BiggerPockets

don't waste your time / money on a course. just read this site till your eyes bleed, and you'll be ready

Well as Corey said read up on here and soak up all the info but if you want my opinion on courses there are 2 that have gotten a lot of praise with very few if any negative responses and they are:

Steve Cook's Wholesaling 2.0 and Vena Jones Cox's Wholesaling course.

Also our own member Andrew Massaro aka The Maestro has an ebook you might want to check out.

I recommend Steve Cook's materials.

His wholesale course is under 300 bucks. I bought it and also went to his boot camp a few years back, and give both a thumbs up.

Steph

Interesting...

Such polar opposites in advice given to you on this topic. 'Courses are valuable', or 'they are a waste of money', etc. etc. Probably best to ignore everyone's advice. Or, you could consider their advice to be solid if somehow they could send you their tax returns privately for 2009 and if they reported more than 200k in gross income from the business of wholesaling - then maybe buy the course they recommended.

Assuming that doesn't happen(or couldn't, because no posters who replied here could furnish this information because they don't meet these requirements), then maybe a few ides could be of value, instead of such concrete opinions.

1) Education and study with real estate professionals does carry substantial merit, if you can independently verify that other people have applied themselves and met with success from such courses and study. John T. Reed's website has some very blunt opinions about the value contained in certain courses. Remember, people today invest 40k - 200k in a college education to get a career that pays 40k annually. So, Curt's post on spending $800 to be able to perform and understand how to structure wholesale transactions that can generate you 10k - 15k/transaction is very astute - it may be worth the investment.

2) Just because $800 is a large amount of money to you personally does not necessarily detract from the product's inherent value, if you can verify it has the critical information you need and find other people who speak of it's ability to help create value, and who have demonstrated that by doing deals in the manner that the course describes.

3) I would bet, and I think that Curt would agree, in this industry it is extremely difficult to find individuals that have integrity. This applies especially to the wholesale business, because the barrier of entry is so low. As such, you have to evaluate all the possible information information for yourself and only then determine that validity of people giving you any advice. Many people who call themselves 'wholesalers' belong in jail...

d) Anyone offering to be your 'mentor' should be avoided. The people who you want to be your mentor try to avoid such situations, because it is so time intensive and unprofitable.

e) People who say they are 'professional wholesalers' should, as a rule, be asked how many properties they own. If the answer is '2 or less', then it would be hard to give them the credit necessary to accept their opinions/ideas/knowledge etc. Suppose someone called themselves a wholesaler, or even worse, the 'founder' of a wholesale 'company', but the only investment property they own is 'some great condo deal downtown near the river', then perhaps we need to examine why such a person would get into real estate? What, they just want to find the best, most highly discounted, 'secret' deals but never, ever, want to own them? They are full time real estate investors who find deals that are JUST SO GOOD they feel bad about owning them?

I think not.

Generally, it is hard to become an excellent wholesaler if you don't have a true passion for real estate. Just because you have a degree in finance and you worked at some random entry level job for a corporate financial firm like Fidelity or something doesn't really give you any qualifications as a real estate investor. Hard to really discern such things in anonymous forums such as these, though. People who have no integrity will tell you ANYTHING to facilitate a sale, whether a course or a house. But don't take my word for it here - just ask them two questions:

1) How many properties do you own?
If the answer is 'two or less,' then ask them why they are selling such a great deal instead of keeping it?(Hint: the answer of 'because I have my money tied up in lots of other deals' or 'because buying houses is like eating, you can only stomach so much', then you might want to run the other direction because who is that person to give you counsel on wholesaling??????????????

2) What was the greatest and most influential wholesale course you have ever owned? What was the specific technique that you adopted? When was the date and time you attended your REIA group and saw that speaker?

When you look at highly successful national speakers like Wendy Patton, Don Derosa, and Pete Youngs, these individuals ALL credit their success to financial hardship that made them want to change their situations and immersion in home study courses.

The 'wholesaler' who is the 'founder' of the 'wholesale company' president of these companies, CFO/CEO etc. etc., well, that's lots of titles for someone if they own less than 4 houses. So discipline yourself to embark on a journey to find someone you can trust and who has led by example. If you can't find that, research your local legal paper and find someone who is buying lots of real estate. If you can't find that, well...read John T. Reed's reviews or just call him up for a recommendation - I doubt you will go wrong.

I would guess, though this contradicts posts here and no offense is meant, that just surfing the bigger pockets forums as your sole source of information to become a successful wholesaler or real estate investor would leave you with an incomplete education, at best. The founder of the site will probably agree with me, and he can pm me and let me know if he doesn't, which I doubt will happen.

In the end, this industry is filled with so many poseurs, you have to be extremely careful. If you want to be a true wholesaler, learn about wholesaling simply as a tool of your real estate investing career as opposed to a career path itself. Become voracious as a reader and absorb information. Question everything.

You can do it!

Wow! That was a lot of info.

Wholesaling always seemed like a means to an end, but I guess it depends on your personal goal. I saw it as an easy way to get started, in this wonderful world of houses and numbers. Knowledge is definitely power, and cost is relative like Mr. Davis said. You don't have to spend a lot of money, if you don't want to. There are a number of used book stores, this website, or, if worse comes to worse:
Go to Barnes and Noble
Grab a latte
Grab a chair
WooHoo free info!

As far as courses and bootcamps go, figure out what you will get out of it. If you like it, do it.

Just never stop learning and learn as you go. Best of Luck!

how do you do this? how can I find out if there's even a market here?

I like Than Merrills course and bootcamp on Marketing and Wholesaling.

Reading websites, books, and courses is good, that is how I got started, but nothing beats a live, hands on, 3-4 day intensive bootcamp, surrounded by other people that are actively doing the business. For me, that is how I learn the best.

Seminars and bootcamps are not cheap, but if they can take you from doing 1-2 deals per year... to doing 20-30, then it is well worth the money. :D

I agree with Feol. I also happened upon JohnTReed.com but, it was not before I ran up significant debt following the advice of, what he calls, "fake gurus."

It is because of him that I have gone back to the basics and have taken a real estate course to learn about investing in my local area. Also, you can never go wrong with local real estate investment associations. Stay local. This way you will learn everything you need to know about getting started in your area.

The biggest complaints from us new investors is that after spending $900 to read a course, the information inside is not helpful in getting us started in our local area. Well, these courses are not designed to be that specific, which is why they fail so many of their customers.

I have learned to take things slowly and learn as much as I can about real estate investing. I am not going to rush things. Patience, perseverance, and being observant are extremely important in this field.

Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way.