All Forum Posts by: Steven Leigh

 Personally if someone could bring a buyer when I couldn't I would absolutely split it 50/50. 50% of a deal is better than 0% of a deal you had to back out of. Plus, it's good karma, and how excited would that person be about working with you in the future now?

The $2k fee is more like what most wholesalers pay to bird dogs who find deals for them. 20% of the profit, with a minimum of $500 and a max of $2k is really common. Bird dogs find the deals, but the wholesaler ends up doing most of the work of negotiating, contracts, title company, buyers, etc.

By the way, @Account Closed, since everyone is jumping down your throat in this thread...

I, for one, want to say GREAT JOB on this deal! You're killing it. Keep it up, man.

@Joseph Brantley I sent you a lengthy PM about why you probably don't want to ask too much wholesaling advice on Bigger Pockets. You will just get swarmed with detractors trying to tear you down. Good luck.

The OP asked "Ever Witnessed a Wholesaler Being ABUSED by Cash Buyers?" and the answer is...

Yes, in this thread.  Wow...

So just for the record, I actually ended up canceling the coaching program, and even though they have a no-refund policy, they were nice enough to at least let me cancel so I don't have to keep paying monthly for 5 more months. 

I don't want to bash the program, as it seems to have worked well for others. The short version is that it just wasn't what I was expecting, and I found parts of it to be pretty disappointing. If anyone wants to know more you can message me on Bigger Pockets, but I don't want to make a big public post about it because that's not productive for anyone.

I wish the best of luck to Michael and his team and to all of those who join the program. 

So partly because of this thread, and partly because of emails with @Brent Hill, I just joined the program last night! 

I've been successfuly wholesaling (assigning) for several months, but I'm looking toward switching to a wholetailing model. I will make some comments on this thread and maybe even start my own as I go through the program. 

Thanks for the feedback, Brent!

Zillow Zestimates can be REALLY far off, so always take them with a grain of salt. How accurate are the tax appraisals in your area? For example, in my county they tend to be within about 10-20k of what homes actually sell for, but other areas they can be over or under by a lot. That might give you a frame of reference.

The other thing to do is go on Zillow and narrow the map to the surrounding neighborhood but don't look at areas that cross any major roads, etc. In other words stick to the close neighborhood. Then uncheck "For Sale" "For Rent" and everything except "Recently Sold". Choose the number of beds and baths of your house, and in the other options, set the square footage to within 10% above and below the sqft of your target house. Then try setting it to houses sold in the last 90 days. You'll have to look at the photos and things to see if it is REALLY a comp, as some houses might be a lot different, but this will start to give you a ballpark idea of what things are ACTUALLY selling for on the market.  If you don't see anything comparable in the last 90 days, go to 6 months, 1 year, or even 2 years, but beyond that it won't be very accurate anyway.

Hope that helps.

I'm considering finding a fairly new agent who might have extra time and need extra income to do some research for me on MLS. This would be things like finding recent cash purchases and sending me the agents who were representing the buyers, maybe sending me expired listings, etc.

Here is the question: Are there legal issues restricting this? If I paid them an hourly rate or per deliverable, would we have to make an arrangement with the broker as well?

Since I'm investor and not an agent or broker, I don't know what kind of laws and restrictions might come into play here. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Accidental double post - deleted

I'm just going to put it out there that most of what you hear about wholesaling being illegal, and that it's not a good strategy because of X, Y, and Z, you should just go ahead and ignore that. 

I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but there is a lot of crap spewed at wholesalers from other investors everywhere you go. Is it jealousy? Maybe. Are there a lot of bad wholesalers out there who make all investors look bad? Sure. But as long as you are disclosing to your sellers what your intentions are with the property, you won't have any trouble in Ohio.

The other thing you will hear especially at Bigger Pockets is that you should never need to hire a coach or pay for a course, because all the info you need is available for free on the internet! While this is true, I think a coach or mentor can be invaluable and can save you a LOT of time having to dig around and find all that info, especially if they have a whole system laid out and you can adopt it and get rolling fast.

As for where to start? I think the big names who actually seem to know what they are talking about when it comes to wholesaling are Michael Quarles, Tom Krol, and Sean Terry. Each have podcasts, coaching programs, etc. Listen to some of their podcasts and read their blogs, etc. and get a feel for whether they might be a good fit for your personality, investing strategy, etc.