Hey, there is a lot of confusion around this, and first off I am not an attorney. Seek legal advice, however, what I understand is that there are really two way to wholesale that is legal in the state of Arkansas. However, as an agent in all of this you need to disclose on the front end that you are an agent.
1. Double close: You do actually purchase a property and then sell it the same day to another buyer. In order to do this, you need to have cash or cash equivalent for that one day that you close. In this scenario it is very tricky depending on the end buyers finances if you are looking to sell it to an "end buyer" and not an investor.
2. Assign a contract: This is where you get a property under contract and you "fee" that you collect at closing is for giving the end buyer the rights to execute on the contract. You must must disclose to the seller everything including that you are selling it to someone else and how much money you are selling it to that end buyer. This is good because you don't have to come up with the money, but you do have to tell all. In my opinion disclosure is always the best policy in both scenarios.
Warning: Where you get in trouble is in two things: 1. Do you really have the ability to purchase this deal. 2. Was it your intent to really close on this deal, or were you only going to close on it if you had an end buyer.
AS AN AGENT, you can do this in a way easier way. Our whole job is to broker deals between buyers and sellers. So, my teams two ways of "wholesaling" is:
1. Permission to show: Say you have a seller is willing to sell a property but they don't want it listed and don't want to be represented. Well, you can get them to sign a "Permission to Show" that will have the price they are willing to sell, and what your "wholesale" fee would be. This could be a dollar amount or a percentage. In this scenario we represent our buyers with a Buyers agreement and send them the deal and get it wrapped up. Now, you can not "market" this deal to the public, but you can to your buyers list in which you have representation with.
2. Pocket listing: Say the seller does want to sell, but they just don't want to list it on the open market. Here you can get them to sign a listing agreement. Here you would have to put it in the MLS if your are with NAR, but it wouldn't syndicate out to all of the public sights, and you can send it to any potential buyer that you may know. Again the seller knows how much you are going to get paid and how much they are selling for.
The biggest thing is don't defraud the public, and disclose all. There is way more things that can be covered and any attorney can correct me on here, but these are the ways we understand how to make it work. Wholesaling is risky, because there are a ton of bad players out there, and so most brokerages don't even allow it because there is so much risk, and the principle broker is risking their livelyhood.
