? You're not inconveniencing anybody, seriously. So, I have a lot to say. Steven Butala: Out of all the stuff I own, cars, motorcycles, boats, I would love... this is an open invitation, for anyone to send an offer on any of that stuff. I'd be happy to talk about it with you, all my stuff's for sale. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Before we get into it... I have a feeling though you- Jill DeWit: I have some stuff I'm holding back. Steven Butala: You and I have a... yeah, have pretty close the same opinion on this. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on landinvestors.com, online community, it's free. Jill DeWit: [Jeff S. 00:01:14] asks, there are few operations... I'm thinking about... there are few operations to get a deed signed and recorded and I'm curious, what type of mail you guys pay for and why? Jill DeWit: That's [inaudible 00:01:27] okay. Jill DeWit: Do overnight, priority, certified, when sending to a notary, from the notary, to the county and back. Do you fold the deed up or put a big paper-sized envelope? Thank you. Steven Butala: So, you know Jill, this is one of those questions that... and I hand picked this question for this show. It's a tiny little detail that I think... it's a combination of all these little details in this business that freak people out. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So- Jill DeWit: Do you want me to share? Steven Butala: Yeah, walk us through. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jill DeWit: So, the first thing when I'm mailing somebody we've negotiated the transaction and I've a notary coming to Mister or Misses Jones's house, on Tuesday and I got to get the documents to the notary. I can't just email her an attachment, have her print it out, which I do as a backup, because there's a payment involved. So there's going to be an envelope going out. Jill DeWit: So first thing I do is I speed... time kills deals, we've talked this. So, I do overnight it and I do want to arrive the next day. So, let's say it's Monday and I'll set up the signing for Thursday, just in case, right? So, Monday to have the envelope arrive, Tuesday in case there's a goof-up, I have Wednesday, and then they're going to do the signing on Thursday. But I do spend for the overnighting of it. Jill DeWit: Then... and I do USPS it's thirteen dollars, I want to say. I use the full size, I don't fold it up I put it in a manila envelope. The deed and an envelope inside there that says, at signing,

It's not about the Money But it's about the Money (LA 1003) 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 how it's not about the money, but it's really about the money. Steven Butala: Hey, today's episode of the Land Academy Show is brought to you by LandTank.com, where you can get your stuff financed. Jill DeWit: Where'd that come from? Steven Butala: Oh, and we happen to own the company. I know it's not in the script. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: I'm trying something new. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Try and sound professional. Jill DeWit: Well I have one at the end. Today's ... I have a different announcement for a different company. Steven Butala: Well we can do it at the end too. Jill DeWit: The extra will be sponsored by a different person. Steven Butala: These are all sell sponsorships. Jill DeWit: Different companies. These are all our companies. So my thing about your “It's not about the money, but it's about the money”, this is a total Captain Obvious moment. That's what I have to say. You know? I don't want you to learn this lesson, kid, but I want you to learn this lesson, kid. Steven Butala: Well, you know where it came from. For me as ... There's just people, a lot of people that say, “Look. You know, I'm really not doing this for the money. I really enjoy it, and it's my ... Okay. It's my hobby, and I'm putting all the-” It's about the money, man. Okay? Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a quick wait a minute, Steve. You could say that about Land Academy. What are you talking about? You're talking out of both sides of your mouth again. Oh, you always say Land Academy's not about the money. You know what? It's not about the money, but I'm not going to write a check every month for it either. So it's a little bit about the money. Jill DeWit: I understand. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: You know how nice it is, actually? It's times like this where I don't have to say anything, you're having a conversation with yourself. And you actually cut yourself off, you actually correct yourself, you actually kind of scold yourself. It's kind of nice. I can just kind of sit back and watch. Steven Butala: Sit-back-and-watch-your-man-fail.com. Jill DeWit: It's like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other shoulder. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jason asks, "I'm new, and in the process of getting reading to send out my first mailer, and I'm trying to tie up all the loose ends before I do so. I have decided that I will hire a phone service to take my calls, as I'm looking to scale this and would rather allocate those resources elsewhere. My question around this is, should I take the calls for the first couple of mailers, so I can get a better feel for things? Or start out right away with the phone service? I feel there's a value in taking those calls, but I also feel that there's a value in consistency. I would rather start with one number on the first batch, and always have that phone number moving forward. Please let me know your experience as I'm hoping to mo...

Keeping up with Internet Technology in Real Estate Acquisitions and Internet Sales (LA 1002) 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 keeping up with internet technology in real estate acquisitions and sales. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: That was take four, in case you wanted to know, and Jill's like, "Thank you for getting it right [inaudible 00:00:30]." Jill DeWit: I'm glad to do this topic, actually. This is important. You know what's funny? Surprisingly, being the chick here, this technology discussion is important to me. Steven Butala: Oh, man. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Learning how to read from a homemade teleprompter's important to me today. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our LandInvestors.com online communities. It's free. Jill DeWit: If it was a homemade ... It's funny. Steven Butala: Here's what it is- Jill DeWit: If it was a homemade teleprompter, be our children holding up poster board. It's not that. Steven Butala: It's a medical monitor for people that are hooked up to stuff at home, like later in life, on a Chinese Glide Gear. I mean, it all works great, and it's not ultra-cheap, but it's not a $40,000 teleprompter like in a TV studio. I only remembered this because, like Jill said, I sent a list of equipment to somebody once ... Shit, recently. Because they asked me like, "What equipment do you guys use?" And I started thinking about it. I'm like, "How do I describe all this stuff? I taped it all together." Jill DeWit: There's a lot that, when you really look around this room, there's a lot that goes into this. It's pretty darn funny. Yep. Jill DeWit: Okay. The question is, Chris asks, "Hi, everyone. I'm about to send out my first mailer, and I'm scrubbing my list for unusable properties. I found several waterfront properties in eastern Tennessee that have oddly shaped parcels extending out into the lake. Is it possible that this is a mapping error, or are these actual properties that, perhaps, used to be dry land at some point? I have come across several of these in scrubbing this list and was hoping for some guidance." Steven Butala: This is a great question. And I love mapping, by the way. I personally love data. I'm not the biggest fan of sales, but I do love all the mapping that's involved in this. For some reason just as a little kid, I loved maps, and I still go on Google Earth and fly around in that flight simulator thing and all of it. Steven Butala: Maps, especially on the internet like on Google Earth and like on ParcelFact, the outline or the GPS coordinates on the Earth are not perfectly lined up inch by inch, because Earth is curved. That's one reason. Number two, you mentioned erosion with water. That's absolutely the case. When that partially was subdivided, there was more land than there is water. Steven Butala: So here's the what you do when this happens. You take the size of the property, let's say it's five acres, with a grain of salt. It might be a five-acre property originally. It might be four now. In some cases ... Jill and I bought a property one time in Washington state that was in a river that was under water a certain part of the year, and then it wasn't. Jill DeWit: I was thinking ...

Why Land Academy Members are Partners and How We All Win Together (LA 1001) 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, we talk about why Land Academy members are partners and how we all win together. Jill DeWit: In case you were wondering, we do use Audition because you're looking at it now on your screen. Steven Butala: I'm going to leave that in. Jill DeWit: I'm waiting. Steven Butala: In case you were wondering ... Jill DeWit: Waiting, waiting. Steven Butala: In case you were additionally wondering, that's why there's two people instead of one on this show, to catch our errors and make fun of each other. Jill DeWit: There you go. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: You know if it was a bad hair day, I wouldn't have said anything. I would have just let it go. Steven Butala: Oh you just want to see yourself? Jill DeWit: Yeah, no I don't want to see myself but I would just let that...that would be really funny to just do a whole show and just show only the Adode Audition surrounding..super funny. Jill DeWit: Okay here we go. Jill DeWit: Ben asked, I have a seller wanting to sell a 30 acre property, however, it's part of a 75 acre lot. Contacted the seller and asked where his 30 of the 75 acres are. He tells me that the lot is not devided and just that he owns 30 of the 75. Jill DeWit: This is hilarious. Steven Butala: We've all been there man. Jill DeWit: This is great. So I call the county to confirm and the information and they say "Yeah, he owns 30 but not any specific part of it." Steven Butala: That's what the county always says. Jill DeWit: This is great. Steven Butala: Yep you figured it out. Anything else? Jill DeWit: Sure yeah. That's great. Even after getting a copy of the plat map and it shows the 75 acre lot with several names on it, but not devided in any way. Also, the seller is the 100% owner of his APN so I would assume that everyone with a stake in the lot would have their own APN. It' great. Jill DeWit: I have another seller just like this only a different lot size. This is funny, this reminds of the other day like buying property with smart people, in certain areas. Anyway. Steven Butala: I'm not going to touch that. Jill DeWit: Is there anything different that can be done with these or should I just move on? Thanks. Steven Butala: He should move on. Jill DeWit: This is good. Steven Butala: Here's why. Jill DeWit: Did you put this in or someone. Steven Butala: Well, me and Kevin. Jill DeWit: Okay, right. Steven Butala: It's a combination of Kevin's answer and mine. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Kevin our moderator on the site. Jill DeWit: Right Steven Butala: Go ahead Jill. Jill DeWit: Yeah.

Episode 1000 - The Story of Land Academy (LA 1000) 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 episode 1000. Jill DeWit: What? What? Can you believe it? Steven Butala: The story of Land Academy. Jill DeWit: I am so excited. I am jacked. I have been looking forward to this. This is a huge, huge, huge, huge milestone. You know that. Come on. Steven Butala: I'm amazed. Jill DeWit: I mean, some people don't even get to show 100, let alone show 10. Steven Butala: That's the truth. Jill DeWit: Man, here we are at a thousand. Steven Butala: This snuck up. I mean, I looked at it, I don't know, less than a month ago. I looked at the numbers and I'm like, how's this possible? Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh. Remember back when we used to joke about having, well, you're one of five. Now you're one of 10. Just kidding. Steven Butala: One of 10 listeners. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Man, so much has happened since we started this show. Jill DeWit: I know. I can't wait. We're going to talk about it. Steven Butala: It's been a life-changing experience for Jill and I. In fact, I'm going to ask Jill right now. 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. Well, in this case... Jill DeWit: You put the question in? Steven Butala: Because I am a- Jill DeWit: Aw. Steven Butala: ... I'm an active Land Investors community member. Jill DeWit: Yes, you are. We still let you participate. Steven Butala: It's one of the few things I still get to do. I'm going to ask Jill was it all worth it? Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: It was totally worth it for me, too. Jill DeWit: Totally worth it. Can't believe it. I mean, really, when you think about the early shows and the trials and tribulations of equipment. It was so funny, too. You just had a friend that... One of these things that, Steven has a way of making it look easy and we had a friend that, like, hey, you guys have a thousand shows. So, really, it's not that hard, right? And he's like, hey, what equipment should I go get? And Steven CC'd me on the email and it was a pretty good list of the equipment that we have now to this point. Steven Butala: Accumulated, really. Jill DeWit: Yeah, exactly. Steven Butala: Trial and error accumulated. That camera didn't work. That mic didn't work. Jill DeWit: My whole thing of just do it right out of the gate, by the way. If you're going to do something like this, don't mess around. Don't use your camera on your laptop and don't use your earbud from your cell phone. It's not how you want to do it. You want to get good stuff and make it good, because your listeners will appreciate that. But, yeah, there's times we had wind and static and all kinds of- Steven Butala: Oh, jeez. You name it. Jill DeWit: We've done it indoors, outdoors, different locations. If you've been watching and listening to us for a while, gosh, it was in... We've had home studios.

Data Driven Real Estate Acquisitions Yield the Best ROI (LA 999) 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 data driven real estate acquisitions and how they yield the best RIO. Jill DeWit: This good, this is important. I'm glad we're talking about this. There's lots of other ways to do this, but there's ... the whole point for me is if you can't get onboard with data, you're gonna be left behind, it doesn't really matter what you're doing, you're gonna be left behind. Steven Butala: Somebody asked me recently, hey give me the elevator pitch on what you guys do, I don't understand it. Jill and I were looking at a boat. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: And the broker said, what are you guys doing at night ... and I said, we buy a lot land and we resell it. And he said, well give me the elevator pitch, I don't understand. People ask this stuff. I'm sure, you're all in land business, too, they ask you some version of this all the time. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: I said, we use data. I'm like everybody, to buy and sell property for less that it's worth at that current moment. And a light bulb went off, and so I decided to make a show out of it. Jill DeWit: Well I agree. Steven Butala: Like everything. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it's free. Jill DeWit: Jacob asked, has anyone had trouble purchasing land in the Midwest region? It could just be my mailer or price, however I've had more success marketing and purchasing in the south west region, and was wondering what the issue might be. Good question. Steven Butala: Great question. I have like a really simple answer, you go first. Jill DeWit: All right. My answer is, no. Steven Butala: No? Jill DeWit: I'm sorry. Well, no, because as I'm looking at my inventory right now about, you know like Colorado and Texas property and other ... in the Midwest parts, I'm not having ... I have Ohio. So I don't have issues, so ... I'm ... Steven Butala: What Jacob means is this, in my opinion ... Jill DeWit: I'm guessing it's a little bit of a pricing thing. Or ... go ahead. Steven Butala: If Jill and I are saying the same thing. What he's saying is, I seem to have a lot better luck buying properties at 100 bucks an acre in the south west than I do in the Midwest, and he's absolutely right. Jill DeWit: That makes sense. Yeah, you do have to change your pricing. Like I was just looking at this Colorado property that we sold, we bought for like 6900 and sell for 36000. Steven Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill DeWit: So ... and it was fast. Steven Butala: Colorado sells fast. Jill DeWit: It does. I can't remember the name of the county right now, but I was just looking at it. But, yeah, it's not a $100 an acre transaction, it's a much more expensive thing. So spend some time, I'm sure I'm you're gonna say the same thing, spend some time and do all the stuff that you know how to do, looking for, you know what Steven says, looking for those areas where there's consistence and you can kind of figure out some pricing.

Land That Sells Fastest (LA 998) 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 type of land that sells the fastest, and slowest, and medium, and all other types of land where you can make hoards of money on it. It just might take a little bit longer. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Before we get into though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Jeff asks, "Hi everyone. For those of you who have a transaction coordinator, I was wondering how much you pay them? Hourly, by the deal, et cetera? And are they in-house or virtual? Thanks." This is- Steven Butala: I know. I put this in here for you. Jill DeWit: Perfect! Steven Butala: And I will preface this, Jill's answer, by saying this. If we had 10 transaction coordinators overnight, magical dust, and they were all good ones that we could work with and work together well with, we would overnight be doing 10 times the number of deals. Jill DeWit: Ding, ding. Steven Butala: If you leverage that whole mail system by sending these blind offers to owners, we can times 10 that in a half hour. As far as financing and funding deals, on the back end of acquisitions, times 10 overnight with the people in our group, and with pulling money from different places. The whole problem, the whole bottleneck has always been, for me, and always will be, getting good people to do these deals. Jill DeWit: So here's the thing. I have not, and I would not do a virtual transaction coordinator. I have had the best luck having them in-house, and in an office. Around me, too, by the way, especially while they're learning. So, that's my first thing. I have tried in the past, too. This is a really good question, very timely, because I'm hiring more right now. I've tested having a transaction coordinator, and then boots on the ground, separately, where the transaction coordinator ... Jeff's in our group. I think I know who this Jeff is, and then we have boots on the ground below them that are out there doing different parts of deals, like really for House Academy. But you can use a transaction coordinator for land or houses. It's great. Steven Butala: And should. Jill DeWit: And should. So anyway, I've tested, Jeff, I've tested let's see what the boots on the ground can do on their own, being their own transaction coordinator, because every now and then there's a little bleed over as to who does what, so until they just figure out their roles and figure out how it works. But so I thought, "You know what? One time I'm going to try without a transaction coordinator, give the whole thing to the boots on the ground and see if they can do both." I found that did not work. So I want to save you. Steven Butala: And vice versa. Jill DeWit: So yeah. And yeah. You can't have a transaction coordinator in this city doing deals, and two states over without a boots on the ground, because there are- Steven Butala: Two separate talents, by the way. Jill DeWit: ... times that they do need that physical presence against this kind of ... Physical presence more for houses than land is really what it is. And that's really where you have a boots on the ground. That's when you need it. So my things are I would hire in-house.

Securing Funding for Good Deals (997) 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, and we are broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about securing funding for good deals. Jill DeWit: I love talking about money. Steven Butala: I love talking about good deals. Jill DeWit: Good. We're made for each other. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: I'll get the money, you get the deals. You think I'm kidding? That's how we roll. Steven Butala: No good acquisition, regardless of size, character, content, should ever go to waste. Ever. Jill DeWit: Or cost. Steven Butala: The biggest reason I've seen them go to waste is, "I just don't have the money to do this deal right now. Hey, seller, this is a great deal. I really want to do it. Can you wait until next month because I've got a lot of deals that I'm doing right now, and I don't have an extra 22,000 bucks to buy a piece of land, but I really do want to buy it, so what do you say we talk in six weeks, and I'll let you know if I can buy it then?" That will never work. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Or, the bigger one is, "Hey, you said you own what also, and you want to own all of that? Gosh! Shoot. That totally fits my buying criteria but, God, that's so expensive. I don't know if I can come up with that much money. I'll just buy this little one. Thanks for showing me. Thanks for sharing." 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: Collin asks, "Why does Realtor.com report data for 1,000 counties versus it's 3,142-" It should be 3,144 for all the counties and parishes. Steven Butala: Why does Realtor report at 1,000 counties than really in reality, there's 3,144 counties in the country. And, here's why. Jill DeWit: I'm going to write down what I think is the answer and then I'm going to see if I'm right, okay? Steven Butala: There's two reasons, but the real reason is this. Houses are only really in about 1,000 counties that matter. There's so much more housing data than there is land data because that's what everybody cares about because they have to live there. So, they have chosen- Steven Butala: Well, Nielsen ratings has chosen those 1,000 counties. That's the second reason. They consider those counties to be the most important and they pour all the- Realtor.com is all about houses. We use it on our show constantly to look at MLS listings for land and stuff, but I'll be honest. That's where they make their dough, buying and selling houses and get in the way of our deals. Jill DeWit: Can I tell you mine? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: 100%, I think it's MLS related. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Because I think back- Steven Butala: You're absolutely right. Jill DeWit: I think it's still that way. Not everywhere in the country is there a dedicated MLS for that specific area. It wasn't really needed. I'm sure there's some areas that it's still, maybe now not so much, but back in the day, when MLS started, there was a lot of word-of-mouth going around. That's how you did it. Then, they started the MLS and I don't think it caught on everywhere.

Member Andy Barnhart Shares Land Academy Success Stories (LA 996) 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 with member Andy Barnhart, who shares his Land Academy success stories. But, before we get into it I have a simple question. Andy, you're sitting right there in that seat. How did you get there? Tell us your story and tell us how you chose Land Academy, and if it's working for you. Andy Barnhart: Yeah, hello. I'll go way back to when I was a child and my dad was a farmer, a dairy farmer. He would try to grow his operation and buy more land, so he would show me plat maps when I was... So, I was looking at plat maps when I was eight years old. He's like, "Oh, we own this 80 acres, and I'm going to buy this 80, and I'd love to have-" he always wanted a section of land. That was his goal. I knew what a section was, and a quarter and a half section at a young age. After college, I got a job- Steven Butala: I have to explain to everybody what a section is. A section is a square mile, and it's 640 acres. A half section is 320, and a quarter section is half of that. Jill DeWit: 160. Steven Butala: 160, and on, and on, and on. Andy Barnhart: Yep. Steven Butala: Anyway, go ahead. So, you're in college. Andy Barnhart: So yeah, I got through college and I got my first job as an Auditor with the US Department of Agriculture with the Dairy Division. I went right in on my first day, and I had learned Excel and everything in college, and thought I was a whiz kid. Then I get into the government organization that I was hired with, and literally some older guys didn't even have a computer on their desk. They refused to work with a computer. All the programs were written in Lotus 123. So, it was like stepping back in time 30 years. Andy Barnhart: I was there 10 years, and we converted everything to Excel and all the reports and everything. So, I was very comfortable with... I had the agriculture background, I have Excel background, I have an auditing background. Then yeah, I bought the realtor courses and took all of the courses to become a realtor. I thought that's something I'm interested in, and then got to the end. I did all of the education and got to the end, and I think at that time is when I found your podcast. You guys were, as you are today, dealing with realtors and [inaudible 00:03:22]. Andy Barnhart: You guys have never shied away from talking trash on realtors, so it made me think, "Well, do I really want to be a realtor?" So, I never went to take the test, and then that's when I bought the programs in 2016. Yeah, that's how I got here. I'm in my third year, and yeah still- Steven Butala: Is it working? Have you done a bunch of deals? I guess, you're on the show so hopefully some of it's working. Andy Barnhart: Yeah, yeah I didn't start out of the gate with a bang. I was skeptical, and I took it really slow. I wrote down my numbers. The first year, 2017, I did 19 deals, and I still had some other jobs going on, some part-time things. The revenue that year was $62,000.00- Steven Butala: Awesome. Andy Barnhart: And then so last year- and I was still doing this all on my own. I did last year 184 deals completed, and then the revenue was $343,000.00. Yeah, I was like, "Yeah, this is-" Jill DeWit: I'm in. Andy Barnhart: I'm in. I'm not a skeptic anymore.

What is Title Insurance (995) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about what is title insurance? Jill DeWit: Oh. We've all wondered that. Steven Butala: We have. The further you get into your career, the more you wonder, "Do I really need this title insurance?" Jill DeWit: The more you read the exceptions, you wonder, "What is ... just what is title insurance?" Steven Butala: We'll cover all that. We promise to make this not boring. Jill DeWit: All right. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it's free. Jill DeWit: Jeremy wrote, "I'm working on gathering data and deciding where to send my first mailer. My plan is to mail three counties with 500 to 600 mailers per county, for a total of 1,500 to 1,800 on mailers going out.". Steven Butala: So far so good. Jill DeWit: Right, "However, I have a few questions that hopefully someone can help me with. A couple of counties I'm looking at have a large difference in population density from one part of the county to another part of the county. I thought about sorting by zip code, but the undeveloped land doesn't have a zip code or address assigned. How do I only send mail to the less densely populated portion of the county? How are you pricing counties that do not have a lot of data? I'm looking at several counties, where the total number of properties in the county is less than 10,000. I know these counties fairly well, and I know who my end users likely to be, hunters and timber investors. But, with anywhere from 50 to 100 total listings on land and farm, I'm only seeing 5 to 10 properties on land watch, and similar websites in the Anchorage range I'm looking at sending my mailers to. Jill DeWit: Do I just base my price off these listings? Or, is there another way people are pricing these areas? Are people just avoiding these counties due to such limited data? Lastly, has anyone had success with subdivision lots in Florida, where there are infrastructures such as roads in place, but the subdivision's still considered rural in the outskirts of the city? I see a lot of these listed on Zillow, and several have sold on eBay for $1,500 to $2,000. However, at those prices it seems like the profit margin is thin after you pay for the data, mailers, etc, even if you're buying at $300 a lot. Jill DeWit: Thank you for any guidance you can provide." Jill DeWit: One of our members, Kevin, already piped in. I'm going to read Kevin's answer here too.Kevin Farrell wrote, "Jeremy, all good questions." Steven Butala: Really good questions. Jill DeWit: Yeah. "I would not worry about population density differences within the county." Steven Butala: Neither would I. Jill DeWit: "Send mail to all the properties in the county that meet your criteria. For example, all the ten acre vacant parcels. Some mail will go to the more expensive areas, no problem. If someone with more valuable land excepts your offer, then you get a better deal." Steven Butala: That's it. Jill DeWit: Exactly. "Price should be derived from the lowest comps in that county." Steven Butala: He's right again.

Why Land is a Good Place to Start REI Career (LA 994) 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 why land is a good place to start your REI career, real estate investment career. Jill DeWit: It really is, when you think about it. Some people look at these transactions, I think, because some of them, we self-close, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but it's so important to learn that process. I guess it's like driving a stick. You need to learn how to do it one way, because it'll really help you with all kinds of other things. Steven Butala: We've all been exposed, afar, from real estate deals. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: You watched your parents buy a house or something like that, some version of an example of a deal. You've decided you want to do this yourself. Land is a great place to start, because there's no real lenders. There's no real estate agents. There doesn't have to be an escrow agent if you don't want there to be one. There's just you, the buyer, and the seller. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: And Microsoft Word. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, though, let's take a question posted by one of our members in the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Jeff- Steven Butala: And- Jill DeWit: Go ahead. Steven Butala: And it's long. And it's good, though. It's good. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jeff asks, "Hi, everyone. I have six offers accepted and I am awaiting my final decision, but I can't even locate some of them. They are all in Presidio County, Texas. Some of them have a legal description that makes it possible to find the parcel, but not the actual location of the land. For example, number 8238 has a legal description of one, DNP Section 143. Yes, that description leads to a 640 acre parcel, however, this one is only 20 acres. So which 20 acres is it?" This is... Beauty of Texas. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: "If you have some system for finding these, please let me know. I have several others with similar problems. Thanks, Jeff." And then Kevin wrote in- Steven Butala: Kevin Ferrell, our site moderator, who's also a very successful member answers and he says this, "Jeff, that looks like a difficult county to get data from. I can pull it up on ParcelFacts.com, but the parcel shown on the map may be 600 plus acres. The county has a pretty good GIS system, but when I pull up that account and click on the map, it shows a different APN of that same 600 plus acres and no real explanation given about the 20 acre lot that lies within that parcel." Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: It goes on to say, "Next step: Call the county and talk to the GIS department. Maybe they can explain. Crack the code, though, and you'll be able to do these deals." And another member, Matt Peterson, also clocked in and said, "There will be plat map for all of these properties, section by section by section." And then they kind of go on, so my point in including not only the original question and then a couple of answers from members and the site moderator is this, you can get just about anything answered in Land Investors- Jill DeWit: Land Investors.

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 993) Transcript: If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. 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://houseacademy.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 iTunes.

How to get past the Fear of Bigger Deals (LA 992) 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 how to get past the fear of bigger deals. You know, right before the show, Jill and I kind of look at each other and say, what are we going to... what's the point here? And this is what happened with this one. Jill DeWit: What's the point here? Steven Butala: She looked at me, and I looked at her, and I said, want to just save it for the show? And she said yeah. Jill DeWit: Heck yeah. Steven Butala: I have a lot to say. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: So before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Eric asked, “Hi. What's a typical amount of time it takes from the time I get a confirmed mailing email from Offers to Owners, to the mail hitting prospects' mail box? I mailed a Tennessee county on May 7th, and I was thinking it would be delivered by now.” Now, I don't know what day this was put in, so I can't actually say that. “My own tracking letter that I stuck in the group hasn't hit my office yet, either. Thanks, Eric.” Jill DeWit: So, I think it's traditionally around two weeks, by the time O2O, because here's how the process goes. You submit either a completed PDF to Offers To Owners, and if it gets in by... I think it's 2:00, whatever that day, Pacific time, it gets in the mail that day. You're either doing that, or you're submitting them your data and your template, and we do the mail merge for you, input into a PDF, and then you just review it, make sure it checks out, and then, again, if it's by I think 2:00 that day, I have to double check with Omar and the team, but then it goes in the mail that same day. Jill DeWit: Now, you know the next steps better than I do from that. Steven Butala: Here's the man-way to answer that question. Jill DeWit: Thanks a lot. Steven Butala: From the time that it hits the mail- Jill DeWit: Thanks, babe. Steven Butala: It takes two to three weeks to hit, to get the offer. That's why it's called Offers To Owners. For the owners to actually get the mail, and open it, and make a, and talk about it with their spouse. Two to three weeks. Then you can expect a week of people ranting and raving about the fact that they don't like your offer, and then you can expect signed offers back. In the bitter end, 30 days. Steven Butala: You will be buying property 30 days from the time that it goes, and that's as fast as it's going to get unless you do, unless you send out First Class mail, or some other mechanism, and then it becomes prohibitively, in my opinion, expensive. Jill DeWit: Not worth it. Steven Butala: And I don't believe... I believe that First Class mail is an illusion. Jill DeWit: I agree. Steven Butala: Do you know, I don't believe that, I don't believe in First Class mail. Jill DeWit: I don't. I totally agree. I got to tell you, even the stupid overnighting things. I'm like, I'm getting to the point where like why am I paying to overnight this? It didn't get there any faster if I'd had just done the regular thing. This is ridiculous.

Members Aaron and Liz English Shares Land Academy Success Stories (LA 991) 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 the sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk with members: Aaron and Liz English. And, we talk about their land success, Land Academy success stories, or maybe some of where they haven't had so much success. Steven Butala: So, just to start it off, and before we get into the real topic, let us know please how you got here? How you got to this moment with Land Academy? Aaron English: Well, I got into the land business about ten years ago, and did the whole Jack Bosch thing, and said, "Go to the county, get a mailer or get the data." And, I'm like, "Okay." And then you get the data, and it's like, "What? What is this?" You know... I was like, "Okay, I can't do this." So, I end up buying a list from China, sent a mailer out and just got a bunch of hate back, so I backed it for like ten years. And then, just about two years ago, I found you guys and went out specifically looking for land investors and land investing, came across your podcast and pulled the trigger. And so, here we are. Jill DeWit: Awesome! Aaron English: How long ago did you join? Liz English: Two years. Steven Butala: Two years ago? Liz English: Yeah, yeah. Aaron English: Yeah. Steven Butala: Has it worked out? I mean, are you doing deals? Liz English: Yeah. Aaron English: Yeah. We're doing lots of deals. I think we're about 150-160, something like that. Steven Butala: Wow! What's a typical deal for you guys? That's great! Aaron English: As far as money goes, or...? Steven Butala: Yeah, like buy it for 5000, 10 acres in, I don't know, some Western State. Sell it for 22, in terms or cash, or what's a typical deal? Liz English: We did a lot of terms before, and we don't want to do anymore because it's a pain in the butt. Talk to a lot of interesting people that are time wasters. But now, we're doing more, bigger deals and selling them cash because we kind of graduated out of- Aaron English: All cash, for sure. We stopped doing notes about last month. Just chasing too many people, and too many people with sob stories and they're like, "We got to take this property back now." You know, it's just a pain. Just cash. Jill DeWit: It sounds good. I mean, a lot of people are... if you have the, I don't want to say stomach for it or what the right word is, but if that's your thing, yeah, you can quickly get how many... you know, coming in a month. But, you have to babysit them a little bit, as you know. There's always one that needs something, and somebody's not available. And, even though with us, I'm like I would say, "What do you need? Do you want me to..." It's like, "I get paid on the third, could I make the payments come out on the fifth?", "Fine." And, they're still always a little something, and I'm like, "This is just a lot of work." And then, of course, then they go dark, and you're like, "Darn it!" You know, I don't want to take it back. I like the payment thing and they're gone. I kind of feel bad for you, but now I got to do it all over again. So, I get it. Yeah. Liz English: We've had some people that are being great all along, but it's just those few people that want to change it up, their credit card every month, or miss a payment,

How Much Should I Diversify Land Acquisition Types (LA 990) 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 how much should I diversify my land acquisition types, one of my favorite topics when I- Jill DeWit: I know. I have a bunch of notes here. Steven Butala: Awesome. Jill DeWit: This is going to be a good show. Steven Butala: Before we get into it ... I started in commercial real estate, so I didn't start in land. We still do deals in that space. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). 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: What you're saying is we walk the walk. We don't just talk the talk. Right? Steven Butala: What does that mean? Jill DeWit: That means that we say diversify, and we diversify. That's the point. Steven Butala: I don't think there's much that we talk about ... I don't think there's much theory in any of these Land Academy, House Academy or any of it. I think it's all proven. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah. Yes. We've been there, done that. Steven Butala: We talk about attitude and some other stuff once in a while, and get a little bit nebulous, but the fact is, this is what we do. Jill DeWit: Sorry, I have a hair right in my eye here, so we'll find it. All right, Jason says, "Good afternoon. I need to find a real estate attorney to draw up an affidavit of heirship. The attorney needs to be in Orange County, California, probably in or near the Irvine area. If anyone knows of a good inexpensive lawyer they can recommend, please let me know. Thanks in advance." Jill DeWit: You know what's really cool about this? I said see stuff like this on Facebook all the time too. I'm glad people know to reach out and ask. Jill DeWit: All right. One of our members, [Steven 00:01:41] F says, "Hey, Jason. I use an attorney out of Riverside. I gave her a call, and she said she'd be happy to speak with you regarding your request. Riverside is the next county over, and she can do work in Irvine. Here's her cell number. Here's her name." Steven Butala: Her name is [Ricky Rivera 00:00:01:56]. Jill DeWit: Oversharing. Steven Butala: Her cell number is (951)719-5149. I included all this, I personally included it in the script today, because that's what Land Investors is. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: That's what we do here. We help each other. It's not just access to the data. It's not just education. It's not just advice on a show, or on and on and on, the stuff that goes on. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: In fact, I'm actually going to call this person too, because adverse possession property ... What this person is asking is ... What happened here is this ... I'm reading between the lines and it's a generalization, but I really think it can help listeners. Steven Butala: When you send out a bunch of mail, there's a lot of people that contact you that say, "I would love to sell you my property," whether it's a house or a piece of land, "but it's in my dad's name. He passed away two years ago, and I've been paying the taxes,

House Flips are the Next Logical Step (LA 989) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Memorial 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 house flips are the next logical step. Jill DeWit: They are. Some people are just ... they took our concepts, started to apply it to other property types, which is great and figure it out and that is the way it should be, right? Steven Butala: Do you think house flips are easier or harder? Jill DeWit: Over all, completing the transaction, easier. Steven Butala: That's what I think. Jill DeWit: When agents get involved, harder. Steven Butala: I don't know I'm trying to make a good analogy and a good example. It's like when you do a bunch of land deals, land deals are great. House deals are just a such of wealth ... Well that's the title. A logical stop. I think they're so much easier for a lot of reasons, but you've got to do them right. Just like everything else. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Before we get into though. Let's take a question posted by one of our members. On a landinvestors.com online community. It's free and I should say this. We also have a House Academy by the time this airs. A House Academy forum. Jill DeWit: We do. Steven Butala: And we're about to launch a new House Academy show. Jill DeWit: We do. True. All right. Alex says, "Morning everyone. Mailed three different counties in my first mailer and it did not go so well. Hudspeth county, Texas is probably the worst county to deal with. They don't even have the properties recorded on a map. I've had a ton of people call and mail back purchase agreements for less than $100 per acre, but I can't find any info on any of them. Jill DeWit: One guy texted me pictures of his deed and plot information, but the coordinates are in relation to the other plots in the same subdivision. No one knows where the subdivisions are. I asked county how they figured out what the taxes for the parcels are if they don't know where they are? And they said, "We have no idea. LOL." If they could get those properties all recorded, some on there could make a killing. Jill DeWit: I got nothing but hate calls from another county, but I think it was my fault on the pricing. The third county, I've gotten calls back, but people want way too much. I'm four grand in the whole, but I think of it as a pricey education. I know I'll make something happen on the next mailer and hope I do. Anyone else get whacked on their first time out?" Jill DeWit: I watched you and there were like several responses. Steven Butala: There are probably at least ten responses to this in the forum from some more senior members. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: I'm about to give my response too. Jill DeWit: It's kind of funny. Steven Butala: Go ahead, Jill. Jill DeWit: One of our members in particular wrote this. He said ... and it was Kevin. Kevin said, "Hey Alex, it's too early to shut the door on these counties." Steven Butala: Exactly. Jill DeWit: "You're getting their early responders, the most motivated and desperate sellers. Just wait." Steven Butala: Exactly.

Why Men Don't Understand Women (LA 988) Transcript: If you enjoyed the podcast, please review it in iTunes . Reviews are incredibly important for rankings on iTunes. 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://houseacademy.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 iTunes.

You Don't Need a License to Buy and Sell Real Estate (LA 987) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk, I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how you don't need a real estate license to buy and sell real estate. Jill DeWit: What?! Wait, what? Jill DeWit: Yes, that's true. Steven Butala: Of all the things that you need a license for, and I'm sure Jill's got a whole list of them she's going to describe, because some of them are silly, like being a barber. Jill DeWit: Yup. Steven Butala: You do not, in any way, need to a license to buy and sell real estate. Jill DeWit: Yup. Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:00:38] we have a lot more freedom than we all think. Jill DeWit: Yup. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question, posted by one of members on landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Damien asks, I primarily wholesale residential buildable lots inside ... okay, wait, wait, wait. Can you go back up here? Steven Butala: I primarily wholesale residential buildable lots inside of sub-divisions. Jill DeWit: [crosstalk 00:01:07] Inside of sub-divisions. He put a question mark and that's what threw my there. I'm like is that a question or a statement? Looking to branch out to other markets, however, I was wondering if there was a way I could find only counties with land that primarily uses public water and sewer and don't need perk tests, wetlands tests, environment tests, et cetera. Jill DeWit: Okay, so we want to find infill lots that don't need those items. Steven Butala: What he's asking is, is there something in a data set in RealQuest, DataTree or whatever you're using that identifies the buildability of a given piece of property, land. Jill DeWit: Thank you for translating. Steven Butala: The answer's no. Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:01:51]. Steven Butala: So these data sets, while they're extraordinary in the amount of information that they provide. Jill DeWit: That would be cool. Steven Butala: What they generally provide, this is how I mentally see it. What they generally provide is all the stuff that you could put on a piece of paper about a piece of property, but no so much the stuff about the physical asset. Now, there's lots of exceptions to that, so you can get square footage very easily if it's a house, and certainly if it's land most of the time. Does it have a pool to how many bedrooms does it have and stuff, but we're talking about land right now, so it's almost all, does it have a mortgage? That's one there, that's one a piece of paper, but the attributes of the land, where utilities are? Is it in a flood plains? Things like that, those are happen afterward, and so if you're brand new at this, this is a very good question, if you're new at this, when you open this data set for the first time and you start horsing around in there, you don't know what to expect. And a lot of times people, just because it's curiosity, it's not like they're wrong, they don't fully understand that the actually physical attributes about the property, access, and specifically access, nothing, it's not there. Jill DeWit: I look at it this way, which is true,

Member Matt Rogers Shares Land Academy Success Stories (LA 986) 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 with member extraordinaire, Matt Rogers, and he shares his success stories, hopefully, and maybe some of the reason why he got here. That's really what I'm interested in. Jill DeWit: Exactly! Steven Butala: Before we get into it, I would love to... actually, this is the question. Love to know how you got here. And don't leave out any details! Matt Rogers: In the summer of 2017, I had taken a break from television producing, which I had been doing for 15 years, and was just kind of burnt out with the travel. I had been on the road for almost 10 years and had some great experiences, met a ton of cool people, have a million awesome stories to tell at parties. But at the end of the day, I didn't really have a ton to show for it. Matt Rogers: The money was good, but when you're on the road that much, you get burnt out after a while. So, I started looking for ways I could work less in production and do something more for myself, and I started just digging into bigger pockets and figuring out different real estate avenues, things that could... You could get in with not a ton of money, and it kept coming back to land. And honestly, there's three or four kind of main educators in the space, and with you and Jill being one of them, I just started listening to podcasts, and kind of connected with you guys and listened for a couple of months, tore through all the podcasts. Matt Rogers: And just decided to join. I joined in September of 2017, and just said, "You know what? Let's give this a shot and see what we can do." And I had about $10,000 I wanted to kind of ante in with, and just see where it could take us. Steven Butala: What's your bank balance now, Matt? Matt Rogers: It's a little more than 10,000. Steven Butala: Oh, wait, we need to hear... What was the answer? I didn't hear that. Jill DeWit: He just said, "A little more than 10,000." Steven Butala: 12,000's good. Matt Rogers: No, it's been a pretty crazy ride for the last, oh, I think we're going on a little under a year and a half now, and honestly, the first three or four months was just almost dipping your toe in the water. And kind of testing for reason, as you like to say, and just making sure that you weren't going to lose a ton of money or just want to make sure it works! Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: What does a television producer really do? Every time I see it on a credits, in the before and after anything we watch, it's like, "Produced by X," and I just, my initial reaction is, "Yeah, they just put a bunch of money into that thing, and that's it." Matt Rogers: There's those type of producers. Those are usually on movies and things like that, executive producers, people that just are the money people. Jill DeWit: Okay. Matt Rogers: As we know, what we do, there's money people in our business, too. And on my level, I did more of unscripted things, like Travel Channel, Food Network, HGTV shows, so I would run with a small team. I would usually have a couple of camera people, an audio guy, maybe a couple of assistants, and my job was to direct and also make sure all the logistics were in place while we were on location.

Our Most Recent House Flips Net Us 100K (LA 985) 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 our most recent house flips net us about a hundred thousand bucks. Jill's like right before the show, "What do you mean it net us $100000?" Jill DeWit: I don't even look anymore. I'm like and did it what? What are you talking about? Steven Butala: We made $98000. These three properties generated. Jill DeWit: I get so- Steven Butala: $98000. When you think about that, it's actually pretty amazing. Jill DeWit: It is. Steven Butala: And you think about doing one a month. It gets to millions pretty fast. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Do one a week. Steven Butala: Yeah. I need it. Yeah. Jill DeWit: That's really what you'd like. Steven Butala: If we didn't have a show and we didn't have Land Academy and House Academy. If we were you, listener. Jill DeWit: We're going to get back to one a week. All good. Steven Butala: We're putting food on the table. 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 says, "Hi everybody. Yesterday, I received a call from a property that we just put on the market". And the caller asked, "Why is it so cheap?" I love this. Isn't this funny how this happens? It's so darn funny. Half the time I feel like I'm going to mark it up just because they don't believe it. "That is my second favorite question when talking to buyers. One, it tells me that I got the comps right. That is important feedback when there are very few comps. In this case I really had to dig to look for listings and recent sales to get a number. Two, if the buyer is serious, he isn't going to haggle much. He already knows that the price is great. Three, the buyer won't drag his feet on a deal because he knows that other buyers will be attracted to this price. In this case, I have two buyers out looking at the property after being on the market for two days. And number four, I have the opportunity to explain my business to the buyer, so he knows how we purchase properties and why the price is so low." Jill DeWit: "I also explained that there are no liens or back taxes. That way you can stop worrying about the property being a toxic dumping ground and get on with making a good purchase decision. Oh yeah. My favorite question is how can I buy it? If you want to hear people asking you these questions? Send more mail." Jill DeWit: And I agree. That was good. Steven Butala: That's a Luke Smith call. Jill DeWit: I like that. Steven Butala: Stop asking all these questions. Just send more mail. Jill DeWit: Isn't that funny? And it's so true. That happens all the time because our whole motto is buy a right, mark it up, this is, we're talking land of course, mark it up so you double your money, but you're still way below everything else out there. And then it's going to sell really fast. And you are going to get these calls and these people going, "What's wrong with this?" And the question is nothing and you better hurry up because I got, there's other people looking at it, kind of thing. It's great. What do you want to add?

Marketing is Everything (LA 984) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how marketing is everything. Jill DeWit: It's an amazing ... Where would we be? Steven Butala: You know, we were just talking before we started the show. This whole internet thing, if you're very young, you don't know what it was like before the internet and how hard it was to market. We all have businesses, every single one of us in Land Academy, and soon to be House Academy. Jill DeWit: I remember with you being at a bookstore, I was looking at a magazine. This was way before Land Academy. It was just selling land. I was thinking, "Maybe we should create one of these magazines to promote our land." I'm glad we didn't do that. Steven Butala: In marketing, you're never going to sell a piece of real estate if you just purchase it and never tell anyone about it. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: So even if you sell a lot of property, just bring it on Craig's List, and it's free, you're still marketing the property. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: That's what made realtors and the MLS so popular before the internet. We'll talk about that and get into some detail in a second here. 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: Tanner asks, "Morning everyone. I'm interested in hearing some thoughts and opinions on how to gain good credibility as a new investor. I understand the importance of having a professional online presence to begin with, but how am I able to boost my credibility beyond that? Land Academy in itself is an incredibly credible source, so is that acceptable to say that I'm a member of this group so that a seller or buyer may be able to reference that as well? Would love to hear thoughts around this. Appreciate it." On the way in, by the way, I'm listening to my Sirius Radio and the Wharton Business School, which I talk about a lot because I just love that dumb channel. It was just, there was a little excerpt from a show that I had heard a couple weeks ago about a guy saying, "Your website, when people are looking you up, right away your appearance and how it looks and everything, it makes them real quick decide quickly if they want to do business with you or not." Steven Butala: In two seconds. Jill DeWit: So number one, you better have one. And number two, it needs to look good and professional. I would absolutely put us on there. We probably still have somewhere, our members would use it. It'd say, "Land Academy certified member," like a little image that you could put on your website. Steven Butala: Like a stamp. Jill DeWit: I would totally use that. And it does make a difference when people trace you to us, then it stops it right there. Steven Butala: I mean, there's a lot of ways. This ties right into the show that we're talking about. So, promoting yourself and what you know and the fact that you have maybe a different or unique angle on how to buy real estate maybe cheaper, you're going to sink or swim by that. This goes right into the topic actually. In fact, let's just make it the topic. Today's topic, marketing is everything. This is the meat of the show. Steven Butala: We have all extremes in our group.

Illinois Governor Pritzkner Property Tax Evasion Investigation (LA 983) 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 Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about Illinois Governor Pritzker, property tax evasion investigation. Sounds boring, but I promise you it's not. Jill DeWit: This is a good one. 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: Michael A. Hello. Michael asks, "Hello friends, for those of you who have subscribed to PATLive, how's it working out? Sure, PATLive can take messages, but are they really helping out? Are you simply calling back at the calls that PATLive takes? Is it really helpful? Every call is different and often there's amount of rapport building that's needed to convince the seller that you're not a scam or that your offers legit? Is PATLive able to do this for you? Please share your experiences. Thanks." Steven Butala: Jill's an expert at this, but I must say before she answers, I've never seen so many answers, membership answers. There's probably 35 answers of positive experiences from our users about PATLive. So, there's an underlying meaning here to this question. Jill's going to answer the actual question. Does PATLive work, yes or no? And I'm going to answer, what I think is the underlying meaning here. Jill DeWit: Okay, I love it. So here's the deal about... So PATLive, there are other different services out there, but we all, as a group, use PATLive and it's nice because they are a little bit real estate based. I think we have a group and they know us. Steven Butala: They understand our group. Jill DeWit: They do and they understand our calls and what we're doing. We've got some seasoned people now, so it works out great. But what's funny too is... What it is, is you send out mail, and the offers come back. You can pick up the phone yourself and weed through all the calls, either the good and the bad and the, "Hey, take me off your list calls." Or you can have someone like PATLive answer the phone, weed through those calls and then, just send you the responses. Which is a beautiful thing because it saves you so much time and energy. Jill DeWit: Maybe you have a day job. This covers that for you and then, all you get at the end of the day is a list of who you want to call back. You may have six no's, one person that was really unhappy and you can see that. Then, you have four people that said, "Love your offer. How fast can we close?" And those are the ones you call back. Jill DeWit: So it's really great and they'll take down some of the details too, which I appreciate. Because what you can do then is have a chance to look up the property and just look over some things and go, "All right, I remember what I offered. They liked it. There's the property." So when you call them back, you're ready to in that... Now you're only making that one phone call, you can efficiently, really close the deal on that call. Jill DeWit: You could have already looked it up and said, "Hi, I just want to make sure I'm talking to Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Yep. Well, I looked it over and you accepted my offer of $1,293? Yep. We love it. Can we do it on Tuesday like you said? Absolutely. Is this the right address for you [inaudible 00:03:11] notary? Yes it is." And you can see how that goes. You could really in one call, with this service,

Difference Between a Wholesale and Retail Deal (LA 982) 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: I'm Jill DeWitt. Broadcasting from sunny, Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about the difference between wholesale and retail transactions. Jill DeWit: There's a difference? Hey, you keep saying I'm crowding you. Am I okay? You want to come a little- Steven Butala: No, you're fine. Jill DeWit: Am I okay? All right, good. Steven Butala: It's all good. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Both of our shoulders are in the frame, it's perfect. Jill DeWit: Cool. Nice. 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: Brian asks, "I'm looking at picking up six adjacent parcels in Riverside County, California, in a developed area that has other small apartment complexes in the same block area. This is a high density zoning, as well as SFR residential, and I would like to target developers interested in putting in apartments. How would you recommend finding such potential buyers?" Steven Butala: This is a great question. It's the kind of question I love answering on the show, because it's a complicated question on the face of it, and very advanced, I'd say, but the answer is so simple. The answer applies to every person who's listening to this that's ever owned a piece of real estate or aspires to own a piece of real estate. When you find specific use property like this, high density residential apartments, they're very specifically zoned, typically, or there's a range of zones, like multi-unit one to multi-unit four, that kind of thing. It's just for sake of argument. Steven Butala: In that county, or in that zip code, or the adjacent zip codes, are going to be other owners that own the property that you can see in the data based on how it's zoned, or being used. I mean, and I'm talking about in less than two minutes you can find these, because you already pulled the data, you sent the mail out. These are the people who are going to buy these properties, and if they don't, 50% of all property gets sold. All property and all property types gets sold to people who live or work in the immediate one mile radius of that property. Small apartments and specialty use properties, no different. Steven Butala: If you talk to anybody who owns any type of real estate, or any business for that matter, they're going to say one of two things. "Oh, this company ... if I had two of these companies, I'd be done. I love this company. I love going to work there, and it's great." Or, "I hate this apartment building. If I could sell it right now, I would, it's just not working." Steven Butala: So, by sending a letter to these people, whether it's companies or [inaudible 00:02:43] owners, you're looking for the ones who say, "Man, I really want another one, or another. I'm looking for another development project, this one's really close to the one I already own." You're going to smoke those people out really quickly. Steven Butala: This kind of deal is how I started in real estate back in the early '90's, before the internet and stuff. It's a very special ... in my case, it was healthcare facilities, like assisted living buildings and stuff. It's specialty use, there's only a limited number of owners in certain markets, and they're going to buy the stuff if they're happy with t...

Member Steve Manus Shares Mobile Home Lot Success Stories (LA 981) 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 with member Steve Manus, who shares his Land Academy success stories. Steve comes to us from Palo Alto, California, and BlueSkyLands.com. Before his land career, he worked with grad students and professors at Stanford University in the Department of Chemistry, and I'm sure there's a lot more to this story than I know at all. Steve Manus: Okay, good morning. Jill DeWit: Welcome. Steven Butala: Steve, tell us a little about your experience at Stanford and how it ultimately led to this conversation we're having. Steve Manus: Sure, and it actually did, there is a direct route. It's interesting. I had been mostly in sales my whole life. I'll give a very brief background, but I was not... I was always smart and did well in college and all of that, but I wasn't some driven or motivated student in particular, and I didn't have a real career path. In fact, I remember vividly the day I threw out all of my law school applications. Steven Butala: Oh, that's beautiful. Steve Manus: It was, it was a very fine day because that's sort of the track that I was on because I grew up in a family of lawyers and my Mom was also a paralegal when that actually meant something in the early days of paralegals when it was more of a substantial position. I just thought, "Okay, of course, I'll just go to grad school." I was a history major, I'll go to grad school or I'll go to law school in this case, and I just... the thought of actually becoming a lawyer was so abhorrent to me that I couldn't do it. I couldn't even apply to the schools. Steve Manus: I'm sure I would have gotten in somewhere, but you grow up in... There's a lot to say here, which I won't, but I just remember years later going back home. I moved out from Chicago to California and I've been here for more than a couple of decades in Northern California. I went back for my Dad's birthday one year, a few years ago, he's since passed, but we were sitting around the dining room table and all of a sudden it turned into this political discussion and my politics happen to be different from theirs, it was if I was sitting in the witness chair. Prosecutor... They're just grilling me relentlessly. I thinking like, "What has happened? In two minutes' time I've gone from loving son who flew in for your birthday to God knows what?" Steven Butala: That's [crosstalk 00:02:31] the Midwest. The culture in the Midwest is like that. I'm from there, too. Steve Manus: Yes, yes it is. We've talked about this. In fact, the Detroit, the... Yeah, because Chicago and Michigan are connected. Anyway, I went into sales and I enjoyed it and was good at it and I just didn't have direction for many years. I wound up at Stanford some years later. I needed a job and there it was, and it was a good job. It was administrative work in the Chemistry Department. I was familiar with universities. I went to grad school myself ultimately, but this was a different world because it's a very, very high-level world. Very high achievers, incredibly hard-working individuals. Those who become professors at Stanford, and particular in the science and engineering, are just the very best in the world, and there aren't that many of them who qualify. Steven Butala: You [crosstalk 00:03:22] mentioned in the earlier part of the pre-show that's not on air that they were also the most...

How Men and Women Approach Land Investing (LA 980) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: I was going to say something like "Guten tag." Then, I was trying to think, "Hola." I'm like, well, that's boring. And then I was thinking of another language and, buenos dias. Here we go. Steven Butala: This is perfect reaction and entrance intro. The differences between men and women. Jill DeWit: Uh oh. Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show. Land, investments, real estate 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 men and women approach land investing. Jill DeWit: I love it differently among other things. Steven Butala: It turns out, there's some differences between men and women in general in life, and it's not that far off from the differences in how we approach investing in land, and they both have equal and incredibly valuable merit and contribution to getting stuff done. That's kind of what the show is to talk about. It's not to dog on each other, although that may happen. It's actually to celebrate our differences and use them to make some dough. Jill DeWit: Exactly. 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: Nancy asks, "Hello. At the moment, I am paycheck to paycheck, but I can probably get $250 up in the next month for a deal. What I'm asking is would someone be willing to go half on, say, a $500 wholesale deal and split any profit? This way I can get my feet wet and hopefully earn some cash so I can do other deals on halves and split again. Then, eventually do deals on my own. I have to benefit and learn from the sales side of business and eventually earn enough money for a monthly membership, where I can then learn the acquisition side. The only experience that I have real estate as a few years back, I wholesaled a house." Well, that's good. Steven Butala: That's good. Really good start. Jill DeWit: "Got it under contract. Then assigned the contract to another, the second one I did. I was not able to find anyone for the contract and had to let it go back." Steven Butala: You got your feet wet. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Yeah. That's really great. Steven Butala: What's your advice to this person? Jill DeWit: Hey, it's a creative way to get started and I don't think it's nuts. The only thing is I'm not sure how much ... I guess I'd have to talk to and just find out what she's able to contribute, including the $250 towards it. Could you help me with the marketing part of it? Can you help me with this? Each person's equally doing some of the work to justify splitting the profit, not just one person doing all the work of one person sitting back and observing. I'm just being honest. What are your thoughts? Steven Butala: I'm going to paint a picture here. It's a very accurate picture of a material number of people who are listening or watching this right now. Steven Butala: I don't have any money. I have a pretty good job. I live in her house or an apartment, and I'm going to work just like the rest of the world every day, wondering what's going to happen. Not Wondering, but trying to put a plan together because I really just don't want to do this job that I'm in the rest of my life, but I don't have any money.

Division of Responsibilities in a Partnership (LA 979) 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 divisions of responsibilities in a partnership. Jill DeWit: Sounds boring. Steven Butala: It just occurred to me that this is my all-time favorite way to avoid work is these recording sessions. Jill DeWit: Who wrote this? Did you come up with this title? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: It sounds a little- Steven Butala: Did I write this title? Jill DeWit: I'm sorry. Steven Butala: No. My personal assistants and full time staff did. Jill DeWit: I know. It's very corporate because you're not usually a corporate guy. So I'm like division of responsibilities in a partnership. Steven Butala: It's not like, hey let's sit down and see what you're responsible for and what I'm .... That's not what I mean. What I mean is I love doing the data and pounding it in the mail, and you and your people love to answer the phone and make these deals happen. That's what this is all about. It's not like we sat down and said, "You do that, and I'll do this." We just naturally fell into it. Jill DeWit: Come on, let's be honest. It was rock-paper-scissors. I lost. I'm just kidding. Steven Butala: Here's my big question, and we'll get into it in a second. If we had to flip roles, would we succeed? If I had to be the wife and you were the husband- Jill DeWit: Based on my laugh, what do you think? Steven Butala: I know. [inaudible 00:01:23] the answer. Jill DeWit: We'll leave it at that. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Luke asked, I would like to know if parcelfact.com, our website that we use for due diligence, may have a GIS function so that there may be a layout ... Hold onto this one, this is a good question ... So that there may be a layout of all the adjacent and neighboring properties or lots with their addresses. We can use these lots or houses and to check the flood zones, comps, things like that. There's all kinds of things you can use for the surrounding properties. Steven Butala: What he's asking is so when you go onto Parcel Fact, you look up a property. It's state, country APN. It beautifully pulls up a property, with dimensions and exactly can really make a fast decision about whether or not you want to buy it. What he's asking is, yeah there's lots of properties that surround it all over the place. What if I could click on those and know who owns it so maybe I'd buy the property, maybe I'd contact the person next to it and see if they want to sell or buy this property really fast. And the answer is hell, yes. We are probably 30 days away from recording ... By the time you hear this, it'll be a lot less. 30 days-ish, let's just say 60 from this functionality come into reality. Jill DeWit: Yep. It's being created right now. Steven Butala: It's something that ... This is a great question. It's one of the reasons I included it. I want this. Everybody does. I want to see who owns the property next door too. Jill DeWit: It's awesome. I actually looked at the beta.

Stuff Your Father Never Told You (LA 978) 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 talk about the topic, stuff your father never told you. Jill DeWit: I can't wait to hear what you have to say. Steven Butala: This is kind of a show that I put together that is directly pertaining to real estate. But specifically for younger people and older people too. I talked about this a couple of years ago on the show, and we had a live event, and many many people came up to me and said, man I can't wait to read this book that you're writing about this topic because, anyway, I'll talk about it in a second. But it's so important to really plan your life out. That's really what this is about. Instead of just letting stuff happen to you. Like planning a real estate deal out. Like you want to know what's going to happen. You want to remove most of the variables, or all of the variables that you can. Plan that there's going to be a few variables you can't control. And just make sure you get it done. I'm not sure a lot of people plan that out. I planned out the professional part of my life, not so much the social. Jill DeWit: It worked out I think. Steven Butala: It worked out well. Before we get into it though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on a LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Joe asks, I've got a group of properties under contract with a seller, which includes a commercial property. The purchase price is more than I have in my acquisition funds right now. But I don't want this deal to go to waste. So I'm looking for a funding partner for the deal. I retried Land Academy deal funding, got it, but they said it didn't meet their criteria. I'm not a member, so LandTank is not an option for me. Purchase price is $20,000 and there's a similar commercial parcel currently listed for $250,000. Did anybody- Steven Butala: And that's where the question ends. And the reason that I included this in there is because there are multiple people, new land investors that are, here's my email address, here's my phone number, this is what we love to do. So and then, all things that happen in Land Academy, it all works out for the members and the people. And then we never hear. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: It's just gone. They have successfully flown out of the nest and we don't know. Jill DeWit: Yeah. So here's the deal. Land Academy deal funding, I do review deals for members and non-members. And so there's something about this deal, it may have been something, just like an access issue, usually the things I don't accept are, there's some access issue or a flooding issue or it's got too many, too high days on market issue, or some other- Steven Butala: Those are federal criteria. Jill DeWit: Or not enough skin in the game to, sometimes I'm like okay, by the time we invest in this and you and I split it, it doesn't really make sense. So it's usually things like that for us. That's part of my criteria. And then- Steven Butala: Biggest one is access. And the second biggest one is not enough money. Jill DeWit: Not enough money. Steven Butala: So by us saying, you know what, this doesn't work for us. Well what we're saying is, it's probably a pretty good deal. Jill DeWit: It might be a good deal.

Why a Career Land Developer Picked Land Academy (LA 977) 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 a career land developer picked Land Academy. Jill DeWit: This'll be good, based on a call that I had, and then I shared it with you, and you're like, "Oh, we got to talk about this." So, I- Steven Butala: It kind of ties into what happened yesterday. There's a special type of person that gets involved in this, and it was a total unintended consequence on my part when we started this. We just wanted to help people and have that question stop, and it ended up all these smart people found Land Academy. Jill DeWit: And look what we're doing now. Steven Butala: Now we're doing deals together and stuff. It's pretty cool. Jill DeWit: I know. It's great. 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: Linda asks, "I've been in contact with an owner of a 33.5 acre parcel in Virginia. But as I was looking through the current deed, it mentions a family cemetery and a right of ingress and egress. I asked the seller about it, and she said it's very old, like 1800s. Some of her relatives are buried there, but then they were moved to church cemeteries many years ago. There are a few graves left, but they're all people unrelated to the family and the seller has no idea who they were. Neither does anyone living in that area. She is supposed to send me a survey that shows the location of the cemetery. Sounds like it's her at the front of the property on the left side, so not in the middle of anything. I had offered $25,000 which is $746 an acre before I knew about the cemetery, and the cheapest comp, comparable property in the market right now is listed for $2,400 an acre." Jill DeWit: That's great. Jill DeWit: "Prices go up from there to $3,000 an acre, and they keep going up. It looks like a great margin, but I'm concerned that having an old cemetery on the property would make it hard to resell. Thanks." Steven Butala: As you can imagine, this topic on land investors itself generate a lot of responses from other members. Jill DeWit: Yep. Exactly. Steven Butala: Would you buy it? Jill DeWit: You know what I would do, I would try to see if I could get the property split to remove the cemetery. In a perfect world, I'd get that piece, chunk, cut out and leave it with the family. Steven Butala: So that's what the response was from our moderators. Jill DeWit: Right. Okay. That would be my first choice. Steven Butala: I like it. The economics of the deal are great, and I'll tell you what. If you can buy at 33-acre property in the state of Virginia anywhere ... There's no bad place in Virginia to buy real estate. So that makes me say, "I want to go to the next ... Let's take it to the next ... It's the next level." Plus, if she's got an old survey and all kinds of stuff, that's really positive. Jill DeWit: I think the right attorney could get this done, and not be that hard. I bet the right attorney can do it in 30 to 60 days and get that piece off there. Otherwise, there's nothing you can really do with it because no one's going to want to move a cemetery, you know,

Rich Girl Talk with Member Faith Hill and Jill DeWit (LA 976) Transcript: Jill Dewit: Good morning, just Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining Land investment talk. I am Jill Dewit broadcast from Sunny southern California. Today I'm here with member Faith Hill, just Faith, who shares her experience with us at Land Academy. I am so happy to talk to you, Faith. Thank you and welcome. Faith Hill: Thank you, Jill. I'm excited. Jill Dewit: I picked you specifically to do this show with me alone for two reasons: Number one, you, like me, started in this business ground up with your husband/partner and that is unique, and I think we are very special because of that; and then two, just you and as a professional coming into this too I mean you had another career you were very successful I'm sure and happy in your career before this, but here you are doing this. Faith Hill: Absolutely. Jill Dewit: I want to talk some business questions. We talked with you and Germaine it's so fun now just us girls because we have a different spin on things. I have some kind of business questions I was going to talk to you about and then I was going to ask you some female investor kind of related questions. First of all, tell me, talk to me about the East Coast. You guys, this is, for me, what's your experience East Coast? You're on the East Coast, I'm on the west coast, properties are so different. This morning I was having coffee with Stephen he was talking about, ask her, I said what do you want to hear? What do you want from Faith? He says you know there has been, over the years he's done well in some of the east coast states and not so well in some east coast states. So you guys are killing it in Virginia and some other states out there, what do you think is the difference and what can you share with us? Faith Hill: Yes. I'm glad you asked that question Jil because definitely we see that there are not a lot of people in the land space that are working on the east coast. At least when we initially started, we saw most folks were targeted in California, Arizona, Texas, so we certainly did have to learn by trial and error in terms of applying the model to Virginia and North Carolina. Those are the two main states we target here on the east coast. It still works here. I know that some people initially might be skeptical of applying the model to different states, but it does work certainly in Virginia and North Carolina. I think some of the differences that we notice early on was that our initial offer prices needed to be a little higher than we originally anticipated. Jill Dewit: I was just going to say that. Faith Hill: Yes, not saying it's not possible to find properties you can buy for a few hundred dollars here, but certainly in our experience, going into, we target one to five acre parcels, we certainly did need to start a little higher in terms of price points. I think might be the biggest difference we've seen, at least with pricing. I think, other than that, the people interaction I'm sure is very similar in terms of knowing who to talk to sellers and being relatable and things like that. That's pretty universal no matter where you're doing this business. I think that would probably be the main difference we saw earlier on. Jill Dewit: Pricing. The people, are they you get the same response with your mailers and your offers? Do you still get those people that are, obviously you are, receptive to it. Faith Hill: Yes. Jill Dewit: Me coming from southern California, I never forget the first time I was dealing with people in New York, right. I'm like, what the heck? The way that they talk to each other and the way that they interact, I'm like oh my goodness. If I lived there, I'd be eaten alive. It's so funny. Faith Hill: I guess maybe people are people no matter wher...

Reasons Why Our Members Stay for Life (LA 975) 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 reasons why our members seem to stay for life. Jill DeWit: I just thought of another reason, by the way. It ties into what we're just talking about. I'm going to give you a little tidbit, a little sneak peek here. I really think that one of the reasons our members are with us and stay with us is because we are real. And we are moving forward and always trying to do the right thing and get stuff done. I'm having a little trouble right now today getting stuff done, because I have a real estate agent getting in my way. Steven Butala: Let it out, Jill. Jill DeWit: We bought a property. This is a House Academy transaction, and I'm selling it. Unfortunately, this property was ready for the end user. It didn't need anything, so none of our normal investors who get it, who are not agents, were looking to buy the property. Steven Butala: Our rehabbers. The people who we sell houses to. Jill DeWit: Exactly. They get it. There's no talking. Steven Butala: Instead of wholesaling this house, we choose to retail it, because it was done. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: We just got a great deal on it. Jill DeWit: Doesn't need anything. We just got a great deal. So what does this mean? That means like, "Uh-oh, now we're dealing with the end user," and what does the end user often bring to the table? An agent. Okay. We can handle that. No problem. Well, now here we are, and I've got just the typical agent who thinks that he knows better than anybody and actually talking to me about my tone of voice today, by the way. Really? I'm the seller. I can walk, and then you get no commission, by the way. Anyway. He's just being a ... He's not responsive. I can't figure out how this guy gets stuff done. That's it. Jill DeWit: So I really stood there and told him what I thought. I'm like, "When you say you're going to call somebody back, call them back. I'm standing by. I call you first thing this morning. Didn't take my call. What's up with that? I'm the seller. Do you want to get this done or not? This is your commission. I have other ... I can move down the list." Anyway. Steven Butala: Since the early '90s ... Because I cut my teeth on this, too. Jill's completing this deal as if it were 1955. Jill DeWit: Oh, my God. Steven Butala: Since the early '90s, she and I have been devising step, by step, by step a way to buy and sell real estate, so she or anybody else doesn't have to go through this. Real estate agents get in the way of deals. Jill DeWit: They do. Steven Butala: That's it. Especially for our personality types. Jill DeWit: They do. Steven Butala: If you are an aerospace engineer, or a nurse, or anything else, and you just don't have time to do a real estate deal, then maybe, maybe, there's a place for them. Certainly not for as much money as they make, but there's a place for them in a real estate deal as a consultant just to shove around the paperwork and make sure stuff gets done on time. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: That is the real problem. At Land Academy and House Academy, we take all that out of it.

One Year Investor is Not a Veteran (LA 974) 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 how being a one-year investor, a land investor, doesn't make you a veteran. Jill DeWit: Exactly. So we'll help you with that. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Do you know I have three contacts in my eyes right now? Steven Butala: What? Jill DeWit: So if it gets a little blurry, I have a little trouble reading or focusing, this eye has one, this eye has two. Steven Butala: What's that all about? Jill DeWit: So here's what happened. Anyone who wears daily contacts knows how great they are/however they are so thin and so light. So you get them in, you get them out. Well, I went to take one out last night and I lost it. It's somewhere rolling around. I don't know where it is. I didn't want to dig. So this morning I got up and I gave it another quick look. Still couldn't find it, so it's like, well, here we go. So I popped another one in and I can kind of feel it. You wore contacts for a while, didn't you? Steven Butala: I wore contacts for years and years and years and one day realized that I just don't care how I look and got glasses. Jill DeWit: Got it. Well I love my contacts. So anyway, if I act a little weird on one eye, that's why. For those of you who are watching. Those of you who are listening are like okay, come on, Jill, move along. Jill DeWit: Neil H. asks, "I'm closing on a property today through title with a hold open policy. First American title. Got it. I asked if they could record it quickly with the county, but there's no promise it will be. It may take two weeks or so to go through because it's a different department. Is there a reason I can't put it on the market today? The sale will close through First American title with the hold open. I don't believe there should be an issue marketing the property prior to being recorded. This is obviously on the buy side. Yeah, especially if everything went though a title and a deed has been signed, right? Thanks." Jill DeWit: Okay. I have a few things to say. Yeah. First we're going to take a deep breath. Steven Butala: Which one of us is going to blow our tops first? Jill DeWit: I think you've been saving it up, Steven. I think you need the release more than I do this morning, so call me one eyed Jill and go right ahead. Steven Butala: One eyed Jill. Jill DeWit: ... It's all you. Steven Butala: It occurred to me recently that there are two camps of real estate investors. Camp number one- Jill DeWit: Oh no. Steven Butala: Which is the camp Jill and I are in and most of the people in Land Academy are in, that understands completely and totally that they have control over a real estate deal and not only that, but probably everything else in their life. They can choose who they marry, they can choose- Jill DeWit: Where they work. Steven Butala: What type of car they drive, whether it's paid for or not, where they work. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: They can choose the exact date ...

Childhood Markers that Lead to Land Investing (LA 973) 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 DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about childhood markers that could lead to your serial land investing habit. This is show 973, by the way. Jill DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: We are rapidly approaching show 1000. Jill DeWit: 1000. Steven Butala: Which will be in June. June of this year. Jill DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: Truly amazing. I'm amazed. Jill DeWit: It is. Steven Butala: When we started this, I figured we'd just do a couple weeks of episodes or something. I don't know. Jill DeWit: Exactly. I had no idea what were doing. Steven Butala: I just figured nobody would listen to it. That's really what I thought. Jill DeWit: And then our weekly member calls, I'm like, eh, let's see how it goes. Let's turn it on and see if everybody wants to do it. Steven Butala: Our listenership's wide. Jill DeWit: I'm like, wow. There's a lot of people that show up and they want to talk. They like this. So we'll keep doing it. Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com community. It's online and it's free. We will keep doing it until people stop listening. I'm serious. Jill DeWit: Thank you. It says Steven Jack Butala asks Jill DeWitt. Is that right? Steven Butala: Yeah. I'm asking. Because I wrote a question. Jill DeWit: Oh. I didn't see it. Steven Butala: Steven Jack Butala asks Jill DeWitt the following. Jill DeWit: What common personality attributes you see in successful people and unsuccessful people? Well, this caught me by surprise. I'm like why is my name up there? What are you doing? Okay, so, what common personality traits do I see in successful people versus unsuccessful people? Steven Butala: Because it leads into the topic. The answer to this question is all really about this topic. In fact, let me just say, this is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: Okay. Gosh. I mean, we've talked about it recently. There's an underlying drive. It's nature, obviously, more than nurture. It's your personality. You don't stop. You don't give up at things. You solve problems. You're not afraid of things. And I think that's what makes people successful. I'm really having to think about this for a second. Unsuccessful people, that's easy. They give up at the first sign of any kind of a hiccup in the road, bump in the road. They're like, "Oh, that's it. I'm out. Never going to work. Done." And usually it's something else going on. It's really not that. They were afraid of it. Or I think it's usually fear and that's why. Steven Butala: So I could not agree more and here's a glaring example of something that happened to me before we started recording today. I took a staff member under my wing recently, to help me do a bunch of land acquisitions. There are several places where I kind of go back to the well, so to speak, and it doesn't happen all the time, but they have a tremendous amount of back tax property that just... They don't advertise it. They only send it to like 10 of us that have purchased back tax properties directly from the county in...

Acquisition Attributes Need to be Communicated to Sales (LA 972) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Buenos dias. Steven Butala: That's the most Spanish I've ever heard you say in my life! Jill DeWit: Wait a minute. Wait, there's a few other words that I know. I'm trying to think of them. Donde es banos? Uno mas. Cerveza. What else? Me llamo es Jill. What? Steven Butala: Do you know how to say butter? Jill DeWit: Mantequilla. Steven Butala: How about butterfly? Jill DeWit: I don't know that one. Steven Butala: Mariposa. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: I don't know. This became- Jill DeWit: Like my butter one? I got that one. Steven Butala: Every time we go to Mexico, I can get through it just because of high school Spanish. Just with nouns and verbs. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And Jill thinks that there's wizardry going on. Jill DeWit: Yeah, I get the point across. Steven Butala: I speak probably second grade Spanish, at best. Jill DeWit: That's great. Steven Butala: Maybe. No, no. Probably. Whatever. Anyway. Jill DeWit: Welcome to The Land Academy Show. Steven Butala: Entertaining land investment talk. Jill DeWit: Entertaining land investment talk. Steven Butala: I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Not anywhere else. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how acquisition attributes, they need to be communicated when you go to sell the property. Jill DeWit: Yup. Steven Butala: There's all this cool stuff about the property. When you buy it, you're like, "Oh my gosh. Look at this, this, this, this, this." And then for some reason, a lot of people, they go to sell it and they're like, "Here's the property. It's for sale." Instead of all the stuff that excited you, that needs to excite the new person. Jill DeWit: Yeah. That just described the whole show. Steven Butala: Before we get into it though for real, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: My good friend Kathleen [Denotridge 00:01:39] asks, "I'm looking at a county to mail. All of the data in the red, yellow, green... " Hold, please. Steven Butala: Sorry. Jill DeWit: You're cool. Steven Butala: This is my fault. Jill DeWit: It's okay. Steven Butala: Technical difficulty. Jill DeWit: We got this. It's talking about... Steven Butala: So, we're going to read it again. Jill DeWit: All right. Steven Butala: Sorry, everyone. Jill DeWit: Take two. My good friend Kathleen Denotridge said, "I'm looking at a county to mail. All the numbers look good on the red, yellow, green equity planner, including a reasonable for land days on market." The red, yellow, green equity planner is a tool that we provide in a spreadsheet in Land Academy 2.0, infill lots. And in 1.0 for the other Land Academy. Steven Butala: And in House Academy. Jill DeWit: And in House Academy. So, great ways to look at things,

Member Luke Smith Shares Success Stories (LA 971) 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 souther California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk with member Luke Smith and he shares his success stories about how he got here, where he's going, what he's failed at, what he's succeeding at and the whole story. Jill DeWit: He's also in sunny souther California. Steven Butala: Yeah, he is. Before we get into it, let's ask him this first question. How did you get here Luke? How did you get to Land Academy? How did you get to become a member? You can skip the [inaudible 00:00:37] process. Give us some background. Luke Smith: That's a good question. My sister lives in Detroit and times were really tough in 2008. She didn't have a job she didn't have a way to put food on the table for her kids. So the houses are cheap. I said let's go by some of these houses, let's rent them out. I'll hire you. I'll pay ahead. I was making some money at the time. I sent her out to buy these cheap houses, these ghetto houses in Detroit and rented things out. Fix them out and the rent should pay for it over time. That learning curve, the cost was realtors, and dealing with the banks and the insurance companies. I was doing this from out of state. I'm in California, originally from Michigan. It was a nightmare. Nobody wanted to sell me those houses. No one wanted to help me. As soon as I got on, the rents were great. The renters were great and they worked beautifully. I wanted to buy more of them. That's how I found Land Academy. I wanted to buy more of those houses but I didn't want to pay the middle man people. I didn't want to deal with them. I didn't want to have them on board. That was the main cost of the transaction. It was all those middle man people. Luke Smith: I went on bigger pockets and I started reading around. I saw some articles of Jacks or Steve's. He was talking about buying land. Vacant land and doing it through the mail and skipping all the middle men people. Like, oh I want to learn that. That got my interest. I think if he can do it for land, I can probably figure out how to do it for houses. Just skip through the whole process. I'll try to land. I subscribed to his stuff and I'm like I was reading all the free side. I'll do it on my own. I start testing it and it's like, I'll just mail out Mohave County. Next to Lake Havasu, that stuff looks like it sells well. 100 dollars an acre and these 1.2 acre properties. 123 dollar offers. I couldn't figure out how to print them on my printer so I was handwriting them. It's like, we'll just get them in the mail just stamp and stamps on there. Totally old school and people got back to me. I'd send a hundred of those things out and maybe 40 people would get back to me because it's handwritten and it's stupid offer. They'd yell at me and tell me how stupid I was and everything. Luke Smith: I about fell out of my chair that the people would actually get back to me. They wrote me letters. They sent me faxes. Emails, calls, lots and lots of calls. Literally 40% response rate I got on those hundred mailer units. I didn't get any deals but I got people that got back. I said okay. I just didn't do something right like the price. This reaches people, I just didn't get the price right. Then I think it was probably Jill sent out a promo for Land Academy cash flow for land stuff. It was her style writing, not Steve's. I'm guessing Jill's. It said you get first three people that sign up get free ten acre property in [inaudible 00:03:55] Nevada.

Offer a Solution for Your Buyer (LA 970) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi there. 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 offering a solution to your buyer. Yesterday, we talked about offering a solution for your seller to the point of nausea. For me. Today, we talk about offering solutions to your buyer because all kidding aside, that's what our business model is all about. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: We provide a solution for the buyer, provide a solution for the seller- Jill DeWit: You know what? Steven Butala: Guess who wins? Jill DeWit: Whatever you do, in any business, if you just walk around with that attitude, you will win. I learned that a long time ago. You need to quickly screen and see if this is the right thing for your buyer or your seller. If it's not a good fit, move on. Steven Butala: What if you walked through life like that? Jill DeWit: That's what I'm saying. Steven Butala: What if, say, you got up tomorrow morning and said, "You know what? I'm going to offer a solution to my wife. I don't know what it is, but she's going to have some issue, so whatever it is, I'm going to offer a solution." Not man solution, like- Jill DeWit: What if she doesn't want a solution? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: What if she just wants you to listen? Steven Butala: Always trying to [crosstalk 00:01:16] took you 30 seconds to get to it. Jill DeWit: And what if that man is not the right fit? You just need to move on. Steven Butala: What if you're the problem? What if you were the problem? Jill DeWit: Maybe you're not the right fit for anyone. That's awful. Steven Butala: No, it's not. It's totally ... I think it's dead on. Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh. I have this thing with all my friends, I have some single friends who are newly dating, and one of the questions I always have to ask the is, "Has he ever been married before?" And, "Does he have any kids?" Because if the answer is no, there's a huge red flag. Steven Butala: Really? Jill DeWit: He might be the problem. Seriously. I feel bad, but I'm sorry, I have a hard time that have never been married and don't have kids. Steven Butala: What's their answer then? What are the questions you ask your friends- Jill DeWit: That's it. Has he ever been married? Steven Butala: It's just one question. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Just one single question. Jill DeWit: Yes. Steven Butala: And you can tell everything from that. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Yes. Already, right there. Steven Butala: What if they're 25 years old. Jill DeWit: Oh, well they're not dating 25 year olds. Steven Butala: Okay. Jill DeWit: That's different. Let's just say over 35, maybe 40. Definitely over 40. Sorry. I'm going to say it. If you've not been married and don't have kids, maybe you should really look deep. I'm just kidding. Steven Butala: See, I look at a non-married, heterosexual guy who's 45 years old like a guy who's just figured it all out...

Offer a Solution for Your Seller (LA 969) 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 how you should offer a solution to your seller. Jill DeWit: You kind of are by [crosstalk 00:00:19]- Steven Butala: This is one of those- Jill DeWit: Sending an offer. Hopefully it's a solution. I have stuff to say about this. I know you do, too. Steven Butala: This is... I wrote this topic for Jill, quite honestly. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It's free. The question is long and I love the question and I want Jill to answer it, so I'm going to read it. Jill DeWit: Okay, I just want to ask about this topic that you wrote. Was that coded for, "I'm tired. I'm going to cue up some topics for Jill?" Steven Butala: No. I'm not tired. This came up because... I don't know. It came up on the call last week. It's a big... "I somehow have not recently conveyed in all the many venues that we are here... If I sound frustrated about this, I am. By the way, tomorrow's topic is called Offer a Solution for Your Buyer. We're here to offer solutions. We're not here... I... Here's the message [crosstalk 00:01:16]- Jill DeWit: To take everybody to the cleaners. Steven Butala: Here's the message. Here's the message. No, no [crosstalk 00:01:17] here's the message [crosstalk 00:01:18]- Jill DeWit: Or I [crosstalk 00:01:18]- Steven Butala: Take them to the cleaners. Jill DeWit: Yeah, that makes it... Yeah. Steven Butala: For what... Somehow, this whole business model is built on buying property incredibly inexpensively and solving a problem for the person you're buying it from. They're no longer considering price at all. You're just taking it off their hands. They don't have to pay it for the taxes. If it's a house, you're just buying it so they can get rid of it. Solving a problem and then here's the overview, and then for the buyer, hopefully it's a wholesaler who's going to resell it or do something to improve it like rehab it. You're solving that problem for them so they don't have to go out and find their own acquisitions or deal... God forbid, deal with a real estate agent. Jill DeWit: Can I add something to this? This is [crosstalk 00:01:57] one thing... this is like a hot topic for me. I know we're going way [crosstalk 00:02:00]- Steven Butala: Me too. Jill DeWit: Way off topic [crosstalk 00:02:01]- Steven Butala: It's a hot topic for me. Jill DeWit: Because here's my thing, too, think about this. The way that we're offering a solution is a very professional, kind, polite way by sending a formal thing in the letter. We are not skip tracking somebody's cellphone and calling them or, Heaven forbid, getting in our car and going on and knocking on their door and saying, "Do you want to sell?" That to me would... That really bothers me, I've just got to say. If you- Steven Butala: Wow, we got to this topic fast. Jill DeWit: We did. Steven Butala: Let's go... let's keep going. Jill DeWit: We did. I was just thinking about [crosstalk 00:02:30]-

Scaling Your Real Estate Operation (LA 968) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here! Jill DeWit: Happy day! Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, welcome to Friday, entertaining land investment talk, I am Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about scaling your real estate operation. Steven Butala: You know one of the things I wanna talk about too is what the difference is between scaling something and repeating something. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: It's a very misused term in my opinion. And whether or not something is scalable, is a question I ask myself before I start anything new. Jill DeWit: Right Steven Butala: Anything, because if it's not scalable, and certainly if it's not reputable, and I'll give [inaudible 00:00:39] lots of examples, it's honestly not worth your time. So there's probably a lot of things that you can remove from your life that are not gonna ever amount to anything, because they're scalable or reputable. Steven Butala: Before I get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members, on the LandInvestors.com online community it's free. Jill DeWit: I gotta tell you I was thrown there, 'cause I was waiting, like wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, there's always like, you know I had a relationship like that, well then you can't see my face. You always come in with, oh you know Steven was just moving my mic, so if you weren't watching that's what was happening there, so yeah. He was like moving it right in front of my face, well that's not nice. Steven Butala: The amount of stuff that I have to do as a producer, to circumvent Jill's, and I say this lovingly - Jill DeWit: I put it here purposefully! Steven Butala: Jill's behavior while we're recording this show Jill DeWit: Behavior! [crosstalk 00:01:34] Steven Butala: I'm not gonna talk into the mic today Jill DeWit: Behavior! Steven Butala: I'm gonna laugh exceedingly loud today. Jill DeWit: Behavior! Steven! All right, all right. Anyway, my point was I was waiting for you to come up with something and you did! Oh you don't disappoint, you came up with some other little thing, to throw in there so thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, back to the question. Okay, Steven K asks, So I visited some lots I own and tried to use Google maps in offline mode, on an Android phone - this is funny. Steven Butala: You know what, this is for you - Jill DeWit: It's good, wait - Tech support Jill! Steven Butala: This is actually, this is, I know that you know the answer to this better than me. Jill DeWit: Okay, so we're out there on our Android phone - well there's a problem there - we're on offline mode, well there's another problem! Sorry. Steven Butala: I knew, this is a driving [inaudible 00:02:30] situation, I put this in here specifically, because I - and I didn't tell you about it because I wanna hear your natural reaction. Jill DeWit: All right, my first, okay wait this is gonna be good. It's determined where the lot's GPS coordinates were, and I was totally useless, it was totally useless as I did not have cell reception - really? I was under the impression the GPS function would work without a cell signal. Steven Butala: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop right there. Jill DeWit: Oh my goodn...

What Makes a Market Mail-able (LA 967) 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 what makes a market mailable. This is a very popular question. Jill DeWit: Makes marker mailable, that's a lot. Sorry. Steven Butala: Oh I didn't notice that. Jill DeWit: Yeah, makes marker mailable. Alright. Steven Butala: Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com, online community is free. Jill DeWit: Okay. This is from a Mike M, but not the Mike M that we talked to yesterday, just to point that out. So a different Mike M. He wrote 'hi all, has anyone taken a property through probate in Arizona? The first property I ever brought a while ago without a title, I am now trying to sell through title. One problem, the wife and the husband are on the title not as JTROS, which is joint tenants with rights of survivorship. And the husband is now deceased. The title companies require this to go through probate to get him off the title. I'm looking for some advice on the quickest way to get this done. $11,000 is at stake on this too. Anyone have experience with this in Arizona? Thanks, bye'. Steven Butala: Yes Joe and I have tremendous amount of experience in Arizona, and specifically with this, I'm gonna direct you to an attorney named Mark Manoil, M-A-N-O-I-L. He's an expert at this stuff, he's the tax lien expert in Arizona and tax lien's are pretty prevalent. Every tax lien jurisdiction's from a state standpoint has different opinion on how to go about this situation, and it's a very, very popular situation in California. You get a death certificate, you file a piece of paper, and affidavit, and you send it in to the county recorder and you are done. It's very easy to undo this in California. Arizona, totally different situation, in fact the truth is we have stacks of situations on our database like this that we have chosen not to pursue for this exact reason. Steven Butala: There's two ways to approach this. You can go through an adverse possession situation if you have a good relationship with the surviving wife. Or is it the- Jill DeWit: I remember a guy. Steven Butala: ... the survivor. Jill DeWit: I think so. Steven Butala: Or you can go through this probate situation. Both are going to cost you ... in excess of a thousand dollars, one may or may not be a little bit more expensive. For $11,000 it's worth it. But I'll tell you that the vast majority of people who have gone through this and who are smart, make this their business model. They go through this adverse possession slash in the situation of maybe probate. First of all don't listen to title agent. Their knowledge of this is not, they're not a lawyer. A title agent has been instructed by their supervisor to close 30 deals a month, or some number like that. This is good news for them 'cause they don't have to close this deal, they can go onto the next one and hit their number. So while they're not incorrect, they're certainly not the- Jill DeWit: Authority on everything. Steven Butala: Exactly Jill. Jill DeWit: I have a lot of experience on that one. Steven Butala: Try contact Mark Manoil, I think he's a state treasurer now, or some version of that. Actually I think he really is the state treasurer now.

Los Angeles County Builder Insight with Member Mike Marshall (LA 966) 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 with member Mike Marshall, who shares his professional experience with us here at Land Academy. Jill DeWit: He's also in sunny Southern California. Mike Marshall: Really. Absolutely. Steven Butala: His signal's going through satellites and stuff, but I really think it's like three miles from each other. Mike Marshall: I know, yeah. Exactly. No, it's great. Lucky to be here right now. Weather's beautiful, so I'm grateful. Jill DeWit: It is. Steven Butala: We ... Before we get into it, let's talk about your position at Los Angeles County and what that's all about, and man, I got to tell you before you even start how beneficial it is to have you in our Land Academy crew. Mike Marshall: Great. Yeah. No, absolutely. It's been a pleasure helping people out and being a part of the group, absolutely. My experience over the last 15 years has been working in different jurisdictions in Texas and here in California, basically with the planning departments, and so heavily involved in land development, land use, and that kind of thing. I come from more of like the land development side of the equation, and so a lot of my experience and a lot of my contacts are in that world specifically here in Southern California and Los Angeles. I deal with anything from ... Beginning of my career, it was anything from small residential additions and everything, but where I'm at now I'm working on large residential subdivisions for large home builders. Maybe 1200 residential units for KB or for party homes. Working on hundred thousand-square-foot large commercial developments as well. Mike Marshall: Right now, where I'm at is kind of like these larger projects, larger subdivisions. Maybe annexation projects for different jurisdictions, but a lot of what I'm doing like I said is really more working with developers one on one, bringing their projects through the entitlement process. When you look at a development project, you'll have the beginning part of it where there's the entitlement process basically giving you the approval to do the project, and then you have maybe going through your building permit process, getting your building permits issued and then going through construction. I'm really more on the front end from the conceptual part of the project all the way through the actual granting of those entitlements, and that's really where my career's focused on in the last 15 years. Steven Butala: I'm gonna ask the question that every single person who's listening to this really wants to ask and they're thinking. Why is it such a pain in the ass to get anything built? Mike Marshall: Especially in California. Jill DeWit: I was fixing [crosstalk 00:02:43] to say [crosstalk 00:02:44] totally. Mike Marshall: That's the thing. My career is like the total polar opposites. Texas is so different. Texas is a lot easier comparatively than in California. California is a lot about like you said, environmental regulations. Just that loan and how steep those are in California. Slows the process down and that means that it's more money and there's less certainty from the developer's side of the equation. What they want is they want certainty more than anything else, and the process doesn't allow for them to have that certainty,

Flip Houses or Land? (LA 965) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill, here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. Get me back in the frame. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, pulling Steven closer to me today because we just look so good in blue. What am I saying? Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. I got all goofed up there. That's really funny. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about flipping land, or flipping houses. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: It's a very basic, short topic. Jill DeWit: And it's not a ... You don't ... Go ahead. I'm sorry. Jill DeWit: It's not an either/or. Steven Butala: Here's a spoiler alert. You should do both, and we'll tell you why. Because, it's the same thing. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: The whole thing ... Hey, if you don't want to listen to the whole show, I can summarize it for you right there. We're data people. We're expert data people in our group. That's what we strive at. The fact that we sell land, or buy land through using and manipulating data is almost, not incidental, but it's not as significant. Why not just roll it into houses. It's the same thing. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: There's a couple more steps on the due diligence side, and the sell side that we'll cover, but in a lot of ways, I think it's easier. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: We'll get into the details- Jill DeWit: You don't need me now, do you? I'll see ya. 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. Before Jill starts, I have to warn you, this is a very long question. It's very technical about RealQuest, and Kevin, our longtime moderator ... Thank you, thank you, thank you, Kevin. We all thank you. Answers it perfectly at the end. Go ahead, Jill. Jill DeWit: Okay. I'm getting ready for it here. Matt asks, "Hey, everyone. I have a market where I looked at all the for sale properties, and determined that they're all very consistently between 4.4 to 5 acres, to five acre lots, i.e., $20,000 to $30,000." Steven Butala: The acquisition price, $4000 to $5000 per acre. Jill DeWit: Okay, thank you. Steven Butala: For five acre lots. Jill DeWit: Okay, thank you. Steven Butala: You know what, I'll ... You want me to read it? Jill DeWit: Yeah, would you please? Steven Butala: It's really- Jill DeWit: I don't know the- Steven Butala: I know what he's getting at here. Jill DeWit: Okay, cool. Steven Butala: Consistently between four and a half to five thousand dollars per acre, for five acre properties, i.e., $25,000 to $30,000 sale value. So he's purchasing for four to five, selling for 25 to 30. However, most of all have been on a market for more than a year, and a bunch, two to three years. I was able to speak with one of the agents, definitely not a land person, who said the owner has been pretty firm on the price. When I inquired if they thought it had been overpriced or why it hasn't sold, all these lots seem to be fine. Not landlocked, not in flood areas, nothing really prohibiting the lack of sale.

Focus and What Not to Work On (LA 964) 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 focus and what not to work on. Jill DeWit: I have some good stuff to say about this. Steven Butala: I direct ... so do I. I directly took this topic from a quote or an interview, old interview from somebody talking about Steve Jobs and he said, "I'm so proud of what we folk have not done even more so than what we've chosen to create." He goes, "We had all these other things that we could have gotten involved in and we didn't. We chose like this four products to develop and the software that's involved with them and it obviously turned out great so." Focus. Jill DeWit: I thought you took it from the book that I'm reading right now. So I have a lot to say about this too. Cool. Steven Butala: This is something I actually am relatively good at so I can't wait to hear what happens with what you got to say. Jill DeWit: Yeah you had to work at it too sometimes. It's hard sometimes. 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: [Erin 00:01:09] asks, "Hey everyone, I'd like to do a mobile home mailer and maybe buy a car or two. The issue I'm having is getting access to the DMV database. I have researched and found that each state has different requirements for DMV access. It seems like most states require you to be either a tow company, an attorney or an auto dealer et cetera. I'm thinking there must be an easier way to get access or maybe my information was bad. If anyone has the low down and is willing to share it would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks." Steven Butala: Here's the lowdown. Jill DeWit: I know you've researched this. Steven Butala: This on my personal drawing board and off of everybody else who works here at Land Academy and Land Stay off of their radar, but it's probably gonna be on there is now. I bought the .com a couple years ago and would love to start Mobile Academy and at some point Owners Academy which does exactly what you're talking about. Send out letters to car owners or anybody that's in the DMV database. So I've done all the research and what you've said was correct. You have to be a lawyer or if they have some reason to have access to this information it's not, real estate data, assessor data from a statute standpoint has to be accessible to the public. How they manifest that or how that manifests itself is put on the local municipality in the states and the counties and stuff. Some counties make it real tough. Some counties make it real easy. Real Quest does all that work for us at all, entirely. Steven Butala: So the DMV data is incredibly powerful and important and it's on my radar to provide it in some other venue. Jill DeWit: Isn't that funny? What's the thought process. I'm sure there is no thought process I just answered the question. None. Like why is your, everything about your house, every last detail about your house, public information a required to be public information. Nevermind your car. Oh that's a little bit harder. You got to jump through some hoops. Steven Butala: Can I answer that? Jill DeWit: Well I have a thought. Steven Butala: Go ahead. Jill DeWit: Here's my though...

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 963) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here- Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: ... with guest Justin Sliva. 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 guest Justin Sliva, like we do every Friday, about the transactions that we're funding and generally what we're doing this week. How you doing, guys? Justin Sliva: Good. How are you? Steven Butala: Excellent. Who do you think did more deals this week, Justin or Jill? Justin Sliva: Oh, probably y'all. I only okayed three this week on the funding side. Jill DeWit: You know what? I have one I approved, three I need a few more information on, and several I rejected. I'll tell you more. Justin Sliva: Yeah. That sounds- Steven Butala: Sounds about equal. I guess it's not a contest. Jill DeWit: But I sold two, also, which is good. A manager's [inaudible 00:00:54] but, yeah. Steven Butala: Before we get into the deals, actually, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Jeff asks, "Hi, everyone. I've been adding different Land Investor tools on Google Sheets, and now I have three worksheets. One is a detailed ROI calculator and footage per acre calculator. Two, a comp calculator, which is a basic way to get averages and do the data entry. Three, a payment comparison, which allows you to see and compare up to three different seller financing terms. So here's the link, if you want to do it." This is really nice, and he's shared it with the group. Steven Butala: Multiple people had a lot of stuff to say on Land Investors, which I didn't include here. Jill DeWit: That was really nice. Steven Butala: It's not really a question. My whole point is that this freaking group's awesome. Jill DeWit: Yeah. It really is. Steven Butala: Whether you use the tools, or ... And you can go there and click on it. There's an active link in there. Whether you use the tools or don't, it's pretty amazing that people will share all their work like that. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Justin Sliva: Yep. No, it really is. Jill DeWit: Well, we've all proved that we're better together. There's enough deals to go around, and we're better together. Why not share this with everybody? We're all just going to get better deals. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Justin, I'm sure your group's expanding, too, on the financing side. I mean, are you seeing that kind of quality response? Justin Sliva: Yeah. You tend to see ... There's like a mind-shift about month three or four after somebody's been actively doing deals. They get through their first, second, third mailer. About their fourth mailer, they realize, "Hey, there's plenty of deals for everyone," and you see their mind shift. It becomes more of a teamwork versus a, "I'm going to try to hoard everything for myself," with that abundant mindset. It's a neat thing to see. Steven Butala: Good. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: All right. Guys, tell us ... Well, today's topic: Finance Friday With Steven, and Jill, and Justin. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: This is the meat of the show.

Confidence You Need to Send Mail (LA 962) 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 talk about the confidence you need to send mail. This is such an important topic. Jill DeWit: It is. Steven Butala: I have a lot of old school stories. There are just people that ... the gist of it's this. There are people that are confident. It's not just confidence to send the mail, that's one thing. Anybody can kind of get over that or learn it or whatever, but it's the confidence to make an acquisition decision. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And not everybody is set up for this on the planet. Jill DeWit: Some people have no confidence no matter what they do. That's a tough one, I feel bad for them. So maybe we can talk about ways that you can build your confidence if you need to. Because I think that's super important. Then there's other people like we all know them, I think you and I are two of them, that we have confidence no matter what it is. I'll be like, "All right, bring it." We've done some different ventures, there's other sub companies going on in our world that we don't think twice about it. We may not be fully versed on it, but we know how to run companies, we know how to start companies. And so we just kind of dive in. Jill DeWit: So I think we're the other spectrum. We have a pretty healthy dose of confidence you and I. Steven Butala: I've known you for a long time, and your confidence level amazes me, even to this day. On a daily basis, about little things. And I'm not talking about beating your chest, narcissistic wack job. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about making little decisions like, "That's not the logo we're gonna use for House Academy." Right, "I think it should actually look like this, this, this, and this." And have it be a good decision that sticks for a long time. Or how to answer somebody's concern about a mailer that didn't go the way that it's supposed to go on Land Investors, and here's why. Steven Butala: I'm not talking about like my car is better than yours. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Jill DeWit: Or, "Does my hair look great?" Steven Butala: There's so much false confidence. Steven Butala: Yeah, especially women are subject to so much more stuff, professional women are than men. And you can just see it a mile away when it's see through and it's a mess, you know? Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's put Jill's mic in the right place first. Jill DeWit: I thought it was. Jill DeWit: You don't like it? I'm good, thank you. Steven Butala: It's like this. Jill DeWit: Oh, I'm good. Steven Butala: And let's take a question posted by one of our members. On the LandInvestors.com online community, it's free. Jill DeWit: It's like you're moving in front of my face. Steven Butala: Did I mess up your mojo? Jill DeWit: I thought you were moving in front of my face. This is what I thought you were doing. "Let's fix Jill's mic." Steven Butala: You know that's probably what it should be. Jill DeWit: I should be like this.

Member Dallas Waldon on How Land Academy Improved Her Business (LA 961) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: On 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 Dallas Waldon on how Land Academy improved her business. Before we get started though, I have a couple of non-real estate questions for you. It's Saturday, right, you're obviously dedicated to this or you don't have a life. Either way. Dallas Waldon: [crosstalk 00:00:31]. Steven Butala: What did you give up to do this? Jill DeWit: What could you be doing right now? Steven Butala: Are you wearing any pants? What's going on? Dallas Waldon: Okay, we're not gonna discuss my pants, but, we are really dedicated to just kind of improving ourselves all the time, my husband and I. So we really don't give up anything. I feel like this is our fun time. Working is our fun time. It sounds really lame though, I know. Jill DeWit: It's like working in your own business, so it's different. Dallas Waldon: Exactly. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: Well I tell you, Jill and I started out like that, too, and that's not the case any longer. Jill DeWit: It is for me. Steven Butala: Jill's overt theme right now is when are we gonna have some fun? Let's get out of here and have some fun. Jill DeWit: Well there's different fun. Steven Butala: That's not true. Jill DeWit: Well there's different kinds of fun. That's very true. Love it. Steven Butala: Today's topic, remember Dallas Waldon shares how she improves her business through Land Academy. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Jill, go ahead with the questions. Jill DeWit: So we're glad you're here. I want to get a little bit of your backstory. So you were already in this business when you found us. So please tell us how long you've been doing this and how you got started. Dallas Waldon: So we got started in early 2018 and we really made every mistake in the book. We're millennials so we like free information. We were interested in real estate we found online, we don't have to buy houses because we don't have that kind of capital, and so we looked up different ways to do it. We did postcards at first. We sent out about 4,000 postcards and not one deal. So I like to call us ambitious beginners. So we just kind of threw everything we had at it and got started. Things really revved up by the end of 2018. Jill DeWit: That's great. Steven Butala: How did you choose land? Dallas Waldon: My husband's the idea machine. I kind of just go with whatever he throws at me and I kind of bring the human element to it. So he said, well, we could do land instead of houses. I said all right, let's try it. Jill DeWit: Perfect. You sound like me. He comes up with these crazy ideas and by the time it gets to me, it's pretty well thought through and figured out and I'm like, you know what, what have we got to lose? Let's just do it. Dallas Waldon: Exactly. Jill DeWit: That's so good. So tell us how did you find us? Dallas Waldon: I would probably say the podcast. Again, we are always trying to learn and listen to things, so we found your podcast and I loved listening to you guys.

3 Simple Systems in Place Before You Send Offers (LA 960) 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 three simple systems you should have in place before you send out mail. And I chose this topic because I was going through Land Investors and there's lots and lots of discussions about ... It seems to me there's three types of discussions that go out about mailers in Land Investors. Oh my gosh I just bought 14 properties I can't believe it. And then almost immediately you just don't hear from them anymore 'cause they're done with it. They learned how to do it and they're rinsing and repeating and repeating and repeating. Those are my favorite. Steven Butala: Number two is how do I sharpen my pencil? What's the first step I don't know what to do? And then number three is, "Hey I did all this stuff. It's just not working like I thought." And that's really what this show is about, this episode. I sent out a bunch of mail, I'm getting a response it's not the response that I thought. Let's look at the systems that I have in place. Maybe there's something I missed. That's what I really ... It's technical week I guess this week. Jill DeWit: I guess so. Went from back office week to technical week and that's okay. That's how we do- Steven Butala: It's the same thing. Jill DeWit: Things. 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: Sandy asks, "What makes one county better than the other county when comparing back tax history?" Love it. Steven Butala: Why are you guys always saying back taxes don't, never mail, why are you answering this question? Jill DeWit: No we're talking about back taxes. Steven Butala: What does back taxes have to do with it? Jill DeWit: Right. Wait a minute. Steven Butala: What the hell Steve? When you're choosing a county it's important. It's not imperative. It's important to look at the back tax history of that county. Some counties like Wayne county Michigan where Detroit is there's 20, 30, 40, 50000 properties in a back tax situation. That's a red flag for me. That's all I'm saying. Just take a look at it. Mojave county same situation there's always 14, 15, 20000 back tax properties on there. Is that a red flag? Should you send your mail? Maybe, maybe not. Some counties have no back tax for ... Utah for some reason is famous for having very very few back tax properties ever. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So maybe it's a cultural thing up there. I'm not sure. All I'm saying is take a look at it and make a decision so here's an example. I mean Wayne county Michigan has all these inner-city back tax properties that are amassing it's gonna be, it's, in my opinion, unfixable in our lifetime for a bunch of reasons. Mojave county on the other hand has the same back tax situation that might be a good thing 'cause there's just a lot of property that has been sold in the 60s and 70s and 80s that nobody's just gonna do anything with it and they just let it go back so that's a good thing. Jill DeWit: And it's a growing community. We know that. Steven Butala: Yeah exactly. Jill DeWit: So that's the thing. Steven Butala: Exactly, but what we want,

How to Protect Yourself Legally (LA 959) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how to protect yourself legally in the land business. Jill DeWit: It sounds like it's scary. Like do I need protection? What am I missing? Steven Butala: So I was coming up with topics before the show today, writing down topics as we always do. We try to do the whole weeks topics all at once and our customer service extraordinaire, Amy, helped us come up with this and she said, "There's one person in particular that really wants to start off and make sure that she's legal." And it- Jill DeWit: I like that. Steven Butala: ... just occurred to me, actually this whole week is kind of back office admin week and how to get a mailer out. Just the basics. Basic, basic stuff. Amy was nice enough to share that we have a bunch of new people, for whatever reason, in the last few months and they really need to just basic 101 type stuff, so Jill and I are happy to help. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: So how do you protect yourself legally? We'll talk about it in a second. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: I have, as always, a lot of ideas on that. Jill DeWit: As always, a lot to say. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question, posted by one of members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: John A. asks: What's the difference between DataTree and RealQuest? Steven Butala: Okay, I'll give the background and you get to answer the question. Jill DeWit: Oh. Okay. Steven Butala: We are, Jill and I, licensed providers of the three major and the only three worthwhile, in my opinion, data sources for assessor data. RealQuest Pro, which has been the old standby since the late 90s. TitlePro 24/7, which is kind of a newer but not totally new data set that helps title agents, actually, help figure out ... Close a deal. And then the third on is DataTree, which is First American Title's almost brand new answer to RealQuest and TitlePro. So what do you think the differences are between the three, Jill, in general? Jill DeWit: Well, first of all, RealQuest, I still love the best because especially for land because every time you go into accounting ... And let's go back. RealQuest is CoreLogic's data company. A lot of it is direct pull from the county assessors and some stuff is fed in, it's manually, because we all know there's counties out there that are still using books on shelves, believe it or not. So RealQuest sends people out and they pull those books off the shelves and they sit there- Steven Butala: I don't mean to interrupt- Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: In the spirit of 101, I'm going to take- Jill DeWit: Oh, okay. Steven Butala: ... a step back further. There's 3144 counties in this country. Counties, parishes. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: They all have a tax roll or an assessor role and that's essentially a database with all the statistics- Jill DeWit: Of all the property. Steven Butala: ... about every single property in their county. Why? Because they tax it every year.