The State of Land Academy After 5 Years (LA 1178)
Transcript:
Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill DeWitt:
Happy Friday.
Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy show entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.
Jill DeWitt:
And Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Steven Butala:
Today Jill and I talk about the state of Land Academy after five years. It's been five years, obviously 2015. It's been decades since Jill and I have been buying and selling land, but we decided to share it with the world, how we do it anyway, in 2015. And it's five years later, and this is what I've learned.
Jill DeWitt:
You know, I also want to say, because it's Valentine's Day. This show is about love. Just kidding. I just had to do that.
Steven Butala:
It's not about love at all.
Jill DeWitt:
Okay, anyway.
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:
Frank asks, "I have finally selected a county and I've downloaded my list from RealQuest Pro for one acre properties. Lowest price I can find all across the board for one acre is $16,000. I plan on offering $3000 to $4,000 per acre and sell for $8,000 per acre. Upon calling a local title company, closing costs alone are going to be around $1000. Do you take these costs into account and then figure them in before your offer is sent so you can still make your profit margin? So in this case, my offer price would be $2000 to $3,000 per acre instead of $3000 to $4,000 per acre."
Steven Butala:
What do you do?
Jill DeWitt:
No. I think I still go in with my price at the way it is. $3000 to $4,000 an acre and you're going to sell it... So I buy for three, sell for six... Even if I buy for four, sell for eight and with closing class, which is nine or 10 I'm still happy with that.
Steven Butala:
So am I. I'm elated with that.
Jill DeWitt:
Because I'm going to get a little more deals. Here's my thing. Coming in a little higher, it's going to yield me more deals and I'm still making a great amount of money.
Steven Butala:
Boy Jill, you're the girl for me. I could not have described it better. It's not about just that one deal or that one mailer, it's about putting a system in place where you consistently make four or 5,000 bucks a deal in the beginning, and then eight to 10, and then 10 to 20, and then 100, 200 per transaction. Using the same concepts, the Land Academy, House Academy concept. Everybody's got little quirky stuff in the beginning. I had all kinds of quirky stuff in the beginning. Mine was all paperwork related, so it was none of this math. But it's a good question.
Jill DeWitt:
It is. Because you know what's funny, we haven't talked about this in a while. I remember talking to a bunch of members about this. They're like, "Oh, I screwed up," on one of our weekly webinars calls. They said, "Oh man, I screwed up. I screwed up this deal. I didn't make what I should of." I'm like, "Well what are the numbers? Tell me how bad." I'm thinking that they bought for 10 sold for eight. They're like, "No, I bought for 10, I sold for 18, so I didn't quite double my money," and they're thinking that's bad. I'm like hold on everybody, you made $8,000 for how much work, what a couple hours it took you? Really, are we really going to call that call that a fail? That is not a fail. So that's the same as this.
Steven Butala:
To put that in context, Jill's so correct. If a company makes 3% profit margin in the real world, like Target or... In the real world, 3% is just staggering when you average it all out. I'm not talking about Apple or Microsoft, those are different companies. Grocery stores make one and a half percent. If they're not in the red they make about one to 2% and that's it. When you're talking about sitting at your desk at home making eight to $10,000 a deal every week, that's a lot of money. I don't care who you are.