The Power of Answering the Phone (LA 1506)
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 DeWitt, broadcasting from sizzling Scottsdale, Arizona.
Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about the power of answering the phone.
Jill DeWit:
Yeah. Nothing like a live person answering the phone. You need to do that, and I'll explain more in a minute.
Steven Butala:
Yeah. 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 if you're already a Land Academy member. Join us on Discord.
Jill DeWit:
Sean wrote, "Have any of you ever had a title company refuse to close a deal because the sale price is too far greater than the county assessed value? This just happened to me with two different title companies. I bought a lot with a current market value of $10,000. I'm selling it for $5,800, but the county assessor data has it valued at 3,825. The title companies are saying they cannot issue title insurance on the property because the sale price is more than 50% above the tax value. Since when does a title company determine the value of the property?"
Steven Butala:
Never.
Jill DeWit:
You are correct, Sean.
Steven Butala:
You're correct to question this. They can't ...
Jill DeWit:
You are correct.
Steven Butala:
They shouldn't. There's something else going on.
Jill DeWit:
There's somebody with ... Is it a big ego thing?
Steven Butala:
If you're brand new at this or you're thinking about getting into this business, these things almost never happen. This is a strange anomaly that, Jill and I have done almost 16,000 deals combined in our career. I think something like this has happened to me maybe less than five times, but I'll tell you, yeah, I had a title person one time, after she did about eight deals for me, called her husband and said, "These deals are all coming in. We should just buy these ourselves, they're so cheap," and so she took a bunch of business away.
Jill DeWit:
That's, like, not legal.
Steven Butala:
I've had country recorders a couple of times refuse to record property that I bought because I was from out of state and they didn't want to sell property to people that were out of state, especially for an expensive amount.
Jill DeWit:
Hopefully that's all fixed by now.
Steven Butala:
Yeah, you can fix it. This, honestly, I would call a lawyer.
Jill DeWit:
I have an example, though. This is how I would explain it. We've all heard of this situation where a home was being sold for a price higher than it was appraised at. We've all heard of that. You get an accepted offer, the appraiser goes out ... Normally, this happens. Normally, you're buying a house, you're buying it for $479,000. The appraiser goes out. We always want it to be that price or higher. We obviously want it to be higher, right, because thinking, "I got a good deal," but it's funny how, "Gee, look at that, the appraisal came back at $479,000. What the heck?"
Jill DeWit:
Now and then, and I haven't heard so much now, but I think anybody over 30 has heard of this. Now and then you've had an appraiser goes out and then, like, "Oh, shoot, they only appraised it at 459," so you have to pay cash for that last bit if you really want the house. This, to me, is no different, absolutely no different. The title company's not going to go, "Nope, not doing it. Not taking it because it didn't appraise to what you're actually spending so we're not going to close the deal." They never do that. That's not true. We just know that, and especially, often if there's a lender involved, that's why you had to get it appraised, too, by the way, so the lender says, "Oh, we're only going to loan you up to the 459, because that's what it's appraised at." It's a hot market, we realize, you're buying it at 479. You get to pay that extra 20,