How to Get a Deal Done without Escrow Title Recorder (HA 77)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:

Hi.

Steven Butala:

Happy to see you on the House Academy Show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:

And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:

Today, Jill and I talk about how to get a deal done without escrow and title and without a recorder?

Jill DeWit:

What? Hold on a moment. What are you talking about?

Steven Butala:

How can I… but Steve, how can I-

Jill DeWit:

I think… are you feeling okay? Maybe that’s what’s going on.

Steven Butala:

How can I buy a house as an investor? I have a buyer all lined up. He’s a landlord. He’s got 150 houses in this market already and I’m buying his house, I’m going to resell it to him, but nobody’s working.

Jill DeWit:

Everybody’s closed.

Steven Butala:

Nobody’s working at the county office to record the deal. What do I do? Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the houseacademy.com online community, it’s free. It turns out that the title of the show is the question.

Jill DeWit:

What is it?

Steven Butala:

This is the topic.

Jill DeWit:

I’m confused.

Steven Butala:

The question is, let’s say Janet said, “How do I get a deal done without escrow, title, and recording?” That’s the question.

Jill DeWit:

Wait, wait, wait. Oh, go to… okay, I’m sorry. The question is a lot of people are worried are asking the same thing.

Steven Butala:

This is one of the… this is while it’s like number two or three… I get all the titles from these shows, from our customer service logs on-

Jill DeWit:

For the questions?

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah, yeah.

Steven Butala:

So, and this is a pretty big question right now.

Jill DeWit:

Got it. People are panicking.

Steven Butala:

And it’s a very good one. It’s a very, very, very good one. So today’s topic, I already read it. This is while you’re listening. It’s all when today the script doesn’t accurately reflect that, so Jill’s like, what the heck?

Jill DeWit:

I don’t know what I’m saying. Where am I?

Steven Butala:

She’s not really saying, what the heck? What she’s really saying is, what the hell, Steve? How do you expect me to understand this encrypted thing that I’m supposed to read?

Jill DeWit:

How do I read this question? Yes. It was in his code.

Steven Butala:

Yeah.

Jill DeWit:

There we go.

Steven Butala:

It was trying to get on the air code.

Jill DeWit:

Okay. All right, so I would like to go first if I may.

Steven Butala:

Yes.

Jill DeWit:

So first of all, I’m sure you like me, are getting tons of emails from everything from your local corner, 7-Eleven if they have your email address as to what their business practices and their health standards are today. We all know their hours, we all know how seriously they are taking our health and their employee’s health-

Steven Butala:

We know they care.

Jill DeWit:

… into consideration. We all know that.

Steven Butala:

We love your compassion, 7-Eleven, keep it up.

Jill DeWit:

Thank you. I don’t need to know that the Slurpee machine is open and operational and you will happily pass me one with a glove to hand through the window of my car.

Steven Butala:

Are people doing that?

Jill DeWit:

I’m sure by now they are. It’s a little ridiculous. I’m not kidding.

Steven Butala:

Oh my god, how can you guys laugh and carry on like this when there’s something so serious going on in the world?

Jill DeWit:

Just want a Slurpee, I just want a Slurpee.

Steven Butala:

You two are heathens. People say that about us right now.

Jill DeWit:

I know. Okay. And we do take it seriously. And so we are doing our own part too. Okay. So fast forward, what does this really about Jill? Well, it’s about companies are still, we all still need to make money. We all are still up and operational, including banks. And you see the emails including title companies, including counties, sure, we are doing things a little bit differently, i.e. let’s do a little more online, but we’re not closing our doors.

Jill DeWit:

All the banks, as a recording as of today, all our banks here in LA County are open. You can walk into a bank. They are heavily encouraging you to use online services. Well, who doesn’t want to? That’s better anyway for us all. So I hopefully they’re beefing up that staff, but it’s still happening. So talking about this right now, first of all, with a land deal, it’s super duper easy to buy and sell property and get it recorded all online.

Steven Butala:

That’s right.

Jill DeWit:

In case you didn’t know that, there’s all kinds of great E-recording services out there for you. This is not nuts. And you know what? We should be good at this anyway. We shouldn’t be doing old-school, put a stamp on it, mailing in deeds to the recorder. I want, and this is for me, this is kind of a positive thing. I hope all these E-recording services are scrambling to add counties and add agents to get this stuff uploaded and reviewed and recorded and back in a better timeframe. So I’m happy about this with land. Now houses and this is a house show, it’s a little bit different. Do you want to… you want to jump in?

Steven Butala:

Necessity is the mother of invention. It’s a to quote a ridiculously overused cliche. So one of the unintended consequences of this whole thing is that when we get out from the other side of it, I think there’s a lot of people that are going to say, Hey, it turns out I can do this from my house and I am a much happier employee base. Escrow is no exception. And I said right before the show to Jill, “There’s no company on this planet that has a sign on their door or on their website that says this, ‘I am not interested in making any money during this whole thing, gone fishing.'”

Jill DeWit:

Right.

Steven Butala:

Or, “We let all of our people go,” and that’s not our first priority. Doing your real estate deal, nope, we’re not going to do it. Government might be saying that. The recorder might be saying that, but there’s always a way, a personal relationship way, whether it’s via email, you don’t have to be in presence to have a personal… Jill’s got an arsenal of escrow agents that she loves and probably an equalist of people that she’s not real interested in doing business with anymore. I bet she had… and they’re all happy like her. Bet you a dollar, you get a could call them and say-

Jill DeWit:

Yeah, we’ll get this deal done. And they’re like, sure.

Steven Butala:

Let’s get it done today.

Jill DeWit:

Yeah.

Steven Butala:

I know your kids are… I can hear your kids in the background, but let’s get it done.

Jill DeWit:

All right. I just thought of something too and I don’t mean to poop on old school agents, but I got to say there are some… if I was an old school title company and I was doing it the old way and I needed to personally have you come in and sit down in front of me with a stack of papers, I bet their business is going to go down versus those good agents like you mentioned, who are creative and helpful and say, you know what? Yeah, we do know about this thing about E-notarizing. Do you know about this? There’s services out there that you have video cameras and you can talk about it and you could almost, technically notarized documents not being right there sitting with the person.

Jill DeWit:

Some title companies, I’ve had this too, like they are so old school, they won’t even take a notary that you know, or even in your office, they want to send out their own third party company. And you know what, those guys, I don’t know if they’re going to… that you can’t do that in this environment.

Steven Butala:

I agree.

Jill DeWit:

You can make it easier for people not harder for people or you will lose business. So my whole point of this is there’s a lots of ways you can get a deal done. Don’t worry about it. Just be creative.

Steven Butala:

When a property technically is recorded, when you have a book and page number. It’s literally because most counties have books, if you go in an old school counties, in fact, even in Los Angeles County-

Jill DeWit:

You can go in an see them.

Steven Butala:

You can see the books.

Jill DeWit:

It’s like a big library.

Steven Butala:

It’s like a big huge three ring binders. And so the books are numbered and then obviously the pages in the book are numbered. You get a book and a page number to this day and you can get it all E-filed. So I’ve been on our last primary residence that we still own, I was asked to go to expedite the scenario, to walk in and sign some stuff just to make it faster and I did. And it was recorded like 13 seconds after I was done, which I was even amazed. I’m like, wow, that’s fantastic.

Steven Butala:

And she was my age, the escrow agent, she said, “Yeah, this is awesome.” So there’s always a way to get this done, always.

Jill DeWit:

Right.

Steven Butala:

Or maybe it forces you to have a different type of buyer like the landlord I mentioned where if you’re buying a house for $80,000 that two months ago was $180,000 and the landlord’s already got a tenant lined up because he hasn’t given up either. He sees this as a little speed bump and that’s it. Maybe even sees the opportunity like you do and he’s averaging the prices of his house out and he’s smart like you do and he’s not freaked out. Maybe you guys all just agree to keep the paperwork on his desk and get it recorded when the stuff stops.

Jill DeWit:

Or do an attorney, maybe get an attorney involved and do an attorney quick close.

Steven Butala:

Yeah, that’s a great idea. Great idea.

Jill DeWit:

And To be recorded in and that could be your unrelated third party real quick.

Steven Butala:

As this goes on, we’re going to hear from people who successfully have gotten-

Jill DeWit:

Workarounds.

Steven Butala:

… recorded and that’s one of the benefits of being in a group like this. They all tell us, they’ll tell us their trials and tribulations and the more often they’ll tell us their problems and less often their successes. But that’s why we’re here. We’ll get to the bottom of it. The recorder thing, the more urban your transactions are, the easier this is to get around. These people, whoever they are, that work in the government, they don’t want to come back after however long this goes on with a stack of stuff a mile high. They know the best employees we’ve ever had always say, “I worked on Saturday because I just would’ve had to do it on Monday.”

Jill DeWit:

It’s true.

Steven Butala:

“So I figured out a way to do it at home and play with the kids at the same time.” So that’s all that I figured out how to do it, should be the phrase, so I don’t have to do it when this ends.

Jill DeWit:

I love it. Happy you could join us today. Every Tuesday and Thursday we are right here on House Academy Show. Monday, Wednesdays, and even Fridays you can find us in the Land Academy Show.

Steven Butala:

Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called Separate Yourself From the Less Motivated. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

Jill DeWit:

It’s funny, it sounds like a Jill topic, but you wrote it.

Steven Butala:

It’s Friday, so tomorrow’s Friday, so this is a huge opportunity. I’m going to sound like your father here tomorrow probably, but you’re going to separate yourself from the rest of the people during this time or you’re not. And most of the people in our group I can say with huge amounts of pride. [crosstalk 00:10:57] They have that personality. You’re not successful in the land or the house group or you’re not a successful real estate investor. You’re not a successful lawyer or whatever you do, if you’re just sitting around saying, I’m just like the guy next to me-

Jill DeWit:

And my hands are tied. I can’t do anything.

Steven Butala:

Yeah, somebody told me I can’t go to work today, so that means I can’t make any money. So that means I’m not going to pay my bills. So we’re all in this together and I suck. Can you say I suck? Trust me, you suck.

Jill DeWit:

On that note, the House Academy Show remains commercial free for you, our loyal listener. So wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are, Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:

We are, Steve and Jill. Information-

Jill DeWit:

And inspiration-

Steven Butala:

… To buy undervalued property, losing listeners by the minute.