All Forum Posts by: Brian Pulaski

As stated above most people only buy/sell a house or two in their lives. They know little to nothing about it and simply follow the realtors/attorneys/title companies instructions.

Those who invest know what wholesalers do, but even a lot of realtors and attorneys who have never dealt with a wholesaler Don’t know what it is.

My guess with your family and friends thinking it’s crazy, stems from the fact that if you describe what a wholesaler plans to do it sounds a bit crazy. Enter a contract to buy a house with no intention to buy it, then assign your position in that contract to someone who can buy it... just the thought of signing a contract for something in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you can’t actually buy sounds crazy to some (most) people. It is Very well known to investors and has a hit or miss reputation. Some live by it and love it and some hate it. My only advice to someone starting out, is to double and triple check legalities and be honest with what you are doing.

Is this house listed on the MLS? Why does a wholesaler need to be involved if it is? Can't the cash buyer just go buy it without a middle man?

If this isn’t an on market deal how did you get in contact with the seller? If the seller is a real estate agent they will most likely not use your contract and will want to use the standard contract for your area. They may also be aware you aren’t the end buyer and are ignoring texts because of it.

No idea on the loan. As far as looking over the property, yes 100% see it with whoever you need to look with you. Don’t trust anyone telling you to make offers without seeing it.

The second thing is to double/triple/quadruple check the contract you are signing. Not just the assignment one, the original P&S document that you are taking their position in.

The last wholesale deal I bought took 3-4 attempts for the wholesaler/their attorney to send a correct contract. They continued to send over contracts where the math was simply incorrect and had me overpaying. Luckily I’ve seen enough contracts to not sign until it was correct.

Another thing I’ve seen is wholesalers requiring you to use “their” title company. The reason is the title search/insurance is ready to go. On that same deal above the title company charged 3-4 times the standard rate (thousands of dollars when I’m used to spending hundreds). They also had something like 30 pages of exclusions... they were actually a good title company from what my attorney said, but again it took us reviewing multiple times for them to get things correct. I still paid a “rip off” amount of money to their company. From now on, I’m not sure I would agree to use a wholesalers title company again. 

Proper fix to me would be remove what’s there and replace with new. It’s doable but will be a bit of work for a DIY guy.

Are you looking for the proper fix or to cover the damage? I have replaced corner pieces before. It isn’t too hard, but you do have to work around all the installed siding which can be a pain.

I have seen where you buy the corner vinyl, cut the mounting flange off and simply get it fit over the top. I did this once, however I had the ability to slide it on from below, which most applications couldn’t do.

Last fix I can think of quickly would be to get someone to wrap it in aluminum. It won’t match the rest but I doubt many people would notice. This also isn’t really diy, and most likely will need a contractor to do it.

You can't choose an appraiser for the buyer when you go to sells you can when you buy if you have a private investor and they don't have any issue with that. At the end of the day appraisals are very subjective and personally I would trust my own ARV verse what an appraiser says.

I take house flipping and rental property owning as two very different things. Personally I flip, but don’t think it’s a good flip for everyone. There is a much bigger question mark of whether it will sell and make you money, verse a rental that will most likely always be rentable (whether making good money or not). 

Another thing, in the current market, flips are getting snatched up with such little profit margins, you will most likely need to be all cash to do the deal and that draining of the bank account with no guarantee when and how much comes back in also isn’t for everyone.

3% split or 3% each agent (6% total)? As much as you say “repeat business”, unless you have a track record of a lot of deals, you don’t have the ability to promise this and should treat the first deals as standard sales. Once you have done multiple deals over shorter periods discussing reduced rates makes sense. 

As a house flipper myself I would go look with a fine tooth comb, perform my due diligence and ask him to complete a property disclosure in it. If there is some underground oil tank, not easily visible issue he knows about, he most likely will bring them to light (or he risks lying in that disclosure).

If you’re not confident in what you see, get a solid home inspector, expect to pay a couple hundred and have them go over it thoroughly. Call the local code and building departments and see if there are any issues they know of with that particular address. Get comfortable and go with it. I rarely worry why others don’t buy houses. I’ve made my best deals on houses that shouldn’t have been sold by someone, or should have been bought by other flippers.

I hate basement water and my area is prone to it. My last flip has severe issues that we did drylock and large cement along the base of the floor/wall. That did nothing. We installed a perimeter drain and deep sump pump and that worked for a few months. The day of my sale appraisal the floor had water all over it. It made its way through the center seam of the basement floor. In the end I paid another company to redo the drains and put in two sump pumps... but most importantly... a warranty. In total I tossed about $18-19,000 at it (due to attempting a few fixes before blighting the big bullet).