Should we use a different term for professional wholesalers?
Having just recently made an effort to get active on BP, I see that the prevailing thoughts here about wholesalers are actually the same as mine - and I wholesale for a living! So many folks without money or experience hear that they should get started by wholesaling deals because "it's easy money." I get leads from new wholesalers every now and then, and they rehabs are almost always tens of thousands of dollars more than they say, or the ARV is tens of thousands less than they say. Even worse is when I use their own numbers and it's a terrible deal!
Having been a full-time wholesaler for 4 years now, with nearly 300 houses wholesaled, I still don't like telling friends, acquaintances, etc. that I'm a "wholesaler" because I don't want to be lumped into the same category as the fly-by-night guys and newbies. It turns into, however, a 15 second description of what I do, which is truthfully more than just wholesaling if our customers need the help or HML.
So, is there another term that we can use to describe a pro wholesaler who does it full-time because they prefer to wholesale instead of rehabbing themselves? I find that we're great at finding deals and are better off financially making a few grand 60 times a year than rehabbing 3-4 houses a year. We're also in a different risk/reward position than rehabbers, but we also genuinely love helping people find new deals. In fact, a new lead was referred to me 2 weeks ago because she'd finished and sold her first rehab 10 weeks prior and had been desperately seeking a house to rehab since then. I didn't have one available in her target markets, but did have one just outside her area and it was one that I knew would fit the design aesthetic I saw on her first rehab. Within days, she'd signed to buy the house we showed her and we're both ecstatic.
That's why I wholesale full-time.