BiggerPockets

it seems like the competition is getting bigger and bigger in wholesaling .. i'm a newbie myself but in the few months i have been getting my feet wet i have seen so many new bandit signs so many ..... everywhere i turn somebody is buying houses cash ... how do u stay different with so much competition . what set you and your company apart from everybody else.. i was thinking bout putting up a sign saying i buy houses with cookies lol just joking!!!!!!

It's not just you. And even the licensed agents, who can collect a commission legally, are jumping in on the wholesaling bandwagon.

I guess most of these folks can't come up with enough money to be real buyers ...

There are bandit signs galore here as well. I actually have been calling a lot of them recently, and getting a feel for how they do business.

But if I lived in Jersey, I could get hard money financing based on ARV, with no doc loan requirements. This would mean I could start rehabbing again! Of course then I would be happy if there were a lot of wholesalers,

Yes everyones attempting to be a wholesaler, I think the way to differate yourself from the rest would be to actually have the ability to purchase the houses, and then wholesale them. I'd guess 75% of so called wholesalers don't have the ability to actually close on the deals they find if they needed to.. Wholesalers that can fund deals in days always win..

I would argue, and have argued on this forum for many years, that Scott's idea technically IS wholesaling. Wholesaling is an exit strategy in which you are reselling houses to NON-end users (i.e. to other investors). If you are selling a house to an investor who is going to then resell or rent it out, then you are "wholesaling", whether you have closed on it yourself or not.

Now the two most popular transaction strategies utilized in wholesaling are assignments and double closings, but the "technical" definition encompasses transactions outside of just those two strategies. Wholesaling means that the buyer is not the end user. Wholesalers in the retail industry sell products to stores that then resell to the "public" end users.

I would actually argue that assigning a property to someone who is going to live in the property is NOT technically wholesaling. You are selling to the "public" at that point. You are a retailer, not a wholesaler, even though you are assigning the property.

As for wholesalers being everywhere, its been like that for years. This is actually a discussion we've been having on here for years too.

Its like when your wife is pregnant. All of a sudden it seems like everyone is pregnant. You start looking for it more and seeing it more. Are there cycles of massive percentages of people getting pregnant that perfectly coincide with your pregnancy? Probably not. You just don't notice it as much when it doesn't apply to you.

I remember when I first got in to the business, my business partner came to me and was sincerely concerned. It seemed to him that all of sudden everywhere he looked For Sale signs were going up on houses. He was sincerely concerned that the market was shifting and we weren't going to be able to sell our house because of a massive influx of supply. The house sold, and over the last 7 years I've bought and sold 300 more houses.

Be careful. Your perception has a sneaky way of getting in the way of reality.

I think everyone is so excited about wholesaling because it can require little/no money and requires very little risk.

The part no one mentions: you need to get a better deal than everyone else, so you can get paid.

Every deal I offer for wholesale, I plan on closing and rehabbing myself if I cannot find a buyer like Scott/Ryan talk about. That makes the stakes a lot different.

I have never met someone in person who makes their living wholesaling.

Most people who want to get into this field have no money. You can why by reading the things they say and look at the way they write.

Many say, "I am going to start in wholesaling and then move to ........." Save the little bit of money you have and get a second job (or a first) to add to that savings.

You can get a real estate license if you would like to sell property. You can save up money and flip homes if you would like to. If you want to be a landlord, then put that cash towards buying a rental.

@ Ryan: You are correct. Thats actually what we are doing with REO's now, since we have to close on them. And I am not about to rely on a transactional funding, so I can only operate in a 50k list price and under right now. But I wont hold for more than a month, and the end buyer is an investor (almost always) so I guess that could be considered wholesaling.

@ Jeffrey: You gotta come to Florida sometime. You would be surprised how many people make a decent living with wholesaling.

You can look at it as a way to get started, something you can always fall back on, or whatever. Bottom line is that wholesaling is not a get rich quick scheme. Its not going to make you wealthy, or help you reach retirement goals. It is however a great way to get out of a J.O.B. , generate cash, and break into REI.

That being said, I plan to sit for my real estate license by February. Because I can see that I am missing dollars in too many places.

I wholesale because it a Great way of meeting people  and learning the inside of real estate .. People can make a living wholesaling . I am more Instrested in connections then money at this point ..  My goal is to become a  active real estate investor .. I am  more Instrested in cash-flow then capital gains ...  Wholeslaing is more of a capital gains thing.. 

@ Jimmy  Florida is like the wholesaling capital of the world . I'm so  shocked at how everybody makes money over there with so much competition all the "gurus " are from over there ... 

Mitch: I have heard that from somewhere else before. But our CPA set up an S corp for us, and we have never had that come up. Our profit or loss after the corp taxes are done just flows through to our personal taxes on a K1. I remember the accountant saying that homes are treated as inventory or some such.

Lisandro: I look at other wholesalers like coworkers rather than competition.