Hi everyone! My wife and I are trying to get started in wholesaling properties. We’ve been reading books and the messages on this site (thanks, your posts have been very helpful) and others, and we really want to get started. We just have some lingering questions. We’ve read that to sweeten the deal for the buyer, we should order a title search, an appraisal and an inspection so that an investor or an end buyer sees how good a deal it is. In San Diego, those 3 reports could be very expensive. Do you think it is worth it to order those reports or just work on locking up the contracts and the assigning them to buyers on our buyers list? We don’t have much money (why we are looking to get into wholesaling) (we both lost our jobs) so we would rather not pay for these reports if it doesn’t add any value. If you think they are worth the expense could you please give us an estimate of what each of them costs. We think we got ripped off when we bought our condo because it was an REO and we had to use the bank’s suppliers (except the inspector). Here’s what we paid:
Title search-not sure because it was included in the closing fees and title insurance which added up to over $1500
Appraisal-$350
Inspection-$250 (because it was a condo, would have been quite a bit more for a SF home)
Start with finding a qualified cash or credit borrower first, then find a deal. Wholesaling should not cost you money. A qualified cash buyer should be able to show you a bank statement in at least the amount they desire to purchase. A credit buyer should have pre approval from either their lender or one you lead them to. They should also have down payment funds, credit scores of at least 680 and provable income that is sufficient to cover proposed new plus existing monthly debt payments
Thanks hassanar. So you don’t think that we should bother with any of those reports (title search, inspection, appraisal, repair estimate). We should just leave that to the qualified buyer?
ras, there are only two strategies I recommend for the new investor. One you’re already kicking around, and that’s wholesaling. The other, and more realistic approach in my opinion, is lease options. They are a heck of a lot easier to get done than wholesaling and virtually risk free.