How I Closed a Wholesale Real Estate Deal With $0 (Step-by-Step)

Do you want to hear something absolutely insane? I was able to make $86,000 on one deal without having to spend any of my own money. In the next few minutes, I'm going to break down exactly what type of property this was, why we're able to make such a big spread on it, how we're able to find it, and how you can go from zero to a million dollars in wholesaling real estate like I did. Now, I'm Nathan Payne, and I've done over $2 million in wholesaling real estate profits, and I've helped hundreds of wholesalers get started in real estate and close deals. So let's dive right in. All right, so let's talk about this property and how I was able to find it because this is actually where most wholesalers go wrong. So if you're starting out as a real estate investor, you're going to want to focus on a specific niche of real estate investing. For me, I've started with single-family residential homes. I did not go into commercial. I didn't go into industrial. Now you're going to want to pick one because you're going to have to stay hyper-focused on mastering that skill set, right? And that niche. So I would recommend single-family homes. I think it's an easier way to get started. And I think the learning curve is smaller. Now, if you go into commercial, I think you're going to have to learn a little bit more. Takes a little bit more skill set in my opinion. And industrial, I've never even done an industrial deal. So I would just focus on single-family properties. And that's actually where we were able to get this deal. This deal where we made $86,000 was a single-family property in a nice neighborhood in South Jordan, Utah. And where we were able to find this deal was we used a company called HomeLight. Now, if you're not familiar with what HomeLight is, it's a pay-per-lead company. But back in the day when we did this deal, it didn't cost us any money to get the lead. Because what they would do is they would give investors leads, and if the investors did a deal, the investor would pay them a percent of the value of the property that was sold. That was the agreement. But now they're actually a pay-per-lead company that you pay and then you get the lead. So that's how it worked back in the day. And again, that's how we were able to get the leads without spending any money until after we closed the deal. Now let's talk about marketing. Marketing is key. Now, you— once you focus in on single-family, you're going to want to generate motivated seller leads. And there's so many different ways to generate leads and find motivated sellers. For me, I've done pretty much all of them. I've done driving for dollars, texting, knocking, cold calling, you name it, I've done it, right? TV ads, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead is different. Pay-per-click is you run your own campaigns. Pay-per-lead is you just pay for the lead. So I've done them all. Okay. And the thing is, they all work. So targeting and getting motivated seller leads is, is the lifeblood. You have to have great marketing.. And you also have to have a great sales process, which we're going to go into later on this video, that how important the sales process is and how to navigate deals. But let me dive a little bit deeper into marketing because if you're watching this, you probably want to know how you can do deals like I did for $86,000. Again, that one came from paper lead, but let me explain to you how marketing works. Now, most people teach that you don't have to have any money to get started in this business to do deals. You can go get a deal with driving for dollars and that doesn't require really any money but gas. You can network with people. Now, I've done deals with $0, right? I've done deals here and there sporadically where I've talked to a neighbor and they had a deal, or I'm driving for dollars and it's here and there. It's not very consistent. If you want to be consistent in this business and make money, if you're going to prospect yourself or drive for dollars or cold call yourself, it's not going to be very consistent, in my opinion, from my experience. It just really requires so much work for you to consistently be cold calling and texting yourself, even if you hire an out. Then it gets really expensive. And I don't think that mail, texting, cold calling is the best lead gen strategy, in my opinion. Now, I think if you have money to invest, you should be doing pay-per-click or pay-per-lead, because those are inbound leads. Those are people saying, hey, I want to sell, what's your offer? That you're dealing with someone wants to sell. When you do outbound marketing, when you do cold calling, texting, if you do any of that and you're hiring it out and you're spending money on that, you are going out and you're bothering people and you're saying, hey, you want to sell? And they— you don't know if they have intent or not, right? Now, a lot of people might think the competition is less, which is true. But if you have a good sales process and you get inbound leads from pay-per-click or pay-per-lead, you can beat out the competition, right? So a lot of different ways. But if you have money, you can invest in generating leads. If you don't have money but you have time, that is where most new wholesalers start. And that's where I would do a sniper approach. Don't pull an absentee owner list and just call the whole list on the dialer. That's going to be an absolute waste of your time. You're going to want to really niche down and list stack. You're going to want to do out-of-state absentee owners. Those are people that don't even live in the state that own a rental. You're going to want to do absentee owner and stack it with vacant. They own a rental that nobody lives in. Okay, so that's pretty— you would say there's some motivation there, you would think, and high equity. They own a lot of the property, right? Like, they, they have a lot of equity in the home. That's what I would do if I were you. I would go specifically— if I didn't have a lot of money and I had time, I would list stack and I would call these people that are on— and there's not— these lists aren't that big, right? So you're going to stack them and you're going to call them and you would call from your cell phone if you don't have a dialer. I would prefer for you guys, and this is what we tell people that we work with in our apprenticeship, to call them specifically from your phone and text them. So it's a number that's recognized and it doesn't get flagged for spam because these other numbers can get flagged so quickly. But anyway, marketing is the lifeblood. You either have money to invest and you're going to do inbound marketing And again, that's pay-per-click, pay-per-lead. Or if you don't have money and you have time, you're going to want to get really specific and targeted with your list that you're going to stack and you're going to reach out to by, by hand dialing. You're going to text them specifically. You're going to leave voicemails and you're going to follow up. That is, again, the lifeblood. This is what you need to do to find motivated sellers. Now, if you're looking for someone to hold your hand and help you do your first deal, that's exactly what I do within my apprenticeship program. So if you're interested in learning about how you can do deals with me where I can walk you Personally, through deals, check out the link in the description below. It's my website and learn more about how we help wholesalers close more deals guaranteed. Now that you know what kind of deals to look for and where to find them, you're probably wondering why was this deal so profitable and how we were able to make $86,000 on it. Let me tell you right now, the way to make the most money as a real estate investor and wholesaler is to solve big problems. The bigger the problem you can solve, the more money you can make. Rarely are you going to find a seller whose house is worth $500,000 and they're asking for $250,000, right? And then you can make a big spread if you wholesale. That's not really going to happen. That's not what we do. And even if we do come across a seller that's asking for $250,000 and their house is worth $500,000, we press back on that. We're like, hey, is there any reason why you're asking for that price? And then they usually tell us, well, this and this and this happened. There's the foundation, the house about to blow up. But you want to press on those too. You want to be like, well, why are you asking that? I'm just curious. That rarely happens that they're asking for such a low price right? Unless there's a big problem to solve. And that's what happened in this specific deal. There was a big problem to solve, and we were able to negotiate the deal lower because of the risk that we were taking on with this property, which I'm going to explain to you right now. So this is the situation of the property. The seller inherited her property from her mother, and before her mother died, unfortunately, she wasn't making a lot of the payments on the property, and she had solar panels that she had bought on the property, and she wasn't making payments on there. So there was a solar lien on the house. So there's a couple liens on the house, and the seller had inherited the property and didn't want to live there. The daughter didn't want to live there, and she needed money fast. And unfortunately, I think she might have been a little bit on drugs, so she wanted the money like ASAP, right? They— she had bills to pay. Now, I'm not here to judge, and it's whether she was on drugs or not, that's unfortunate. But that we were there to let her know, like, hey, we can buy it at a fair price, we can buy it for cash, we can close quickly. And what was happening was the seller had all these liens on the property because the mother who passed away wasn't making the payments on it. And because the solar panels specifically because they had signed the agreement with the mother and she had passed away. Well, the daughter was not able to communicate with the solar company to resolve the issue of the solar panels. So the solar company was like, hey, you didn't sign an agreement with us. We're not going to talk to you. You owe us $47,000 for solar panels. It was crazy. So the seller was really frustrated and upset. She was trying to sell the house, but a lot of companies weren't willing to buy it. Other investors were like, I'm not going to take on that risk. The seller wasn't willing when she was trying to sell to Open Door and other companies to sell it at the right discount where somebody was willing to take on that solar lien and the other liens that were on the property. When we talked to her, we said, hey, look, like obviously you've talked to a couple other people and they've walked away. They haven't been interested in this property. For us, if we're going to buy this house as a solar lien, we're going to have to get it at the right price. We're going to have to buy it so when we pay it, we can obviously pay off the solar lien if we can't get that lien taken off later. Where we can still make a decent amount of money on this flip, right? And when we talk to sellers, we're not like greedy and saying, hey, we need to make a ton of money, but we're telling them, hey, like we're a business, we need to make money. Obviously, if we flip this property, we don't want to be underwater. We have mouths to feed too. So when we told the seller this, that we were willing to take on this property, but we needed to get it at the price, she came, we came to an agreement. We were able to negotiate it with her where the house was really ARV was probably around worth about $460,000, and we were able to get it around $350,000, right? Because of the solar lien was about $47,000, then the repairs were about $40,000 plus, it could maybe even more. So we were able to get that spread, right? So one of the interesting things on this deal was that they had said that this mother had gone through bankruptcy and that the solar lien was going to get wiped off, but it hadn't got wiped off yet. And the seller needed the money immediately. They wanted to sell now. So we said to them like, hey, we don't really know if the solar lien is going to get wiped off, so we can't get you exactly like a higher price because we don't know if that lien is going to go away. So we're going to have to buy at this price. So what ended up happening is we got the property at the price where if the solar lien wasn't taken off, we were still going to be able to make probably like $20,000 or $30,000. But luckily the solar lien, by the time we closed on the house, did get wiped off and we were able to make that spread for taking that risk. Now, if you guys are watching this, you're saying, what, did you buy this house or not? This is how you make the most money in real estate investing, whether you're a wholesaler. I call myself a real estate investor, not specifically just a one-trick pony wholesaler. What we do, and this is how you make the most money, is we look at every deal, every opportunity, and we say, what's going to make us the most money? So in this situation, when we originally got under contract for $350,000, we reached out to our cash buyers and we tried to dispo it and we said, hey, who's interested in buying this house? And we started getting a bunch of offers around like $360,000, $370,000, $380,000. And I think, so the range of what we were going to make on this deal was about $20,000 to $30,000, right? Because we're going to give it to a cash buyer. They were going to flip it and they needed to make their profit. And at that time we were like, you know what, if we just take this thing down, if we buy it and just clean it and relist it, and that's what wholesaling is. It's you buy a house, you own it, you put it back on the market after you clean it, you do carpet and paint if you need to. That's wholesaling. That's what we said, hey, let's see if this will make sense. So we ran the numbers and if we wholesaled it, we were going to make around $70,000 to $85,000, $90,000. So we're like, okay, take $30,000 now wholesaling it or buy it and run the risk and make $80,000 to $90,000. And on top of that, the solar lien was in play there, right? Obviously, if we take it down and we put it on the market and we sell it and the lien doesn't go away, we make half of that because the solar lien was $47,000. We'd have to pay that off if we wanted to sell the house to someone else. So we took that gamble. Again, I told you I got in this deal with $0. I didn't spend any of my own money. What I did is I got a hard money lender. The hard money lender offered 80%. He gave 80% of the value of the home. So $350,000, he gave 80% of that. And I had to go find the rest of the money for a down payment. So I went to some family and I said, hey, I have this property, I'm buying it at a discount. I already have 80% raised. 80% of the funds raised. Can you bring 20% and I'll give you a return on your money? So I was able to raise the other 20% and repairs, gave the down payment to the hard money lender, was able to buy the property, was able to clean it up, fix it, and then sell it. And we were able to sell for around $460,000 after fees and commissions and all that. It was $86,000. So technically the spread's bigger, but there's commissions and fees and everything involved. And luckily the solar lien was wiped off by the time we were able, like I said, to to sell it. And that's how we're able to make so much money. Now, as, as we rolled the dice, we could have not made this much money, but things aligned and we were able to make the money on the deal because, again, the solar liens were wiped off. We put it on the market where you're going to be able to make more money if you sell a house to someone that's going to live in it versus an investor, because they need to make profit too. So if you're considering wholesaling, that's That's what I would do. If you see that you're going to make $30K on a wholesale deal, but if you take it down, you can make $80K to $100K, wholetail it. Go get a private money lender to give you $80K, $90K, even sometimes they'll give you 100% of the funds. But if they don't, then you just go to private money lenders where those are family, friends to finance the rest. That's how you get into a deal with zero spend. Okay. A really cool part that I wanted to add is the seller actually left a ton of stuff in the house that was pretty valuable, like a fridge, upright freezer. She left like some stoves. Like camping stoves, blenders. Blenders aren't worth that much, but she left a bunch of stuff. And for me, I was like, dude, we could throw this stuff on Craigslist or we could throw this stuff on Facebook Marketplace and make a quick couple thousand bucks. So that's what we did. We just took a bunch of stuff, took pictures and listed on Facebook Marketplace. We were able to make, I think, $2,000 to $3,000 in a couple of days just by taking pictures, telling people, hey, the garage code is this, and everything was in the garage and people would just go get the stuff and they Venmo us. So if you're looking to make extra money on houses that you flip or you wholesale and the sellers leave stuff, go ahead, list that stuff on Facebook Marketplace. You'll be able to sell it. You'll be amazed at what people buy. I sold a little blender for $10. Come on, like you can go buy that at Walmart, but somebody wanted to buy this one at this used one at this house. So anyway, we were able to make a couple thousand dollars through that. Just food for thought. Like if you want to make a little bit extra money on your wholesale deals. So let's do a quick recap on why we're able to make so much money on this deal. We were able to solve a big problem. Other investors were walking away from this deal because they didn't want to deal with the lien, and we were able to take it on. We were going to wholesale it and somebody else was going to take it on, but we decided to whole tail it because we were like, we can wait, we think it'll get wiped away, and it did. So solving bigger problems equals bigger deals and making more money. All right, now unfortunately, you do have to deal sometimes within this business with crazy sellers. You have to deal with sellers who are upset, that are going through a hard time. And if you want, here's an audio clip of the seller. And she would call us and she'd make demands and she would yell at us because she wanted her money now. And unfortunately, because of all the things that were going on with the solar lien and all the things that are happening with the house and the title issues, it was taking a little bit time to close and she was pissed. But anyway, you're going to deal with sellers who get upset, and that's kind of a lot of the time who we deal with. We're trying to solve their problems is people are going through a lot. So just be patient, know that you're trying your best to help and serve them. That's how I look at this business. We're not looking to just rip people off because that's just not right. We're looking to help and solve people's problems when they don't really know what to do. We solve it and we take care of those issues. So by the way, if you want to help with deals like this, check out the link below. So you might be wondering, how do you go from doing deals like this to consistently doing millions of dollars in wholesaling? And the answer is a great sales process. You have to have your sales process dialed in. I'm telling you, when leads come in, if you do not know how to monetize them, if you don't know how to make money out of someone's problem and help them solve that problem, you're pretty much lighting your marketing dollars on fire or your time, you're wasting your time because leads are gonna come in. If you don't know how to solve those issues with a good sales process, knowing how to solve those problems, take sellers through that process that helps them know, hey, I'm gonna help you solve this issue by doing this. If you're not able to take them to the finish line, to the closing table, you're not going to be able to make millions. But that is the key. Number 1 is lead gen. You need to generate leads, which we talked about previously, and then it's the correct sales process. And when I talk about sales process, it's not only qualifying the lead and knowing who you're talking to or negotiating, but it's also having the right exit strategies. It's not just wholesaling. If you just wholesale and that's all you do, you're in trouble. Because wholesaling is just usually the lowest offer they can get. But you're going to need to know how to do wholesaling, wholesaling, novations, BRRRs, subject to. Now that is something difficult to know immediately in the beginning. It takes time. That's why you need to align yourself with people who know how to do it because they can help you close more deals with less leads. So right now for me, we're averaging 1 out of 8 to 10 leads to do a deal on the paper lead side, which is incredible right now. It's not always like that, but the industry average is like 30 to 50 leads to do a deal. And how are we able to do that? Because we— our sales process is money, and we know how to do all the different extra strategies. So if you're wondering, how do I get to making again that million dollars consistently? You have to have a solid sales process. This is exactly what I teach in my Painless Flipping Apprenticeship, is when a seller comes and is motivated but maybe their price is not in the right spot yet, or if they're not realistic on the price, how do you deal with a seller like that? Do you just make them a lowball offer and hope that they that, or do you take them through a specific sales process that gets them realistic, helps them know why you're offering what you need or what other investors are offering? That is what we teach is the best way to monetize and close deals. Because again, you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on marketing, but if your sales process sucks, you're pretty much wasting your money. And that's what I thought in the beginning when I wasn't doing as many deals in the beginning when I didn't have a good sales process. I just thought I needed to throw more money at it. I need, oh, I need more leads. I need more leads. More leads is not necessarily the problem unless you have zero leads. Right? But it's, it's how you talk to the sellers and how you navigate that process. Again, that's what we teach in the Painless Flipping Apprenticeship, and we call it an apprenticeship because it is not a mentorship where you come in, we give you some videos and one call a week, and we say good luck. The apprenticeship is literally we work with you hands-on to help you close deals. We partner with you, we tell you exactly what to do on that deal, we coach you to do it yourself, or if you need help, we'll jump in and do the deal for you. We'll negotiate the deal for you, we'll talk to the seller, we'll get it under contract, we'll find the buyers, we'll do paperwork. We'll do that, and you can learn as you go. So if you've ever thought, man, if— ah, man, I wish I had someone that had some experience that could guide me through this deal, that's exactly what we do. And that's what I wanted when I first started. That's why I started the Painless Flipping Apprenticeship. If you're like, what's painless flipping? My last name is Payne, and that's why I call it painless, because it's easy. We're making it painless for you in our apprenticeship. Painless Flipping Apprenticeship. We work with you hands-on, and that's what I wanted. I was— there's so many deals that I've passed up on on the back in the day when I was new, I was like, man, I wish I had someone that could just help me out. I know this is a deal. I just don't know how to make it work. That's what we do at the Painless Living Apprenticeship, and we help you not only with the marketing, with the sales process, not only that, with the paperwork, with the buyers. We got you covered. So if you're interested in that, check out the link below. So to recap, if you want to do millions of dollars in wholesaling and you're at zero, you need to start by picking a specific niche. You need to go into that. And I would recommend single family. You need to master that. You need to generate leads. And again, I would recommend aligning yourself with someone who can help you close those leads when they— once they come in. If you're not good, because again, the amount of leads you're going to need to close the deal, it's going to be a lot bigger and you're going to spend a lot more money than if you had someone that had your back. Generate leads, focus on single family, get a sick sales process or learn the sales process. Align yourself with mentors or people that can help you or me.. And that's how you're going to get from zero to a million. It's step by step, line upon line, little by little. You're going to master this business and you can do it. I know you can do it because I've done it and I started and I didn't know anything. But now there's so many resources. Now the information is so available. You can go watch tons of videos, you can watch tons of stuff, you can ask ChatGPT any question you want, but it does not take place for someone that has experience and they can help you walk you through it. So that is what you're going to need is someone that can help you get there. And I don't think there's many real estate investors that probably haven't had a mentor or someone to help them get to the next point. So by the way, there are thousands of other wholesaling videos that I've made and you can check them all out on my channel.