All Forum Posts by: Marc Daffner

The biggest problem is that the PA Department of Revenue will do anything to get every bit of $ they can. There are actually several appellate decisions holding that if a contract is assigned you have to pay two sets of transfer taxes - one as if the property was sold to the wholesaler and another from the wholesaler to the end buyer - even if it only involves a single closing.

Also, PA has been following suit with several other states in bringing criminal prosecutions against wholesalers for acting as an unlicensed real estate broker.

The work around to this is to sign an option, not a sales agreement, with the seller. You then record the option with the Recorder of Deeds, and your end buyer pays a "release fee" at closing for you to unencumber the property.  It's a good idea to offer the seller a few extra bucks at closing to get them to agree to this type of structure as well.

And that, my friend, is how to legally wholesale a property in Pennsylvania.

I'm new at the real estate game but I've been an attorney for 22+ years.  And yes, I signed up for the 10-Hour Wholesale course.  My assessment: for $97, it's not bad at all.  It's very informative (if you're new), and puts a lot of ideas out there on the table.  I mean, as I later found, you could probably learn all of this on BP or through any of a number of other channels but I did want to mention one thing which is that Justin himself is actually the real deal.  

If you have a question or a problem, he's very responsive - in fact, we sparred a bit over the difference between wholesaling in Florida (where he's from) and Pennsylvania (which all but outlaws wholesaling) and he actually looked into my concerns regarding PA law and transfer taxes and got back to me.  And no, I didn't have to buy any other product to get a response from the guy - just sent an email.  In my business, free advice is pretty much reserved for the initial consultation, so the fact that he'd even personally entertain a string of correspondence from a "student" says a lot.

Bottom line:  $97 isn't much to pay for what you get - and Justin is a great source of info.