In this instructional video Nathan Payne explains how real‑estate investors can wholesale properties that are listed on the MLS through a cooperating realtor without compromising ethics. He outlines the benefits (access to inventory, realtor motivation) and challenges (assignability, commission issues) of MLS wholesaling, then walks through the complete workflow: identifying a distressed MLS property with sufficient ARV margin, securing a buyer, negotiating a contract with the listing agent, setting a due‑diligence window, handling earnest money, and closing. Payne highlights common obstacles such as non‑assignable contracts and shows how to resolve them via agent negotiation, double‑closing, or transactional funding. The core of the video is a recorded live phone call with a listing broker (Joe) where Payne demonstrates how to ask the right questions, propose price, inspection period, closing timeline, and earn the agent’s cooperation. The call illustrates practical tactics: positioning as a cash buyer, leveraging fast closing, offering a reasonable earnest deposit, and confirming lockbox access. The video concludes with a call‑to‑action for viewers to subscribe for more wholesaling‑with‑agents content.
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What's up everyone? We're gonna be talking about how to wholesale real estate with a realtor. Welcome back everyone. Today we're gonna be tackling a question that comes up often, and that's how do you wholesale a deal that's currently listed with a realtor on the MLS? So this episode is loaded with good information, and what we're gonna do is break down and make it easy and practical for you guys to apply this information so you can go and wholesale a deal that's currently marketed on the MLS right now. By the end of this video, we're going to be going over the benefits and the challenges of wholesaling a deal that's marketed on the MLS, learn actionable steps to make this partnership work, and see a live demonstration of me making an offer on the MLS to a real estate agent. First things first, what are the key considerations when trying to find a deal that's marketed on the MLS that you can wholesale? Well, you want to find a deal. That's what you got to do. You got to find something that you can assign to one of your buyers. If you see a house that's listed on the market and the ARV, or the after repair value, what it's worth after it's flipped, is $300,000, and it's listed at $250,000, and you offer $250,000, there's no margin. There's no way that you can assign this or even flip it and make money. So you have to find a distressed property. You have to find an opportunity. Before we go to the next tip, if you're serious about leveling up your game as a wholesaler and doing deals with real estate agents, subscribe to my channel because I got a bunch of content that I'm coming out with on how to do it. So now that you understand what you're looking for, let's talk about how to apply it. When you make an offer on the MLS that gets accepted, listed and you're looking to wholesale it, you're going to put it under contract with that real estate agent. And what that means is you sign it and then the seller signs and you both agree. And usually the realtor should represent you, so they're motivated to get the deal done. But they send you and the seller a contract, you sign, then you do take your due diligence period. You should give yourself 5, 7, 10, 15 days, as long as you can get. And if you already have a buyer, great. And if you don't have a buyer, you can use this due diligence period to find one. That's when you would go see the house, you'd send your buyers through, and then you would assign it within that period to your buyer. Now there There are some things you might run into. The contract that you signed with the agent might not be assignable. So what you can do is you can say, "Hey, agent, I actually— something else came up. I'm not going to buy this, but I have a buyer that I'm working with. It's a business partner that I'm actually just going to assign it to him. Shouldn't be any problem. We're closing like we said. It's the same price." And a lot of agents are like, "That's fine." If agents ever give you any problems, you can double close. You can use transactional funding and double close on the property and then sell it to that end buyer anyway. There are closing costs involved. In transactional funding costs. The process is pretty dang simple, but there are intricacies. All you're doing is you're finding a deal, finding a buyer, assigning to them, and then if there's paperwork involved, you gotta deal with that. But that's how you deal with wholesaling a deal that's on the market. What I want to show you right now, everybody, is how to make an offer to an agent that you're planning on wholesaling. I just called this agent, I recorded my conversation, and this is how I talked to him. I want you to see how I navigated the conversation and how I went through it. This agent actually is a flipper as well. I'm sure he wholesales and he knew what I was doing. And we were just talking openly and frankly, and I just said, what are you gonna, what do you want for the house? And we just got straight to business. Check out the conversation. Tell me how you think it goes.
Hello?
Hey Joe, how you doing? This is Nathan Payne. I'm calling about the house on Sly Avenue.
Yes, that was me.
Yeah, do you have a couple minutes to talk about it?
Yes. Okay.
So I'm actually not in the Tampa area. I'm an investor in Salt Lake, but I'm trying to kind of get out of there because the market's so slow here as a flipper. And I'm hearing that Tampa's still pretty hot. Is that true?
Yeah, absolutely. We're flipping ourselves and have clients that are still flipping all the time in the area.
So what's, what's the situation with this one? Because I have a software that gives me, you know, distressed properties. So I call in, see if I can make an offer, see if it makes sense. If you're a flipper, what made you not want to take on this one?
It's actually my friend's flip. He just wanted to put it on the market, and I told him, since I'm a broker, I'll do it for him. And eventually I think I can sell it. He's just going to flip it himself because he's got a few of them going.
That makes sense.
He just asked me to list it as a favor.
Okay. So yeah, and it looks like it just got listed.
Is there a price where he's—
we don't have to BS around. Is there a price where he's like, "Dude, I'm looking for this, and if I can get it done, good. I'm not interested in lowball offers from other investors." Is there a price he has in mind?
Yeah. I mean, basically what I listed at is pretty much what he's looking to get. I mean, he'll entertain a strong offer, but he's not going to entertain a super lowball.
So if I came in at $250,000, would that be like punch in the gut, like too low, or what do you think?
Yeah, I think that's a little low. Okay. I think.
I'm seeing—
Maybe like high $260,000s, maybe.
What's the situation with accepting an offer? If I make an offer, let's just say $260,000 and I can close in 7 days, is he looking to accept one that quick, or is he just going to wait and see what comes in?
No, he'll accept it quickly. I mean, if you can close fast, that definitely makes your offer more enticing. He might take a little off the price if you can close close very fast and it's more concrete.
Yeah.
Kind of tell me what you're thinking because I mean, I invest too.
So it's just really like there's the down payment or sorry, the earnest money, the close date. Obviously, I'd want to probably have one of my guys that is local go look at it in person. But, you know, so probably like one due diligence day. I don't want to like lock them up for a stupid amount of time. But what do you think would get the deal done if we're like, hey, yeah, let's do it? Because I'm looking at the ARV and looks like it's like $450,000 in this area, probably like $500,000.
That's what we have the RV about, it's about close to $500,000. Right.
Yeah.
So kind of tell me, what do you think would get it done that you could present it? Because I mean, I'm looking for a project like now because I just—
Yeah, yeah. To get the offer done, essentially it would be the price would have to be just not super lowball, fairly close.
Okay.
A fast closing would be preferred. And yeah, I think a short inspection period, like a day or two, would also be enticing. I think those with a good POF or something to show that you have the funds or the lending ability to get it done. —close. Yeah. Would make the offer enticing. Obviously not assignable as well. Of course.
Yeah, of course.
This is what I'd like to do. You know, obviously $250,000 would be great, but if we could do $260,000, I would say I can—
I think I can close in 7 days. But, you know, if you gave me like 10 business days, that would even be better just in case. And just 2 days of due diligence, and I can put like $5,000 down. Do you think that would— you could write that up for me? Because I'm not— I don't have any agents that represent me, so hopefully you could do it for me.
Yeah, that's the other thing is since you're not representing the adult, obviously he doesn't have to pay that side of the commission. So that helps you offer a little bit as well. Yeah.
Yeah. So do you think you could write that up and give that to him today? And if he's— if he likes it, we could just, you know, go under contract today, hopefully, and just get it—
get started ASAP. Yes. So you said you want to do $260,000. Yeah. You want to do a close?
You could. 10 days. 10 business days if we could do that.
That's more like 2 weeks, but I think he still might be interested.
If 2 weeks is not enough, I would just say give me until like next Wednesday. I don't know if that's— just because, you know, if I don't make it this Friday, I'd still, you know, I wouldn't want to lose out on the deal or my earnest money, you know?
Yeah, the only thing is the title has to come in. That's it. So yeah. Exactly. I mean, I could put it for next Friday or the Monday after. That's 2 weeks.
Let's just do next Friday. That should be enough time. Okay. So I'll do that.
You said how much money you want to put on the escrow?
I usually do 5 when it's a cash purchase.
That works. Uh, Monday the 11th, $260,000. Inspection period? Yeah, just give me 2 days.
So you just give me 2 days. So if you give me, um, till Wednesday.
That'd be fine then, you know, because if we go under contract today, I can send some people maybe later today or tomorrow or Wednesday.
Okay, cool. All right, I'm obviously pretty tight with him, so I can just propose those terms to him and see if he wants to counter back or if he wants to accept that. And then whatever you come to an agreement with, I could write it up and execute it.
And as far as seeing it, I see there's a lockbox.
Would it just be like, you know, once we're under contract, you just kind of give me the code and I'd send my my people through?
Yeah, exactly. It's vacant. Okay. Yeah.
And please keep me in mind, like, if this one doesn't work, like I said, just— I'm kind of bouncing from the Utah market to this one. So if you have any ones that are any opportunities like this, you know, I'd love to look at everything you got.
Yeah, absolutely, man. That's mostly— I'm the broker. That's mostly what our brokerage does is we're essentially just working with investment properties, whether it's commercial or residential listings or buyers. We're pretty much doing mostly our own campaigns for property, finding distressed residential properties, commercial as well. So yeah, we pretty much are all only working with investors and we're getting different deals all the time. I totally get it.
It's kind of a scary time right now. And that's why I'm kind of— I'd rather go to where the price points are a little lower. Still kind of high in Utah. Like, to get investment property, you're still in the half a million mark just to find something that's like crappy, but it's not too expensive.
Yeah, I've heard a few different things about Salt Lake. Looks like a beautiful area, but I'm sure out west is more expensive. Yeah, actually, another investor in Salt Lake who basically sold all their stuff in Salt Lake and they used it to just buy up. Yeah, essentially like whatever they had for one property in Salt Lake, they're buying for like 2 or 3 in Tampa, basically.
Who do you know? I might know them.
It's actually an older lady. Her name is Melanie. Her last name is like Madrigal.
Yeah, I'm sure we're friends on Facebook or something.
But anyway, yeah, man, I appreciate it.
And, you know, when do you think I can expect to hear back from you, Joe?
I actually just shot him a message. I'll probably give him a call after this and I'll probably be able to get back to you at least by 5. Cool, cool.
All right, man, I appreciate it. Do you have any other questions for me?
Nothing else for you. If you just want to text me over just like a name, contact info, any kind of background, that would help as well.
100%. All right, I'll send that all over. Yeah, bye.
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