Two wholesaling questions

[Micahel Lorent]

I have two major wholesaling questions that are troubling me:

Firstly, when you wholesale, does it matter if the seller owns his home free and clear or does it make a difference if he has a mortgage on it?

Secondly, how exactly do you go about finding and analyzing deals? How do I identify a "good" deal?

I've heard alot of suggestions about using agents to pull comps; if I did this, what exactly would I ask for?

Thanks for your answers! I think I'm getting my head wrapped around the wholesale concept and hope to begin soon. I want to first, however, find a good investor-friendly title company and get an agent that can help me when I need; this should be my "team" for now, and then find buyers (lots of great threads on doing that! :D ). The last bit of the puzzle is just: "What is a good deal"?

[Jon Holdman]

I'll go further and say tax values are useless. If they match the value of the property its just by luck. They only get done every two or three years.

You must learn the values for the area yourself. There's no shortcut. Look at lots of houses, track ALL the solds, and understand the area. Many, many years ago we were looking at houses in Sugarland, TX. The agent we were working with specialized in the area we were searching. We could drive with her and she could describe every house and tell you what it was worth. At that time that seemed amazing. That's where you need to be. Learn the area and learn the values.

There are lots of threads on this questions, too. "Determining ARV" or "How do I determine ARV" or similar phrases.