https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSlV7l5ITaI

Welcome to Wholesale Hotline. I'm Brent Daniels.

I'm Jamil Damji. And I'm Jerry Norton.

And I'm Pace Morby. Every week we bring you the best information on real estate investing.

Be sure to participate in the comments.

And subscribe.

Welcome to this special episode of Wholesale Hotline. My name is Brent Daniels joined by the incredible Pace Morby and Jerry Norton. And we are talking about what happened June 5th, 2025. Court rules, court holds offers to buy houses are not telephone solicitations. And of course they aren't. Guys, we are going to dig into this because this is really exciting and really something that I think is a long time coming. But finally, somebody actually fought it in court and won the right to say, you know what? When we're calling up somebody and seeing if they would consider an offer on their property, it is not a solicitation for service or for for a product. So which makes sense.

I mean, we're buyers, not we're not, we're offering to buy something, not sell something.

I read this. Congress crafted the TCPA to Target specific types of calls, leaving other forms of Outreach such as purchase offers outside its scope. It would require legislative action or regulatory clarification from the C, C. Boom, baby.

Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. I mean, we've been talking about this for a couple of years and I would say in the side chat, it's one of the most common questions that pop up of, Hey, am I allowed to call these people? You know, if they tell me they yell at me or I get a letter, better yet, I get a letter saying that you shouldn't have called me this, that and the other and I get a call from an attorney. I think a lot of people forget that we are the customer.

Right?

Just like Jerry just said, we are the buyer, we are the customer. We are not asking, Hey, will you buy something for me? We're not selling you anything. We're asking, Hey, are you open to selling that thing to me? And what's cool about this is a couple of months ago, also the robo dial thing got shut down as well. And so not only can you call sellers and offer to buy their house and ask them, Hey, will you sell your house to me? But also the robo dialing thing a couple of months ago also got shut down. And so you can not only call sellers, but you can call sellers with currently, at least the way it stands right now, is you can call it them with AI and just have tens of thousands of calls happening all at the same time. I don't know how long this will go, but it doesn't seem like anybody has a leg to stand on right now, which is freaking awesome. Brent, did you read anything about do not call list or anything like that regarding TCPA? laws?

Well, that's essentially what TCPA is. TCPA is just, you know, you can register on the do not call list, but they're basically saying that you register for the do not call list to opt out of solicitations. And they're saying that the calls to offer on a property is not a solicitation unless the FCC changes their definition of it or Congress. if Congress says that it is. So it is, it's really, really, really interesting. And I think, to be honest, you guys, we've seen a lot of different lawsuits being thrown at our industry. And let's be honest, most of them settle out of court. A lot of them don't go the full length to put it in front of the judge to get an actual ruling on this because, you know, the, the, the, the appeal of, hey, if you just settle for 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, you're not going to have this long drawn out court case that's going to cost you all this money. But somebody said, somebody with deep pockets and we know who it is here locally, somebody that's done very well in our industry for a long time was like, you know what? I'm going to fight him. I'm going to fight him. I got the budget to fight him. I've got the cojones, so to speak, to fight him and we'll see how this shakes out. And it's really interesting that it happened. Yeah, it's cool.

I think it's really good for newbies that are afraid to pick up the phone or better yet, I think it's better for the newbies that use it as an excuse to not pick up the phone. Right? They'll go, well, I'm not supposed to be calling and is there something better? Now, Brent, you're not, you guys aren't doing any cold calling right now.

Everything you guys are doing is inbound. Is that correct? All inbound. I am. looking at now opening it back up. Yeah. Opening back up, hiring four or five callers, really being tight on the filters coming in, you know, so it's not overwhelmed. The problem that I had in my business pace and, and Jerry is we were getting, you know, 50, 60, 70 leads to a deal when it came to cold calling. And it was, it usually took between 90 and 120 days from the first time that we talked to the property owner to the time that we actually got on the deal. And so it really was clogging up my system in a lot of ways. Now, if you're doing this independently, if you're doing it for yourself, go bananas, right? I mean, you're gonna do so much better numbers. You're gonna, you're gonna need a lot less leads. You're gonna really sink your teeth into these opportunities and see them through the finish line. But if you're hiring other people to do it, you have to, you have to kiss a lot of frogs or tighten up the filters of what they're sending into you. as a quote unquote lead. Would you agree, Jerry? Well, yeah.

And you know what I find ironic with this? This is like such a win for us and we need a win right now. With all the wholesale regulation, they did clarify that real estate agents who cold call to solicit listings is soliciting.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Because they're offering a service to help somebody buy or sell real estate. That is a you are then trying to sell, right? Unlike us trying to buy. So it just cracks me up because they, you know, NAR in the real estate agent industry has been working so hard to come down on wholesaling and ban wholesaling and create all these laws. And here this one comes out actually in our favor for once. So it's kind of cool.

That is interesting that even an agent is soliciting, but we as wholesalers are legally not. that is so freaking great. What a big win.

It's a service that they're providing. They're literally applying for the job of selling somebody's house as opposed to, hey, I want to buy your house. I want to give you this money to be able to buy your house. You know what I mean? It's really interesting that I'm trying to think of, and maybe you guys can do a better job of this than I can, but is there anything else that you know of any other industry where they call out to offer somebody that answers, offers them money for something or offers to buy something. Is there anything else that this is like that you guys can think of? Maybe in the chat, put it in there if you guys have some experience with it. I just can't pull anything out that's similar to, hey, let me buy your house. Maybe let me buy your car.

Right?

Let me, let me, let me, I saw that you registered with these cars. Do you want to sell your car? I don't know.

But people don't call car owners and say, do you want to sell your car? I don't think that's a thing. Right.

So, I mean, is there anything else like this?

I don't think so. I don't think so. Charles Madden says, this is actually an interesting thing. He asked a question, which then gives me another question on top of it. Hey, guys, you've been in this industry and maybe some of you are licensed. Maybe you can tell us if all three of you are licensed agents just to get the license. This is actually a conversation we're going to be having up on, I believe, June 25th. I believe we're going to be doing a wholesale hotline episode about the Wholesale Association. Jerry, you are currently licensed, right?

Correct. In Michigan.

And how many, like what percentage of your deals are in Michigan?

Well, I mean, I don't actively use my license for traditional real estate. So I don't show homes or list homes very often. I hold my license for a few reasons that just Facilitate the investing side of things.

Like what? Like give me one reason why you would have a license.

Access to the MLS is a good one.

Okay, but don't you know that proper wire is free?

Yeah.

I also have a real brokerage, so we build a team under us.

There we go. Okay, that makes sense. So from a standpoint of, hey, people respect you, they see you on YouTube, they want to go and become an agent underneath you. There's a money making opportunity there for you. so Charles, who asked the question a little bit earlier, just to be very clear, Jerry has a license, but he does not use it as a licensed real estate agent in the traditional sense of the word. Meaning he's not listing people's properties and he's not showing houses to buyers. So he uses it for other, other means. I myself do not have a license. I don't know that I ever will. Brent, you used to be a big real estate agent. That was actually your beginning of getting into this business. Do you currently have your license now?

Yep. Yep.

How often do you use it?

Well, I mean, every day to get on the MLS to look at some deals there. But beyond that, I'm not representing any clients besides myself.

Do you feel like the MLS data is better than like PropWire or other services?

I think that there's probably just some long-term usage, you know, and some familiarity that I have with it that I just go to it, right? Because I've been using it since '04 in Monsoon in there does a really good job of showing me all the pendings. And I think that there's a little bit of lag time on some of the other providers when it comes to the properties that go under contract. which I think is really important. But I feel like the speed of something like PropWire or these other services where you can pay to get MLS access is getting better. Or maybe it's spot on, Jerry.

No, I would agree with that. I mean, the biggest thing about the MLS, 'cause everything starts in the MLS and then it rolls over to other services paid or free. But what's really unique about the MLS is that it has a gazillion filters. has more filters than anything else you could imagine. So I could say, I want to see that subdivision. It'll show me that subdivision. I could say, I want to see everything that happened between 24, 2010 and 2011. That is a, you know, three bedroom below certain tax thing. I mean, like, whatever, whatever you can possibly create in a filter, the MLS has. So it allows you to get really, really granular. I'll look up properties where I'm like, I want to know what's what's happened in this property in all time history. And it'll show me every listing that's ever happened on that property. I can go back and look at pictures from five years ago, one year ago, 10 years ago. I can see who the agents were involved on those transactions. Like I can really deep dive research. I can tie right to public record right off the MLS. I mean, I don't think, I think for one, if you're in a non-disclosure state, getting the access to the MLS is huge. There are other tools, but even if you have these other tools, I still think nothing will ever compare to the MLS for a data provider that allows us to do really high level research.

But I would also say, you know, if I took away the MLS from me today, Pace and Jerry, I don't think it affects my bottom line income going to my family's bank account at all. No. You know what I mean? I would find other tools. I would say in Texas would be huge in the non-disclosure. You know, Texas is a really, really, really big one, a ton of great markets in Texas, and it's non-disclosure so having access to the MLS is a big advantage there because you don't know what the properties are really closing for unless maybe you get a propellio or something like that.

Yeah. You know, I've never had access to the MLS. Me personally, but I married a real estate agent. And so I look at it and I go, Hey, I tell her, I go, Hey, look at this house, right? I mean, not that I couldn't just look it up. But honestly, guys, I'm like, I hate being on the computer. I'd rather be on a phone. And also, my favorite lead gen is what Brent and Jerry do right now, which is inbound. That's what I did for six years. What did I need MLS access for when somebody called me and said, Come over and look at my house? I wasn't pulling lists for the first six years of my business. So I never need to go on the MLS. I wasn't looking expireds. I wasn't going through any of that kind of stuff. So I got used to the business without that. And then when we list our properties, I just hired my wife, Laura, and I never had to deal with anything.

Right.

And I paid her one percent. She listed all the properties. She did a great job of it. So I really have never spent any time in the MLS. I spend all my time now either on PropWire or DealSauce, depending on what I'm trying to do. And that's all I need. So it just kind of depends on, I think, personality-wise. Brent and Jerry, you've been in the business longer than me. Plus, you guys were both, or Brent, you were an agent before you jumped in the business, so you're very used to it.

Jerry, I don't know if you were an agent before you jumped in the business, were you? Yeah, well, I started in 2004, and at that time, you could not do any research if you didn't have the MLS. I mean, you were dead in the water. in 2004 all the way to probably 2010 or so, 'cause there just was no other option. So I got it 'cause I was pretty much forced to, I couldn't comp or do any research whatsoever without it. And then I just kept it and, you know, we do monetize it quite a bit. Like if you, we will list if the seller doesn't want a low cash, an innovation, creative, and they just want retail, we'll offer to list it for 'em. Now, I don't wanna do that work, but we have someone on our team that'll manage that. you can get referrals. So if you don't want to list it, but somebody wants a listing, you can say, hey, let me put you in touch with so and so. You can split the commission with them. Like, my license makes me a lot of money by having it, but it's not the main thing. Or I would, I, I'd survive just fine without it. In fact, I go back and forth on keeping it all the time. But, you know, now, if you're in a state that's, that's regulated, that's requiring it, you, you might want it, and. If you're in a state that's not regulated, you might want to get it because it's probably coming. I mean, they're pretty much, most regulation is requiring a license of some sort. Not all of them, but a lot of them are. That might be a reason too.

So Charles Madden says, well, the question was geared to newbies who are inside wholesaling. Yep, totally get that, Charles. I think we answered it in that regard. It gets scary because we are told to do agent outreach. I do agent outreach live on YouTube and I have never had a license. And when the agent asked me if I'm licensed, I say, Absolutely not. Why would I will literally tell an agent, why would I do that? And I know that that's not polite or kind. I just nip it in the bud immediately. I go, Absolutely not. I am not licensed. I am a real estate investor. What do I need a license for? I buy houses. I don't sell them for other people. And I think you've seen that, Charles, if you've known me for any amount of time. And the other one is Gator Method. What do you need a license for to lend money to anybody? That's not a thing. You don't need that for anything. So I think a lot of times people will do this thing that Brent Daniels taught me a long time ago. It's called Creative Avoidance. Yeah.

You have to finance it, is it?

No, well, no. It's creative non-finance where you don't make any money because you come up with things in your mind of why you shouldn't pick up the phone.

By the way, Charles is not talking about wholesaling. He's talking about whole sailing.

Oh, like selling on the ocean? I freaking love that.

Yeah, that's what he said.

Sub to Shanna says, I love sailing. I love that. Charles, it's a great question. It really, really is. Jalabi 99 says, I'm very pragmatic. I, when I need to get a real estate license to assign contracts in a particular state, then I will get one, which is what Jerry was just saying. Until then, I won't. It's not that big of a deal. I agree 100%. It's not that I'm, I'm anti-establishment it's not that I'm anti-real estate agents. Everybody on my team is licensed. Molly, Jade. Kelly, Shelly, like every girl on my team is a licensed real estate agent. And I actually don't even know why they have their licenses. We don't none of them list the properties for us when we flip them. My wife is still licensed. She will help friends and family members buy houses. She just closed on a deal Friday for my sister. But outside of that, I don't know anybody in my business that actually needs a license to do anything in wholesaling, fixing and flipping or buying and holding. I think most of the people that have licenses are either A, like Jerry and Brent, where they grew up in the business before technology was so prevalent that there's now technology like Prop Wire that is as good for an investor like me as the MLS would ever be. I don't really care about all the little details. I'm aware of the filters. In fact, the filters in the MLS, when I look at them, they overwhelm me and I don't want to be looking at them. Truly, there's so many options, right? And then the other reason why you would want your license is if you're in Illinois or maybe North Carolina or one of these other 11 states that are currently making wholesale challenging for a non-licensed individual. Scott Williams says, I love PropWire. I think just about everybody does. Yeah, this is a good point too. You can always squat up with the real estate agent if for some reason you need that. I know a lot of people in our communities TTP, the Iguana Tribe, Sub-2, Astro Flipping, they all in Illinois, they're just teaming up with each other.

You want a really easy hack for that too?

Always.

Go to a real estate agent who you're friends with in your market and then offer to pay their MLS dues, like their whatever it is, 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month, if they'll set you up as admin under them.

Yeah, that's great.

What you do is you get your own login now, so you're not using their login, you can't do that, but you have your own login. You can get in there, use the MLS as a tool. Now you can't set up showings and do agent stuff, but you can have your own login as an admin underneath the agent. And that's a really fast, easy way.

To get access to the MLS. I love that. Samuel Morgan, good to see you, brother. He says, Jerry, have you come across any wholesaler regulations in Nevada? I haven't heard of any so far.

No, no, no. I was talking to Brent about this earlier today. Oklahoma just passed new regulations. So they're probably the newest. Ohio is really close on a on a on passing one, too.

Tell them what it is, Jerry.

Oklahoma.

Yeah. Please tell me it's not North Carolina's where you can't. The seller can cancel at any time up until close of escrow.

No, not that bad.

They can, but only for two days. So that's not so bad. Yes, the Oklahoma already had regulation in 2021, they passed where if you market contracts, you need a real estate license. So what everybody did, in fact, I have a full-time active operation in Tulsa is we double close every single deal. In fact, our title company double closes an escrow for us or what we call dry closing. So we use the funds from the cash buyer to fund the first closing with the seller and we don't even have to come up with transactional funding. So everybody did this work around in Oklahoma, which was double closing. Well, you know, Oklahoma wisened up and now they closed that loop. So the new regulation, they redefine wholesaling to include double closings. So if you double close, it's wholesaling and you're back to needing a license and you have to follow some new disclosure. You got to have some written stuff. Tell them exactly what you're doing and then the seller now has two days to cancel the contract after signing. That's some of the big stuff with it.

All right, Brandon Martin, good to see you brother. He says Connecticut just passed regulation that goes into effect October 1st. Need your guys advice on starting an association, please.

Well, come to the right place.

Yeah, I missed the meeting today. Do you guys want to catch everybody up to speed on what we've been working on?

Well, yeah, we've been working behind the scenes with legal and a team to form an Arizona Association, and we're using that as a template for, I think, a national association. So we're working through all the, all the things to get that set up properly. And we're gonna be, what are we doing, Brent? We're gonna be basically announcing a big launch party on Wholesale Hotline in August, I think, is what we decided.

Yep.

So yeah, we're pretty excited to roll that out. We've been everyone's been working hard behind the scenes. We've been putting our own money into paying the legal and guys, it's not cheap to get something like this going, but we're going to start in Arizona because Arizona right now has an attorney general who's aggressively anti-investor, especially anti-wholesaler, anti-landlord. And so one of the big objectives is to lobby to get them out. We want her out of Arizona. She's so bad for Arizona. So this is some of the things that we need to do. Identify a legislator who's trying to stop real estate investing and go up against that and fight against that.

Is the biggest challenge you think coming from lobbyists on the other side, spending money trying to get these legislators who honestly are not real estate investors themselves? Why are they so concerned? Is it because the National Association of Realtors spending money to try and shut us down?

I mean, that's a lot of it, yeah. I mean, if you look at North Carolina, their bill right now, which is led by NAR, is to define wholesaling as any and all transactions unless it's your primary residence. So Pace, that would mean if you buy your mom's house and you keep it as a rental, that's wholesaling. Anything. Wow.

Yeah.

And so they're, and you have to have a license. So they're trying to force Every transaction that happens in North Carolina that you have to have a real estate license, force everybody to get licensed and be agents is what they're trying to do.

Interesting, interesting.

The issue is this pace and they're.

Organized and ours organized. They get together, you know, like they're they know how to raise millions of dollars and they know how to organize for this stuff. They've been doing it for years. So someone's got to go up against this.

The organization, we have attorneys that look at everything that is being discussed in the state, right? Any of these different, I guess it would just be legislature that comes across and there's usually about 15 to 1700 different ones and they look at every single one pace to see if it has anything to do with the, the people that they represent, the associations that they represent to see if there's anything that they have to, you know, really be aware of. And I think the biggest issue that we've had as wholesalers is all of a sudden it pops up out of nowhere and we're like, oh, geez, what just happened here? Right? Nobody's tracking it. Nobody's going through it. Nobody's putting an argument to the other side. So they just slip right through. They just get absorbed. They're just. All of a sudden activated and then we're like, oh, I guess you have to have a license now in Illinois. And nobody knew. You know what I mean? I mean, there's a, and now we've kind of got a little bit of tracking. We've got Jerry Norton that's just, you know, sniffing all these things out. But he can't do it all through every state, everywhere. You have to understand what what's what's coming up from from the standpoint of.

Legislation, which, by the way, Connecticut is not passed yet. It only passed the house. May 30th, it has not passed the Senate or been signed into law yet.

Have there been any states that only got to the house and did not pass the rest?

All the time.

Yeah.

Stuff dies all the time.

Yeah.

Okay. So you do have a chance.

But once it passes the house and the Senate, almost every time the governor signs it. So it would have to be where the governor's like, oh, no, I love wholesalers. I'm not signing this. you know what I mean? But, but that, once it passes the house and the Senate is pretty much a done deal.

When are you going to become the legislator for Tennessee?

When you become the governor of Montana.

I think I could do that. Give me 10 years. I think I could do it. There's only about 42 people that live here, so it's not that hard.