The Book on Flipping Houses

[John Drake]

Hello, I'm considering buying the package deal with both: The Book on Flipping Houses and Estimating Rehab Costs, however I have one question. I'm currently focusing on wholesale, and I understand that a lot of what goes into wholesaling is related to flipping. But, are these books the best fit for me, or should I look to purchase something else, specifically geared towards just wholesale? Thank you for your time!

[J Scott]

Wholesaling has some basic components:

1. General understanding of how the industry works
2. Finding deals
3. Analyzing deals
4. Getting deals under contract
5. Marketing and selling those deals

The first 4 of those above are 100% overlap with flipping (though #3 has some nuances for wholesaling), and are covered in gory detail in the two BiggerPockets flipping books.  

I've always contended that wholesaling requires all the skills of flipping, plus more.  If you don't have all the knowledge about flipping that your customers have, you're not going to be very successful at understanding what they are looking for in a deal, verifying that your deals have those characteristics and then being able to sell those deals.

In fact, I've often recommended learning to flip before learning to wholesale -- I actually flipped about 30 houses before I ever wholesaled one, as I found wholesaling *more* difficult than flipping, simply because you have to be *much* better at finding and negotiating good deals when wholesaling, and that's one of the hardest parts of this business.

So, in short, I would say that if you want to wholesale, you should be intimately familiar with the information both the BP flipping books, and also be an expert in marketing/sales/contracts.  Again, that last piece isn't something I cover in detail in my books, but I also don't know any single books that does cover all those things in gory detail (they may exist, I just don't know about them).

Happy to answer any other questions anyone might have...