Hi everyone! I'm a new wholesaler out of Washington state. I'd like to ask fellow investors how to build a reliable cash buyers list quickly? I'd like to wholesale across country but not sure how to do without a widespread buyers list. I've reach out via 'Connected Investors' platform, facebook, from craigslist ads, anything I can think of. When I do reach out for buying criteria I rarely get any insightful responses, just short answers if any. I am going to my first REI event tomorrow so hopefully that helps. Although, you hear of a ton of people very successful in wholesaling and wholesale across the country in their first year as an investor. How is it possible to confidently make offers in any area without a solid cash buyers list to refer them to? Having a really hard time with this any help is appreciated!
Those comments might be true in their situations but it isn't true for everyone. When I first started I was able to have records of every property in my county. Not really worried about the buyers list I was getting a signifiant amount of leads. When I would get one under contract I didn't have any buyers to market to. Getting properties under contract without a buyers list leads to unhappy sellers and buyers. Don't be like me!
What I would suggest is go to the county records of the county you are marketing to and get the entire database of properties in that county. Parse that information, then get the owners that appear more than a handful of times. That right there alone when get you every property in that county, every buyer in that county, buyers in the surrounding counties and buyers in the entire state.
@Amanda Fardella most of the ones that say they do it across the country do that to make it sound like they are "bigger" than they are honestly. It is very difficult to do it outside of the marketing that puts you in contact with someone that happens to be open to selling an out of state property. Focus your attention on 1 market and just crush that market. In regard to Buyers, as others will say, there are always buyers when you have a great deal. Outside of that, look for some of the better realtors in the market. They may be open to buying a property if they are doing well, or at least have a contact they can put you in touch with that might buy it for themself!
Hi Amanda, In my opinion, when building your buyer's list you have to provide something of interest. I got my first property under contract before I worried about a buyer's list... probably not the smartest choice but it worked for me. Once I had the property under contract I had something of interest to offer buyers. I made up a For Sale flyer with pictures, info and price and then sent a copy of it via email, text and FB to every local wholesaler I could find in my area. Thanks to Google I was able to find alot of them. Two replied which was followed by a bit of a bidding battle at the property. I assigned the contract to one of them on the spot and he handed me his earnest deposit right then and there, which I drove over to a title company. The owner got exactly what she wanted, the seasoned wholesaler/real estate investor/agent/buyer got a great property to fix n flip (for a nice profit), and I wholesaled my first deal... and added a few names to my buyer's list. It might work for you too.
Those comments might be true in their situations but it isn't true for everyone. When I first started I was able to have records of every property in my county. Not really worried about the buyers list I was getting a signifiant amount of leads. When I would get one under contract I didn't have any buyers to market to. Getting properties under contract without a buyers list leads to unhappy sellers and buyers. Don't be like me!
What I would suggest is go to the county records of the county you are marketing to and get the entire database of properties in that county. Parse that information, then get the owners that appear more than a handful of times. That right there alone when get you every property in that county, every buyer in that county, buyers in the surrounding counties and buyers in the entire state.
I would concentrate on your local area, pick the nearest 4-5 county's and plan to attend the foreclosure auctions. When at the auctions, introduce yourself to the bidders on properties. These are your cash buyers. Also as @Account Closed mentioned, get a list from the county or any title company and then boil that list down to those that are buying more than 1 property in a year. Those are your flippers and buy and holders. Market to that list to build your cash buyers base.
You might want to touch bases with local hard money lenders. They may be able to steer you toward their client base that uses their hard money to buy and flip homes? Start attending various investment meetings in the area. Look on Meet up, Bigger Pockets and google to find these meetings. Make sure to spend your time really talking with the people at the meetings, so you know who is truly active and who is all talk?
It sounds like you are trying to bite off more than you can chew. Nationwide wholesaling by assigning contracts is not typically going to be legal in most states and difficult to find real deals without you having intimate knowledge of each specific market. Gurus and the like make wholesaling sound easy and the virtual wholesaling sound even easier. Making money in this business is not rocket science, but it certainly is not easy and it certainly will not just fall in your lap after viewing some properties on the Internet expecting to be a middle man. Said middle man requires a real estate license in most states now.
If you want to wholesale, learn the market in your specific area first, become an expert, and also learn how to calculate accurate rehab numbers and exit values, skipping this step is recipe for failure.
Once you have this under your belt, fining cash buyers is the easy part. All cash transactions can be delivered to you by a title rep or real estate agent along with you finding them in person here on BP or at your local real estate meetups. Knowing each buyers specific criteria upfront is also important and getting that info from some random email where the investor doesn’t know who you are will result in what you have described above, little to no legit info.