Land Academy Show

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 958) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: With guest Justin Sliva just because it's Friday. 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: Like I just said, today Jill and I talk with guest Justin Sliva 'cause it's Friday. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: About the transactions we're doing and anything else, quite frankly, that we'd like to talk about. Jill DeWit: That's because we all have so much free time. So much free time. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: I changed the time on ya Justin. Thanks for being flexible. Justin Sliva: Oh yeah. No problem. It's throwing me off. I'm already off this week on days of the week and so this one just made me all kind of confused. I don't know quite where I'm at right now. Jill DeWit: I understand. Steven Butala: So, before we actually get into the whole show, how's your eBook doing and consulting and what's goin on? Justin Sliva: The eBook's doing good still, between five and seven sells a day. I didn't expect a huge thing, but five to seven sells a day that just keep generating. It's been consistent across all the platforms at that. You know, it's something nice to see. To just, ah, somebody else got helped by this. So, the land business is going good. We just locked up a piece of property in Maine that touches the Canadian border, which I think is really cool. So, we have 66 acres that like backup to Canada, which to me is really neat. I don't know why. I just find it really cool. So, we're in it for, I think, $16 grand. Steven Butala: Oh, that's cheap, cheap. Justin Sliva: Yeah. So, it's a- Steven Butala: You know, Years ago, I bought a ranch that was adjacent to Mexico. Justin Sliva: Oh okay cool. Steven Butala: It struck me the same way, like I had to buy it. It probably wasn't the best deal I've ever done and it wasn't the best deal, but it was adjacent to Mexico, so I had to do it. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Yeah. Justin Sliva: I'm thinking that, you know, as all the people that talk about wanting to move to Canada when different electorial people ... I'm like, ah, I can make it like a toll bridge, right? They can camp on our side and then move across if they want. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: You know, they probably could just walk across from where it is. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Justin Sliva: Yeah. No, they could. They could. It's great. Jill DeWit: Straddle the line. Justin Sliva: Yep. That's all I need is somebody to get arrested for like illegal entry. Jill DeWit: There we go. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Love it. Justin Sliva: Yeah, everything else is going pretty good. Yeah, no complaints. Jill DeWit: Good. Steven Butala: All right. Awesome. How's it goin with you Jill? Jill DeWit: Great. Steven Butala: Is it a good transaction week? Jill DeWit: Yeah. I'm great. I had some really good deals, I know I will talk to you in a minute,

Start to Finish Land Deal Reviewed (LA 957) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about a start to finish land deal, and we'll review it every little step of the way for you. Jill DeWit: Exactly. I've got numbers. Steven Butala: Jill diligently did a tremendous amount of calculation and note taking prior to the show, unlike most shows. Jill DeWit: What are you talking about? I do ... And [inaudible 00:00:31] the other day. I do. 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: Where are you notes, Steven? I don't see any notes on your side of the desk here, so just got to say. Steven Butala: You know, I've never been a note taker. People in school ... Jill DeWit: You know what it is? It's me. "Jill, will you write down?" Just kidding. Steven Butala: No. Jill DeWit: I'm just kidding. Steven Butala: I never treated you like a secretary ever. Jill DeWit: I know. I know. Steven Butala: You've been my partner in this from day one. Jill DeWit: I know. Thank you very much. Okay. Steven Butala: This question's a little long, I have to tell you. Jill DeWit: Thank you. I will ready. Jill DeWit: Dustin asks, "Hi, Steven and Jill. Our membership to RealQuest Pro through Land Academy offers us an enormous amount of helpful data when pulling lists. Thank you, by the way, for this. When pulling a list under Custom Search, we always pick Property Detail on the left-hand side under Report Selection. I've noticed there's also another selection under Report Selection called Homeowner Association. I would personally love to have HOA/POA data when downloading my lists. I prefer not to buy rural vacant land located in HOAs and POAs. Jill DeWit: Currently, the only way to figure out the HOA status with each property is to see if there is a subdivision listed when we download the list, and then Google it in hopes of finding a web page or some other source indicating it is an HOA. Or we can ask the seller, or the county assessor, or the recorder, but all other this takes all to the time and phone calls. If RealQuest Pro has this data, then is it possible for them to include it with our membership? This way, we can easily scrub it out. Or do you have a quick and easy way to find HOA/POA info on the properties outside of this route. Thank you." Steven Butala: This is an incredibly brilliant question. I've said this a thousand times on the show before. I'll say it again. I can tell this person, who's a relatively new member, is going to kill it, just by the depth and how this question is written. Here's the deal. RealQuest Pro is an aggregator of assessor data they take off the assessor database, the tax roll, and they add some stuff to it once in a while. Sometimes they don't. They put it into their package, their format, and then we pay a subscription and get to use it. We're a licensed provider, and subsequently, so do you. A lot cheaper, I might add if you just walked in there and got it yourself. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: The assessor couldn't give a hoot about HOA and POA data,

Members Jermaine & Faith Hill Share Land Academy Experience (LA 956) 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 members Jermaine and Faith Hill, and we share ... Hopefully, they're gonna share their Land Academy experience with us. Welcome, guys. Jill DeWit: Yes. Jermaine Hill: Thanks for having us. Steven Butala: Jill's got a ton of questions. We spend some time on this because it's a really unique situation with us. We just got doing a deal with you guys. Faith Hill: We did. Yay. We're excited to close before the podcast. Steven Butala: Is the deal closed? Jill DeWit: Did we just get this one funded on Monday? Faith Hill: Pretty much. Jermaine Hill: Yeah. Steven Butala: Good. We got paid out, right? Jill DeWit: Yes. Steven Butala: Wow. Jill DeWit: You guys have a check coming. Did your check arrive? Jermaine Hill: It did. We had to direct deposit it. Jill DeWit: Perfect. Good. Steven Butala: Did it clear? Jermaine Hill: It cleared. When that question with that title company, that's a good question. Jill DeWit: You know it's so funny. Do you want to hear what happened real quick? Steven Butala: Yeah. Absolutely. Jill DeWit: As far as Jermaine and Faith are concerned, it could not have gone better. It was perfect textbook how we all went into it. What they said we're gonna sell it for, how it all played out. Awesome. At the very end, this title company screwed it all up. They sent in the wrong recording fees or something. Jermaine Hill: Yes, they did. 40 dollars over. Jill DeWit: Isn't that hilarious? I was telling Omar. Omar is looking at me, poor guy. He's getting the brunt of it. I'm like, they're a professional title company. What the heck? This is what we pay them for. Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:01:45] Jill DeWit: It did not record the day we thought it was gonna record. We all didn't get paid out. Then we had to wait several days for the title agent who was not around. Are you kidding me? Seriously? Steven Butala: When's the last time any of us, if ever, had a deal close where there's just no issues at all? Jill DeWit: Right. I don't know. Steven Butala: Can you name a time? Jermaine Hill: I don't know. Jill DeWit: Often it's something. It's often not. Usually it's they ask for 18 things that we don't need. I'm ready for that one. This one I wasn't. I'm like, are you guys kidding me? Jermaine Hill: It's very rare that you have a deal close where there's no issues at all at closing. Steven Butala: Let's ask a few questions. Jill DeWit: It's so funny. Steven Butala: We'll intertwine the answers hopefully with the deal that you guys just got done. I say you guys, I mean Jill and you guys. Give us your back story. Tell us where you're from and how you got to this point. Jermaine Hill: All right. I guess I'll kick it off. We're generally born and raised in Orlando, Florida.

Our Most Successful Members have This in Common (LA 955) 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 our most successful members have this in common, and it's not just one thing. Jill DeWit: Good, because I have like four. Steven Butala: I know, and I don't know what yours are and I bet ours are pretty similar in this topic. Jill DeWit: I have good looking ... Steven Butala: That disqualifies me. Jill DeWit: Good hair, let's see here. I have they're nice. I ... Just kidding. Steven Butala: You know what's really funny about that, Jill? Those are real serious priorities for a lot of people, especially out here in Hollywood. Jill DeWit: Oh, gosh. Steven Butala: What do you mean I can't do this? I'm good looking. Jill DeWit: Oh my goodness. YOu know, there's a ... That's so great- Steven Butala: That's a crackup. Jill DeWit: Wait a minute. I hate to poke fun of these people/however, let's cut to the chase. There's a large group of people in the real estate industry that I swear they go at it, it's all about how they look, what they wear, and what they drive. Am I correct? And they think that if I have the Lexus and the nice suit, my hair's done, my nails are perfect- Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: ... I am going to be killing in this industry. Steven Butala: They think that they're going to sell a house because of that. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Or that it's actually even a contributing factor. Jill DeWit: What the heck? Exactly. Steven Butala: There's a show on Netflix- Jill DeWit: You know what? Steven Butala: Did you see this? Jill DeWit: No. You know what, though? I was just thinking about, I would like an agent to show up and take me out in her okay car, began busy, and killing it. Oh, and by the way, she's carrying around stuff to clean and stage a house in her trunk, because she walks in and makes it perfect every time she has an open house. And she's got cookies ready to bake. That's the person I want to work with. Steven Butala: This is brilliant. We need to talk about this right now. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: I would love for a real estate agent to pick us, Jill and I up- Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: ... in a market where we're thinking about buying a house- Jill DeWit: Yep. Yeah. Steven Butala: ... for our primary residence. I would love for that real estate agent's assistant, personal assistant because they're so busy- Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: ... driving the car. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: And I would love for the real estate agent to constantly be saying to us, "I'm so, so sorry, but I have to take this call because we're closing on something today." Jill DeWit: That's good. Steven Butala: "I'm so sorry this has to happen, but I've got to close on this. We're just about at this house and I'm going to tell you a little bit about this m...

Perfect Land Acquisition Makes You Run to the Bank (LA 954) 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 southern, sunny California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how the perfect land acquisition makes you run to the bank. Jill DeWit: That great? Steven Butala: We talk about jogging to the bank, sauntering to the bank. Jill DeWit: Walking away from the bank. Steven Butala: Meandering to the bank. Jill DeWit: Running out of the bank. Steven Butala: Strolling to the bank. Jill DeWit: Just kidding. Steven Butala: And full blown sprinting to the bank based on how good the deal is. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: I'm sure you have examples of all of it right now. So Jill and I, surprisingly we don't communicate that much at work, and then every time we sit down to record these shows- Jill DeWit: This is the most that we talk. Steven Butala: ... There's about three minutes before we sit down. She's like, "What's the topic?" I say it's, and I label it, like in this case it's a perfect land ... She's like, "Oh, I have two right now. I have two properties right now that I ..." Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Then the camera turns on and she's like sweet Jill. Jill DeWit: Thanks. Steven Butala: She's not CEO Jill. Jill DeWit: Thank you, thank you. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of the members, one of our members, on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Tim W. Asks, "A seller wants me to sell the farmland out behind her home, but wants to keep the home. How do you go about doing this? I've heard about subdividing after you buy a property, but I could not find information how to subdivide a property when you buy it. I don't want to do the work, and pay the money, and not have it close. Property's located in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. Looking at about 40 ish acres, so survey is not going to be cheap. I did some searching and could not find a previous post. If there's a step-by-step or a post that I missed previously, please send me a link. I greatly appreciate it." Bonus ... This is cute. "Bonus valuation information or question. They used to farm, rice, crawfish, and soybeans, but it's currently not being farmed. Do you value farmland different than you do vacant parcels? There are not many parcels for sale in the Parish, and it's quite remote. The typical websites are not giving very many properties to compare to." This is a good one. Why don't you go first. Steven Butala: This is a diamond. You found a little diamond here. Number one, when there's agricultural property like this, there are very, very liberal, pro-user, pro-seller, pro-buyer rules that are rooted in the statutes in every state that I've ever checked. I have not checked Louisiana specifically, where this kind of thing happens all the time and you don't have to go through a lengthy process at all. As an agricultural person or a farmer, you can probably literally walk into the county and say, "I need to separate my house APN from my farming APN." I know for sure in the core agricultural states like Kansas and Iowa, that this is a two day process, maybe a one incident process. It's very, very pro-agriculture,

Signs you have Arrived in the Land Business (Rerun) 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.

Hiring Training Trusting Your Land Company VA (LA 952) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about hiring, training, and trusting your land company virtual assistant. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: I will cut to the chase for you. The short answer is, like everything in Land Academy, we've already done it for you. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: I'll show you and tell you all about how and where to find that. Jill DeWit: Perfect. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Marcus asked, "I just got my first land offer back and I'm starting my due diligence. When it comes to setting a price to sell at, is there a way to get an idea of what the retail value of the property is from local professionals without revealing what the property is? This is assuming I haven't purchased it yet." Jill DeWit: This is awesome. One of our members, Joe, already wrote in and responded. He said, "I've a relative who's thinking about selling some property." That's what he said. You could also do that. And Marcus said, "Thanks. This is a bigger lot in the neighborhood. Taxes are paid. Full road frontage with utilities, houses on two sides and public housing on the other. 5K for almost two acres." This is great. Jill DeWit: You want to talk about this first? Steven Butala: Well, Jill's ... I mean ... Thank you for the response and these strings go on, and on, and on. We just posted it today while we were recording this. Steven Butala: Jill's an expert at poking her nose around to do research by talking to people in local markets and finding out everything that she needs to know without ever revealing the property. The fact is, unless you reveal an APN, an assessor's parcel number, they're never ... A lot of- Jill DeWit: Current address. Steven Butala: ... new people think they're gonna call a real estate agent and say, "Look, I've got this property. It's in this subdivision. I just want to know what it's worth." A lot of people think the real estate agent's gonna say, "Well, give me the address, and give me the assessor's parcel number, tell me who the seller is, tell me how much you're paying for it, and I'll tell you how much it's worth." And it's never like that. Jill DeWit: You don't have to do that. Steven Butala: The fact is real estate agents, vast majority are not incredibly ... They don't know the definition of an APN, and that's literal. I've talked about this with my sister who's an incredibly intelligent real estate agent, and successful. She hates the assessor. She hates the numbers part of this business. She's not an investor. Fortunately for her, her husband is. So a lot of the money ... She turns fee money into investment money, mostly because of him. Steven Butala: So real estate agents, they're not going to pound you the way that you might think. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So keep the APN to yourself and you'll be all set. Jill DeWit: And the thing is too, so this is obviously subdivisions, got houses on two sides, it's got utilities, I think he said it's paved. So this is not hard to back into.

Tim Flood Shares His Share Land Academy Experience (LA 951) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk with Tim Flood, who shares his Land Academy member experience. Tim, how are you? Tim Flood: I'm very well today, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Jill DeWit: I am so happy. Steven Butala: Right. Jill, go ahead. Jill DeWit: I want to just say, the reason why we're here, you're kicking off our new series of having members be on shows. We're gonna try to do it every Wednesday I believe now is our plans. The reason I ask you and I'm not gonna get into too much detail right now, but I'm just gonna say you are so sweet and sharing us a really cool note that you sent us in our Facebook Messenger that I'm sure was just meant to be a private little thank you rah-rah about this deal that you did and, oh my gosh, what just happened, and I'm like, "Oh, wow, okay. We gotta talk about this." Steven Butala: Let's cut to the chase. What's the deal that you did? Tim Flood: Actually, there were two. I hit a couple of home runs this month, but one was a bases loaded grand slam home run. Jill DeWit: Bases loaded grand slam. Tim Flood: Yeah, we knocked it out of the park this month. Jill DeWit: It doesn't get any better than that. Tim Flood: The nice deal was we bought a little five-acre parcel near Tulsa, and we bought that one for 10,000 and we sold it for 50,000. Jill DeWit: Nice. Tim Flood: That's a pretty nice deal, but that wasn't the best deal. We bought a 17-acre parcel that's east of Tulsa and we bought it for 36 plus closing costs, so we were all in at about 38- Jill DeWit: Awesome. Tim Flood: And we didn't even get a chance to market it on Facebook, which is where we do most of our marketing. I had a friend of mine go put a sign up out front and I got calls instantly. Jill DeWit: Wow. Steven Butala: Wow. Jill DeWit: I thought- Steven Butala: A sign! Jill DeWit: A sign. Tim Flood: Yeah, just a sign, a Home Depot For Sale By Owner sign. Jill DeWit: I love it, with like a Sharpie. Tim Flood: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and my number. The phone started ringing instantly. Jill DeWit: Wow [crosstalk 00:02:04]- Steven Butala: Why do you think? Was it the deal? Was it the location? Why do you think it was such a good response? Jill DeWit: Wow. Tim Flood: Yeah, it was exactly the location. One of the things that we do that's a little different from what I think some of the other people are doing, we physically go and drive and look at each and every property that we're gonna buy. Steven Butala: Oh, that's what Joe Hurley does. Jill DeWit: Are you in Tulsa? Tim Flood: No, no, no. I'm in Fort Worth. Jill DeWit: Okay, all right. Tim Flood: It's a four- or five-hour drive or whatever, so it's well worth a couple hundred bucks for a hotel room and a couple of meals out and the gas to get up there to go look around 'caus...

5 Levels of Land Company Progress (LA 950) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. 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, just like we do every Friday, about the transactions that we've done this past week. Justin, how are you? Justin Sliva: Good. Good. Busy. Jill DeWit: That's a good thing, right? Justin Sliva: Yeah, we had our e-book launched this week so we did the software [crosstalk 00:00:29]. It had all the [inaudible 00:00:31] so that was pretty neat, saying that starting to work good in the system. Steven Butala: Are you getting download numbers? Justin Sliva: I haven't pulled it yet. No, I was wanting to wait to first. We just hit the soft advertising push that did the social media channels, and so we'll see how that kind of plays out. I've had a couple of people reach out to say, "Hey, thanks for the book. It seems great so far," so I know that that it was getting bought, I just haven't looked yet to see what the numbers are. Jill DeWit: Oh cool. Steven Butala: We're trying to hit 50 a day, downloads for our e-book just on our website. Jill DeWit: Right. Justin Sliva: Nice. Nice, that's awesome. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Quinn R. asks, "Hi everyone, I'm Quinn, a sophomore in college, and I've always been extremely interested in real estate, but never considered the possibility of selling the land." Steven Butala: Been there. Jill DeWit: Right? "I'm from Scranton, PA. I don't mind traveling. Actually, I just drove back from a small trip to Michigan." Steven Butala: Been there too. Jill DeWit: "I'm a musician, photographer, stock investor, and adrenaline junkie." Well, it sounds like, Quinn, you're in the right place, by the way. "I'm not entirely sure where to start with this, so any direction would be appreciated. Cheers." Steven Butala: So I intentionally chose this question, Justin, for our call today because I know you deal with a lot of people that are new to the real estate business. Brand new. What's your advice. Justin Sliva: I want to say just get started in sending some mail. Learn the basics. Just get with a county, put some mail in the box and start working forward from there. You're going to fail forward, make mistakes. Don't stop, just keep moving through. If you've got questions, say you come up with some consulting and you work through those particular issues and you push them [crosstalk 00:02:10]- Steven Butala: It's a baptism by fire. Just get some mail out there and deal with it. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Jill DeWit: It's true. Justin Sliva: Yeah, we talk about that every day. Your first mailers, they can go really good or really bad, and if you do really good on your first mailer you're going to do really bad on your second mailer because you're so confident. From there, you just keep real estate-doing it. You have fun with it, because it's profitable. It's simple. It's so simple that you're not going to believe how simple it is.

Replacing Yourself in Your Land Company (LA 949) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good morning. 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 replacing yourself with a land company virtual assistant. Replacing yourself let's say ... Jill DeWit: I just say replacing yourself in general. What if it's not a VA, seriously what if you bring in some, a partner. Steven Butala: Well I read the title wrong. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: Before we get into let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Let's read. Jill DeWit: We'll cover the title. We'll fix it here in just a few minutes. Hang in there. Steven Butala: No the title is ... Jill DeWit: Replacing yourself in your land company. Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: The VA comes a few shows from now. Jill DeWit: Right. If you even use one. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: There's a lot of people and I was one of them that didn't see the value. I was afraid of it, but I got over it and I do see the value/however, there's stuff I just can't do. Steven Butala: You know what that would be a good show. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: A good episode like there's some stuff that I fought you on in the beginning and there was some stuff that you fought me on. Jill DeWit: There's stuff you're still fighting me on. Steven Butala: Yeah, well that's a different show too. Jill DeWit: Like today. Steven Butala: But there's some stuff that we ended up using that I said, "No this is a terrible idea." And then like a year later it turns out we're full blown using it. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And then Vice versa. It's always like that. I mean- Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: That's why you have partners. It's free. Jill DeWit: So the question Sandy asks, "If Redfin data," everyone knows Redfin.com. It's a great source for a lot of information. "If Redfin data doesn't have information on the county or zip code is there an alternative source that might have the data." Now this is something that we use in our ... In our equity planner in our program. We have a red, yellow, green chart which is helping you pick a city or zip code a county where to send mail to. And one to the things that we look at now 'cause we have it now is some of the data that's out there from comps. And so we'll pull that in and that's kind of what she's referring to so what's great is a couple of our members have already responded here. Jill DeWit: One of 'em is Kevin. Kevin [Farrell 00:02:23] said, "Sandy. I used Realtor.com for the similar map function. I also use Land Watch and Zillow. Redfin is great, but it only covers certain markets. My comments here is to apply to vacant land searches." Steven Butala: Kevin's a moderator on LandInvestors.com and he's also a very successful member. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: And he's absolutely right...

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 948) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. 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, just like we do every Friday, about the transactions that we've done this past week. Justin, how are you? Justin Sliva: Good. Good. Busy. Jill DeWit: That's a good thing, right? Justin Sliva: Yeah, we had our e-book launched this week so we did the software [crosstalk 00:00:29]. It had all the [inaudible 00:00:31] so that was pretty neat, saying that starting to work good in the system. Steven Butala: Are you getting download numbers? Justin Sliva: I haven't pulled it yet. No, I was wanting to wait to first. We just hit the soft advertising push that did the social media channels, and so we'll see how that kind of plays out. I've had a couple of people reach out to say, "Hey, thanks for the book. It seems great so far," so I know that that it was getting bought, I just haven't looked yet to see what the numbers are. Jill DeWit: Oh cool. Steven Butala: We're trying to hit 50 a day, downloads for our e-book just on our website. Jill DeWit: Right. Justin Sliva: Nice. Nice, that's awesome. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Quinn R. asks, "Hi everyone, I'm Quinn, a sophomore in college, and I've always been extremely interested in real estate, but never considered the possibility of selling the land." Steven Butala: Been there. Jill DeWit: Right? "I'm from Scranton, PA. I don't mind traveling. Actually, I just drove back from a small trip to Michigan." Steven Butala: Been there too. Jill DeWit: "I'm a musician, photographer, stock investor, and adrenaline junkie." Well, it sounds like, Quinn, you're in the right place, by the way. "I'm not entirely sure where to start with this, so any direction would be appreciated. Cheers." Steven Butala: So I intentionally chose this question, Justin, for our call today because I know you deal with a lot of people that are new to the real estate business. Brand new. What's your advice. Justin Sliva: I want to say just get started in sending some mail. Learn the basics. Just get with a county, put some mail in the box and start working forward from there. You're going to fail forward, make mistakes. Don't stop, just keep moving through. If you've got questions, say you come up with some consulting and you work through those particular issues and you push them [crosstalk 00:02:10]- Steven Butala: It's a baptism by fire. Just get some mail out there and deal with it. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Jill DeWit: It's true. Justin Sliva: Yeah, we talk about that every day. Your first mailers, they can go really good or really bad, and if you do really good on your first mailer you're going to do really bad on your second mailer because you're so confident. From there, you just keep real estate-doing it. You have fun with it, because it's profitable. It's simple. It's so simple that you're not going to believe how simple it is.

Where to get Mobile Home Data Because its Not Real Estate (LA 947) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Good day. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill Dewitt: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about where to get mobile home data because it's not really real estate. Jill Dewitt: Exactly. Steven Butala: Or is it? Jill Dewitt: Or is it? Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on TheLandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill Dewitt: Option B asks ... Interesting user name. "Has anyone have," ... What does and ... "Anyone have feedback on hand written envelopes versus window envelopes." Here we go. "Has it been making that much of a difference in a response rate? Thanks." Oh good, some of our members already answered back that we have here. Thank you. Kevin wrote, "Dear Option B, that is not something that we do here. We do high volume, digitally printed mail stuffed into window envelopes with postage for about the same price of a stamp. Rather than worry about increasing our response by .05 or less, we just send more mail, tons of mail every month." I think that, that's one of those things too, by the way, hand written, whether it's really hand written or it's made to look hand written, it just, A it doesn't look professional, and B I don't think it sends the right message. Steven Butala: I've spent, like everything, spent a tremendous amount of time and energy failing. Jill Dewitt: That's right. Steven Butala: I have done hand written letters. Jill Dewitt: It's true. Steven Butala: I have done machine hand written letters, so it makes it look like they're hand written. I've tried postcards. I've tried putting a dollar inside an envelope. I've tried putting all kinds of stuff on the front of the envelope, like, "Offer for your real estate inside!" Nothing, nothing works better than sending a professional business envelope with nothing on the front. In fact, in House Academy, I spend a whole chapter on how exactly this mailer should look with picture examples of how you do it. You want to model the outside of your mailer, regardless of the real estate type that you're purchasing, all the way down from the cheapest piece of land to the highest piece of commercial property, to make it look like you're receiving a new credit card. That there's nothing on the outside except what's required, because you have to open it to see ... The whole point to sending a letter is just to make it look like you have to open it. Steven Butala: I've tried putting stamps on there because I thought that bulk mail ... The way we have it now it's a bulk mail permit on the envelope. I thought that would affect it. So, Kevin's 100% right. Actually even Kevin, I would take this further than Kevin says, our moderator on Land Investors. I don't think a hand written envelope would even increase your percentage. In fact, I know it won't. Jill Dewitt: It's true. Steven Butala: You and your spouse are sitting around and you get a letter, and you're eating breakfast and having coffee and talking about stuff. And you or she opens it, gets it, and you don't know what it is. He or she opens it. It says, "We want to buy your house for $180000," and you both know that your house is worth 200000. It's all well written and it's got a dot com on there, and it's nothing but respectful. It says, "Yes your house is three bedrooms and two baths,

How to Buy Your Next Primary Residence (LA 946) Transcript: Steven: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Guten Tag! Steven: What? Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from not Germany but from Sunny Southern California. Wouldn't that be funny? Steven: We should do this where we go, everywhere we go. Jill: Yeah. Steven: Today, Jill and I talk about how to buy your next primary residence using data. Jill: Yeah. Steven: We've done it. I'm doing it right now. Jill: Exactly! We do do this on the road but we haven't been in Germany in a while. Steven: We should celebrate a little more. Jill: Exactly! Steven: Before we get into it, let's a take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill: Okay. This made me laugh. JeffU asked ... I've got to say, it's so funny. Do you remember there was a guy, I wonder if it's the same guy, there was a guy years ago that was at our group and his name was Jeff and it was back when we first started our member calls every week and we would always title the calls. There was always some funny thing that happened during the call. Steven: Like these shows. Like this episode. Jill: Yeah, we'd all crack up about something so at the end of the call, we started to all, we said, “All right, what would you call the show?” And we come up with this funny things and I swear there was this guy that was ... I want to say it was Jeff U. We're like, “Yeah. You know what? Well, Jeff U?” Do you remember that? Steven: I do. Jill: So anyway, if it's you Jeff, I think it's funny and nice to see you. So, “Sorry for the newbie question. I have heard about Steve and Jill talk about percentages off of retail value. My question is what is retail value?” Is ... this is a great questions guy. Steven: That's what I think. Jill: And now I know you're new so it's not the same Jeff but welcome anyway. “Is it the top price that you could potential sell it for it? Number two, what others are selling it on Land Watch or other sites? Or Number there, is it what you would be selling it for discounted from Land Watch and other sites? Also, I'm just curious, what is the percentage of that ...” wait, “what is the percentage that you discount a property? I understand it's going to be different from county to county but on average what you end up selling it for and what is the discounted price from the full value? Let's say you sell it for top dollar and what is a discount percentage from other sites such as Land Watch for similar properties? Thank you for taking the time to answer this newbie question. JeffU.” Steven: So we answer every single one of those questions and address those topics in a tremendous amount of detail in our of education programs but I choose this question very specifically because it's a big issue. Like pricing itself is what he's really asking is, “Yeah, you guys talk about retail value. You talk about wholesale value. You obviously say you have to buy it cheaper. What are the percentages?” Steven: Retail value is the price that it's listed for in general. It used to be not so long ago but used to be the price you listed it for and the price you sell it for is very different. Not so much anymore. Basically, the listing price plus or minus 5% with land or houses or anything is about the same. And that's your retail value and you can very easily with land associate a price per acre or in the case of infill lots,

Direct Mail Acquisition Ideas (LA 945) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about direct mail acquisition ideas. Jill DeWit: Well we all know one. Steven Butala: Let's hear. Jill DeWit: What we do. Land. But wait there's other ways? There's other things? Steven Butala: We purchase real estate through direct mail sending direct mail offers. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Mostly land. Jill and I buy a lot of houses this way and immediately resale 'em house flip renovators. And we'll be releasing a program called House Academy in a couple months. Or a month or so if everything goes right. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: Today's show is about some other things that you can use this real estate data for if you're a little bit creative and quite frankly I learn a lot about this from our other members. They're like, "Hey did you know that we've been buying and selling land and houses for quite some time and we just bought an office building 'cause of doing this?" That kind of stuff. That's what this shows about. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Riley asks, "Hello there my name is Riley and I'm based out of Davis county Utah. I'm 18 years old and about to graduate high school." Well this is cool. "However, I didn't attend a regular school. I attended an early college." Okay therefore you're smart. I got that. "Therefore I will be graduating high school with my associates degree in Science from Weber State." Good job. "The last few years people have always asked me what I want to do and I always tell them I want to go into sports science. The full truth is I have always wanted to be an investor. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Something where I can work for myself on a daily basis. I do not want my salary to be set by a boss. I want to be my own boss and make a good living and that gives me plenty of time for a future family." Jill DeWit: "The biggest concern is how can someone like me, 18 year old minimal budget, get into rural estate, rural real estate investing? What are some methods I can use to find smaller and cheaper properties that fit my budget to start off? Would it be worth my time to find someone that would invest in me and supply monetary value to kickstart my investing? I'm open to all advice as I have no experience and I have many years ahead of me to learn and take risks." Cool Riley. Steven Butala: Let me talk to you like a father for a second. Jill DeWit: Uh-oh. Steven Butala: No it's very good. Jill DeWit: I'm just kidding. Steven Butala: You're already way ahead. Jill DeWit: It's awesome. Steven Butala: Way, way, way ahead. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: Not only are you graduating from high school on time you're graduating with an associates degree which is great. And I'll tell you what I've always wanted to be I had a secret too just like you. I always wanted to be a private investor. And not necessarily in real estate, but I always wanted to use my money or people who believed in me, their money,

Other Ways to Use Real Quest Assessor Data (LA 944) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good morning. Good afternoon [crosstalk 00:00:05]. Steven Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk, I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about other ways to use Real Quest Assessor Data of which we are licensed providers. Jill DeWit: Of all, yeah. Steven Butala: This is what the show is about. If you think about this, you have the name, and address, and a tremendous amount of data about the piece of real estate that they own anywhere. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: What could you help them achieve if you have the name, and address, and a super effective efficient way to contacting them. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: That's what we're talking about today. Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Ben C asks, "A quick question for everyone. Do you have a preference between mailing tax delinquent lists or normal mailing lists? Do you get a better response percentage for those that may target tax delinquent lists, how many years of delinquency do you look at, i.e. two years delinquent, three years delinquent? Do you combine your price break and the back taxes together when assessing the offer? What percentage are you typically offering? Thank you." This is a good question. We haven't talked about this in a while. Steven Butala: We haven't and I love how ... Jill DeWit: [crosstalk 00:01:29]. Steven Butala: You know, it used to miff you. Jill DeWit: Two parts. Oh, yeah. I used to get really all fired up about this. I still am kind of fired about this, but it's okay Ben. Steven Butala: So, go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say now that you've taken a year and cooled off a bit. Jill DeWit: I have cooled off a little bit. Don't even say driving for dollars because that will make a whole, I don't want to bring that up. That's a whole other rant. First of all, no, we don't. How do I say this? Steven Butala: Let me help you. All right, let me start off real quick. Jill DeWit: Okay, you go ahead. Steven Butala: We never ever mail tax delinquent only property's. Jill DeWit: Single out. Correct. Only, is the key word there. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: We mail them all, not single them out. Why, because the percentage of those that are problems are huge. If you single out all the bad ones, all the tax delinquent, I mean, for a lot of them, there's a reason why they're not paying their taxes. There's a problem there and do you really want to take that on, number one? We have found and I just watched this discussion, maybe I saw the same thread too in the online community because I saw people saying, you know, "Don't do it." How many people that I buy property from that the taxes are current? That's what I like too and that's what we get. Most of them are people that are current. Didn't know they could stop paying their taxes and are thrilled to sell their property. Jill DeWit: They're like, "Yay, I didn't know I could not pay them." That's number one. My second point is if you're going to sit and go line by line, by the way,

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 943) 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, about the transactions that we're funding and completing this week. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Welcome, Justin. Justin Sliva: Hey, how's it going? Steven Butala: This is like show 13 or 12, or 13 so, so we've got to [crosstalk 00:00:24]- Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Guests. It's a little bit more permanent than that. Justin Sliva: You did talk to your script writer. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Yep, that's ... yeah, sure. 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. Jermaine ... oh, sorry Jill. Go ahead. I'm slowly taking over. Jill DeWit: Are you okay? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: How much coffee did you have today? Steven Butala: I only had like two cups. Maybe that's the problem. Jill DeWit: Oh, there we go. Okay, I've got three things: white [inaudible 00:00:55] ... wait, MTV, coffee, we'll get into all that. Steven Butala: Yeah. Justin Sliva: This is going to be therapy session today. Jill DeWit: It is. Oh, [inaudible 00:01:03]. Steven Butala: Let's talk about the 80s and 90s, I can tell. Jill DeWit: Okay. Jermaine asks, "Has anyone sold their land business? If so, please describe the experience." I am curious. Steven Butala: We alluded to this ... we danced around this yesterday, but I put this in here intentionally because I'd like to hear what Justin has to say about that. Because I know you're all exit strategy driven like we are. Justin Sliva: Yeah, I mean you put together the business and the LLC and you could sell the LLC as an entity, and everything that's attached to it, all the assets, with it. So it's pretty straightforward, if everything's all together which one of the problems is if you have stuff in your personal name, stuff in your not LLC name, or other LLCs and you don't have it tied together in one family. I mean, I have never done it, so I just assumed that's how it would be done though. Steven Butala: I mean, I've bought and sold a lot of companies- Justin Sliva: Okay. Steven Butala: And I really think what he's asking here, and what I'm interesting in getting to the bottom of, is is this attractive to a potential buyer where you've got a bunch of 40 acre properties somewhere, you've got a website up, you've got inbound traffic, you sold some property, you're buying some property, you're all in the process. You obviously figured out whatever CRM you're using, or whatever version of all that is all put together. Is it sellable or marketable? And is it too tied to our faces? Jill DeWit: That's what ... I don't think it's- Steven Butala: Is it too much tied to, "Oh yeah, only dealing with people who can run their businesses are Steve and Jill." Jill DeWit: Well that would be my fear. I would think that it would be a problem. Justin Sliva: Yeah.

Where Does This Business Model End (LA 942) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about this topic, where does this business model end? Jill DeWit: Oh, I have a road map. Steven Butala: This topic came from- Jill DeWit: I made a road map. Steven Butala: ... a question by Jermaine. Jill DeWit: Really? Steven Butala: In the last weekly call, he says, "Has anybody out there ever sell their company?" Jill DeWit: Oh, exit strategy. Oh yeah. Steven Butala: "Do you ever build it all up and sell it?" Jill DeWit: Got it. I forgot about 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: Marcus asks, "What should I be doing while waiting for my first mailer to hit?" It's good. Steven Butala: So there's two weeks, but once you send a mailer out, it takes two weeks for office owners- Jill DeWit: Yep, and you're sweating it. Steven Butala: ... to get it to where they're opening the mail, potential sellers are actually opening the mail in the office, so he's asking. Jill DeWit: That's kind of funny. "What do I do? What do I do?" Steven Butala: First of all- Jill DeWit: I'd start getting ready. Get your systems in order. Steven Butala: No matter how much you study and no matter what you listen to, how many podcast episodes you listen to or how seriously you take this, around the second week, the middle of the second week, and I swear to God I do this too- Jill DeWit: Yeah, he does. Steven Butala: You sit there, you look in the mirror and you say, "This didn't work." Jill DeWit: Yep, "I failed." Steven Butala: "I failed." Jill DeWit: "The phone's not ringing." Steven Butala: "I must've missed something." Jill DeWit: He does that, too. It's so funny. You're right. Steven Butala: Jill laughs every time. Jill DeWit: Yeah. I'm like, "Sit tight." Steven Butala: To this day. Jill DeWit: "How many times do I have to tell you? You did it right. I promise," and then another week goes by and we're overwhelmed. Steven Butala: We're buying dirt. Jill DeWit: Yeah, and he's like, "Oh sorry, yeah, I guess I overreacted there, didn't I?" Yeah, you kind of did. Steven Butala: Everybody wants something to just smack them in the face and for it to be great and easy. That's how we all want our lives to go. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: This is easy and great and profitable. Jill DeWit: "I don't have to do any work." That's right. All right, so let's go ahead. We'll talk more about what we think I kind of did, but some of our members put in some replies, so I'm gonna read some of the responses. Jill DeWit: Robert replied: "Congrats on your first mailer. That's a big step and I totally understand the feeling you're having right now. Sure,

Difference Between a Successful or Failed Mailer (LA 941)Transcript:Steve and Jill here.Hello.Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California.Today, Jill and I talk about the difference between a successful or a failed mailer.Sorry. I feel bad, but we can help you.In prefaces like this.Yeah.I've done millions, and millions, and millions of letters.Yeah. Oh, my gosh.Millions since the '90s.We should've add ... That'd be a good thing to know. We all talk about how many properties that we've turned, but ...Talk about proving.Right. The number of offers ...I should calculate it.You should go back and calculate that, because it's staggering, and it's not stopping. I mean, now we're doing it with houses and other things, too, so it's comical.I've had exactly one failed mailer in my life.Will you save it for the show?Yeah.Thank you.My point is to preface it with this. The name of this episode is The Difference Between A Failed Mailer and A Successful Mailer. I would say 90+% of all the mailers that go out by all the members, regardless of where they are in their career, yield a property acquisition.Yes.Like everything, Jill and I hear about the failed ones, and not the successful ones.Exactly.It's the squeaky wheel.Exactly.So we're going to try to address and help.Thank you.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. This is a long question, Jill.Okay. Robert asks, "Is there anyone out there that actually uses the Equity Planner tool shown in the Rural Vacant Land: Chapter Three video Finding Your First Target Market? Specifically, the red, green, yellow county tab. I ask because I was trying to follow along, and it seemed that either the tool is broken, or I don't understand how it works."Can I just some tiny bit of background?Ready.In the LandAcademy 1.0: Rural Vacant Land, which Jill and I just got done recording about a month or two ago, I included a tool that I created recently. And included it in there where we take data from the zip code or a county, you paste it from Realtor.com or Redfin.com, tons of data about days on market, technically. It's a tool to help you decide where to send mail.Right.At the left side of the ... It calculates all these columns, and it shows you, "Okay. We calculated data." Green light means, "Heck, yes. It's a good candidate to send."Send mail.Yellow is like, "Ah, there's some concerns."I don't know.And red is-Don't bother.No, there's some indicator that's says, "Property's not moving in this area." For example, the days on market's too long. So he's referring to that tool, "Does anybody use it?" Yes. Actually, if you go into Land Investors and look at this question, there's about 40 replies to it about how great it is. But go ahead, Jill.Yeah. A lot of people are using it.Go ahead.Okay. "I would like to point out that I'm very familiar and comfortable using Sell, and it's a big program. I'm not ruling out user-error or that I'm missing something. I copied and pasted the data I the right spots from the places I was told to do so, but I noticed that the colors didn't change." Okay. "They stayed the same regardless of how the data pasted or input into the tool. I even took the same county information and populated all the lines with the same information, but the first few columns never changed, because there's no formula in the cells. They are just numbers typed in, and it's never addressed how to fill them out. At one point in the video, they talk about-"They meaning us.Yes. Meaning you on this one. "... talk about how using your own threshold to determine if something is good or not, but if you're new or familiar with the area, how do you make that determination? What are considered good or bad numbers? It seems like you already have to be experienced in the area in order to use the tool and determine if the...

Already Successful Members Succeed (LA 940) 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 already successful members succeed at this. Jill DeWit: Love it. Steven Butala: What the heck does that mean? Jill DeWit: That's it. I wrote it down wrong. I put, "Already Successful Members Being Successful Here," which is still true. Steven Butala: It's the same thing. Jill DeWit: Same thing. Steven Butala: So without exception, this is without exception, I was thinking about, because somebody asked me recently like, "What is it? Give me the profile of a member who really does well at this." And I said, "Well without exception it's somebody who's doing incredibly well at whatever they're working on right now. They just don't like it anymore." Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Here's a great example, I mean if you're an aerospace engineer and you're doing great at it, and you make a ton of money and you're just tired of it and burnt out, which happens to everybody, you're going to do great at this because you already know how to do great at whatever you're doing. Jill DeWit: Remember we used to have a checklist? We used to say ... It started with what three things do people need to be successful members? We were almost stuck to a point where we were going to make it a requirement. I'll have to remember this, I was going to make it ... it was a long time ago, I wanted to make sure everybody was successful so we were going to pre-screen and interview people. Steven Butala: Oh yeah, I do remember that. Jill DeWit: And there were three things that we knew that they had happened. Steven Butala: In fact, we did that for a while. Jill DeWit: I can think of two of them, and I can't think of number three. So let me give you the first two that I could think of. Steven Butala: Well let's save it for the show. Jill DeWit: Okay. What if I forget it by then? Steven Butala: I'm going to write these down. Jill DeWit: All right, three things. Steven Butala: Three things. Jill DeWit: Okay, all right, all right. Steven Butala: I'll remind you. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: This happens with Jill all the time. "Let me talk, let me talk. I'm going to forget what I'm going to say. I'm forget what I'm going to say." Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:01:45] Steven Butala: Like, in our regular normal life that sort of happens all the time. Jill DeWit: You're a stinker. That's why. Steven Butala: Did you ever talk to somebody, and you're sitting there talking to them- Jill DeWit: Thanks a lot. Steven Butala: You know they're not really listening to what you're saying. They're thinking about what they're going to say next. Jill DeWit: Oh, that's not true. That is bad. Steven- Steven Butala: It just happens only when ... When you have some- Jill DeWit: Steven. Steven Butala: It happens like 5% of the time- Jill DeWit: Steven.

Proven (LA 939) 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 the word proven. And full disclosure, I was watching a basketball, a college basketball game, and Ford commercial came on and it said, "Proven." And I'm like, you know what? Jill DeWit: Is that where this came from? Steven Butala: Ford is proven. We're proven. Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: There's a lot in that word. Jill DeWit: There is. Steven Butala: A lot. I have a lot to say. Jill DeWit: I'm sure you do. Steven Butala: Hey, before we get into it, though, let's take a question. Before we get into the question, even, I have been ... I don't think you see the comments people make about this show. Jill DeWit: No, I don't look at them. I don't. Steven Butala: Recently, there's been a couple of comments about how- Jill DeWit: Uh-oh. Steven Butala: ... will you guys quit screwing around? Jill DeWit: Oh. Steven Butala: You're making ... This wonderful somebody says ... Jill DeWit: Or I'm here to get some education. Steven Butala: "You guys are so unprofessional- Jill DeWit: Oh. Seriously? Steven Butala: You're laughing and joking and the only jokes are inside jokes. No one cares." Yeah. Stop having so much fun. It's like my high school- Jill DeWit: Teacher. Yeah, don't enjoy this. Steven Butala: ... social studies teachers. Jill DeWit: You're not supposed to enjoy your childhood. Steven Butala: Stop having so much fun. Jill DeWit: Or enjoy your adulthood. Steven Butala: Stop laughing. Jill DeWit: Exactly. We're here to get serious, young man. Steven Butala: Yeah. Yeah. We're here to buy and sell real estate. Jill DeWit: Not enjoy this. I don't care how big your bank balance is. Do not enjoy it. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. And do not laugh. Whatever you do. Jill DeWit: I promise. Steven Butala: And don't smile. Jill DeWit: I won't. Nope. Sorry. I will not have fun. It's like I used to do that with the kids. Ben C. asks, "Hi, everyone. So this is my first official post. Tested out a comment yesterday, but figured this was the best place to start. My wife and I have been researching vacant land investing somewhat passively, I might add, for the better part of six months." Good. Steven Butala: Good. Jill DeWit: "Over the past two months, I figured it was time to take it seriously and really buckle down the research and looked at something other than YouTube videos and gave myself a launch date of June 1, 2019." This is awesome. Steven Butala: This is great. Jill DeWit: Yeah. "The goal is to target vacant land residential lots between a quarter and five acres to start, supplement with larger wholesale lots to get experience with bigger deals without the risk and scale upward from there.

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 938) 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 Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about, talk with our guest Justin [inaudible 00:00:17] just like we do on every Friday about the transactions we're doing this week. Welcome, Justin. Justin: Hey. How's it going. Steven Butala: Good. What's been going on this week? Justin: Oh man. It's been a busy week. We had the live event last weekend and great turnout there. It was, y'all came and spoke at it a little bit. To resume, we had some complications with the wireless but it was great feedback. 33 people total so it's huge, good time. Steven Butala: Awesome. Jill DeWit: What was the reason that people were there? Were they, did they need to get over a hurdle? Justin: Yeah. It was a big mix. We had some people that had just kind of read our E book and y'all's E book and then just didn't really know what to do next for land investing and happened to reach out as we were getting this ready. Two people that were wanting to get to talk to us, 35 year land appraiser and sub divider. We had the [inaudible 00:01:07] there, they came, father and son. Trevor, we all know Trevor. So his dad came in and they spent the morning with us and went over some case studies on appraising and the sub dividing. Justin: So it was a good mix. And that was one of the things of putting that together, was the worry of, do you add value for every person there? You don't wanna speak too high over people's heads to not having enough information. But it turned out really, really good. We got a bunch of people over the analysis paralysis that they have when they get, when you're looking at all the data and you're going, "What do I do with this?" And we got them over that and how to pick counties and states really fast and kind of, one of the things that I took back from that, it was like, 'Hey, I price for margin." And we've always talked about how I shop, is just margin, margin. This is what I wanna pay for acre and this is what I'm gonna offer. I want it to sell so I don't wanna offer and I worry about the spread there. Justin: So went through and did the whole country yesterday morning and for margin and priced every county in the whole country to see what margins were there. 115 counties in the country matched the margins I want and so that's something I'm starting to work through. I've mailed three counties yesterday. I've got another two on the desktop that I'm finalizing the pricing on. I'll probably get those out today or tomorrow. Steven Butala: So what data did you make those decisions based on? Justin: Just the active market that's out there. So say if somebody wants to buy something, they wanna sell 15 hundred dollar an acre property. You're gonna offer a lot less than that, 25, 30, 35 percent of that. So the math is really easy if you take 15 hundred bucks an acre times 20 acres is 30 thousand dollars. So you just shop everything is 20 acre to 20 acre, under 30 thousand dollars by state and then it spits out property. And then you just look at the counties and say, "Okay, this county has potential." And go from there. It's super rudimentary. It's not super scientific. But it gets you a list, gives you a direction to start working in. Steven Butala: It'll work. Justin: Yeah.

Learning from the Land Investors Community (LA 937) 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 DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about learning from the LandInvestors.com online community. Jill DeWit: I learn something sometimes from our community. I love it. Steven Butala: Every day I go in there. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: Every week I go in there, probably twice a week, maybe three times a week, for sure. One time a week to spend a ton of time pulling the questions on for this show, for all these shows. Man, it's just ... Jill can attest to this. These people, it's an amazing tool. Jill DeWit: I know. It's the greatest thing. Steven Butala: It is truly an amazing free tool. Jill DeWit: Yep. We'll talk more about that here. I have a lot to say. 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: Steven Kisch asked, "Hello. For those that use either Congress Reality, $299 list free, or BrokerDirectAnalyst.com, as low as $85 specialist fee, what is the commission structure you are using in listing to get deals done for selling land? How low can you go and still attract buyers, agents, or is that even an issue? Thanks, Steve." Steven Butala: Let me give some background real quick before ... Another community member is going to answer the question. When you go to sell a piece of real estate, in the past, you have to hire a real estate agent or a lot of people thought you had to hire a real estate agent, and they would charge 3 to 6% of the sale price depending on the terms that you sign. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: There's thing called fixed price MLS that came about recently because of the internet. Jill DeWit: That was the only way that ... What he's saying is that hiring the agent used to be the only way to get it in the MLS. Steven Butala: Yes. Now, you can do this thing where there's this fixed price MLS, these services that are online. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: They're tech people that happen to have a real estate license and can legally have access to their MLS- Jill DeWit: And put properties in there for you. Steven Butala: They'll take all your information to 50, 80 bucks, a 100 bucks, 300 bucks, some number like that, and they're not going to give you any services at all. They're just going to post it on the MLS, so other realtors can see it, because they have buyers, and sell them the property. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Go ahead. Jill DeWit: It's just a listing service. Steven Butala: His question is, "That's great. So ..." Jill DeWit: "I don't have an agent with me. That's not how I'm getting it in the MLS." Steven Butala: Well, his question is, "That's great. That takes care one agent in the deal, the listing agent." You pay him $50, or whatever you negotiate, and nothing else. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: "What about the other person on the other side that's representing him? What do you do?" Jill DeWit: "Is it still going to attract peop...

Calendar Based Schedules (LA 936) 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 our calendar-based scheduling concept. Jill DeWit: I have to say something funny. Steven Butala: Yeah? Jill DeWit: Somebody, I don't know if it was on a member call or on our online community or what, but they put in a thing, "Hi, this is so and so from sunny such and such, such and such." I'm like, "Oh, that was very funny." Steven Butala: Making fun of us. Jill DeWit: Yeah, totally. It was really cute. I'm like, "I got that, and I appreciate that." That made me happy. Steven Butala: Along those lines somebody- Jill DeWit: I thought it was cool. Steven Butala: Recently said, "This is the meat of the show." Jill DeWit: Oh, that's great. Steven Butala: That's what they said to me. "This is the meat of what I'm saying," or something. Jill DeWit: "This is the meat of the call." I love it. Hey before we get to the question, I would like to make one more announcement today. Yay. I said something about it on Monday and I'm telling you today on Wednesday, don't forget 10% off is happening right now until Friday off all of your orders with Offers 2 Owners, which is our direct mail company. 10% off is a pretty big deal. I mean and it's really cheap. It's already cheap going into it. Take 10% off of it, it's awesome. Jill DeWit: So how do you do it? Go to Offers2Owners.com and get the details there. Thank you. Steven Butala: That is cheap. Jill DeWit: It is cheap. Steven Butala: We're already like at the bottom. Jill DeWit: We're already cheap. I know. Steven Butala: If you're sending out 1500 units a month, which is what I recommend. It's the cheapest place on the planet, plus because we don't have a scaling system like every other printer in the world, 1500 is ... nevermind. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: It's a good deal. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Patricia and Tom, hello. They say, "Hello everyone. We are in the process of selling 78 acres in-" can I say the county? Steven Butala: Sure. Jill DeWit: Okay, ["Karin 00:01:57] County, California, and the buyer would like to go through a title company. We decided to finance this deal, but none of the title companies want to insure a land contract-" Steven Butala: This is very, very typical. Jill DeWit: "The only way to go-" Steven Butala: Very typical. Jill DeWit: "Is a Deed of Trust. And, Mr. Steve Butala is always saying that land contract is the only option. Please advise." Patricia, with land addiction. And I love this because one of our members, Kevin Farrell who's a moderator on our site, already piped in and wrote an awesome response. Kevin said, "Patricia, when we do a land contract we do not require the contract. We hold the Deed to the property until all payments are completed. When a Deed of Trust is used,

How to Stay Organized (LA 935) 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 stay organized. It's as simple as that. It's something so simple. You can say, "Oh, man. Well, you really need to be organized." What? And it's so hard. Jill DeWit: Isn't that funny? Steven Butala: The last live event that we did, there's a woman sitting up front. It was ... I don't know. She was a retired ... Something complicated. And very like, I don't know, something like some kind of a mechanical engineer or something. It was pretty intense. Jill DeWit: Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. The VP. The Toyota VP. Steven Butala: Yeah, that's- Jill DeWit: Yeah, yeah. Finance. Steven Butala: Yeah and I- Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: And so she was heckling me and I'm glad she did. She'd like, "Well, you know you say this. Stay organized. Oh, you've got to stay organized to get your first deal done." And she's like- Jill DeWit: It's like, "That's nice. I don't know how to do that." Steven Butala: "That's great, Steve. That's great. Thanks. I paid to sit here and look at you and you tell me- Jill DeWit: And you tell me to- Steven Butala: ... stay organized." Jill DeWit: ... stay organized. Steven Butala: That's great. Jill DeWit: Have a nice day. Thanks for coming. Steven Butala: So that's what we're going to talk about today and all week, actually, is organization/motivation/don't let life get in your way- Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: ... of accomplishing whatever you want. This doesn't have to be about real estate. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: It can be anything. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the Land Investors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Okay. Tanner Hendricks asks, "Hello, everyone. I wanted to hear some advice on what the first three steps are I should focus on as I try to educate myself on all aspects of this business. I'm starting from scratch. I want to feel as though I'm making progress, so should I be setting things up like a website, LLC, PO Box, in the meantime? Any budget/business plans? It will probably be a month or two before I pull the trigger on the full membership, so any advice on what to do in the meantime is greatly appreciated. Thanks." Oh, and sorry. Steven Butala: I'll do it. Joe Schmidt responds, because Land Investors is a community, so people ask questions and people, other members in our community, and it's all free, respond. Some of the more senior, or long time members, try to help out the newer people. And so Joe Schmidt responds, "Here's what I did to prep ..." In quotes. "I set up an LLC, I opened a separate bank account in my LLC's name and funded it with 10 grand. Set up a virtual PO Box, email account, Google Voice number for intake after the mail goes out and of course, I bought the course and sent the mail. You can worry about your website, business cards, logo, etc. after your first mailer. Son, everything hinges on sending them out." Jill DeWit: That's true.

How to Stay Motivated by Jill (LA 934) 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 stay motivated, by Jill. Jill DeWit: You know what's funny about this today? I'm not feeling very motivated. Steven Butala: What? Jill DeWit: We've been traveling. It's been busy. Steven Butala: I have never seen you not motivated. Jill DeWit: Oh, thank you. Steven Butala: I've never seen you not with a ball of energy unless you're like dead asleep. Jill DeWit: Well, you know why? Here's the truth. I am internally, right now, a little bit ... I've had a lot going on. I've been traveling. I've been a little sick, I will share, so I'm not my best. But you know what? I rally. I guess that's what today's about. I'm going to help other people. I get it. I know it and there's lots of days I feel like poop, but I'm here anyway. Steven Butala: Man, you hide it well. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Well, and I can help you. Hey, wait. Before we get into it too, by the way, I want to say one quick thing since I'm just apparently taking over the show and it's kind of about me today anyway ... Steven Butala: Staying motivated is not what I'm going to talk about today. It's perfect. Jill DeWit: Uh oh. You're going to talk about ways that you try to mess with me? Steven Butala: I'm going to talk about taking on a partner who's really motivated if that's not what you are. Jill DeWit: Oh. I got it. Steven Butala: Then I don't have to stay motivated. Jill DeWit: Got it. Steven Butala: I can stay in a dark hole and do data stuff. Jill DeWit: Yes you can. But here's what I want to share real quick because this is super, super, super important for everyone listening. From now until Friday, you can save 10% on your entire order through Offers To Owners. Steven Butala: Oh. Jill DeWit: Right? Steven Butala: That's brilliant. Jill DeWit: I'm reading this verbatim from my team and they are awesome. If you've been waiting to send mail, this is your chance. If you know us, by the way, you know what we're all about. Sending out mail, getting offers in the mail to get there first and get these properties cheap. If you've already sent mail, this is still your chance. The coupon code is available to everyone, so it's not just new people. It's members as well. Visit OffersToOwners.Com and use the code MarchMail, so altogether, MarchMail, at checkout. More details are on the site. Thank you for that public service announcement. Steven Butala: What made you guys decide to give everybody a break? I know it too well because I look at the numbers, you know? They go up every month. Jill DeWit: You know, honestly ... Steven Butala: This whole company's a nonprofit entity, you know what? I have to express some concern once in awhile. Jill DeWit: That's true. 10% off of what? I know. Well, I have to be honest with you, Steven, our team right now is taking over some departments by design. They just actually now just hand me things and say, "Read this. This is what we're doing right now." I think it's the greatest thing ever.

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 933) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: With guess Justin, actually. Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Back Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk with guess Justin Sliva about the transactions that we are funding this week, like every Friday. Jill DeWit: Yeah, exactly. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Justin, in like three sentences or less, how's your week going from a funding standpoint? Justin Sliva: East coast is busy. I'll say that. I mean it's been heavy in Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, so even Florida, so the east side of the country is extremely heavy right now with people getting deals back. Steven Butala: Awesome. Before we really 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: Victor asks, "Hi, I'm from Texas, but I've been wanting to run my land business out of the country. I want to try staying Costa Rica for a month as a vacation but still, work. The two problems I think I'll run into is one, title companies want me to physically sign sometimes for larger properties. Two, sending cashier's checks for smaller companies. I guess I can give my employee access to my bank account to make cashier’s checks, but that makes me nervous. Is anyone doing this successfully?" Jill DeWit: Fortunately, we have a lot of people in our role that are doing this successfully. We just had a guy, by the way, re-enroll. He was a member for a while. He left and he just came back. It was like one of those, that's usually when people leave, it's usually a life situation, and then they come back. It's awesome how many people come back. The guy in Austria. Justin Sliva: Oh, wow. Jill DeWit: You know. Steven Butala: That's a time zone change. Jill DeWit: Isn't that wild. Steven Butala: The good news is that Costa Rica is the same time zone, so. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: You're all set there. And then, Jill and I run our whole business and we teach, especially in Land Academy 2.0 and now House Academy 1.0, we teach how to have your business completely run. You just oversee everything. Kind of do the approvals and get everybody else to do it. Our business is that way now. We just do the approvals and kind of oversee the deals. You should be striving for that anyway. Jill and I separate our banking, our operational banking environment so that there's one bank that has most of the money in, and then there's what we call an operational bank account that gets filled up. It's technology an imprest account. It pretty much goes to zero, then we fill it back up. Jill DeWit: Just for transactions. Steven Butala: The operations people have access to it. It only gets a certain amount of money. They can't really touch the real gold. The long story short, there's solutions to all this stuff. You could do specific power of attorney with somebody that you trust somewhere in the states and make that your mailing address. If you really sit down and think about it, we have a lot of members who are all over the world. Japan, Austria, Australia. Jill DeWit: Europe. Steven Butala: I saved this question for Friday, for you Justin because I'm wondering how many deals you get submitted from overseas people?

The Power of Scaling Offers to Owners (LA 932) Transcript: Steve and Jill here. Hello. Welcome. Jill, you crack me up with this stuff. I'll just kind of slow it down. Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Today, Jill and I talk about the power of scaling offers to owners. Is that slow enough? I have to admit something right now for everyone, and you too, Steven, that I didn't take any notes. I rewrote the top title, and I'm sitting here going, "How do we want to talk about this?" So ... I'll do it. Okay, good. I am sure you have a plan. Yeah, I have a total plan. Okay, good. It's gonna be concise, and mind-boggling. And informative, and entertaining. That's what every woman wants. Concise? I want a man who's concise and mind-boggling. I don't think everyone wants that. No, they don't. What do they want? What do women- But a man wants a woman who's concise and mind-boggling. So, what do women want? Isn't that true? You want a woman that's concise and mind-boggling. Like, "I don't know how she looks like that, or how she packages it up, but it looks good. That's mind-boggling." Packages it up? Exactly. Nice packaging. "Whatever's going on under there, Daddy likes." What if you walked up to a woman and said, "Hey, nice packaging"? How would that go? You know what? It depends on the person, but I got a few people who would think that's comical. And I got a few people that would not think that's funny. My experience with women has been, they're not gonna like that at all. No, I am that person. That if you walk up and go, "Hey, nice packaging," I'm gonna be like, "Right? Thank you." "Yeah, it's all Nordstrom Rack, half off." "I got this all just right where I want it." It is ridiculous. "And there's no body tape involved." Ridiculous how differently men and women are, that we even talk to each other for any amount of time at all. Dude, I'm gonna walk up to you some day, and I'm gonna be like ... You're with some really cool jeans, and I'm gonna tell you, "Nice packaging." What would you say? If you said it to me? Yeah. I would say, "Hell, yeah." Okay, good. See? I would say, "How do I kick it up even a couple more notches?" I like this. This is my new thing now. "Nice packaging." I don't even know what this show's about. I do. I can help you. Oh, before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our packagers on LandInvestors.com. It's an online community, and it's free. Okay. This is a little bit different. This is actually a thread that was started by a member on our staff, and I wanted to read about what we're doing here. This is kind of just to further let you know about the value of this group and what we're doing. Yeah. That's really what this is for. A, what we're doing for the group, and B, how smart our group is, based on the comment and the feedback that we got. So here's the thread, started by Erin, one of our senior managers here at Land Academy. She wrote, "Hello, all. One thing that we're working on here at Land Academy is creating a centralized place where members can put recommendations for various types of vendors, et cetera, that they have used before in different areas. Our question to you is, how"- Vendors meaning, "Hey, is this title company in North Carolina good or bad?" Actually, put the vendors in that they've used and loved. Yeah. Not to talk about them, but like- Oh, just a good- ... "Hey, anyone in Florida, this is the guy. He's the bomb. We did all these deals in 10 days." Okay. And, "Hey, Texas. I've got a great drone pilot. He will drive to all the surrounding states. Here's his contact information and how much he charges." Okay. It's that kind of a vendor list. I'm the last one to know, because- That's okay. ... I'm the owner. That's okay. That's why I'm here. So, that's what we're putting out there for ...

Velocity of Money (LA 931) Transcript: Steve and Jill here. Mid yawn, hello. Welcome to the Land Academy show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. And I'm Jill DeWitt broadcasting from sunny southern California. When Jill gets done yawning we'll talk about the velocity of money today. I'm so sorry. No it has nothing to do with this topic. I want you to know it has nothing to do with you. I didn't yawn like, "Oh here we go again. We're gonna talk about some accounting things. I'll just take a nap." Sorry. The velocity of ... To your happiness, the velocity of money is very easy to talk about and very easy to explain and I never get tired of talking about it. And even if you know exactly what it is. It's still just good to refresh it in your mind or if you've never heard of it it's all good. Oh goody. 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. Could you imagine. That's kind of funny. I never get tired about talking about the velocity of money. I never get tired about spending the velocity of money. Yeah you know what we could talk about the outbound velocity of money. Outbound velocity. I like this. Is this is inbound or outbound? 'Cause I have a lot to say about that too. We'll talk about inbound and then outbound. Okay good. Never even thought about that. Yes. Congratulations. Now this topic is important to me. Now I'm in. Okay Marilyn asks, "I nee help. My processes are all over the place and I'm wasting time retyping and recreating documents and emails for each deal. You could say I'm the copy and past queen. I know there has to be a better way. Most of my documents are in a Google Docs and I'm using Google Sheets to track deal flow. I've recently been playing around with a Google Sheet add-on called Document Studio, but it doesn't work every time. Probably operator error. Here again, I'm taking information from my main deal flow Google Sheet that I copy and paste into another Google Sheet to initiate the document merge letter. What do you use?" "Do you hire a pro to set it up? A lot of what I learned is from you two so any referrals there would be useful as well. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance. Marilyn." Yes, hello Marilyn. What do you want to say? You have to strive to be a linear thinker. First time I'm gonna get just slightly philosophical here. Okay. You have to look at every single task that you do and you kind of have to hate it. You have to say, "I really don't like doing this task. I'd like to remove it somehow." And not remove doing it today. Re-setup the system so that it's all together completely removed. I use the analogy like this. How many times you ever gone to a closet, like a hall closet to look for a tennis racket or something like that? And you know it's back there somewhere and you end up just completely reorganizing the closet and 20 minutes later you have a Goodwill pile and everything's completely organized and it doesn't probably make your spouse that happy. Or depending on your spouse it makes 'em really happy. Makes me happy. That's how I think of everything. Every single thing I do I look at it and I say, "This is completely unnecessary. I need to relook at this." That's a good analogy. So you have to set up a system, you have to start thinking like this today. I don't care if you're brand new at this or you've done it a 150000 deals. There's a whole module in the House Academy program that the gist of it is this. You have to set up a system that's entirely and completely repeatable and it runs itself with other people without you. Or you will never truly scale this business to where it needs to go. So you can take that a million different ways, but you cannot work in your own business forever. Does that mean you have to outsource purchase, acquisition decisions? No, but you can do 100 acquisition decisions on Wednesday morning be...

How to Find a Wholesale Money Partner Fast (LA 930) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hola. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk. I never know what you're gonna say. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: I'm Steve Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how to find a money partner fast. A wholesale money partner fast for your real estate deal. Jill DeWit: Isn't that great? You know, I'm glad we're talking about this. A lot of times that people say, "You know, Steve and Jill, they talk about the buy side. They don't talk so much about the sell side. I know it comes easy for them but it doesn't always come easy for me." So I'm glad that we're talking about selling and finding buyers. This is all really, really, really wanted and asked for information. Steven Butala: I wrote this topic because this is what I struggled with when I started. This exact topic. I didn't really struggle with anything else, plus or minus. Finding a good money partner, which in the end we didn't do, I didn't do. I chose to use the equity that I created on the last deal and put it in the next deal. And that's one way you can do it, and it worked great for us, but it took probably four times as long as it needed to. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: Now we have a bunch of equity partners mainly because we started Land Academy. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: We have other members. So it worked out. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: We'll talk about some of the tools that we developed in a minute here. Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Is this a long one? Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: Okay, so I watched this question being loaded in so I just want to preface you right now, listener. This is a little bit long and I'll paraphrase where I can, but it's really really really good, valuable information. Steven Butala: If you're a brand new member or you're just kind of a lurker, which is great, this is really going to interest you because this person is a new member and he takes us through his journey of his first deal. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: If you're already a member and you're listening, I hope you've had an experience like this. Jill DeWit: I'm pretty sure you have. Based on the comments, too, pretty sure you have. Okay, so it started back on January 23rd. Jill DeWit: Hi. I just wanted to make a record of this moment- Steven Butala: This person's name is Joe Chu. Jill DeWit: Oh yeah, Joe Chu. And it's in Land Investors so if you wanna see it, go check it out. So starting on January 23rd. Jill DeWit: Hi. I just wanted to make a record of this momentous milestone so that I can look back here a few years later and see where I started. Jill DeWit: How cool is that, by the way? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Using our community as like, to document, so you're just gonna go, "I remember that day and how scared I was and here I am on my yacht." Jill DeWit: Anyway, so it says: I signed up for this educational program just about a month ago. I watched through the training,

How to Buy Houses for Immediate Wholesale (LA 929) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Good morning. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I am Jill DeWitt, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how to buy houses for immediate wholesale. Jill DeWit: I realize I said morning when it's really actually afternoon. I'll wake up here. It's one of those days. Steven Butala: Why does it feel so early? Because it is. Jill DeWit: What? Well, it's not ... It's not that early. People would say, "What? What time? Are you guys think that's early?" When really they've been up at the office since five. We're kind of wimps. Steven Butala: What happened to you this weekend that was fantastic? Or really bad? Jill DeWit: This week? Steven Butala: This weekend. Jill DeWit: Oh, I went to Santa Barbara. Steven Butala: I was with you. Jill DeWit: Yeah, I know. Steven Butala: And it was fantastic. Jill DeWit: I thought you were gonna it say it was really bad, because we brought up ... You know what, it was really fantastic, because we got to go to Santa Barbara. It was really bad because we had to take a kid. Steven Butala: So good that our children don't listen to this show. Jill DeWit: Exactly. It's okay. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Yeah. It's fine. Steven Butala: He's at that age. Jill DeWit: And we need to vent about it. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Makes me feel better. Steven Butala: Publicly on the show. Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah, totally. Steven Butala: That's why we have the show. To vent about our children. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Joe Chu asks, "I picked the counties I wanted to mail based on my personal for use preferences. I think to myself, it would be nice to spend the weekends there. So I mail there. Have you used the same logic?" I don't think that's crazy. Steven Butala: I have used this logic, which we don't talk ... This is why I included this question. I've used this logic on every mailer I've ever done, ever. I put myself and that's why I included it, so ... And I say all through 1.0 and 2.0, test for reasoning, test for logic, and just make sure it makes sense to you. It's almost like what you choose in the grocery store is ... Some of it's about price. Some of it's about, yeah, I really want to taste it. Some of it's about is it good for me? So you have to kind of feel your way through whether or not you want to send an area, send mailer in an area. But I will say this triggered something for me for some reason when I read it, because I'm never gonna mail an area just for financial reasons and that's it. Because Jill and I buy and sell real estate all the time and we do it based on, yeah, this is a good deal. Sometimes, if the deal's really right, I get this feeling like, you know, maybe we should keep this. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: This is such a good deal, financially, and it's such a cool property. We never do.

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 928) 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.

One Third of Our Members Quit Their Jobs (LA 927) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Oh happy day. Steven Butala: I never know what you're gonna say. Jill DeWit: Thank you. 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 happy sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how 1/3rd of our members quit their jobs. Jill DeWit: That we know of. Steven Butala: This is a result of the survey that we took last week, or sent out last week and people responded to and I'm still reeling from it. Jill DeWit: I have a lot to say. Steven Butala: I never thought this ... You know we don't sit around and talk to our members all the time. Jill DeWit: Sure. Steven Butala: We don't know what goes on out there. We do this show, we hear some customer service response from stuff once in a while maybe some people have issues. And then there's about five to eight people who are the loudest, obnoxious can't get anything right. That's what we hear. We don't hear all the great stuff. Jill DeWit: I do have to say one thing though. We do check in with our members every week, every Thursday. We give a member call and whoever wants to they can be on it. We actually have two member calls. We have two different groups so and if you're listening to this by the way just something to throw out too I'm thinking of it. You want to be on a member call. You sure can. Send a note to my team support@LandAcademy and say, "I want to check out one of these member calls you guys are talking about?" Steven Butala: "Yeah what is this you guys are talking about constantly?" Jill DeWit: "Yeah I want to hear what this is going on. What are you guys doing?" So ... Steven Butala: Jill loves to hand those free one time passes out. Jill DeWit: Yeah. And you can listen in on a call and you can even ask some questions. So ... 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: Georgia M. asks, "Hi. During the Thursday member call-" Steven Butala: What the heck? Jill DeWit: Thank you. "I think I recall Jill saying that there would be somewhere on this Land Investors site which I have the criteria listed for what's required when submitting a deal for funding. I see the FAQ, but I'm not sure if that's it. Please let me know. Thanks." The criteria for submitting ... Oh would you go back up again? Steven Butala: Submitting a deal funding deal to us. Jill DeWit: Okay yeah. The criteria that's a very good question. Steven Butala: There's criteria up there. Jill DeWit: The criteria- Steven Butala: I put it up there. Jill DeWit: Is what is needed when you fill out the form. For example, who you are? How many deals have you done? Everything about the property so I can look it up. I need to know do you have a signed purchase agreement? I need to know are you dealing ... Are the sellers- Steven Butala: I'm gonna put it on the screen. Jill DeWit: Alive, able to- Steven Butala: If you're on YouTube you'll see it on the screen. Jill DeWit: Okay. So you go to deal funding.

Bigger Pockets and Land Academy (LA 926) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Hola. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill Dewitt: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny, southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about Bigger Pockets and Land Academy. If you've never heard of Bigger Pockets, I'm not sure what rock you're living under. We're going to clarify it right now and how to use it with Land Academy. By the way, this is show number 926. Jill Dewitt: Yeah. Can you believe that? We're going to hit 1,000. Steven Butala: We're going to hit 1,000 shows here shortly. Jill Dewitt: Like in summer, I think, it's going to hit. Steven Butala: I can't believe it. Jill Dewitt: Yeah. Steven Butala: We have all the transcripts from every single show we've ever done. Jill Dewitt: That's a lot. Steven Butala: I wonder if we just put all that together and took out the highlights and just ... Jill Dewitt: Wouldn't that be a cool ... Steven Butala: ... slap it all together in a pretty - Jill Dewitt: Put it into a book. Steven Butala: ... pretty book or something, yeah. Jill Dewitt: That would be awesome. Steven Butala: It would be fun to do, too, actually. Jill Dewitt: Not for me. Steven Butala: See where we improved or where we've completely declined in the quality of entertainment and advice here. Jill Dewitt: Thanks for taking on this project, by the way. I appreciate the volunteer. Steven Butala: Remember when we started this and you said, "This is the dumbest idea you've had"? Jill Dewitt: Which one? Steven Butala: This podcast. Jill Dewitt: Which idea? Oh, I'm sorry. Steven Butala: She's like, "Yeah, there's seriously no way. No one's going to listen to a stupid podcast about land." Jill Dewitt: No, what I said was, "What's a podcast," first of all. I did say, "That's dumb. Who is going to listen to this?" Then I found out, oh, people commute. I didn't know that. Steven Butala: Every week I get the analytics on downloads and everything for the show and I just can't believe it. There's a lot of people that listen to the show. Jill Dewitt: Yes, there are. Steven Butala: It's either that we got there first and it was like one of six shows on iTunes back in 2015, or people actually get something out of it. I don't know. Jill Dewitt: I don't know. Steven Butala: It's probably the former. Jill Dewitt: Yeah. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community, it's free. Jill Dewitt: Rob H. asks, "I don't understand this idea of a closing attorney. I heard it mentioned in one of the webinars. I know some states require them, but what's the advantage otherwise? Aren't you paying them extra for working with a title agent? Can someone fill me in please? Thanks." Steven Butala: Go ahead, Jill. Jill Dewitt: Oh. Steven Butala: I know you're dying to answer this. Jill Dewitt: No. Here's the best thing about it, Rob. It's either or.

Land Academy Members Survey Results (LA 925) Transcript: Steven Jack B.: Steven and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Howdy. Steven Jack B.: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala Jill Dewitt: And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Jack B.: Today. Jill and I talk about Land Academy, how Atlanta Academy ... Well, the Land Academy member survey results. Jill and I took conducted ... Well, I didn't have anything to do with it. Jill Dewitt: My team. Steven Jack B.: Jill and her team conducted up huge- Jill Dewitt: Awesome. Steven Jack B.: ... extremely extensive survey to find out what's working and what's not working, what people like, what they don't like in a lot of stuff- Jill Dewitt: Newbie advice. This is a show you really want to listen to. When you ... So, don't turn it off yet. Please hang in there. Steven Jack B.: I was shocked- Jill Dewitt: Because the advice, and the tips, and the things that I have to share coming up on the show are phenomenal. Steven Jack B.: Still really bring results seriously. Jill Dewitt: ... and really, really good. Yeah. Steven Jack B.: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill Dewitt: Victor asks, is there a downside to buying a property at a tax deed auction? I was going to purchase a property from someone but found out it's not theirs anymore. It's currently for sale for a tax deed auction lower than the offer I sent them. Is there any downside of buying one from the county due to non payment of taxes? Thanks guys. Victor. Steven Jack B.: This is a great question, and- Jill Dewitt: I know you have a lot to say. Steven Jack B.: I feel qualified to answer it. Jill Dewitt: Yes you are. Steven Jack B.: I started the whole company back in the day buying tax deeds, because the whole send stuff in the mail thing was not that ... It wasn't a- Jill Dewitt: And it didn't have as cheap as now, first of all too. Steven Jack B.: ... I've got my mind. In fact, and the data wasn't made available to the public. Real quest, it's this interesting? Core logic and Real Quest started this whole survey, this whole assessor data collection concept. And they set it up for oil and gas, the oil and gas industry, insurance, and mortgage people. They didn't set it up for like people like us investors or people, and then they found out later that this data that they're collecting is useful to people like us. So, there wasn't available. The only way you could get it as call each county that you're working on, and they would send you the data. And it's a big, huge mass. Sometimes they'd send it to you in a paper printout. So- Jill Dewitt: I remember when you got this. Steven Jack B.: Yeah. Jill Dewitt: I remember jumping up and down. You're going, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You guys have what?" Because it wasn't on their radar. You just did some searching and just happened to find a company that had what we needed. Steven Jack B.: Right. Jill Dewitt: That was it. And it was like, what was that? Steven Jack B.: They don't really talk about it on the website even, back then. Jill Dewitt: What year was that? I don't remember, like 2010, '9, '8, I don't remember.

Land Academy Members Speak Their Mind (LA 924) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk, I'm Stephen Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how Land Academy members speak their mind. Jill DeWit: As do you. Steven Butala: I was thinking that, trying to figure out how I could say it and you did it for me. Jill DeWit: Oh, yeah, don't worry about it. I never have to come to you and say, "Steven, I think you're holding back. Could you please tell me how you really feel?" Could you imagine if I ever said that to you? Steven Butala: Jill and I, from day one, set this all up so that this is not like a college lecture, where we sit here and say stuff and people take notes and then they regurgitate it out on the test. This is a place for everybody to just get in it. Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: Say what you need to say. We'll talk about in a second. Jill DeWit: Hilarious. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Daniel B. asks, "I was wanting another tool in my toolbox for closings plus a source to get a little more knowledge on quiet title and gaining access to properties. It doesn't take long to see the benefits of just sending more mail, but there might be some jewels hidden in some of the multiple, problematic properties you get calls on. As we grow our property price points, some of these problems might not be that difficult to remedy. Steven Butala: Okay, I've said it a thousand times in this show. It just constantly amazes me how smart our members are. Jill DeWit: I know. Steven Butala: ... and the people that join. This is an incredibly astute perception, a well-written question. I'm going to list three or four of the offshoot companies that people have started, members have started, based on solving problems. What happens is you send a bunch of mail out. People sign it. They send it back and you jump up and down and say I'm about to buy 40 acres in a fantastic area for $10,000 or $12,000 that's got to be worth $50,000. A couple of minutes later, you find out the person you're talking to is the niece of the actual person on the deed and you've got to undo a bunch of legal stuff. It's all centered around dead people, the vast majority of these issues, dead owners, and the person on the phone's- Jill DeWit: Dead people. That's hilarious. Steven Butala: I say this stuff and I don't realize what I'm saying like I don't even think that's derogatory or funny. Jill DeWit: I'm going to go with that one. Steven Butala: What if I was just sitting here talking about myself? This would be no fun. Jill DeWit: Make America alive again. Steven Butala: Make America alive again? Jill DeWit: I don't know. I was just thinking of the dead people. I'm trying to grab any type of one liners I could throw dead people in there. Steven Butala: Let's make America thin again is more accurate. Jill DeWit: I know that's yours. Steven Butala: Make America thin again. Oh, we just lost half our listeners. Jill DeWit: Oh, my gosh. David dropped that one on. We were somewhere and it was clearly that envir...

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 923) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven Butala here with 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, like every Friday, Jill and I talk with guest, Justin Sliva, about the transactions that we're doing this week, and general banter about [inaudible]. Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community; it's free. Jill DeWit: Ben asks, "I'm thinking about trying a mailer for some infill lots and just gathering data at this point. I've ran across a legal description for a residential vacant lot that seems weird to me. S10886-Whitestone, condo unit four, 1.01% common interest. Nothing has been built here, yet no improved property value. But description says it's a condo and this person owns Unit Four. So, did this person buy a condo from a builder before it was built and has a deed for a land or a piece of it? Not really sure what to make of it. Thanks." I know what I think it is. Steven Butala: Can't wait to- Jill DeWit: [crosstalk] Justin Sliva: Guys, tell me if I'm wrong ... I'm totally guessing here, but I feel like it's the common area in the condo that everybody owns a percentage of that their HOA pays. And that could be it. Steven Butala: That's a possibility. Justin Sliva: Okay. Jill DeWit: I think it could be a timeshare, because of a timeshare, you can own a percentage too. Because you might own a 12th of it, because you might own a month of it, or you might own a week. Justin Sliva: Yeah, so that would be 52 weeks a year, so you'd own 1/52. What would that percentage be ... it could be it as well. Steven Butala: That's very viable. What it could also be is it could be land, that somebody subdivided and made it into a condo. We've all seen detached ... What looks like a house was actually a condo. And then we've also seen undivided interests/common interests ... Okay, here's the point. We're all saying some version of the same thing. Jill DeWit: [crosstalk] Steven Butala: At the end of a legal description when you see, INT, which is undivided ... whether it's common interests or undivided interests, or any kind of interests, just run the other way. Jill DeWit: That's [crosstalk] Justin Sliva: [crosstalk] Jill DeWit: I'm out. Done. Justin Sliva: I actually scrubbed that on my house dated mailers. When I run through them, you see 50% at the end on the legal description. I just run through and delete them. Just for that reason. Steven Butala: A keyword search for INT, and just take everything out. Jill DeWit: That's the key here. Justin Sliva: That would be smarter. I learned something today. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Steven Butala: I want to parlay this into another question I just read on Land Investors about scrubbing data and there's a lot of strings on Land Investors about, Why Can't You Scrub This Data Out From RealQuest? And keyword search and scrub it out and ... Here's, and I'll answer the question and you guys can pipe in, for sure. The place to scrub data is not in RealQuest. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Data's so cheap. Just get it all into Excel and go to town on it. Don't try to scrub stuff out of RealQuest. First of all, it will take you forever.

90 Days with a Rehabber vs Wholesaler (LA 922) Transcript: Steven J Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. I was gonna do like, "Mm-hmm (affirmative)." Steven J Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And, I am Jill DeWit. Broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven J Butala: Sultry Jill DeWit today. Today Jill and I talk about the topic, 90 days with a rehaber versus a wholesaler. Jill DeWit: I like that word, by the way. Can you imagine that was your license plate? Sultry? Everybody would be like chasing you down the freeway. Be like, "Who's that?" Steven J Butala: Not me. They wouldn't be chasing me. Jill DeWit: Oh. That's so funny. Steven J Butala: They would be wondering why that person has such an overinflated concept of themselves that they have to have a vanity license plate. In fact, you know what? That's my concept on vanity license plates at all. Jill DeWit: Listen, mister. Steven J Butala: I don't care if you're the best looking person on the planet. Male or female or whatever. Jill DeWit: I used to have one. Actually, a couple times. Steven J Butala: I don't understand these vanity plates. It's a license plate. Jill DeWit: I've had them. I know. I've had them. I don't have it anymore. I'm under the radar now, but I have had them and it was kind of fun. My favorite was the one time I got a speeding ticket, because I was racing up to catch up to a vanity license plate, because I was trying to figure out what it was. How awful is that? Steven J Butala: How old were you? Jill DeWit: I was old enough to know don't get a ticket speeding up to read a vanity plate. That was dumb. Steven J Butala: I have a lot of questions, Jill. Certain stuff. Jill DeWit: Yeah. So, yeah. I'm sitting in traffic school, and everybody's talking about how they got there and I'm like, "Stupidest reason. Trying to catch up to read a vanity plate. Right here. That's why I'm in traffic school." Steven J Butala: Did you catch up? Jill DeWit: Well, yeah. I caught up and the cop caught up to me. Steven J Butala: What did it say? Jill DeWit: I don't even remember now. Whatever it was, it wasn't that good. Steven J Butala: So, it wasn't worth it? Jill DeWit: Nope. It was not worth it. I can't believe I did that. Steven J Butala: It's funny. You're with somebody for decades and you don't know stuff. You just learn something, especially on a show. Jill DeWit: Yep. No- Steven J Butala: You probably kept that one under your hat, because it's maybe- Jill DeWit: Yeah. It's not my finest moment. Steven J Butala: Before the end of this show I'll think of some stuff that I've done that's just silly ridiculous like that. Jill DeWit: Good. It'll make me feel better. I like that. Steven J 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: Abby asks, "Hi, guys. Assuming you market your property everywhere in the interment, what's the average number of days your vacant lot stays on the market before selling? Thanks." You want to go or you want me to go? Steven J Butala: I'd love you to go, because that's your end of this.

What Every Wholesaler Does Wrong (LA 921) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello, handsome. Steven Butala: Start the teleprompter again. Jill DeWit: I'm sorry. Are you all messed up now? Did I totally blow your mojo there? Steven Butala: Who doesn't want to hear that? Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Who doesn't want to hear, "Hello, handsome," or, "Hello, beautiful"? I mean- Jill DeWit: Thank you. I concur. Steven Butala: I'm gonna start the teleprompter for the third time. Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I am Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about what every wholesaler does wrong. Jill DeWit: I love this topic. Steven Butala: So do I. Jill DeWit: It's really good. Steven Butala: And it's simple. Jill DeWit: It really is. Everybody's kind of going, "Okay, let me think. Do they not get the inspection? Do they miss something?" And it's nothing like that. Steven Butala: Yup. Jill DeWit: It's really good. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Katrina asks, "Hello, everyone. I have two questions I was hoping you could help me with. Question one: The cash flow from Land program. With the cash flow from Land program, we focus our attention on rural vacant properties in counties with a low census population density. Am I right to assume that with infill lots, we want to avoid the low population density counties? Can you explain in greater detail the type of market we should try to target? Are we looking for a large population, million plus, medium population, 500,000 to one million, or small population, 200,000 to 500,000, or even rural populations?" Do you want to do that one, before I go to question two? Steven Butala: Yes. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: The fact is this. This is a great question. Is it Katrina? Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: This is a fantastic question. Where would you logically ... Let's apply reason. You know how we're all constantly saying, "Just apply some logic. Test for reason." Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Where would you logically want to buy a buildable piece of property, and who are you gonna sell it to? The answer to that question will give you the answer to where you should be sending out mail. Jill DeWit: I want to buy in an area that there's building going on, for starters. Steven Butala: Good. What else? That's exactly right. Jill DeWit: I don't want to buy in a subdivision that somebody started and never finished, and there's three of 100 homes built, and there's tons of extra infill lots sitting there. I don't want that. Steven Butala: This is awesome. We're applying linear thinking here. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I want to go where the people want. Steven Butala: Keep going. Jill DeWit: Maybe I have a buyer. Steven Butala: You nailed it. Jill DeWit: Maybe- Steven Butala: You nailed it. You could stop right there.

Wholesale vs. Improvement Equity (LA 920) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill Dewitt: Guten tag. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill Dewitt: I'm Jill Dewitt, doing my best to entertain Steven, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about wholesale versus improvement equity, and how to create it. You cracked me up with that. Jill Dewitt: Thank you. Steven Butala: We set this up so that she can make everyone, mostly me, laugh with how she responds to this. Jill Dewitt: Oh, good. Thank you. Steven Butala: Jill, we're in the beginning. It's working. Jill Dewitt: Thank you. Steven Butala: You have an endless creative approach to saying hello, Jill. Jill Dewitt: I have some very other- Steven Butala: You have stuff in the bag? Jill Dewitt: Well, not ... Oh, I'm sorry. You meant appropriate ones. I have other ways I can say hello to you, so I don't think you want that right now. Steven Butala: Oh, I'm speechless. Jill Dewitt: I have some ways to say good morning and I have ways to say goodnight. Steven Butala: Geez, woman. Wow. It's good we're talking about real estate today. Jill Dewitt: Thank you. Focus, babe. Focus. Steven Butala: Here, hold this hand grenade and focus. Jill Dewitt: Yeah. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill Dewitt: Dalton asks, "Hello. I'm in need for honest no BS advice. I'm in the search for a land investing course. I've been all over the internet looking at what's available out there. I found Land Academy, the Land Geek, RE Tipster, Land Flippers, Land Profit Generator so far. Has anyone recently bought any of these courses and applied what they teach? And have you had success o failures? Please give me the good and the ugly. I want it all before I commit to anything. Thanks." This is cool. I'm really glad this is the kind of stuff that goes on in our online community. It is completely 100% unedited, by the way. People write in answers and our people answer them truthfully, and I love it. And I see I've got a couple answers here. One person, Chris said, "Dalton, I bought Land Academy after looking at and trying some others. I bought some bits from RE Tipster and I have nothing but good things to say about Seth, but I needed a more complete all inclusive training than he offered in 2016. The Land Academy training is exactly what they advertise it to be, everything you need to know to do the land business. It does not contain hard work, common sense" ... Does not, am I reading that right? Steven Butala: I don't know yet. Jill Dewitt: "Hard work, common sense, and startup money of $10000 to $15000." Oh I see what you mean. You have to bring your own hard work, common sense, and startup money. That's true. You must supply those pieces. Steven Butala: Maybe we should supply the startup money too, Jill. Jill Dewitt: "Keep searching this forum and you will read more about individual experience with Land Academy. Good luck to you." That's really nice and that was really cool, and that is very true. We don't supply ... Good luck. What was he saying? Hard work, common sense. Steven Butala: Common sense. Just a lot of common sense.

Think This All the Way Through (LA 919) Transcript: Steven Butal: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Steven Butal: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butal: Today Jill and I talk about the topic think it all the way through. Jill DeWit: I feel like I'm telling my child that. I'm telling everyone that. Steven Butal: I know. I was thinking about that too. This is a little preachy, this topic. Jill DeWit: It kind of is. But we're going to tie it in. Steven Butal: We'll make it funny and not preachy. Jill DeWit: We will. But we should walk around. Everything that you're doing, especially like my team. Did you think this all the way through? Maybe that should be the topic. Did you think this all the way through? Steven Butal: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on thelandinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Sam asks, "Hello all. I'm curious what people think about land investing in 2019. I've not purchased a course, but I've done about two weeks of research on my own." Steven Butal: That's good. That's great. Jill DeWit: "And I think I'm ready to get started." That's good. "However, one thing that has been daunting me, the bulk of the information published is several years old. Since then, I'm assuming hundreds of other investors have entered the mix. Looking at the numbers just to advertise on landacademy.com," this is for last month, "185,750 offers mailed, and 283 properties purchased is roughly a .1% success rate." I have something to say about that too. "Has the low barrier to entry created too much competition or over fished the pond? Let me know your thoughts. Thank you." And then we have one person that already weighed in. Is it okay if I go ahead and read that? Steven Butal: And we have a couple responses here. But I have to say this. I would encourage you, listener, to go onto landinvestors.com. I published two responses here, and I'm going to answer the question too, so is Jill. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butal: We're going to actually spend a couple minutes on this because it's so important. Well, you know what, let's hear what they say. Jill DeWit: Okay. One of the things I want to talk personally on is we can really accurately see the data because it's run through our company, the numbers. I know that part's accurate. But what's not accurate is what people actually buy and what they post, because they often sell properties and don't post it on LandPin. So that number is lower than what is real. I just put the numbers that we have access to. Steven Butal: If you go on any of our websites, or the vast majority of them, there's this little thing that pops up that says, "This is the number of data that our group pulled last month." Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butal: "This is the number of units that we mailed out collectively." Jill DeWit: Purchased. Right. Steven Butal: [inaudible]. And these are the estimated number of transactions that were completed. And it's always around 1%. But it's trailing because you don't purchase and sell a property. Jill DeWit: It's true. Steven Butal: Purchase a property in one month and ... It's overlapping. Jill DeWit: That's a good point.

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 918) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven and Jill here, 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 about transactions that we're doing this week, and it actually happens every Friday now. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandInvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Abby asks, "Hi guys, I stumbled upon a 0.34 acre parcel in Santa Cruz County, California in a desirable location, but it's not buildable. There's no sewer line, and the county won't allow a septic permit unless the lot is at least one acre. Should I buy it? It does seem like I'm getting it a reasonable below market price." What? Steven Butala: This is something that happens every single day to all of us. Justin Sliva: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill DeWit: Yes. Steven Butala: You know, you've got to make that decision. Man, it's cheap but it's not really usable. I don't know, what do you think, Justin? What do you do here? Justin Sliva: The question is, what are going to do with it? Jill DeWit: Exactly. Justin Sliva: Yeah, it's an infill lot that you need to build something on to create the value for the next person. For me, I call it a pass. What can I do? It's pretty, it's in this great location, it looks great, it's got great views, but I can't really do anything with it. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Justin Sliva: So that's the bad thing about it. Steven Butala: 10 years ago, I would have said all that to the seller and said, "But I will take it off your hands for $100.00 because I know you're tired of paying the taxes," and sold it on eBay. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Justin Sliva: Yep. Steven Butala: For $1,000.00. Justin Sliva: Yep. Steven Butala: We don't do that kind of stuff anymore. Jill DeWit: Exactly, now it's too small. Justin Sliva: That's a great way, the mantra, "Always be closing," and that's that idea right there. "Hey you're closing," they go, "Hey, this is why I don't want it." I'll give you a couple of hundred bucks and make [crosstalk]- Jill DeWit: If you want to get rid of it. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Steven Butala: Every time we [inaudible], but we don't do that anymore. Every time we did that, I regretted it. Jill DeWit: Yes. Justin Sliva: Really? Steven Butala: I mean, making $900.00. Jill DeWit: Do you know why? You had passed it to me- Steven Butala: Yeah. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Jill DeWit: [crosstalk] in my lap and then I'm like, "Oh man, I'd rather be spending my time on a bigger deal." Steven Butala: What I really regret is giving it to Jill. Jill DeWit: [crosstalk] oh, thank you. Justin Sliva: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Like, "What are you working on?" "A stupid $100.00 transaction. Thanks a lot." Justin Sliva: Those aren't too bad. I've got a bunch of those going right now we've got automated.

How to Sell a Piece of Land on the Internet (LA 917) Transcript: Steven Jack B.: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWitt: Hello. Steven Jack B.: Welcome to The Land Academy Show. I was gonna say ... Jill DeWitt: What were you gonna say? Steven Jack B.: I don't know. Jill DeWitt: Welcome to the- Steven Jack B.: Welcome to Thursday. Jill DeWitt: Oh, yeah. Steven Jack B.: It's The Land Academy Show entertaining land investment talk, I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWitt: It is entertaining and I am Jill DeWitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Jack B.: Today Jill and I talk about how to sell a piece of land on the internet after you've bought it. Jill DeWitt: Can you imagine if what we were doing is if ... You know those guys that, and we all drive along the freeway and there's this poster on the ground. I wonder how many calls those guys actually get. You know what I mean? How often do you really- Steven Jack B.: The bandit signs? Jill DeWitt: No, the signs that for sale property. This parcel for sale. Steven Jack B.: Oh, like on the highway, highway? Jill DeWitt: Yeah. What's funny is, I would envision, it is low and here's my reasoning. Because I have sold numerous properties to truck drivers, and you would think that they wouldn't be, and I don't have any signs on anything right, so you would think that the truck drivers are looking for the land based on the signs. If anybody's gonna see it, it's gonna be a truck driver and they're gonna be buying it. Steven Jack B.: Yeah. Jill DeWitt: But I've sold a lot of land to truck drivers that, they just know the areas. Steven Jack B.: Oh. Jill DeWitt: Then they're online looking in the areas, and then they find us, so I question- Steven Jack B.: Oh. Jill DeWitt: How value those signs really are, number one. Number two, have you ever noticed how old and faded those signs are? Steven Jack B.: Yeah. Jill DeWitt: One says Broker ABC and his phone number and I wonder, "Has that been out there for four years?" Steven Jack B.: Or 40. Jill DeWitt: Right. Steven Jack B.: Because that's the ... You know before the internet, some of that stuff's been out there. Jill DeWitt: There you go too. So, anyway, I'm just proving my point as far as this is the way and the best place to do it. Steven Jack B.: The internet made all of this possible. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. Steven Jack B.: I was lucky enough to start in this business when the internet was getting its legs. Jill DeWitt: Yeah. Steven Jack B.: But for years and years decades and centuries, people had no way of the sell rural vacant land. Jill DeWitt: That's true. Steven Jack B.: Real estate agents didn't want to ... Before the internet, what are you gonna do, go out and look at the property? Jill DeWitt: Right. Steven Jack B.: Let's say you're ... there's just no way. This really created a market for vacant land. Jill DeWitt: You have to think of it like a retirement place or something. You can't, "Sweetheart, I've got it all ...," could you imagine they pull out a big map? Steven Jack B.: Yeah. Jill DeWitt: Sweetheart I have it all mapped out. Steven Jack B.

How to Close the Deal on a Piece of Land (LA 916) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today we talk about how to close a deal on a piece of land. Somebody signs your offer and they sent it back, what the hell do you do now? Jill DeWit: It's like, "Uh-oh, what do I do know?" We can help. Steven Butala: We've all been there. Jill DeWit: Exactly. 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: Jason asked, "I have recently been scrubbing out anything that has a business name such as LLC, Inc., corporation, et cetera. I was never getting any deals from these so I thought I'd just exclude them from the start. Does anyone else leave them in or out? I'm curious what others have seen. Thanks." Steven Butala: Jill? Jill DeWit: I know what we do. We leave 'em in, but I don't send 'em 40. If the same person ... If you see the same LLC owns 40 deals, they don't need 40 letters. They'll figure it out. You just ... You can send them one. That's okay, and you don't even have to put all of 'em on there, you can just send them the one and they'll get it, 'cause all of our stuff is in LLCs. You never know who you might be missing because ... It's not even just us, there's a lot of trusts and other entities that people choose to take ownership in. That doesn't mean that it's someone that wouldn't want to get your offer, so if you take those out you could be missing some good deals. Steven Butala: She's absolutely right. You absolutely want to keep those in. Those are the professional people that are in the real estate business- Jill DeWit: True- Steven Butala: That want to own real estate, especially for info lots. Those are the people who own lots that they're gonna build on. They're the people who are gonna buy this property from you when you buy it, so- Jill DeWit: Ding ding! That's right, too. Once you close on the other one [crosstalk 00:01:56]- Steven Butala: Don't take those out. Jill DeWit: Call them, too. By the way, hang on to that data. Steven Butala: We buy property from churches and companies all the time. What you do want to take out is the City of Los Angeles or the city of whatever. Any municipality, Bureau of Land Management, any government agency, hospitals, and just stuff where you know there's such a small chance that they're gonna actually sell the property, too. Jill DeWit: Right, that it was like it's a mistake or something. That's cool. Steven Butala: Today's topic, how to close a deal on a piece of land. This is the meat of the show. I'm also happy to report it's Jill's show. Jill DeWit: Well, you know that's the whole thing about us and how we got ... How this has been the core theme of how we run our business. It's always been, "Steven, make my phone ring", and then once the phone rings, whether it's on the buy side or the sell side, that's my job, is marketing. What does this mean? Steven did all his work. He picked the right county. He priced them perfectly. They went out. Now they are ... They now want to sell. They signed it, they sent it back. What do I do and how do I close this deal? I'm not gonna talk about due diligence and what you need to do there,

How to Price a Mailer (LA 915) Transcript: Steve Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey. Steve Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. You always crack me up with that. Jill DeWit: I tried to do it different. Steve Butala: I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steve Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to price a mailer. Jill DeWit: This is good stuff. Steve Butala: That's our number one all-time request, frequently question. Jill DeWit: Yep. That's true. Steve Butala: "That's all great, Steve. But how it I do I price it?" Jill DeWit: But we're not going to give it all away, are we? Steve Butala: Yeah. I'm going to tell you exactly how to price a mailer right now. Jill DeWit: I know. We are. That's who we are, and that's what we're going to do, so hold on. Steve 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: Jeff asks, "So here's my question. Do you take precautions to remove people from your mailers when they ask, even though it's a bit tedious? Secondly, is there actually any legal grounds when sending in a contract offer directly in the mail? In other words, could this be interpreted as predatory on any level and if there are things you put in place to address this? Thanks in advance." Steve Butala: There's three questions here. One, do we take steps to remove people? When you send a bunch mail out, there are certain people that are not so pleased with us. Certainly our property owners. They don't agree with your valuation, let's say. Jill DeWit: Yeah. If it were twice what they think it's worth, they would be very happy and calling you back, and we wouldn't be talking about it. Steve Butala: A lot of them are nice about it, and they say, "I got your letter. I don't want to sell the property at all, not even for any price. Just please remove me from your list," which is totally reasonable. Yes, we have a rolling by county, by mailer file that we keep. It's as simple as a Microsoft Word document. We have people's names on it. Jill DeWit: Just draw a line through it. Steve Butala: Yeah. Actually it's in Excel all by county. Jill DeWit: Right. Steve Butala: Yeah, when we hit another county again, I always go back and remove them. Jill DeWit: If we ever go back to that area again. Steve Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steve Butala: Do they have any legal recourse? No. No. There's no way we could sit and teach this that way that we do and have so many members that are so successful. No, we'd be in so much trouble it's silly. Jill DeWit: Well, and it's like number one and number two, is this public information? For me, I see it no different as all the coupons, and the ads, and the promotions, and the things that come in your ... Email's even more ... What's shocking to me is the email stuff I get. This is mail, and there's a reason why we do this via the mail. Steve Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Now email is a whole different story. Steve Butala: That's spam. You can't do that. Jill DeWit: I think that maybe that's what you need to know...

How to Choose a County to Send Mail (LA 914) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: How the heck are you? Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about how to choose a county to send mail. We're kicking it all the way straight back to the most basic stuff this week. Jill DeWit: Like episode four. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: 914 might sound like episode 004, just kidding. Steven Butala: This whole week. What's funny about that is when we started doing the show in 2015, how to choose a county was different. Jill DeWit: Oh. Yeah, we didn't have the tools and the resources. Steven Butala: And the information and stuff. Jill DeWit: And the staff and the help. Steven Butala: Yeah. And the practice. Jill DeWit: And the bills. Steven Butala: And the three years of feedback from our members. Jill DeWit: And the bank accounts. It's gotten a lot better. Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, let's take a question posted by one of members on landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Alice asks, hi, guys. Another quick question. I'm still a bit skittish, maybe pushing perfectionist when it comes to sending mail. I was inches away from mailing a county. It sounds like finger hovering over the button. Recent completed sales are decent. Days on market, not too long, et cetera, et cetera. Everything is good about that, then I took a quick moment to visually peruse the area in Google Earth and noticed it's completely riddled with oil pads and rigs. Steven Butala: I know, you're in New Mexico. Jill DeWit: Should I run away from oil rigs? Intuitively, it seems to me the oil pads would negatively affect value, yet, the county meets basically every other criteria that matters. Have any of you guys had success in and around oil rigs? Should I be turned off by them. Steve. Steven Butala: You should be turned off by them. And yes, we have purchased property that has an existing oil rig on it, and with a lease in place, and they're usually very, very low revenue, like $500 a year. And all it is, is really complicating what we do. I've never had any interest in oil and gas, or any of that stuff. It's a whole separate industry. I mean, oil rights, it's a completely separate deal versus surface rights, which is what we buy. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: So, no. Jill DeWit: For me, I took it at just like, even old-school, like who would be your customer? Yes, I want to live out there. I like watching that thing go up and down. It's very therapeutic. Could you imagine? That's where I want to be. Steven Butala: My whole goal in life is to live 20 yards from the oil rig. Jill DeWit: I can hang my laundry on it. Steven Butala: I don't think that niche exists. I think of all the reasons that we sell property. We literally have a database full of people who want to buy property without access because they want to be lost like that. Jill DeWit: That's true. This is not one of them. Steven Butala: Never have I seen, I want to live in an industrial center. Jill DeWit: My kids love to go play on the oil rigs.

Finance Friday with Steven, Jill & Justin (LA 913) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steven, Justin, and Jill here. Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala with Justin [inaudible]. Jill Dewit: And Jill DeWit. Steven Butala: Broadcasting from Southern, sunny California, and Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas today. Justin and I, and Jill talk about finance Friday like we do every Friday. Jill Dewit: Yay. Justin: Yay. Steven Butala: Give us a quick fun highlight that makes people not want to turn off this podcast, Justin. Justin: Oh, man. 40 properties priced and checked in the last 48 hours. Steven Butala: Wow. Justin: I mean, that's why you dial into this, right? Is to know that we have these deals going on and that we're all in it to win it. Man, I'm smoked right now. Smoked. Steven Butala: Of the 40, how many are you ... how many you just love? Justin: I green lit for this morning. I have two packages of ten, so that's kind of misleading when I say, "Hey, there's 40 properties." But, two packages of ten, I'm still pricing them out. One of them I can't find [inaudible] anywhere for it. It's essentially ten lots from an old abs tractor in a mobile home park in Oklahoma. He wants $2,000 a piece for them. I just can't find if there's meat on the bone on those or not. Then another ten is from an oil company that ... it's in a $100, a $125 area acre per range, and they have ten properties there. They want $150 an acre, so I'm just going through and checking those. Steven Butala: [crosstalk] All the deals I've ever done with big companies like that have turned out to be home runs for us. Justin: Yeah, they were reclaimed mineral act. Texas has a ... where you get rid of the mineralize estates state essentially sells a surface to you and then you get a 50% bonus of the minerals if you hold onto the property, in case you do anything with them. One of the newer Land Academy members brought them. It was on his first [inaudible] mailed one candidate and said, "Hey, we'll go up a little bit on our price will take this, but we've got all these other properties and so we got those back, and he's like, "What do I do?" and I said, "we got to look at them.". That's why we're here, right. Steven Butala: That's great. Jill Dewit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Hey, before we get in the actual show, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill Dewit: Bob ask, "How do you verify legal access for rural land? Do you just look at maps and see if a road goes to or through the property? Even if you see a road/trail how do you know if it has ... property has legal right to the road/trail? If there is no road/trail, I'm assuming there still could be legal access, but how would you know? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated." Steven Butala: Go ahead, Justin. Justin: Okay. On that one, first thing is obviously look at Google Earth, good [inaudible] fact pulls up, you see there ... if there's a road, a named road tends to be a named road because it's recorded somewhere, and then from there you ask a question if there's a ... Could there be not a road and still access? Yes, it could be easement. A lot of times you'll find that in your ... in the different deeds, and a lot of the Southern states we work at you'll see the adjoining deeds will have that stuff in the bottom of it. So, they're recorded in, easements are recorded with the county. The road,

Commercial Property Acquisitions by Steven (LA 912) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Almost fell off my chair. Hello. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. At least you fell into me. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about commercial property, specifically commercial property acquisitions, my style. Steve's style. Jill DeWit: And I'm gonna spend 10 minutes painting my nails. Steven Butala: That's probably what's gonna happen. Ask me some questions, like when we get into it. Jill DeWit: Oh, I will. I will. Steven Butala: I'll answer them. Jill DeWit: I'll come up with some good ones. Steven Butala: Let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Ben asks, "When doing research for new counties to mail to, I've been looking for the counties with the lowest population density, the dark green areas, as advised in Land Academy. However, when I go to RealQuest and pull in numbers for that county, I'm constantly getting less than 1,500 results or considerably less, with the only search criteria being 0% improvement and one to 50 acres. Which, after scrubbing, leaves a pretty short mailer list. So my question is, what's the thought process on focusing on the very rural areas? If I start looking at slightly denser populated areas, are there anything I should be looking out for that may be problematic for me?" Steven Butala: Something's wrong. If you go to County Wise, start there first. That's probably where you pulled the density maps. And for each of the counties, you'll see a total record count of land parcels and ... I think. I know there's a total property count. So, if you look at Mojave County, Arizona, which is a dark county ... And I'm not advocating selling mail there. Jill DeWit: Sorry. It sounds like it came from a dark place. Steven Butala: It's not like a dark, negative place, awful- Jill DeWit: It's a dark, dreary county. Steven Butala: ... with trolls or anything. It's that darker county, from a population density standpoint. Thanks, Jill. Jill DeWit: You're welcome. Steven Butala: You'll see that there's tens of thousands of properties there. I mean, just thousands and thousands and thousands. Probably hundreds of thousands of properties there. And, like, nobody really lives there. So that lends itself, for a lot of reasons, to sending mail there. Am I saying you should do that? No. I'm saying, if you're getting 1,500 count on a property in a county where there's thousands and thousands of properties, hundreds of thousands of properties, something's wrong. Something's wrong with RealQuest, something's wrong with how you're using it. And- Jill DeWit: Can I weigh on one thing? Steven Butala: I address this in dramatic detail. Dramatically, in fact, in Land Academy 1.0, which we're just days from releasing. In fact, it might be released by the time this airs. It should be, actually. So yes, you may absolutely ... Let me end on this, before Jill answers ... You need to spend hours on this. This is your livelihood. We're not here to do real estate deals. I'm not here to do real estate deals. I'm here to become and implement sending out perfect mailer campaigns, that yield unbelievable acquisition results,

Sellers Need to Trust You by Jill (LA 911) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Howdy. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And Jill Dewit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how sellers need to trust you, and this episode is really by Jill. I can't describe how important trust is when you're doing a real estate deal. Jill DeWit: Totally. I'd like to point out, by the way, because I'm looking at it right now. It's episode 9-1-1. Isn't that funny? It's like, Emergency. I need to get the sellers to trust me. 9-1-1." I can help. Steven Butala: It is raining and thundering and lightning outside, and we are like 50 yards from the ocean. It's a little scary. Jill DeWit: It is. I'm a little excited. It's kind of like I'm outside looking; it's all dark. I feel like, is there a tornado coming? I don't know. Steven Butala: I hope it's showing up where ... I hope you can hear it on the mike. Jill DeWit: That would be cool. Steven Butala: The roof's shaking, that's for sure. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: Before you 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: Trevor asks, "Hey, guys. I was curious if anyone has sold any properties via option/double closing, whatever you want to call it. I have wholesaled a couple of houses in my day, but that was with a title company, and I knew, and with buyers [inaudible] new, and with buyers I already had lined up." Steven Butala: Yeah, that's the right way to do it. Jill DeWit: Right. "My question is, do I just need to sign to get them to sign option agreement and then find a title company to do a double close? I've got several folks with forty thousand dollars or so properties who are willing to sell them at about 50 to 55% of market value, but not the 33 to 35% of market value that I offered. Is there any way to get something like this done without complete hold of hands?" Steven Butala: Hold on, let's answer that question. Is there any way to get an option agreement done without a lot of work and a lot of maintenance and a lot of phone calls and hand holding? Jill DeWit. Jill DeWit: I'd do it. Steven Butala: Without work? Jill DeWit: Without [inaudible] I'd have a conversation with them, but it's not a lot of work, but I'd have a conversation with them, tell them what I'm doing, explain the whole process. Steven Butala: That's a lot of work. Jill DeWit: Get them to sign an agreement; I guess it is a lot of work. So ... Steven Butala: You don't see it that way because you just love doing these deals. Jill DeWit: Yeah, but Steven Butala: And I say that with total affection and respect. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: But option agreements are a lot of work, but they also don't require any money. Jill DeWit: True. Then the next, the followup here, purchase contract with the seller, ninety day inspection period, a hundred dollars of earnest money. I don't do that. That was his idea. Steven Butala: I do. Jill DeWit: Was doing it, to maybe do a contract with the seller, ninety day inspection period and then the earnest money. I don't. You know,

Minor in Possession (of real estate) (LA 910) 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 minor in possession of real estate. This is obviously a play on words for minor in possession. Like the show yesterday, it was inspired by an actual thing. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: An actual comment. Jill DeWit: I love it. Steven Butala: The real question is this, can a minor own real estate? The real short is answer is yes, and we'll talk about it because it gets tricky. 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: Matt asks, "I have the opportunity to buy four half acre lots, two on one side of the street and two on the other side. Everything looked good at first with asphalt roads, curb and gutter, all the utilities and an agreed purchase price less than half the value of comps in the area. The agreed purchase price is $20,000.00 per lot, and the lowest priced comp is $50,000.00. But once I looked on Google Earth, I discovered that the road had been raised to meet a grade of perpendicular road it T's into-" Steven Butala: Great due diligence. Jill DeWit: "As a result, the road for these four lots' front is about 10 to 15 feet-" Steven Butala: Oh, feet? Jill DeWit: "Higher than the lots, with about a one to one slope." So the road's up- Steven Butala: Not inches? Jill DeWit: The lots are down 10 or 15 feet- Steven Butala: I hope that's a- Jill DeWit: And then a one to one slope down from the road. Steven Butala: I hope that's a misprint. Jill DeWit: Right? Steven Butala: I hope it's 10-15 inches. Jill DeWit: "Do you have any-" it does say feet, I don't know, "Do any of you with building experience think that these lots still have value close to the comparable lots that don't have any of this type of topography? If these lots are devalued due to the situation, do you have any idea how much they would be devalued, or are they not worth hardly anything because of the cost to raise the grade of these lots? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance." Steven Butala: I mean, my hat's off to you for figuring this out very quickly on the Internet without spending any money. I mean, I can tell ... I don't know if you're new at this or what, but you're going to be good at it. First, you had what it takes to find the lots in the first place, and they're undervalued so you got 85% of the way there. You asked all the right questions, are they devalued? What should I do? What do I do next? I don't have any experience. All these questions are great. We're not the people to ask them. I can tell you what Jill would do, she would call a local real estate agent. She would call the owner of a tire changing shop that's close by ... I've seen her do all of these actual things. She would call the clerk at a- Jill DeWit: I'd talk to the county. Steven Butala: 7-Eleven that's close to the place. Jill DeWit: I'd call the county too, and talk to them about it. Steven Butala: Called multiple people at the county, and just say, "What the heck is the deal with the grade on thes...

Doing Deals with a Full-Time 70-hour-a-Week Job (LA 909) 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 DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about doing deals with a full-time 70 hour a week job. This is inspired by a true story, a true member story. Jill DeWit: It wasn't us. Steven Butala: It's inspired by a true story and embellished upon, as always. Jill DeWit: Do you know what's funny though? Steven Butala: No, it's not. Jill DeWit: I think you did use those terms. No, I think he did say it really was 70 hours a week. It wasn't embellished at all. Steven Butala: No, that part's not embellished at all. Jill DeWit: No, but and I have some good tips. Steven Butala: Of course, we're going to tell our silly stories because when we started all of this stuff, a lot of years ago, we had jobs just like that too. Jill DeWit: I know. I've had that. I've struggled what. It's almost like, even thinking like college days. You know, you feel like when you're cramming for a final. Like, oh, am I going to get it all done? I have some ideas. Steven Butala: Through the years, Jill and I have found ourselves in this situation, where we're working 70 hours a week. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: We have to reel it back in too. Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: Seriously. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: If you have this personality type, you just take stuff on like this, but we're getting into the show. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question, posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Elias asks, "How do you guys areas that are completely saturated with investors already? If everyone is there, obviously, it's a good county/market to invest in. Do you jump in right alongside everyone else and mail to those same properties again? If so, do you get fewer signed offers? Do you target different size properties? I've been hitting and missing with these counties quite a bit lately. I'm trying not to waste too much more money on mail." Steven Butala: That's a great question. A very valid concern and well put. I avoid competition. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: You know, we've got, I don't know, 300 or so members in our group, I think, seriously actives ones are around 50% of that. And then, but I know the really, really successful ones that I'm in contact with because we do deals together, and funding and stuff, are not where you think they are. They're not in, I'll just reel off of a few counties. Jill DeWit: Those places. Steven Butala: They're not in Costilla County, Colorado. They're not in Mohave County, Arizona. Most of us are long past that. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: While those top counties are great to cut your teeth on, and they're great, you will generally, buy property in those counties, you're not going to quit your job, and support a family just on those really tiny deals. I'm not picking on those counties. You just need to think bigger, and you need to think more like Land Academy 2.0.