All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

The quickest way to ruin all the relationships you've built over the past 11 months is to bring an unverified block deal to the table. They will have 1,000,000 questions you can't answer and as has been said above, there are countless red flags. If you are still learning, why do you care about 53 single-family homes in Detroit, a market you have no knowledge of. Properties that only exist on spreadsheets are of no use to you or anyone else, unless fully verified with contracts, photos of the exterior and interior, and I am guessing that's never coming. Focus on staying local and providing value and finding deals that you can see and touch.

You have to segment the two business as much as possible and in most states, you must disclose you have a RE license on off-market mailers. I have two separate LLCs, one for my real estate business as an agent and one for an off-market property acquisition business. If you are wholesaling and your lead came from off-market or direct calls not related to your on-market agent business, then you should be safe treating it that way. However, the more your brokerage knows about your off-market deals, the more they want a cut. That's why separation is important. If a prior seller wants you to wholesale a property for them, that could be a more gray area. I've had brokerages say I couldn't wholesale to which I responded so I can't be a regular citizen as long as there is no crossover and there is full disclosure that I have a license? They couldn't answer.

Dual agency is permissible and many agents know how to manage it correctly. They should not be giving private information to you or the seller when representing both sides, however you always have to remember that their ultimate obligation is to the seller because that's they only way they get paid. You don't pay for a buyer's agent and you will now be paying for advice from the listing agent which inherently has a slight bias to selling this property and not another one. But if you do get a buyer's agent, they won't be able to sneak into this deal. Once you've seen it with the listing agent, they have agency for the deal.

You will get a lot of invest, invest, invest advice, but I don't agree. You will increase your freedom exponentially if you spend the next couple of years paying off the loans. If you are running virtually debt-free at that point, your ability to scale up from one to the next will be much better.

Your renovations will differ depending on single or multi-family and the rents you are trying to get, as well as the surrounding comparable sales and rents. You never want to do too much to a rental property because it is unlikely you will get it back and the wear and tear could be a lot. If you are looking to BRRRR a multi and live in one and rent the other, I recommend smart, high-value adds for the tenant and for privacy. If there is backyard, I always put a fence down the middle so you and your tenant have private space from each other even if you can see over. I also put in two W/D whenever possible to reduce the shared laundry. I clearly mark parking spaces as well. This also helps when you move out and complete your BRRRR. Tenants who have clear separation and privacy will interact and argue less.

If you are talking about single family reno, it's different, but for what you are looking for you will be talking about lipstick reno. Nice-looking, but cheap things to increase the value and aesthetics of a rental unit.

Driving for dollars is better as a learning experience about how to identify potential properties that may be in distress. By first understanding what to look for (newspapers piled up, unkempt yards, chipping paint, stickers on the windows, etc.) and then doing some research of local foreclosures up for auction and property histories you can start to build a better picture of whether the property is actually ripe or whether someone is just lazy. When you look at the tax records and the owner is out of state and nothing is pending, that's ripe. But driving for dollars is much more than just finding a dopey house and knocking on the door. To succeed there is a lot of nuance to how you go about it, but it is a great practice run on straight identification of homes for the future.

To me, what you are planning as a first-time investor out of state is the quickest way to lose that 30k. Have you ever invested out of state? Have you ever managed a property? Have you ever hired a property management company? Are you planning on flying out to see these properties in person? If all of those answers are no, put the money into something else. There are deals in every area, no matter how hot, it's just about how to find them or how to find the town that is three away from being up and coming.

Where do you live and why are you looking outside of where you live? If you are a first-time investor, outside of your primary residence, you should be looking local to maximize your landlord learning and management of the property. 

Give up my license? @John Thedford crawl back under that rock and stop harassing everyone on the site with your nuisance-based ideologies and conspiracy theories. I am trying to help people do things the right way. You are an online troll with a puny business who bases his daily success on how many people he can enlighten about scammers and such.

To sum it up in regard to the assertions in this stream that all wholesalers are violating laws if they don't have a real estate license, you always should include language in your wholesale emails like this:

"The Wholesaler Name is a principal party in a valid and assignable purchase and sales agreement, which allows The Wholesaler Name to purchase a property in City, State. The decision has been made to offer this purchase and sales agreement to another cash buyer so as to allow you the opportunity to buy this property. This is not for public distribution. Private communication only."

Although I am a former attorney, this does not constitute legal advice.