All Forum Posts by: Max Yuan

I am a software guy that got into wholesaling, so it is not like I've been in the industry for decades, but definitely in your shoes last year.

1. Definitely start in your area. If you can't close deals face to face, you probably won't be able to close deals over the phone. It also helps you build the intuition on how much you can offer. The 70% rule is more like a heuristic, depending on the property you should go lower or higher on the offer. You don't want to miss out on a deal that could make you $30k just because you need to offer 80% ARV.

2 PropStream, PropRadar are great ways to get started. They essentially give you all properties in an area, and you can skip trace and call the homeowners. The best way to think of it would be virtual door knocking. Slim chances of success, but cheap and easy to get started. After that, I would encourage you to go to your county recorders office / court to request data yourself. This is probably the most up to date information you can get, you can get the data cleaned, formatted and skiptraced for pretty cheap using some new comers like GoliathData. List is only as good as the caller, so make sure you have your script ready to go.

3. Becoming good friends with buyers' agents and local investors. In my experience, they have the fastest turnaround time vs folks out of driving distance from the property. If you are listing it online, aren't you just in a sense just "listing it on market"? Your advantage is your connection to the right investors with cash to purchase the property. Another reason why if you cannot operate locally, you probably won't be able to succeed wholesaling remote.

@mods this is self promotion

Wondering if anyone has experience extracting information from PDFs of Tax Delinquencies / Code Violations.
It is really tedious to copy the information out, and trying to find the properties and owner information manually.

What sort of tools do you use?

@Chris Seveney how do you use the Microsoft copilot? Been super curious about their capabilities?

The most sophisticated professionals always go through a transition from buying generic property lists to creating their own playbooks from raw data sources. Creating lists that no one else has.

I've been helping professionals monitoring probate and pre-foreclosure leads in real time streaming the leads to their CRM to pulling parcel data directly from county appraiser database at scale.

At some point you will realize that these "national coverage" companies just won't have the fine-grained information you need to help you succeed in your counties. Happy to jump on a call if you'd like!

Doesn't sound like they are truly generating value for you then. For context, I spent a decent amount of time building AI tools in real estate and shared this article AI in real estate what is hype what is real in BP a a bit ago.

If you are paying $250, and it is not making that money back, then it is wasted money. The base plan for the tool that my team has created is $999/mo designed for real estate wholesalers and they love it. No one has ever complained because it helps them close one or two extra deals every month which ends up being a more than10x return on their investment.

Tools are these funny things, try them, if they are not adding value just cancel.

What is your order of operations like?

Are you reaching out to home owners that matches your criteria, or are you reaching out to individuals that are going through life events like Probate and Foreclosures?

Both of these platforms are great for providing property information, but a lot of times you won't be the first to reach out on them. You have to figure out your own playbooks for unique data source to get an advantage on the market,

This is going to be a long journey - so make sure not to get discouraged. Some get their first deal in a week, others in a month or two. But unless you are making calls, you are not moving forward. Once you have closed a couple of deals, start thinking about developing your own playbook. Propstream is a great way to start, but the list is shared among hundreds of people, it will unlikely that you will be the first to reach out. Find your own advantage.

Always here as a resource - welcome to BP

If you offer is high enough, anyone will be willing to sell. It really is about finding deals that make sense for investors in a repeatable and scalable way. Whether you are processing inferred signals such as pre-foreclosure and tax delinquencies or optimizing for explicit leads using SEO.

There are definitely good deals to be found on MLS, but I am sure we all agree the bigger the information gap, the more opportunities there are for a lucrative deal.

We have actually seen great success partnering with some of the most tech-forward wholesalers; They are fully capitalizing on the "first mover advantage" aspect of this information gap; streaming real-time leads directly into their CRMs to automatically start their sequences.

@Roi Azoulay I think you are absolutely correct in this. End of the day real estate is a relationship game and nothing can beat the human connection.

The only thing AI and large data pipelines can really do is streamline an existing process that is working for you. If you are using VAs to put together a list, you can now do it faster and easier. But the tool is not going to help you close if you are not closing already.