All Forum Posts by: Ryan Webber

As a professional wholesaler with a very well established buyers list, I sell the majority of my deals with a handful of phone calls. There would be no point in listing most of them.

Now I have at different times listed wholesale deals on the MLS and what I've found is I hate it. I end up getting investors that whine like retail style buyers. They want this and that fixed or tested and 30 day closings and option periods and inspections and contingencies and blah, blah, blah.

With my own mini-mls, as you put it, Jerry Kisasonak, I dictate the terms.

I want you to close in a week or less.
There are NO contingencies. No financing addendums. No option periods.
I get the earnest money directly and it is non-refundable.
I pick the title agent.
If you want an inspection, do it before you bring me a contract.
I will fix nothing in the house.
I will not pick up the piles of trash in the front yard, or the piles of clothes in the kitchen, or kill the cockroaches infesting the house. I will not replace the roof, the sewer line, or the heating and air, and I will look at you like you are stupid if you even ask me to. That is obviously why I'm selling it so cheap.
Here's the price. Take it or leave it. If you don't buy it, someone else will or I will fix it up myself. I don't really care which it is.

When I try to dictate these types of things with a realtor, they usually freak out and look at me like I am stupid.

Wholesaling professionally is about building strong relationships with strong cash buyers, and the MLS is not needed for that, and neither are realtors. Realtors usually get in the way and complicate things. And really, why waste the time or the money anyway? Just pick up the phone and call the investor directly. It saves precious time and makes you more money. Why pay a realtor thousands of dollars to wait to see your listing, research it enough to pass it on, set up an appointment, show it, write up a bloated contract, blah blah blah. Do the work yourself. Build the relationship with the investor directly and make thousands of dollars more on every transaction. That seems like a no-brainer to me.

Now when you are actively building your buyers list, I can see the advantage of doing any and every type of marketing to buyers that you can, including the MLS. But thinking that any one marketing strategy is the end all, golden path to riches and enlightenment, is really a short walk to a small bank account.

My best buyers rarely buy anything off of the MLS. If I was utilizling the MLS as my main marketing tool to buyers, my business would suck. Obviously each market is different, but my best advice is to consistently and persistently build and work multiple systems of finding deals and of finding buyers. Sure, use the MLS, along with everything else you can think of to find buyers (websites, squeeze pages, ads, networking, research, etc).

Laurel Bowen, well I would say you proved that you bought the property at a good enough deal to qualify as a wholesale deal, which trumps what most people on here told you. If you are offering a house that someone can make $20,000 net profit on by putting less than $10,000 into with 90 days sale time on the retail market, then that is a wholesale deal. So your issue was not the deal or your profit margin or any of that other crap, it was your network of buyers. If you want to wholesale the next one, dig deep and build that buyers list with solid buyers.

Keep in mind that requiring at least $1,000 non-refundable earnest money on a wholesale deal keeps a buyer from pulling out 2 hours before closing.

Your experience as a successful rehabber can go a long way in helping you as a wholesaler, if that's still what you want to do. Either way, congratulations, and welcome to the club, Laurel.

Consistent and persistent action. That's the key to 2 deals a month, 4 deals a month, or even 10 deals a month. A professional wholesaler could do 100 deals a year in Philadelphia. I would be surprised, 100% ABSOLUTELY surprised if there are not AT LEAST 2 investors doing a 100+ deals a year in Philadelphia. I've done 82 in one year in my city of 180,000. Now are willing to do what it takes consistently and persistently enough to be that level of wholesaler? Only you can answer that, and your words mean nothing. You can only answer that with your actions.

I helped a guy years ago in Philadelphia take his business from doing 2 deals a month to doing 4 or 5 a month. I haven't talked to him in years but he had the potential to take his business to 10 deals a month, but he just didn't have the vision for it yet.

As you said, George, wholesaling is a simple process. Don't complicate it. Follow your own advice. Get in front of more people who want to sell.

Kevin Tunney, owning your own business isn't the best thing for everybody, and most wholesalers I know would actually make more money in a 9-5. Building a successful business is no easy feat, and some people work better under structure and reliability.

Chris Speights, I personally don't think what you are offering to your partner is worth that much. Wholesaling is 95% work. Its EARNED income. Yes, there is value to your established website but I couldn't see putting a price tag of over a couple thousand dollars on it. Let's say $2,500. From my perspective, anything more is based on the value of buying out your interest and not necessarily based on the value of the website you developed and control.

I think its more important to focus on making sure your friendship is fully intact when your done. That is worth a whole lot more than a couple thousand dollars. You've made money off of your efforts and off of his, and now you are moving on to something else. It seems like he's been understanding and worked with you, so just make sure you return the favor.

Will Barnard is right on, but I haven't seen any deed restrictions on HUD's, yet. Fannie Mae's commonly have a 90 day resale/refinancing restriction but not always. I'm not sure what the trigger is for when they put that in there, but I've had several with it and several without it.

That's the only restriction directly on reselling a property. Now there are some lender imposed restrictions that are put on buyers using traditional style financing (conventional and FHA), but you won't run into that unless you are retailing properties.

I haven't kept up with where FHA is at with their restrictions. They used to have a 90 day no resell restriction and then 90-180 days with two appraisals and documentation of updates by the seller. Then they took off the 90 day restriction for a year but I don't know what happened after that. Someone else on here can chime in for that.

Conventional financing is not as cut and dry and it depends on the lender, but I've seen several with similar restrictions as FHA.

lol, for you Scott, I'll do it.

I disagree. Our entire economy is based on the scarcity model, and the fact is, no, there are NOT an unlimited supply of deals. If I had the information I could tell you the EXACT number of possible deals available in any city at a certain point in time, so that means there are not an infinite amount. Now will there realistically be enough investors to take advantage of all those deals? Probably not, but that's a different question. The fact remains, though, there is not an infinite supply of deals. Now the supply of deals is replenished constantly through equity being paid down, inheritances, etc. but if the demand surpasses the supply, you will run out of deals.

Let's say there's a lake out behind your house that is full of fish. You catch 4 or 5 fish there everyday, so you tell your buddies and don't even think about it. Your buddies show up each day and starting catching 4 or 5 fish a day, so what? Its a big lake. It can sustain it. The supply rate is vastly higher than the demand. But then more people start showing up, lots more. Before you know it there are hundreds of people fishing there everyday. The beaches are packed with fisherman. You even wake up one morning to see several commercial fishing boats prowling the waters. Months go by like this, will you still be catching 4 or 5 a day? No, because the demand has surpassed the supply rate.

When demand gets above the replenishment rate of the supply, you get a shortage. That's basic economics and has nothing to do with how optimistic your perspective is. Now will you get there in Dallas-Fort Worth, or in Chicago? Probably not, but the economic facts don't change.

I have expanded into other markets, virtually and otherwise, and wholesaling locally is much easier and has had much higher returns. And grooming another person as a successful wholesaler does not guarantee ANY personal payoff to myself. Yes, I am doing a good thing and maybe it will benefit me personally in the future but maybe it won't. Maybe it will cost me tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars when its said and done. Doing it out of an expectation of a personal return directly to me is the wrong reason in my opinion to do it. I have mentored hundreds of investors, and many of them have benefited me personally, financially and otherwise, but most have not and probably never will. That doesn't stop me from continuing to help other people. To me its the right thing to do whether it benefits me or not, but I am thoughtful about what I do, who I do it with, and how far they are from my own fishing holes.

Ok, so I'm going to be the dissenter here, because I've mentored up my competition before and experienced them taking deals directly out of my hands. We are talking tens of thousands of dollars taken right out of my pocket, and it SUCKS. And it was nothing to do with integrity issues, but I was bidding (and lost) against someone I mentored. Someone who would not have been bidding against me if I hadn't helped him. Its a small town where I live. In my town of 200,000 people there ARE a limited number of deals to go around. If my main competition does 50 houses a year and I do 50 a year and a couple other guys do 30 a year and then a handful of newbies come around trying to do 50 a year, eventually the well drys up.

I used to be all Pollyanna about it, but now I've come to the conclusion that resources are limited. Yes, I agree with J's $.02 that the vast majority of newbies will not do what it takes or grab a hold of the information, but when they do grab a hold of it in your own little backyard, it can suck. Maybe it will all pay off down the road, but in the meantime I'm only mentoring wholesalers in other markets.

When someone on a world wide forum gives straight cut advice about what you can and can't do in a very specific field of investing and doesn't disclaim geographic limitations of the advice, I guess I assume that the advice is based around generally accurate principles that would apply to most or many of the people who would be reading the advice. I see now that my assumption is wrong. In the future I will keep in mind, Bill, that your advice is only designed for use in Springfield and/or Missouri, but please forgive me if I remind world wide readers of that fact when you choose not to mention it and when the advice given isn't accurate outside of Springfield and/or Missouri.

I do feel responsible to post geographic disclaimers EVERY TIME I post about advice that I KNOW is not true for the vast majority of people. Actually I feel responsible to post geographic disclaimers every single time I am giving any kind of state specific advice because I know that most people on here are NOT from Texas. It does take two extra words of typing, "In Texas", but I think it provides the highest level of service and benefit to the people that are on here searching out real world advice.

You are absolutely right. But see I can't get on here and not say anything, so I have to limit the times I get onto BP or I won't have any simultaneous double closings.

I never heard the term simultaneous closing until I got on BP 6 years ago. Eventhough I had already done a ton of them, I had never heard a single person or title agent call it anything different than a double closing (obviously that could be a regional thing). And until Will started differentiating the terms a couple years ago, everybody used "simultaneous closing" and "double closing" on BP interchangeably.

I still don't understand how the terminology fits. A double closing (transactions separately funded) and a simultaneous closing (buyer funds wholesaler's purchase with seller) have all the same exact components except for where the funding comes from. So the timing of the closings is not the issue. The funding is the issue. So using terminology that refers to the timing of the transactions (simultaneous) is not a fitting term. Its a misnomer. You can simultaneously close a double closing and a simultaneous closing, and you double close (do two closings) with a simultaneous closing and a double closing. So the terms don't reference the difference. The terms should be based around the difference in funding.

And Bill was implying that I was pushing the terms "wet" and "dry" funding. I think I actually remember Will bringing those terms to widespread usage on BP, also. Those terms are fitting, in my opinion though, because of their similar definition in the mortgage industry.