Agents: Seller or Buyer

[N/A N/A]

I'm new to wholesaling and still in the process of researching my market, which means I'm beating the pavement, basically on weekends, seeing as many houses as I can.

I'm learning a lot about the values in my area, and I'm running into a lot of brokers and agents as well. Some of them have started calling me with potential deals - nothing worth pursuing yet, and I'm still educating most of them on what a "deal" is to me, but I'm wondering whether the pros here have experience working with both buyer's agents (someone who can scour the MLS, etc.) and alert you when they find something they think might interest you, and a seller's agents, who will call you when they have a listing they think you might be interested in.

I know there are pluses and minuses with both, but here's what I've heard:

1) If you're going to elicit the assistance of a buyer's agent, you should let that person know if you're also having listing agents call you with deals.

2) The listing agent is likely to be more motivated, since they'll get both ends of the commission, but they'll obviously be calling you *only* with their listings, so it will take time to build up relationships with enough of them to keep any meaningful number of leads coming in.

Opinions?

As a side note, thanks to what I've read here, on a couple of other forums, and in the books and courses I've read, I can stop the "BS" pretty quickly and tell these people what a house should be selling for, what kind of repairs it probably needs (at first glance), and what those repairs will cost. Man, I wish I'd known all this when I bought my house years ago.

[Scott Ficek]

I can speak from experience on this question. When I first was trying to get started in flipping and investing, I would meet Realtors much like you are. I would go through the same discussion each time with them:
[list]Here is what I am looking for (flips, rentals in this neighborhood, etc)
When you call, I can drop everything and meet you at the property
I have money in the bank and I am pre-qualified with a compentent mortgage banker
I will make a decision within 5 minutes of seeing the property
[/list:u]
I should have been the ideal buyer, but typically the agent never called me again or would send me deals that were completely opposite of what I was looking for.

I finally met a Realtor that only worked with investment buyers. He had never listed a house and had no desire to. He spent time with me to learn what I wanted and then when out and found it. I think that was the only way I could have started. I used him as a resource to learn the investment business. He benefited as I bought about $4 million worth of property from him!

Now as a Realtor myself, I use the same process. I relate it to being a detective or big-game hunter. Tell me what you are looking for and I will find it. A listing agent is only going to see what he has listed. As a buyer's agent, I see everything on the market and can use my tools and expertise to find exactly what my customer wants.

Long message, but I hope it makes the point.