All Forum Posts by: Ryan Webber

Well if you are doing an assignment that works great, but if you are doing a double closing that's not going to work that way Delondon.

And even on an assignment, there's nothing wrong with paying some of the closing costs to get the deal done. Its better than letting it die on the vine.

Not necessarily Delondon. It depends on what type of banker they're going to talk to.

There are two different departments in a bank. The residential department is where you would go to get a loan for your homestead and where many people go to get a loan when they start investing. When your buyer says they are going to talk to this type of banker then, yes, move on.

Most investors don't know that the other department in a bank even exists. Its the commercial loan department. Now, yes, you are buying residential property, but you are buying it for commercial purposes, so the commercial loan department will make loans on investment real estate.

A commercial loan officer doesn't work under the same standards that a residential loan officer does. They don't necessarily care about the condition of the property and many of them can close in less than 2 weeks.

Most experienced investors work with one or more commercial lenders. So just because someone says they need to get a loan from the bank that doesn't necessarily mean you should move on.

I always communicate that your buyers need to be cash or cash equivalent buyers. Cash equivalent being buyers using hard money or commercial financing.

I've only had one person back out on me after signing a contract and giving $1000 non-refundable earnest money. I always require that they pay the earnest money to me directly and my contract is very specific that it is non-refundable.

Always get earnest money, $1,000 minimum, and you won't have this problem.

If they're waiting you out to steal your deal then go to work and get it sold to somebody else.

Cherry, are you prepping to do a guru pitch or something? Your posts are off and you smell fishy to me.

TX_Eagle, its a business and its work. I've been wholesaling for a living for about 6 years now. I find multiple deals a month (except during the winter months), and have consistently for the last 6 years. Yes, you can find deals every month. It does depend on the size of your market, and the strength of your competition, and most importantly, your personal drive.

I live in a town with about 200,000 people, and my first year in wholesaling I wholesaled 37 houses. My second year I did 82. I consistently do somewhere between 30-60 houses a year depending on how hard I want to work.

Yes, its the REAL deal, but it does take REAL work. Waiting months or years for a deal is really the wholesalers own fault (remember most importantly its about your personal drive).

Yes, as Jon shared, most wholesalers are worthless and don't last in the business very long. That's not because of the opportunity but because of the individual.

There are no hard and fast rules as to who pays what. Everything is negotiable in a contract, including closing costs.

As was stated by Rich, if you assign a contract then the buyer takes over your contract and any closing costs that the contract states the buyer is responsible for. If you make the seller pay all the closing costs in the contract, then you're buyer would not be responsible for any, or vice versa.

And as James stated, you can always choose to pay for the buyers closing costs out of your assignment fee, even if the contract with the seller stated that the buyer would pay for them. That would need to be specifically addressed in the assignment though.

Now it is common that in most real estate transactions that certain fees/expenses are paid for by the buyer (lending fees, half the escrow fee, appraisals, inspections, survey, and attorney fees for the deed of trust) and certain fees/expenses are paid by the seller (title insurance, half the escrow, prorated taxes, prorated rents, deposits, and attorney fees for the deed).

Now it is common that in many wholesale transactions, the contract states that the buyer is elected to pay all closing costs. Though I understand the logic behind it, I don't think this is necessary, and I rarely do it. I use closing costs as a negotiating leverage tool if I need to, but I don't offer it if I don't need to.

Either way, everything is negotiable, and whatever you and the seller/buyer agree on and write into the contract is what the title agent is going to do.

Wholesalers sell to cash buyers for several reasons. The biggest being seasoning issues.

You can't double close to somebody using conventional financing, and assignments can not be financed into conventional financing. So theoretically if someone had enough cash to pay your assignment fee outside of closing, pay their down payment, and still qualify with enough reserves THEN you could wholesale to someone using conventional financing. With all that factored in the bottom line being, you need cash buyers.

Now there are some ways to do escrow demands on the seller's side of the HUD 1 that can circumvent this all, but that's a whole nother conversation.

I would never refer it to an attorney BEFORE you go to a title agent. If a title agency will give you title insurance who cares about what an attorney thinks about it? Its the title company's issue, and that's why you get title INSURANCE. You are adding steps that are completely unnecessary and are a waste of your time and money.

Title insurance companies give title insurance for a reason. Talk to your title agent and do what they require to get title insurance and everything else is their problem not yours. There are many things that you have to worry about when wholesaling, why add another one that you already pay someone else to take care of?

Similar to Jaremy, I've also closed over a hundred houses with an affidavit of heirship. The title company provides title insurance and you go on your way to worry about more relevant issues.

Again each state's heirship laws are different and you should check with YOUR TITLE AGENT to find out what laws will apply. Title agents have title attorneys that specifically make the decision on YOUR files whether they will provide title insurance or not and what will be required to give title insurance. Asking anyone else is foolish and a waste of your time. You might as well go directly to the decision makers and not some attorney who will have nothing to do with your file.

Depending on the level of service of your title company and/or agent, the title agent will many times take care of the entire process of determining who is an heir and tracking down heirs for you. With my current title agent, I do little to nothing in tracking down heirs to clear up the title. She does it all.

Dan, thinking about it, it makes no sense that any title agency wouldn't dedicate their legal staff to research who needs to sign for what deal. That is exactly what a title insurance company does. They are the ones that determine who needs to sign so that they can issue title insurance. Intricacies of probate law is exactly what they specialize in. It IS their business. If the title company didn't do their due diligence in determining who owns what, then they would not last long in giving title insurance. There would be too many claims against their insurance and they would go bankrupt. Their business is determining who owns it, who the heirs are, what probate/heirship process needs to occur to transfer ownership properly, and who should sign after its all done so that title is properly transferred.

I really wouldn't have minded if you had called me. This business has a multitude of things to learn and understand, and its normal to forget what you know sometimes. It still happens to me, and having someone to bounce ideas off of makes a huge difference.

I know each state is a little different, but I've never heard of separate escrow and title companies. Not to say that its not that way in some places, but in Texas the escrow and title company are the same thing. I believe in California they are the same also.

Lines of credit are normally just as smooth as a cash deal. Sometimes they might want an appraisal but that's not something you will have to deal with anyway.