Wholesale starting out.

[Tyler Bemesderfer]

I think I’m at a point in my research I need to quit googling and start having conversations with people. I’m a cable technician by trade but I’ve been talking about and researching real estate on and off for arguably my entire life, so I believe it's time I start making some moves forward. Growing up my parents flipped houses, rather, they house hacked primarily. My stepdad owned a few rental properties when he and my mother first met, so I was exposed to some variety. So as a kid I got dragged around to all the apartments, the open houses, the nasty, run-down, should’ve been condemned 30 years ago houses. My stepdad would give me $20 to go replace all the outlet covers and switch plates. In that time I learned how to do some DIY work, learned laying tile, drywalling, painting, some landscaping, etc. I’m not a pro by any means but I can find my way around Home Depot. After the 08 crash, my parents had found other avenues of income, and the days of changing switch plates were over. After high school, I enlisted in the Air Force and once I separated I’ve worked various manual labor and entry-level jobs up until now.

I want to get into wholesaling, it's realistically my best option. My credit is crap, and my job covers my monthly expenses and that’s about it. I’m comfortable with cold calling. It’s a lot of what I do now, in fact, it seems I’m the only one at my job that is willing to make phone calls and write emails. I’m comfortable evaluating properties. I grew up looking for signs of damage on homes specifically, my social groups come from a lot of construction backgrounds, I make a living getting intimately close with the insides of walls, crawl spaces, and attics.

Here are my questions:

-Who is responsible for getting the closing agent? Seller, myself, or the buyer?

-What is the going rule of thumb for evaluating rehab costs for properties in 2021 with how much lumber prices have risen?

-How do I explain what I’m doing to the seller without sounding like a con artist? Do I even tell the seller or does the buyer just handle it from that point? I don’t imagine buyers fall through the ceiling with a superhero pose saying “I’ll take it from here”

-When do you make your offer and get the purchase agreement signed? Say you make the offer for 200k but after due diligence, it needs to be 180k, can you renegotiate?

- Last question, until I’ve built myself a reliable buyers list ill likely have to rely on posting in Facebook groups, craigslist, and here. How do I vet the buyer? It seems like properties are sold these days as fast as they’re posted so when I accept an offer how do I know that buyer is capable of covering his end of the deal?

Like I said I’ve been doing my research. I’ve watched 100 YouTube videos that explain the process, find distressed properties, people search and skip trace for property owners, ask them if they’d like to sell, assign the contract, buyer and seller close, “GET PAID!!!”. I have dug through the forums, gone down my rabbit holes, figured out (for the most part) what’s good information and what’s bogus. I’ve got templates written up, I know which lead strategy I want to tackle first, but I have some smaller detail questions and I can’t find an answer without spending a few hundred on someone’s “close your first deal in 30 days” package. To be clear, I am not opposed to paying for education. I am, however, very skeptical of seeing no tangible evidence that they know what they’re talking about before the transaction.

Important note: Right now, I just want to replace my income and maybe live a little more comfortably. If I can pull off one I know I'm going in the right direction and I will go from there. I'm not trying to make a million dollars by the end of the year, ill be ecstatic if I made an extra 5 grand by the end of the year. Eventually, I'd like to use the money I make from wholesaling to get into some BRRRR deals, and multi-family properties, and then maybe for nostalgia ill try my hand at straight flipping as an adult. But until I have something to bring to the table other than just finding the deal I'm eating this elephant one bite at a time.