The Biggest Mistakes for Beginners in Real Estate Wholesale

Before diving into wholesale real estate, I need to tell you something that will save you months of frustration, wasted time, and tens of thousands of dollars. I've seen my students make the same mistakes over and over again. And it's not because wholesaling doesn't work, because it absolutely does. I've done over 15 million in deals from this. My team's averaging 120,000amonth, and I've helped dozens of partners close their first deals. The problem isn't the business model. The problem is these seven mistakes that kill wholesaling businesses before they even get off the ground. I've made every single one of them, and they've costed me tens of thousands of dollars and months of wasted time. And now I've watched hundreds of people make the exact same ones. So if you're about to start wholesaling or you're in your first few months, pay attention. This might be the most important 12 minutes you've ever spent. Let's get into it. Mistake number one, not building a buyer's list before you get a property under contract. This is the biggest mistake I see beginners make. They spend all their time trying to find the deal, and when they finally find one, they have no one to sell it to. Here's what happens. You get a motivated seller on the phone. You finally get them to agree to a great price. You get the property under contract. You're excited. I mean, come on, it's your first deal. Then reality hits. You start posting the property in random Facebook groups, calling investors you don't even know, and you're scrambling. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on your contract. I watched a Guy lose a $25,000 deal because he couldn't find a buyer in time. The seller got frustrated and canceled the contract. Here's the truth. Wholesaling is not about finding deals. It is about connecting buyers to the deals. And if you don't have buyers, you don't have a business. So what should you do instead? Step one, go to every real estate investor meetup in your city. Introduce yourself. Collect emails, phone numbers, and stay in touch with those buyers. Step two is join investor Facebook groups and local real estate forums so you can start building relationships. Step three, drive around and look for rehabbed houses that just sold. Find the owner, and that's your buyer. Before you even make your first offer to the seller, you should have 20 to 30 real buyers in your phone that are ready to buy the deals from you. This one step will save so much stress later. Trust me. Mistake number two was overcomplicating. The business. I see people all the time spending months setting up llc, building fancy websites, creating logos, making cool business cards, setting up email sequences. And they haven't even made a phone call yet. Listen, I. I get it. It feels productive. It feels like you're building a business. But here is the harsh truth. None of that matters if you can't find a deal and close it. Wholesaling is simple. Not easy, but simple. Here's the entire business model. Find a motivated seller, get the property under contract at a good price, find a buyer willing to pay more, assign the contract and collect your fee. That's it. That's the business. You don't need an LLC on day one. You don't need a website, you don't need business cards, you don't need a CRM, and you don't need fancy marketing tools. All you need is a phone. Smart, some motivated sellers, and a willingness to make calls. Get your first deal closed, make an extra 10 to 20k and then start to invest in business infrastructure. I closed my first three deals with nothing but a Google voice number and a sheet of paper. No llc, no website and no fancy tools. Stop over complicating it and start executing. Mistake number three is wasting time with unmotivated sellers. This one killed me for months. When I was starting out, I. I'd get someone on the phone, they'd say they're interested in selling. Then I would chase them for the next few weeks to find out they didn't even want to sell really in the first place. I'd call them, email them, text them, try to set up appointments. But they just kept pushing me off. Can you call me next week? I'm still thinking about it. Let me talk to my family. And I kept chasing because I thought if you stayed persistent enough, they'd eventually sell. Wrong. Here's what I learned. There is a huge difference between someone who is interested in selling and someone who actually needs to sell. Interested. That means they'd sell if the price was right, timing was perfect and all the stars align. Motivated sellers have foreclosure notices, divorce situations, inherited properties they don't want. Properties that have way too many repairs, job relocations with tight timelines, or tenants that they can't stand to deal with. These people, they don't need to be convinced. They just need a solution. So here's the rule. If someone isn't motivated, don't waste your time. Put them in a follow up sequence through email and text and focus your energy on people who actually need to Sell time is your most valuable asset. Don't waste it chasing people who aren't ready. Mistake number four is not knowing your numbers. This is where beginners lose money or lose deals. They don't know how to run comps, they don't know how to get rehab costs, and they don't know what cash buyers want to pay. So they make one of two mistakes. Mistake A, they offer too high, get the seller under contract, then realize that no buyer will ever pay that much for the deal and then it falls through. Or mistake B, where they offer too little and the seller just laughs in their face and says no. Then they lose the deal to someone who actually knew their numbers. Both mistakes come from the same problem. Not knowing your numbers. So let me break down the formula you need to know. This is called the 70% rule, and it's the rule that most cash buyers use to purchase properties. Let's do an example. You have an ARV, or after repair value of $200,000, what the property will be worth when it's totally fixed up. The rehab cost is like $40,000. That's what it needs in repairs. You're going to take 200,000, multiply it by.05 point, then subtract 40,000 from it. That is the maximum amount a cash buyer would want to pay. So for this example, the maximum a cash buyer would want to pay is $100,000. Now, if you can go get the property under contract for 85 or 90,000, you have a deal. If the seller is stuck on like 120,000, you don't have a deal. But here's how you get good at this. Step one is learn how to pull cones. Use zillow.comrealtor.com or ask a local agent for help. Step two is learn how to estimate rehab costs. Ask about the roof, the foundation, the electric, everything. Step three is talk to the buyers and ask them what they're looking for, what area do they buy in, what's their max purchase price, and what percent rule do they buy at. The more deals you analyze, the better you'll get. But you can't skip this step because you need to know your numbers or you're going to lose money. Now, mistake number five is giving up too soon. This one is a painful watch because I see it all the time. The time someone starts wholesaling, they grind for 30, 60, 90 days and they don't close a deal, and then they quit. They say wholesaling doesn't work. It's oversaturated all the Deals are gone. No, you just quit before the breakthrough. I spent four months making $0 before I closed my first deal. Four months, 12 hour days, thousands of calls and zero in income. Most people quit in month three. I was one week away from quitting when I closed my first $5,000 deal. So. So here's what you need to understand. Wholesaling is a lag business. The effort you put in today will get you paid 30, 60 or 90 days from now. That seller you talked to in January, well, they might not be ready till March. That lead you followed up with in February, they may call you back in April. The problem is most people aren't willing to do the uncomfortable work long enough to see results. So if you're in your first few months and still haven't seen results, I'm telling you right now, don't quit. Keep calling, keep following up, keep building relationships and keep analyzing deals. Your breakthrough is closer than you think. But you'll never reach it if you quit now. Mistake number six is not having a follow up system. Here's a stat that will blow your mind. 80% of deals happen after the fifth follow up. But most wholesalers, they call a deal maybe once, maybe twice, and then they never follow up again. They said, well, they said no. So I guess that's it. Most sellers aren't ready to sell today, but they are within the next 30, 60, 90 days, sometimes even six months. So if you don't have a system to follow up with them consistently, you'll lose the deal to someone who does. Here's what we do. Every lead goes into our CRM. I built it from scratch, but you can use a simple spreadsheet when you're just starting out. Step two is we set up follow up reminders. If they're not ready now, we set up a follow up call for 30 days out. Step three, we just stay in touch. A quick text, a phone call, an email. Just checking in. Not to be pushy, but to stay on top of mind. I've closed deals a year after the initial touch point. And if I didn't have a follow up system, I would have never made that money. So set up a system. It doesn't have to be fancy, it just needs to exist because the fortune is in the following. Mistake number seven is not treating this like a real business. I see a lot of people treat wholesaling like a side hustle. They work on it when they feel like it, they make phone calls when they're motivated, and they follow up when they remember. And then they wonder why they're not making any money. Listen, if you want a real business, you have to put in real business effort. That means showing up every day, even when you don't feel like it. Tracking your metrics to calls made, contracts signed, Tracking your metrics to calls made, conversations, had contracts signed, setting goals and holding yourself accountable. Investing in yourself and in your business, marketing tools, education and treating sellers and buyers professionally. You don't have to quit your job. You don't have to go all in and leave everything behind. You just have to be consistent. Many of my students still work full time jobs, but every day after work two to three hours every weekend, they follow up with leads and try to get them closer to the closing date. Because we treat it like a business even when it's not full time. And that's how we get people to eventually replace their income and go full time. So ask yourself, are you treating this like a real business or just dabble? Because the results you get will match the effort you put in. If you avoid those seven mistakes, you'll be ahead of 99% of people who try wholesaling. This business works. I've done over $15 million a month real estate deals. We do $120,000 a month and I've helped dozens of people close their first deals. But it only works if you execute correctly and avoid these massive pitfalls. Quick question though. Which of these mistakes have you made or which one of them are you most worried about making? Drop a comment and let me know and I'll read every single one and reply. So here's the thing. You can avoid all these mistakes by learning from someone who's already made them. That's why instead of just teaching people how to wholesale, I bring them in to do deals with us. We provide the motivated seller leads, we provide the funding, we provide the buyers, and we walk you through the entire process from the first call with the seller to actually collecting your fee at closing. You don't have to figure this out alone. You don't have to make the same mistakes I made. You can plug into a system that's already working and get paid while you learn. If you're serious about doing this the right way, apply down below and my team will reach out to you shortly. We'll explain exactly how we work together and see if you're a good fit for one of the spots we have available this quarter. We're only taking on a few people, so if you're ready to stop making mistakes and actually close deals, apply down below. Now. Appreciate you watching. Let's get it.