How to work with RE Agents for leads

[Marc Cesar]

Greetings all, its been a while since I've added anything on BP. I recently connected with a investor friendly agent who is willing to assist my partner and I in our wholesaling business. My only question is how do i work with agents to get the best leads to wholesale to end buyers? what are typical questions i should ask the agent in order to get a win-win situation going?

[Joe Liu]

Hi Marc, I'm both a real estate agent and a wholesaler / rehabber. I choose this combo because if I don't want the lead that I find, I can wholesale it and while I wholesale it, I let the person buying it know that I'm coming to them first before I contact all my other cash buyers and that if I give them this deal, that they let me list the house. This has never been a problem. For me, it works out great if its something from the MLS since I can typically squeeze out the buyers BAC and then when they sell it, I get the listing BAC. Even if you don't take this strategy on fully, the agent should still be able to get the buyer's BAC which is still a good deal for the agent.

As far as a realtor, find someone who's a little savy in technology. If the agent doesn't know how to text and has a hard time working a scanner, you probably want to move on. Make sure the agent has a Docusign account so you can sign everything virtually. It'll save everyone a lot of time and you can fire off a lot of deals in one day without printing, signing, scanning, sending it back.

Besides expired listings, I usually pop a box over the entire city and surrounding cities (you can narrow this down to just an area you like to work in). Put in what my minimums and get 500 results. Export that to excel and I have a macro that I run that looks for all my keywords, like TLC, FIXER, CASH ONLY, etc. That pops me out 10-20 MLS numbers and then I take a look at those and start with them. You can do the same thing with expired to narrow it down faster.

Also, you might be able to find a good investment real estate agent at an REI meeting. The real estate firm I work for specializes in pre-foreclosure and we even have our own REI meetings.

Good luck!