How to Close 10 Wholesale Deals in 1 Day

It’s pretty easy actually. Get (“contract”) (10) unwanted houses from a seller at a great price and turn around and wholesale all (10) to a cash buyer. Boom – easy right? We’ll of course it’s never THAT easy. What if it was your 1^st deal ever? That would be scary. What if it was your 6^th thru 15^th deal? That was my scenario. But I did it. And you can do it too – because I knew practically nothing when I did it – had done 5 deals at that point. So how is it possible?

Well it was around November timeframe (2012) and we had just done our very 1^st Wholesale deal a few weeks prior. Our 2^nd deal was with a guy who had (13) or so rental properties down in the “South Side” of St Pete, which is a very rough side of town for the most part and you can get houses pretty cheap. We had done a lot of “driving for dollars” in the South Side and found a house and sent a letter to the owner and they called us off of our letter. I think he said he would sell the house for $20K, so I went and looked at it. It was terrible! Terrible, terrible house! Old, rickety, wood frame, termite infested, tiny house in the rough side of town. So I offered $11K and we finally settled on $13K I believe. I wrote up the contract and would close in a few weeks. He also mentioned he had (12) more houses and he’d be interested in selling them all – but he’d let me know about those after we closed on this one.

So I found a buyer within a couple of days (Craigslist) – it was a shady wholesaler in town who will remain nameless. But the guy did actually close on time. I had to do a double close because I wanted the buyer to see that I was the one closing on the house – so there would be no issue with me getting the contract on the other (12) houses. So all went well there. The weekend before Thanksgiving, he provided the list of the properties. That week I scouted out the properties as best as I could and I was given access to most of them thru the property manager as well. They were all in the “hood”. Some were rented – some were vacant. Turned out (4) of them were just vacant lots. The guy had torn the houses down because it was easier to do that then rent them out. I know I know….

So I went and visited the seller the WEDS before Thanksgiving and gave him an offer on all (12) properties. I believe we had gone back and forth for a couple of days on the final price – but it ended up being around $270K and a $12K deposit. And I agreed to close on the Friday before Christmas (12/21) – so I had about 3 ½ weeks to get it done. So I needed to go find buyers for all of these properties. I could easily draw out the rest of this story to be a “made-for-TV-Movie”, but I’ll try to get to the point quickly. But it was quite the adventure (and maybe I will still make a movie out of it).

Time to get to work, right? I have (12) properties I need to get sold ASAP. And this was before I ever had a good buyers list – I think I had (2) cash buyers at this point. So I showed the list of properties and my prices to the one shady wholesaler I mentioned earlier and he agreed to buy (5) of the properties (none of the vacant lots). I marked them up about $2K each or so. He also put up $10K of deposit – so that covered $10K out of the $12K I was supposed to put down. I locked up another property from a buyer off Craigslist and he put down the other $2K I needed. So now I had (2) houses and (4) vacant lots left to sell. Turns out the houses were overpriced – they were in Gulfport and the Tax Assessed was actually way higher than what houses were going for so that threw me way off.

And the vacant lots were going to be a big problem I came to realize. NOBODY wants vacant lots in the “hood”. At least not for much money. Between what the seller and I had figured them to be worth – I basically had to give them away. Met some interesting people in my adventures of selling vacant lots in the “hood”. Maybe that will be the name of my movie. Haha. I put out bandit signs in the front yards of the lots and also put them on Craigslist. The 1^st one I unloaded was to the next door neighbor who wanted it to build a playground for his grand kids ($2500). I sold one to a guy that was with a non-profit and they were going to put a garden there for inner city kids to learn gardening. Kinda neat. And the last two were to a gangster looking fellow who figured he could put a house on them and flip them. Not sure what ever happened there.

The kicker is that none of them could close – ALL (10) so far – until 12/21. And the owner was expecting full payment then. Turns out I kept dropping the price on the last (2) Gulfport houses and went into closing day still with no contracts on them.

Closing day was a movie unto itself as well. First of all, I owe all of the success of this deal to my title person, Suann Lewis of Gulfside Title. I may have taken 10 years off of her life that week, but we (mostly her) made it happen. So to get the day started we had to meet of the vacant lot buyers at their house to get the money – which they paid in Amscot cashier’s check, cash, and loose change. Then we went to IHOP to meet the other two buyers of the vacant lots – one of which also paid in cash (approx. $4K). Met one of the other house buyers there to give him the keys to the property. Suann had everyone sign off on the HUD Statements at IHOP. About (6) of the deals were double closes and I had signed off on those the day before with another title company. Then we had to go back to Suann’s office for me to sign off on everything else. She actually gave me my checks for all the deals. Then we had to wait the rest of the day for the monies to get wired in from the other deals and then she would wire the seller’s portion to them. I believe that happened around 4:30PM – the Friday before Christmas. So it was technically (16) closings for Suann, since (6) of them were double closings. Talk about paperwork.

So I checked with the seller and they confirmed all the money was there except for the (2) Gulfport houses – they agreed to extend for a couple of weeks, which turned into a couple of months before we could get those sold. Long story.

After it was all said and done, I think we only made about $15K on the deal. Was shooting for $40K, but the lots I ended up losing $$ on and the Gulfport houses we ultimately lost money on. But – WHAT A GREAT EXPERIENCE! After that, there isn’t a whole lot that rattles me on a wholesale deal. I feel like I’ve seen it all at that point.

Bottom line – I knew nothing and pulled it off – with a good title person. So take action, find some deals, and just do it (and be sure to find a good title company). Go to www.HowToWholesaling.com to learn more about how to Wholesale with no money or experience. Good luck!