Am i being too greedy

[Nicolas J]

Okay a friend of mine are teaming up to cover more ground in the whole selling market and he wants to use a Realtor to sell these houses that we come across cause he seems to think the Realtor can sell them faster then using a buyer's list of other investors that buy these empty houses that we find. I personally feel like using a Realtor is all and find on certain houses but not on every house that we get coming in the front door. Right now i have a list of 30 houses that a bird dog has brought to me and my partner wants to put all of them under contract and list them with a Realtor and i keep telling him that is not a good idea . Because i do know this won't happen if we sold all of them at 50,000 a piece at the 3% that the Realtor wants that's 45,000 could have been in our pockets. Am i just being greedy or should i have a right to want to keep as much as i can?

[J Scott]

There are two parts to my answer:

1. In terms of being greedy, there's always a trade-off when it comes to be being greedy. In this case, the trade-off is how much work you'll have to do. If you can successfully get a realtor to sell your deals, you'll have to do a LOT less work than if you have to find buyers yourself. The time you save could be spent finding more deals, which in turn would likely make you more money, even with the commission costs to the agent. On the other hand, you can do more work and fewer deals, and keep more money on each deal. It's a trade-off only you can evaluate (though I certainly know which way I would lean).

2. The bigger question here is whether a realtor would actually be successful in selling your deals. Consider that most agents work with other agents and their clients through the MLS, and most serious cash buyers aren't going to be represented by agents looking for deals on the MLS. Secondly, depending on how you plan to wholesale the deals (assign the contract or double close), you may need to get someone else (the actual seller) to pay the commission to both your agent and the buyer's agent. Personally, I don't know too many (any) agents who have an investor network larger than a buyer's list I could put together myself.