Obtain Real Estate License or Wholesale? Southern California

[Edward Kim]

TL;DR Should I wholesale or get a real estate license in Southern California with respect to an effort/payoff perspective knowing that it's a very hot market?

Hi BP, I'm a long time lurker in these threads and a budding investor trying to gain some capital so I can start investing in SFRs in the midwest. I'm currently located in Oahu moving back home to the surrounding Los Angeles area shortly. I've been looking forward to the idea of being able to find a bigger spread in both of these hot markets. Admittedly, I've struggled with taking action for a long time but have finally taken the leap not too long ago!

I've been driving for dollars here and have been struggling to obtain a distressed sellers list from certain local government agencies so that I can start cold-calling and wholesaling. The agency's unwillingness to help me though has me looking towards listsource and skiptracing companies to append phone numbers.

Once I get my first leads, I was thinking about possibly birddogging these properties just to build a relationship with the bigger players so that I could continue to ask for advice and properly wholesale my first deal, since it involves so much intricacies like accurately estimating ARV. In fact, I would probably do this (birddogging) for properties in Oahu in the case I get the list once I'm already in California as wholesaling long distance would be even more overwhelming.

I plan to continue this strategy once I'm in California. However, I wanted to know what BP thought about this topic. Whenever I look through wholesale threads there seem to be a good amount of people who strongly feel that this practice should be done through real estate agents. I understand why certain people feel this way from an ethical standpoint.

Some people also think "why bother going through the trouble of wholesaling" when you can get the same results from the agent commission.

So I'm basically curious about how people feel about this not only from an ethical standpoint but more so a practical standpoint. I'm not looking to screw people over with wholesaling and trying to do it right. 

Thanks BP!