Risking Your Reputation in the Land Business (LA 1079)
Transcript:
Steven Butala: Steve and Jill, here.
Jill DeWit: Hi.
Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about risking your reputation in the land business. What's this topic all about?
Jill DeWit: Well, it comes up now and then, and it's important to talk about doing the right thing. As it relates to land and kind of in life, you want to be that person. I know that we have a lot of listeners and a lot of people in our world because we're honest, we're transparent, and if we say we're going to do it, we do it. You want to have the reputation because the benefits are overwhelming, and if you don't do it, on the flip side, it will come back to bite you.
Steven Butala: When you have a group of people like this in any group, I don't care if it's a church group or people in an office, there's always people, the vast majority of the people, in fact, all of them that I can, that I know of are really stand up people. There's always a couple, one or two, that just decide that they're smarter and better and just troublemakers.
Jill DeWit: It's like you tell all the kids when they're in school. Last summer, our kid number three had to take a summer school class, and it was not because he had to it was because it was either that or take a zero period. He's like, "I'm not doing zero period for a semester."
Steven Butala: For three years.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. He's like, "I can't do it. I'd rather do summer school and suck it up." So, we get it. In the summer school, there was one kid that was really a pain in the ass for... Can I say that?
Steven Butala: I guess, yeah.
Jill DeWit: Okay. Anyway, for not only the teacher, but for everyone in the class. You would always say, "Well, there's always one," and I think you're right.
Steven Butala: Let's just get right into it.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free.
Jill DeWit: Brian asks, "I have a seller with 10 acres of unplanted land. I realize this is land that hasn't been platted/plotted by the county. I'm curious if anyone has experience with this. Will I need to incur additional costs on the acquisition or sales side?"
Steven Butala: Our moderator, Kevin, answered this question perfectly, and after Jill reads his answer, I'll make a couple of comments because this is a very, very good question. This comes up with rural vacant land all the time.
Jill DeWit: All right. Kevin wrote in Brian from the Oklahoma state website FAQ page on abstracting, "What is the difference between platted and unplatted land?" Platted land is a parcel of land divided into lots, as in a subdivision, the platted lots are filed with the County clerk in a plat book. Unplatted land, which is not following a plot book, and the legal description is described using a section township and range, and won't cost you anymore or any less.
Steven Butala: Yeah, so unplatted land, if you've ever seen a plat map, and it's not a plot, plat map, it's usually a white piece of paper with pencil drawings. Sometimes they're even hand drawn, from a surveyor. They go back in time, a tremendous amount of time. The old really old ones are hand drawn. There's a lot of unplatted property in our business.