1st Wholesale (and by accident at that)!!

[Brandon Hicks]

I'm primarily a buy and hold guy and currently have 42 units. I did one flip in 2008 and that was somewhat accidental as well.

Recently I was contacted by a friend on Facebook after blasting my craigslist ad across my personal, business and several 'garage sale" type Facebook pages about a house 30 min away in my hometown.

Long story short I negotiated a no money down land contract on it at $35k, which is my standard M.O., with plans to rehab and rent it. The sellers were just emotionally done with the house. They had inherited it 3 years ago and had recently evicted the 12 year tenants after only receiving 3 of the past 8-9 months rent. The house was full of stuff and most of it was essentially garbage. Same with the garage and shed.  (The cleanup ended up requiring two 30 yard roll offs which I assisted with since I sold it to a friend) They offered to let me have it at $25k cash vs. the $35k on contract so I said I would write it up in a way that it could be closed either way in case I couldn't find the $25k cash.

I ended up forming an agreement less than 24 hours later with a friend and fellow buy and hold investor for $30k. We did a double close with his cash so I never put up a dime and walked away with $3200 after closing costs.

Until this deal, ill be honest and say that I somewhat rolled my eyes at the thought of wholesaling. I just didn't see it as something that would actually work in the smaller communities where I invest. Now after doing it I'm interested in learning more and actually attempt to do some on PURPOSE!!

One takeaway from it is that I need to negotiate the closing costs up front with the end in mind. Since my intention was to buy on LC and keep it I had agreed to cover the $400 in owed taxes and cover the closing costs so I ended up eating more than I likely should've. In hindsight I would've also been better off leaving it open for assignment to cut those costs even more. Overall though I'm excited with the way it all turned out and am happy with the learning experience and the check!