We are Profitable While Most Real Estate Niches are in the Red (LA 1279)

We are Profitable While Most Real Estate Niches are in the Red (LA 1279) Transcript: Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hello. Jack Butala: Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Jack Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how we are profitable while most real estate niches are in the red. Jill DeWit: We were talking about this earlier today. I was thinking how I wrap my head around this and what I think about is who's losing sleep right now. That for me is my alternate title. Jack Butala: I look at everything like risk, and we'll get into this in the meat of the show, but it's very, very risky to have all of your eggs in one basket. Jill DeWit: It's true. Jack Butala: If you're, let's say, an apartment building owner, did you do anything wrong? No. It's just nobody could have predicted this situation. Jill DeWit: It's true. Jack Butala: But I think most apartment buildings that I know of are, and really commercial real estate, are based on 75% occupancy pays all your bills in a best case scenario. Jill DeWit: Gosh. Jack Butala: And then that 10, it's even really probably higher than that, 85-90%, so it's that last 10% is profit. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Jack Butala: So when you get a substantial number of people that are allowed to not pay, and I don't care how you feel about that, that's just the fact, then it's got some massive, massive financial hardship. Like Jill said, if we had a bunch of apartment buildings, I'd be losing some serious sleep. And then even worse would be office buildings. Jill DeWit: Right. Jack Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: Nick wrote, "I'm about to call the county for a couple of properties I have under contract to purchase. What things should I be asking the county when I call?" Jill DeWit: Good stuff. Nick obviously is doing his due diligence and making sure he wants to buy the properties. The first thing I do is I don't want to call the county and be that guy and ask them every last question when I have a lot of answers of my own. So the first thing I would do is, I use Neighbor Scoop. I go between Neighbor Scoop or Title Pro, because you have that, Nick, and you can get the ownership information, you can get the vesting deed if you didn't already get it from the seller, confirm ownership, you can check out zoning if you need to, confirm size, confirm annual taxes. There's all kinds of things you can do. Jill DeWit: The things that you call the county for, the few things you might need help with from them are, are they current on their taxes? Stuff like that. And how far back does it go if they're not current? Did they stop paying in 2016 or did they stop paying in 2019, whenever it is? Get the total amount of taxes. It's very rare, but you can ask them, too, are there any liens or things that you can spot that you see here on the property? Anything else that's been recorded against the property? Jill DeWit: What's possible? This is my favorite thing. This is usually why I'm calling, too. It's really those two things, and I might, while I'm talking, too, I'm going to verify everything's right too. I'm like, "Hey, just to make sure for ownership, I see, George Smith Family Trust. Is that what you've got?" "Yup. That's what we have, too." So I'll just double check that, even though I probably got the vesting deed already because I did it myself. Jill DeWit: But the big thing, too, is I'm asking the county, what's possible? I want to know. Do they know if it's buildable? Is there anything that they know about it? Is there utilities? It looks like there's utilities at the street. What can't I build there? For example, can I put a mobile there? If the answer's no, are there any restrictions as far as what kind of site built o...