All Forum Posts by: Steven Leigh

@Account Closed is dropping some serious knowledge, as usual. :) Nicely done.

P.S. Stop telling people about BeenVerified already! You're just creating competition! Just kidding.

Oh man, that is a HUGE question and probably the topic of about 40% of the wholesaling forum! I would advise reading lots of posts in the wholesaling forum and see what people are doing. Look specifically at posts about direct mail or other topics like "finding leads" or "finding sellers". Lots has been discussed.

Also, I recommend this link a lot, because it gets you thinking about a lot of different avenues you can explore. Some of these techniques are free or cheap, while others cost money, but it's a starting point. If you don't know what some of these on the list are, start a topic here, or do some googling.

http://retipster.com/50-quick-actions-you-can-do-t...

Also, it's great to hear you are building your buyers list first, as that is CRUCIAL to being a successful wholesaler. Keep that part up, as it's arguably MORE important than finding sellers.

Good luck!

Well, it's not the end of the world if you can't filter easily, it just helps. The taxes owed and the years delinquent generally accomplish the same thing, so I probably wouldn't waste a lot of time scraping. In fact, if you want to filter a little tighter for smaller numbers you could probably just raise the taxes owed number a bit more.

You're welcome.

One more thing, it's probably not a bad idea to get the info from the wholesaler or your end buyer about what title company or attorney is doing the closing, then follow up with them yourself and make sure they have the JV agreement and that they understand the split, etc. Since you don't know the wholesaler, that's a good way to look out for your interests and make sure the deal happens as expected.

Ben nailed it. You have to realize that some rehabbers and landlords have NO idea how to find cheap properties. They basically cruise around the MLS looking for something at 95% of market value and then call it a great deal. You also have the folks who buy at sheriff's auction which is usually about 66% of the tax value, but they usually don't get to look at the property and they assume a lot of risk.

Finding REALLY great deals on properties is a lot of work, but as a wholesaler, if you become a master of marketing to motivated sellers, you will build a pipeline of these deals coming in. Then when you have a huge buyers list of serious cash buyers who are starving for deals, you are providing them a lot of value.

I'm constantly asked by several of my buyers if they could pay me to do their marketing for them and bring the deals only to them. :) They don't know how and don't want to do the marketing themselves.

Some landlords and rehabbers complain about wholesalers snatching up all the deals. The reality is we find deals where they never would have found them. The SMART rehabbers and landlords LOVE good wholesalers, because they can just sit back and pick the deals as they come up.

You're welcome.

One more thing, you might have a bunch of commercial, industrial, and other properties on there. See if you can filter by codes so that it's only residential.

Also look for "land use codes". The standard for these is that 500 is vacant land, 510 is a single-family, 520 is a duplex, etc. You want to DEFINITELY filter out the vacant land, unless that's something you are focusing on, and probably all the others to get down to single-family.

@Account Closed nailed it. There are several ways to word the contingencies.

But the broader answer is, DON'T back out of your contracts unless it's just absolutely necessary. The way to do that is build a massive buyers list of very motivated buyers who are just dying for properties. People will tell you that if your wholesale deal is good, the buyers will find you. That's total BS! Build a huge buyers list before you even get your properties under contract, and you won't run into these problems.

Here's a good article on building a buyers list with a lot of good tips:

http://retipster.com/buyerslist1/

Having said that, if you find you can't find a buyer at the price, you can go back to the seller and tell them you have to back out of the contract because it needs too many repairs or you did more research and the price isn't going to work. In some cases they will ask if a lower price would work, and you can sign a new agreement with a reduced price. In other cases, they want to cancel it. In this case, I would have a realtor ready to recommend to them, as well as a property manager, so that at least you are offering them some solutions and not leaving them hanging.

I would recommend you filter down to properties that have been delinquent for at least two years, though this could vary in your county. The reason for this is that some people just don't pay their taxes until the end or beginning of the year, which technically makes them delinquent, but then they pay it all up. If it's been two years, though, there is probably a problem.

Also, I would filter the Net Delinquent amount (the total amount they owe) to something like $2,000 or more. Again, this may vary. $2,000 is about the average annual taxes around here, so anything above that is significant.

If your tax delinquent list allows you to sort by zip codes, tax districts, or other markers, you can then filter by only the areas you want to target. It all depends on how many or how few you want to send out.

Good luck!

Okay, then yes, I would sign a JV agreement with him that states you get a $10k finders fee if you bring the buyer, to be paid at closing, etc. Then you don't have to add another purchase contract. This also benefits the wholesaler because if he finds a buyer himself he doesn't have to pay you, although you could always make an agreement for a smaller fee in that case or whatever you want to agree to.

If you go to https://www.biggerpockets.com/files you can probably find a JV agreement to use if you don't have one.

Good luck!

Have you established any kind of motivation by the point that you are passing them on? Have you already talked price?

I MIGHT be willing to pay $200 a piece if you could establish a motivation level and if you had already talked price and they were already below a certain criteria.

If it's just leads that called back and you don't have that kind of information I would be less likely to pay that much.

(I'm not interested in your area, btw, just answering hypothetically if it were my area.)