How To Get Started Wholesaling Today

Everyone says it. "So you don't have enough money to make your first investment, why don't you just get started by wholesaling, its easy and requires very little cash". This is what many experienced investors will say to you when you are just starting out. And yes, wholesaling does require very little money down but NO, it is not easy. I am an investor and wholesaler now and will tell you 7 days out of 7 I would rather be investing and managing rental property than be in the trenches of day to day operations wholesaling.

However, it is how I got my start and still one of the best ways to get your feet wet in real estate without jumping in head first. First off, for those of you new to the concept, wholesaling in the business of signing contracts to purchase real estate from motivated sellers and then immediately going and selling those contracts to cash rich/deal hungry investors for an assignment fee. Think of it as no-renovation no-capital required super expedited flipping. The reason it is so appealing to beginners is because you don't need more than a few hundred dollars to get started. 

So how do you get started. Before we answer this question, we need to know what the key to operating a successful wholesale business is. I can tell you from experience the absolute most important thing in any wholesale business is finding great deals! Once you nail this part everything else is like slicing butter, trust me. Now lets go one step further, what is the key to finding great deals? It is finding and talking to motivated sellers.

Now that we know the key to a successful wholesale business, let's talk about how to get started with not much money. So the real questions is what is the best and cheapest way to find motivated sellers. Well, one of the easiest and cheapest is driving for dollars. Driving for dollars is the act of going out and driving around the lower-median priced home sections of your town looking for vacant properties. The reason this is a great first step is it only costs you your time and some gas money. 

The next step now that you have your list of vacant properties is to find the potentially motivated sellers who own these properties. The best way to find these people is to look up the properties are your local tax assessor's website. This site should list the properties owner and their mailing address. From there you simply print off some letters saying your are interested in buying their property and send it off to their mailing address. A sample of the letter I use can be seen below.

It simple yet captures their attention because I include a Google Street View image of their actual property.

In my opinion this is the absolute best way to get started as it requires almost no money and guarantees you are getting your letters to sellers with a high probability of being interested in selling. However, to really make this process worth it you should have a list of at least 200 properties you are mailing to. Even at this amount I would not expect more than 10 calls, but if just 1 of those 10 calls results in a $5,000 assignment fee for you then its worth it. With that being said, even if this first mailer results in $0 in assignment fees, I guarantee you will learn a ton about your market, wholesaling and real estate in general.

So stop overthinking and get out on the road today. This is the first step to building your real estate empire.