How We Started Buying Land 90s
Jack Butala: How We Started Buying Land 90s. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening.
Jack Butala: Jack Butala with Jill DeWit.
Jill DeWit: Hello.
Jack Butala: Welcome to our show today. In this episode Jill and I talk about how we started buying land in the 90s. I was forced to tell my own story a couple of days ago and Jill liked it so much she's going to make me do it on the air again.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: Before we get into it, first lets take a question posted by one of our members on LandAcademy.com, the online community there. It's free.
Jill DeWit: Cool. Ted asked, "I have a parcel in New Mexico ... Excuse me, Minnesota, that I've currently got sold on a contract for deed. The buyer has been looking to getting some permits and the county has alerted him that there's a fee owner on the title from way back in 1972. Apparently, when they parceled out a larger piece of property it wasn't done correctly so this guy is on the titles of this parcel and all the neighboring parcels and he passed away in 1995. It wasn't an issue 3 owners before me until now. Is this something that probate would clear up or a quick title action? What should I do?"
Jack Butala: Excellent, Ted. This is a great question. It's probably even a PhD level question, at least master's degree for sure. I think that you and I ... I'm really glad we're doing this on the air. We alluded to answering this question on our weekly call on Thursday for our members, but the thick of it is this: It sounds to me like you need to do a Quiet Title action.
I know in Minnesota, I did a bunch of research for you, and I found out that it's called Adverse Possession. In Minnesota they don't actually call it Quiet Title. The first thing I would do is, like I suggested to you pretty much in private, I would contact an attorney and just have a consultation. There's several law firms that pop right up in Google that rectify situations like this. On the thick of it or on the front end of this it sounds really scary, like, oh my gosh, I'm going to lose all this money, I sold the property, I did something wrong. I really don't think it's really that complicated. I really would just consult with an attorney and if you do end up having to do what's in effect a Quite Title action or Adverse Possession action, all it really is is just following the statutes. You have to literally put notice in the newspapers for a certain amount of time and then file a bunch of court documents. The whole thing probably takes 3 to 6 months. If nobody responds to the posting in the newspaper, because I'm not sure people read newspapers anymore.
Jill DeWit: Isn't that funny. It's funny that it's still a formality, but you still have to do it. Okay.
Jack Butala: In the end, you're done. At that point, by the way, you have what I think, this is my opinion, now you have an insurable piece of property, what some people call Marketable Title. Is is a little bit of a wrench? Yeah, but you know what's going to end up happening too is you're going to find out how easy this is and now you're going to seek property out, because there's a ton of property that's just sitting around because this makes everybody really afraid. This will open up Minnesota acquisitions for you too.
Jill DeWit: That's very true, once you figure these things out. I agree. It's funny, some of these terms, it's easy to go, oh no, it sounds so big and scary. No it's not. There's ways around it. Is anybody trying to pull a fast one or do anything? No. The guy's not here anymore, it's just a formality.
Jack Butala: It's a formality, Jill.
Jill DeWit: It is.
Jack Butala: Exactly. Well said.
Jill DeWit: We get hung up on these sometimes. You can work through it. You know what? You just have to call sometimes,