Why Smart People Understand the Land Investment Business Model (LA 1347) - a podcast by Steven Butala & Jill DeWit

Why Smart People Understand the Land Investment Business Model (LA 1347)

Transcript:



Steven Butala:

Steve and Jill here.



Jill DeWit:

Hello.



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 why smart people understand the land and business model, and maybe why some un-smart people don't.



Jill DeWit:

Un-smart... Smart-less.



Steven Butala:

Like all these topics, there's something going on below the surface. I know what it is. 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 DeWit:

Greg wrote, "I'm buying blocks of lots out West, but the acres and the dimensions on the plat map don't seem to match up with ParcelFact, and Parlay 2.0 specifically. One dimension of lots is 165 feet on the plat, while as best I can measure, is 145 feet, according to both ParcelFact and Parlay 2.0. The total acres the County references seems to match the online data, shorter domain dimension, lower acreage, but not on the original plat. Which is more likely to be correct? That's a you, all day long.



Steven Butala:

You ever see the Rain Man?



Jill DeWit:

I have. Dustin Hoffman? Tom Cruise?



Steven Butala:

And how chronic his OCD was? We love Greg, and I don't know Greg, but I love Greg's question here, but I'll tell you, these are satellite images that are lined up with manual GPS coordinates that are coming from a database. Imagine GPS coordinates and a corner point of a piece of property that's not a square, it's all kind of a polygon with 22 points. That data set's literally got 22 data points for each of the, not the corners, but the edges, even. Multiply that, times 150 million properties in the country, then, technically think about the image, this is 10 feet off for Greg, the image is coming from space.



Jill DeWit:

Can I add, throw in there the curvature of the earth.



Steven Butala:

Yes.



Jill DeWit:

Which is reality. Thank you.



Steven Butala:

The image is coming from space, and not just one satellite. Very often the satellite images are overlapping each other and they're not perfect. So, what's going on with this question is, it's not perfect, and it's never going to be perfect. If you want a perfect survey, you have to order one, and the guys come out with the orange coats on and devices, and they tell you exactly what your lot dimensions are. And even then, there's a plus or minus margin of error. You can't overlay.

I'm extremely confident that the ParcelFact dataset from which you see the data on your screen, and the Parlay dataset are identical. How it's getting presented, we use S-Ray. Jill and I own ParcelFact. Parlay is another, I know those guys and they're great guys, and they have a great product. They're also the makers of LandGlide. The products are all coming from the same dataset, and while our presentations are different, the data behind them are the same.

Here's my big picture point. Who cares? It's a few feet off. You understand the boundaries. If you're going to build a road, you need a survey. If you're going to build a house, you need a survey. If you're going to get financing, you're going to need an in-person survey. I'm not knocking you, Greg, at all. In fact, I bet you a dollar you're either an engineer or an accountant. I'm an accountant, so I can say this stuff. Accountants and engineers are in a different planet. It's like the Rain Man. If the light says, "Don't walk," and you're in the middle of the street, you stop walking.

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