All Forum Posts by: Chris Piper

Hey @Account Closed, that's great that you are so busy with your real estate business. You might want to look at something like CRM for Gmail if you use Gmail. If not, check out Hubspot or insightly. They are all CRM(customer relationship management) softwares that are free. They will really help you organize your operations.

I have a purchase agreement and assignment contract that are good @Hanifah Montanez. They don't need to be state specific so they work anywhere. The contract explicitly states that the property can be assigned and the seller signs off on it and initials it saying they are aware that it may be assigned. Let me know if you want them.

I wouldn't sweat it @Burt L. Just run your numbers and figure out what your max offer is that you can pay. Try to keep the contingencies to a minimum, and a decent amount of earnest money will help too as long as you know you can close on schedule.

Maybe it was just a coincidense that you were both there at the same time. Either way, you could have a lower offer than the other guy, but if you have no contingencies and he does, and you put up more earnest money, then you could get the deal. Just be confident that you are the best person to do this deal, and if the numbers don't work, walk away.

Sean, figuring out repair costs and comps are what will keep people coming back to buy from you. if your numbers are way off, your repeat buyers will disappear quickly. So here are a few things you can do.

Estimating repairs: You can get a few contractors to meet you at your first few deals. Then you can see the costs in their estimates and use that as like a cheat sheet to estimate the next deal for yourself.

Another Real Estate guru I've listened to said he never steps in a single house he buys. He estimates between $20-$30 per square foot of the house. Depending on the size of your city, you would have to determine if you go with $20, $25, or $30.

Comps: The best way to get comps is by using a broker. The downside is that if you aren't using a broker for a wholesale deal(which you shouldn't be), they will get tired of pulling comps for free for you. If you can get MLS access somehow, that's ideal, but kind of tough.

You can also get a BPO I believe it's called where a broker will pull comps with no expectations from you for a minimal fee. You could also use a service called Real Quest, which basically let's you pull your own comps through them. They have access to the majority of that info on almost all properties in the U.S. It is a monthly subscription, but worth it.

Lastly, you can use a free site like zillow. Their comps aren't 100% accurate, but probably 10%-15% higher than the actual comp price. Hope that info helps!

Remax, Century 21, or Coldwell Baker are the 3 biggest.

This may seem like a dumb question, but I've been out of wholesaling for a while. When you do a wholesale deal, you need a purchase agreement with the appropriate clauses to protect yourself and you need to include the fact that you may assign this contract to another buyer so that the seller understands this upfront correct? And secondly, you need to have an assignment agreement you use as a contract between yourself and the cash buyer so you are covered and get paid. Am I correct on both of these items? Thanks in advance.

P.S. If anyone has these contracts they could send me, I would really appreciate it.

@Thomas Soliz I would use a couple grand to get set-up with all your wholesaling needs. I would also follow Jeff's advice and learn how to correctly wholesale whether from youtube, or this forum, or RE Mogul. Then, I would start looking for properties that are super cheap regardless of area that are in livable condition or close too it. Make a list of them, in my area I would look for houses under $25K, shoot out lowball offers on them, try to pick them up for around $5K each, then if they need a little TLC, aka paint/carpet or something, then do the work to spruce them up. Once you get one that is ready to go, advertise on criagslist and bandit signs something like this: 3 bed/2 bath NO CREDIT CHECK Own your own home today!!!" Then when people contact you, have them fill out a basic application. Then go through, find the best candidate, collect a down payment of say $2K, then the balance is in the form of a note. They pay you $400/mo for 10 years, and they own it free and clear. Now you can sell part of the note to bring in money right away, like the first 5 years of the note or the second 5 years, then collect on the remainder of the note monthly. You can also sell the whole note. I would sell at say 70%-75% of the value of the note. Now you just spent $5k and turned it into $30k. All the time you're wholesaling and making $5k-$10k a pop, and then repeat the above process. That's my advice. Alos, if they default on the payments, you kick them out, and sell it again the same way and make another $25k or more. Good luck.

@Angie Vance Banks always want to squeeze every penny they can out of an REO. They're greedy. They've already squeezed all they can out of the previous owner, and now they want full price to do it to the next person.

In my opinion, your agent is incorrect. Here is a saying I heard a few years back from a Real Estate guru when dealing with banks and REO's. "If you're not embarassed by your offer, then you offered too much." Of course that means make offers that are super low and a great deal for you and don't feel bad about it. What people don't realize is that when banks have REO's (bad debt) on the books, it decreases the amount of money they are able to loan out for mortgages. Now any logical thinking person would assume that the faster they get the REO's off the books, the better. Not the banks though. They hold on to properties for months or years, and even hold back what is called "Shadow Inventory." These are properties they own (REO's) that aren't even available for sale. It makes no sense in my opinion.

Point being, submit offers on any REO's you are interested in, and never feel bad about offering too little to the banks. They'll either say yes or no. Sometimes they will say yes, or counter with something reasonable. You can always counter their counter as well. If they say no, submit the same offer every 30 days. Sometimes, you'll eventually get them to give in and sell to you at your price when they finally get tired of holding on to it.

I don't know much about the Fannie Mae stuff, so I'll leave that for someone who is better versed in that area.

A wholesaler is a middleman. You find a motivated seller, get that property under contract for a steep discount, find a cash buyer to assign the contract to, and make your profit on the difference in what you contracted the property for, and what you sell to the cash buyer for.

@Ben Roberts You don't need much money to start wholesaling. You need 2 things. 1. Cash buyers 2. Motivated sellers. To get both as fast as possible I would get some bandit signs, get a phone number that rings to your cell phone so you don't get dinged by your city for putting up bandit signs. I would skip the biz cards and the website. 

If you have MLS access or are working with a realtor, I would have them pull all properties sold in the HOT zip codes in your town for the last 6 months that were cash transactions. You can then contact the agent that the cash buyer used and tell them that you see they bought XYZ property 3 months ago, and you have one in the same area and you were wondering if they would be interested in it. You can also call anyone in your area who has a WE BUY HOUSES sign posted somewhere, tell them you are a wholesaler, and find out what their buyers want. Tell them if you find a a deal for their buyer, you will split the profit with them. If you want to mail to cash buyers you can do that as well.

Here is how I would use the $1,000:

$100 Bandit signs(put some up for cash buyers and some for motivated sellers)

$25 (or less) Phone Number that rings to your cell

$275 Postcards to cash buyers or motivated sellers

$100 Keep for miscellaneous expenses that might come up

$500 Save it for earnest money deposits you might need

Hope that helps. It's just my two cents though. Good luck.