Wholesaling Is Dead? Here's What's Actually Happening in 2026

If you're currently wholesaling, you probably noticed that it's getting way harder to do deals. Deals are taking longer, sellers are getting harder to find, marketing costs continue to rise. And if you're being honest with yourself, I know that you're wondering if this whole thing is still worth it. Well, it is, but not the way that you've been doing it. Now, if you don't know who I am, my name is Fidel Guajardo. I wholesale for the last 5 years, paid every coach, mentor, and spent over $1 million of my own money in paid advertising to really systemize deal flow and get consistency. And I currently manage over 45 clients where we do their marketing and we help them scale,. So I have dozens of wholesalers who are doing over $100,000 per month with low ad spend. And I can tell you that the reason why they're winning is going to come down to a few things. So if you stick until the end of the video, I'm going to let you know exactly what those things are so that if you're grinding and if you're not where you want to be, if you stick until the end of the video and you apply these lessons, you're going to be able to plug them into your business so that you can get more momentum and that you finally win this 2026. Now, before I tell you what the people who are winning are doing, We need to go, we need to go over what stopped working since 2022 when the rates increased. So number 1 is you can't be doing spray and pray marketing. Now, I know a lot of people preach out there that you can get started with cold calling because it's the cheapest form of marketing. But as you already know, most people are probably trying to sell you a course and cold calling used to work, but now with the all new regulations, you get put into spam calls. Every one of these sellers, since it's the cheapest form of marketing, have already been called. And if you're probably like me, when you get your phone, you get over 20 to 30 spam calls every single day. So the fact that he thinks that he can reach people, you're just grinding instead of finding a better method, right? Because think about it, like all the beginners are trying to get into wholesaling, they're cold calling these people. So those lists have already been burned. Now I'm not saying that you can't get deals, but you probably need 60, 80 leads to get a contract. And it only works if you're already experienced with sales where you know exactly what to ask, what to ask the sellers, how to sound differently, and really getting lucky that you find someone that's actually motivated. Because at that point with cold calling and with the outreach, it's a matter of luck, not so much that the marketing channel actually works. The second problem is that you are pricing deals like it's 2021 where you could just list properties on the market and sell them, where you're doing renovations or wholesales. Since the whole market, it's getting harder and the interest rates are still high, And there's pain and blood in the water. Buyers are getting more picky because they're seeing hundreds of investors that have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in deals. So of course, if they're still buying, they need to adjust their criteria, which means that whenever you negotiate deals, you need to be able to get them at a deeper discount so that if you're trying to wholesale them, your flipper can still make a margin and then you still make money for the business. So you need to be mindful and really look into what properties are really actually selling for in today's day and time. You need to look into the actives, what has sold, the pending, and then forecast what the property will sell for in the next couple months, looking at the trends. So if you can take anything from this video, is really, really hone in on the comping, because there's all these new beginners that are getting into innovations and they think that they can put a property in the contract So they offer the sellers what they want, but they won't be able to move them. So you gotta be mindful of doing this whenever you're comping. And then number 3 is the people that treat this business like a side hustle, they're going to get mediocre results because now since everything is getting harder, you need to be a professional in how you do this business. Because if you don't, you won't be able to do what's required in order to succeed. And that is why fundamentally, hustling, you need to be a really good operator to ensure that you make money because there's so many moving parts when it comes to wholesaling that you need to fix and overcome and solve before a deal actually makes it to the closing table and that you get paid. So if you don't have this mindset that you're willing to do whatever it takes to close a deal and invest into your company, you're not going to be able to make it. So that time for you to treat this like a side hustle is over, because if you do that, you won't have success. Now, what is the shift number one that these people, the people that are winning, are doing? Well, first of all, they are attracting instead of chasing. Now, what we do with them is we run Meta ads that are targeting our ideal sellers, which, you know, is people that are going through divorce, inheritance, foreclosures, problem properties. So if you can get anything away from this video is that you need to get strategic into who you are trying to target. You don't want to mass market everyone that they want to sell for cash because that doesn't mean that they're actually motivated, right? So the reason why I love Facebook ads is because It is the only platform where you can intentionally target each pain point. And since Facebook is intrusive, it means that it's all going to be based on the ad. Now with us, we don't run the generic, we buy houses sort of ads. We run a pain, right? Are you going through a divorce? Are you facing foreclosure? Do you have a property, a property that needs a ton of repairs? We've been put some of our clients in the ads and this works very well because chances are if you have used an agency, they're using generic We buy houses sort of ads, and that is not attracting motivated sellers. And that is why you always say that you're getting shitty results. And the reason why is because the type of ads that you're actually running. And remember, when we simplify wholesaling, wholesaling is talking to motivated people that have a pain that we can solve. And that is why they're accepting our lower offer because they are not dumb. They know that the property can be worth more, but we are solving a problem and that is the value exchange. So if you make the whole focus of your business where you're trying to target the actual pain, then the chances that you're actually getting good results is going to increase if you primarily focus on these. And with our method, we have an average cost per lead of $52 for distressed leads, and we need 20 to 30 leads to one contract. Whereas if you're doing cold calling or doing paper lead or you're using direct mail, your cost per deal, I guarantee that you're going to be between $4,000 and $5,000 and $6,000 because, but because we know how to run our ads and this is what we do with the clients, our cost per deal is cheapest than any of the other marketing channels because we know exactly what we're doing. So if you do the math, if you were to compare a cost per deal of $5,000 versus sub $2K, sub $2,000, which is, that's what we have with our clients. And you were able to get leads just like these where you get repairs needed, facing foreclosure, facing foreclosure, facing foreclosure, facing foreclosure, downsizing ASAP, within 1 and 3 months, do you think that you'd be able to get more deals? This is another client, right? You know, some of these are vacant, some they live there, they need to downsize, it's inherited, financial difficulty. What matters is that we are actually trying to target the actual pain. And here we have another one of our clients, foreclosure campaign, financial difficulty, downsizing, job loss, financial difficulty, probate, financial difficulty, ASAP, ASAP. We ask them when they want us to contact them. That is why we're able to get way more deals. If we make this the primary method of all of our marketing to attract these motivated people, if we put an emphasis into this, we're going to get way better results. So if you become more efficient with the marketing, you're going to be able to get way better results. Now, when it comes to the marketing, you can use whoever you want, but just be— but just be sure that you are targeting people that are going through divorce or some sort of pain, because if you do that, you're going to be able to get more deal flow. Okay? So you can use me or whoever, just make sure that you basically make this a whole focus of your whole marketing to attract motivated sellers. Now, what is the second thing that these people are doing? We want to filter for quality instead of just quantity. So I know a lot of you have an average deal size between $5,000 to $10,000, but I would rather do 2 deals at $20,000 to $25,000 per deal instead of doing 3, 4 deals at $5K, right? Because it's less moving parts, you net almost like double more and it's less stress for you, right? So a lot of the times the juice is not the worth, the juice is not worth the squeeze on thin deals. And a lot of people think that you need to lie to sellers into what you're doing, but my best clients, they're super transparent with the sellers and where they're doing an innovation or if they're doing a wholesale, they are going to be transparent with the sellers, right? So in order for you to get higher quality deals, You have to get better at sales. Like there's no way around it. Um, so in order for you to do that, you need to buy into some sort of coaching or mastermind into sales, because if you do this, you're going to be able to get way more deal flow at a better discount and therefore make more money for the business. So if you do that, you're going to be able to train your sales skills or train your team. Number 2, learn how to negotiate better deals. Number 3, be transparent with the homeowners. And number 4, you're going to be able to walk away from bad margins because if we make the emphasis of our business where we're targeting people that are going through divorce, foreclosure, and all the pain points, then at that point we can pick and choose because if they have some of those other pain points, they have something that we can solve, right? So we can choose who we work with. And that is exactly why our clients make between $20,000 to $25,000 per deal, because that is the main focus and emphasis of our whole strategy. Our thing is we get better at marketing and we get better at sales. And if we're able to do that, that is exactly how we drop the cost per deal and increase the profit per deal. Because at that point, we don't need to spend so much money in the business because our marketing is efficient and we don't need to have this huge bloated company where we have all these different sales reps because we're doing things the right way where we're focusing on the profitable, on the profit for the business, right? So we get a lot of lead flow, we can pick and choose who we want to work with. So number 2, you got to have that mindset shift that quality is going to be more important than quantity. And when you can get good lead flow and good marketing, you can pick and choose who you want to work with and only pick the deals that you know you're going to make the most amount of money. Because there's been times where we close $50,000, $60,000, $80,000 deals, and those deals were way easier than the small ones that we make $10,000, $15,000. You get way more headaches, but On the ones that we make more margin is less headache. So I'd rather do more of those rather than just try and hustle and do all these things, right? So number 1, get better with marketing and have people come to you. And number 2, you need to focus on the quality and actually training all of your sales team so that they actually perform. Now, the 3rd point in this video is that you need to have the mindset shift from being an operator to being a business owner. So you want to run your wholesaling business like an actual business and not a hustle. Okay. Super important. Cause I know a lot of people just dive into things thinking that you're going to get all this deal flow, but before you do that, you're going to be able to see the game that you're actually playing. So you got to run it like an actual business and you need to track your KPIs because anyone that tells you that this is not possible without a huge team is lying. You have to track deals. And if you see all of my interviews, the reason why our clients are making over $100,000 per month is because One, we nailed the marketing. Two, we nailed the sales. And number three, we track the KPIs so that we make data-driven decisions because the better that we are at each of these three things, the more money that we're going to be able to net and really pinpoint what's working, what's not working. And if we don't have no need to scale and the business is actually giving us $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 in profit, why would we want to scale the business even more? Because as it is, you already get through a ton of headaches when it comes to wholesaling and all the moving parts, right? So the next mindset shift that is going to unlock a lot of lead flow and growth in your business, and when you make this shift from being an operator and a hustler into an actual business owner, right? So what are the main KPIs that we track? Well, first of all, we track the leads to appointment ratio. Now with our Facebook method, we see a 40 to 50% when it comes to the growth leads to the appointment. So 50% of the leads, they're going to be a qualified lead, meaning they do have some sort of pain point and they are urgent to sell. That is what we call the qualified lead. And that is what we call an appointment. Number 2 is we want to track the appointment to offer ratio, meaning out of the appointments that we complete, how many of these get an offer? We want to give out an offer to at least 80% of the people. So let's say that you get 25 leads on a weekly basis, probably 13 to 15 of those leads are going to set an appointment. You're going to— an appointment, like I said, it's a qualified lead where we take them through the process. They're urgent and motivated. And then from those 12 to 15, we want to give you got an offer to at least 10 to 12 of those 15 people? Okay. Those are the main things that we track. And then we want to track the offer-to-contract ratio. So out of those 12 offers that you gave, how many of those did you close? Now, if you gave 12 offers, you need to probably get 2 to 3 deals, 2 to 3 contracts from those offers. And if you are above that, you're probably doing something wrong within your sales process. You are not addressing an uncommitted language. You're not going over objections. You're not setting the proper expectations. And then at that point, it's 100% a sales issue. So if you're not tracking these numbers, you don't know how to improve and how to train your team into what, into what they need to do. Right. And then at the end, like once you are at a 1 in 5 and 1 in 6 contract ratio, you want to know the total leads to a deal ratio, because that is going to give you the cost per deal. So if your average cost per lead is $50 and you need around 25 leads to get a contract, well, that means that your cost per deal would be more or less like $1,500, but then you need to factor in your close, the actual close rate and success rate. So let's say that 20% of your deals don't make it to the closing table because you have bad dispo, then your cost per deal is probably going to be like $1,800 or $2,000 instead of just $1,500. But once we're able to track that, and let's say that we establish our cost per acquisition, let's say it costs us $2,000 and we are making around $15,000 to $20,000 per deal, we're getting a 10x. So at that point, we know we can reverse engineer how much money we want to make into how much marketing we need to invest so that we get the leads, the appointments, the offers, the contracts, and the closed deals so that we actually get to our revenue goals, right? So you need to know your cost per acquisition, and your average profit per deal. Because if you don't do this, you're going to be flying blind. And all of my guys, I am super demanding when it comes to the KPIs because that is one of my biggest mistakes that I made when I first started wholesaling. Because now we know exactly what's working and what we need to do on a daily basis, weekly basis, and monthly basis. So you shift from being a hustler to being an actual business owner. And the better that you get at these things, the more money you're going to be able to make for the business. So those are the 3 things that the winning wholesalers are doing in 2026. To keep on getting results, if you're not doing this, remember, number 1, you want to attract people that are motivated and you can do it with paid advertising. We do it on Facebook, but if you're doing any other marketing channel, make sure that the whole focus of the whole campaign is to attract people that are going through some sort of pain point. Number 2, remember on the quality instead of just chasing quantity, because we can respect our terms and the profit that we want to make per deal. And we train the sales team and we become better at training our team and ourselves when it comes to diving into the sales process. We're going to be negotiate better deals, we're going to be more transparent with the sellers, and as a result, make more money. So the marketing and the sales and basically chasing the quality is going to play hand in hand. And number 3, you need to shift your mindset from being a hustler to being a business owner, because if you know what's working and you're tracking the KPIs when it comes to the leads needed to get a deal and you establish a good cost of acquisition, at that point you already know that you have an ATM that if you put a dollar in, you can get 5, 6, 7, $8, $9, $10 back, and therefore build the business of your dreams because you're focusing on the main important things of the business, which is marketing, sales, and KPI-driven management. So I hope that that was helpful. And if you need help installing this marketing system into your business and you are doing at least 3, 4, or 5 deals per month, and you're making over $30,000 per month, we can help you scale, but only if you can invest in the advertising because we want to help you make money. So if you're interested in hearing exactly how our method works, click on the link down below, schedule a call, and I'll walk you exactly how we can help you scale. With that being said, I'm rooting for you. I hope you crush it, and I'll watch you in the next video. Make sure that you subscribe.