Beth:
Hi, I’m Beth with TB Properties by Its Land. Today, I’m going to answer the question: when you are selling your vacant land to a land investor, does that land investor have to have a brick-and-mortar location in order for you to do business with them and sell them your property? The reason that I’m bringing this up is we had someone who Googled us, found us online themselves, and asked us to quote them on buying their land. When we responded that we will need to know where their property is located and the parcel number, they came back and yelled at us and said, “you don’t have a brick-and-mortar facility!” Sorry, I have to laugh about this because they came to us and then yelled at us about this.
Even so, it is a good question. Do you need to have that brick-and-mortar facility in order to be reputable? We may feel as though if someone’s got a physical location or storefront, that they are safe, that it’s a little bit safer of a transaction, and oftentimes that is the case. Even so, there are plenty of fly-by-night businesses that will open up a location and later they’ll disappear. Still, one must admit that an eBusiness can seem to have more opportunity to be shady than a brick-and-mortar business. Regardless of having a storefront or not, in my opinion the most important way to protect yourself when you are selling your property, whether it’s your home or vacant land, is to complete and close the transaction through a title company. Whatever real estate investor you may be considering selling your land to, you may ask them if you will be closing through a Title Company? Will they cover Title Insurance? Is the Title Company licensed to close in the county where your property is located? If you have a competent team at the Title Company doing the paperwork to close your transaction and handling the funding of the transaction, then what does it matter whether your buyer has a storefront or not?
The great thing about real estate nowadays is that you can operate out of your home. In fact, many industries now allow people to operate out of their homes. When it comes to real estate, you can operate from anywhere in the country and buy land anywhere. As a seller, you can live in one state and own property in another, and you can sell that property from another state. In fact, it is quite often that when we’re working with property sellers, they’re not even coming in person to close a transaction because their own property is remote. Maybe it’s just an hour away, and they have better things to do or maybe their property is in another state or even several hours away. With today’s technology, title companies allow you to close remotely by overnighting documents to you and they will instruct you sign in front of a notary public and overnight back to them. The notary will verify that you as the seller are who you are, and that we as the buyer are who we are.
One of the most important components of the transaction is you getting paid, right? It’s making sure the transaction closes, it’s making sure you’re protected, and that you’re actually getting paid for the transaction. When you close through a title company, they will only accept certified funds from us as the buyer. What that means is we have to either wire money directly out of our bank account or we will have to overnight a certified bank check. The funds have to clear in order for the transaction to move forward.
Until the Title Company has our money and they know it’s in their account, and until everyone has signed their documents in front a notary and gotten them back to Title, your property is not leaving your hands. On the flip side, we as the buyer are protected too as we are not at risk of losing our money either since the transaction is going through a third party, which is the title company.
Back to that original question: if you’re selling your property to a land investor, do they have to have a brick-and-mortar facility? Truly, it depends on how comfortable you feel. That is a question that you’re going to have to answer for yourself. Whether you do or do not, to me, the most important thing would be working through a title company so that you’re protected.
Having brick-and-mortar doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re safe. Not having one doesn’t mean that you’re not safe. If you think about it, as a real estate investor, TB Properties Buys Land is able to save money by not having storefronts all over the country in every state and county that we purchase property in. We do purchase property all over the country but there are certain areas that we tend to do more business in and have more experience in, but we are open to looking at property all over the country. If you have questions about this, please feel free to reach out. By the way, I’m not making fun of the guy who reached out to us and seemed to be yelling across email. Maybe he wasn’t “yelling” and maybe he was just having a hard day. I did think that what he asked was a very valid question and something that I needed to address across this video. In any case, we look forward to working with you. If you have questions, give us a call or shoot us an email. We do look forward to working with you. Thanks again.