Wholesaling questions - long post

[Brandon Benth]

Hello all,

First want to thank everyone for all the information given out on the forums, I have learned a quite a bit from just skimming through various posts. I do have many questions of my own that I'm sure I can find, but am unsure of exactly how to word in the search bar. I'll ask my questions using my current situation just so I'm able to keep them concise!

I'm a total beginner. I've done some research into STR, but have heard that those are becoming more and more scrutinized by various markets, and have ultimately decided to scratch that strategy (at least for now).

Anyway, we now have an opportunity to look into purchasing our forever home, one that we've had our eyes on since we moved to our town 3 years ago (we were aquainted with the owners and knew they would be selling soon). If we were to move forward, and ultimately purchase the home, it would certainly hold up any plans of investing through LTR, STR, Fix/Flips, etc. because our money would be a little tied up. This has pointed me toward Wholesaling, as my understanding is you need little to no capital to get started. I believe I understand it correctly in that it is about putting a property under contract (with the contingency that if you don't sell the contract in a certain amount of time, you back out), then selling that contract to an investor with the property price plus a 'finders fee' who would then flip the property to resell for a profit.

My questions would start with things like:

Where to find your investor/buyers? How does one start creating a buyers list?

Where can a wholesaler find off-market deals? I'm mostly on Zillow or Realtor, are those good options?

Are there contract templates that anyone could share? Would BiggerPockets have one somewhere that I haven't found yet?

What is needed for a business side of this strategy? Would I need to start an actual business with the state for this type of strategy? Or could I do just fine as an individual?

Would any profits of this be taxable? Would starting a business for Wholesaling be a better idea tax-wise?

I see the online guys saying 'Virtual Wholesaling' and promoting their 'programs' or 'groups' but I just don't believe that those things are the end-all-be-all. Or is there anyone out there who has seen success in these? I assume they would work as your buyers list?

I'm not sure if this is the way to go, but with the potential to start out without much/any capital, it sounds like a decent place to start to earn a little extra income and do a good bit of networking at least.

Thanks again everyone!