I’m looking for a good market to start wholesaling in…can anyone give me some tips on how to do some market research (i.e. websites, what to look for, places to get information on markets).
Thanx
Hey Wholesale,
A good local realtor who is affiliated with your local REI can help you out.
You’ll want an area with midranged type homes that are mostly owner occupied. At this level all your REI techniques come into play and you’ll be able to flip houses more quickly than in lower priced and ritzier neighborhoods as well.
You definitely want to play in this profitable mid range
Dennis
I personally think you’ll want to focus more on lower priced neighborhoods but not the “war zones”. In the mid range houses there are a lot less wholesale deals to do. It may be easier to wholesale them but in the wholesaling world you have to do volume and i think in the mid range you’ll have a much harder time finding wholesale deals. The other strategy you might want to focus on is doing direct mail to free and clear houses. But ultimately make offers and focus on finding motivated sellers. I think that is the key as opposed to focusing on certain areas.
(This is just my opinion on the subject) When I started out it was tough to deal with Realtors. (I know a lot of the guru courses say otherwise) but I talked to realtor after realtor. Once they found out that I was new at the time they didn’t want to bother with me even though I wanted to buy multiple homes from them. MOST realtors come with the mentality of buying homes “Conventionally” but there are many, many ways to buy a home “Unconventionally” (For example: sub 2, lease options, using the existing home items as a downpayment to purchase the home…etc) It’s only limited by your imagination. I also met some very successful agents and at the time they didn’t want to deal with me either. I understand the Agents point of view and to be honest I wasn’t bitter about it. An agent has to put in a lot of time into selling a home and once they do they have to pay a lot of fees when they do close a deal, (Not only that uncle sam has his hand out as well). Unfortunately, the MLS is the tool you are going to need to really value homes and markets.
How I started figuring out Market value on properties? I got a map of my target market that I wanted to farm. I didn’t want it too big because I didn’t want to spread myself too thin. So I wanted to be an “Expert” in the market I wanted to farm. I did that by looking in the local paper for properties in my farm area. Specifically, with a price attached to them. I would attach the price and features of the property, (3 bedrooms 2 baths, 2000 sq ft…etc) If the property was sold I would go to the courthouse to look up the properties and what it sold for. Not only that I would look up my farm area and pull up all of the properties that I can and put them on the map with the price, description…etc. Today they make it even easier for you because most states have websites that you can find out this information for free so you might want to look it up in your area.
Long story short try to work with a realtor to see if you can get access to the MLS, (Maybe your experience with a Realtor will be different from mine) If it doesn’t work with a Agent then you can use Zillow for a ballpark figure of property values and you can also look up how much properties have sold for from the courthouse and possibly your city’s websites, Also look in your Sunday paper for property in your target market.