Is Wholesaling Real Estate REALLY Worth It in 2025?

What's up, Sean?

What's up? What's up, man? How you doing?

Oh man, I'm good. And today me and you are coming— we had Jared. Jared was going to come on. If you guys don't know Jared, he's going to be on next time. He's in traffic. But basically what we're doing on this call, if you're tuning in, like, what the heck is going on? What am I watching? Guys, what we're doing is we're answering the top questions that people have about wholesaling that they search on the internet. We're here to answer them, to talk about them, to give our honest opinions and help you guys know whether today is wholesaling real estate worth it. Okay, that's what we're going to be diving into.

Is it worth it? Is it worth it?

Is it worth it? Before we dive in, First, I'm going to introduce myself, then Shawn's going to introduce himself so you guys know, should we even be listening to these guys? And then we're going to dive into that question and we're going to dive into it and go in depth, really deep. Okay. So my name is Nathan Payne. I've been in the industry for over 6 years now. I've been wholesaling, done hundreds of deals, done millions of dollars in transactions. And I'm going to tell you if I really think it's worth it today on the call. That's, that's who I am. Shawn, who the heck are you, man?

Man, I'm Shawn Young out of Atlanta, Georgia. Like Nathan, I've been in the industry for a little over 10 years. Done hundreds of deals, made millions of dollars, helped others do the exact same thing. I transferred that into a virtual assistant company so I could definitely help others scale. And, uh, that's where we are now, man. So we're out here trying to help folks live the dream, the dream.

But is it really a dream, Sean?

Is it a dream, man? It can be, it can be a dream, but it definitely has some, some, uh, some dips and dives that you got to be prepared for. And we're going to talk about that today.

Talk about it. So let's get right into it, man. The question that everybody wants to know is wholesaling real estate worth it? So short— in a short answer, I would say it depends. It depends on what your goals are, depends on what you want in life. Because if you don't— if your goals, if what you want in life doesn't align with helping sellers, helping people, talking to people, changing lives, I would say it's not worth it. Go do something else. It's a lot of work. And if you don't— if that's not what you want, it's not worth it. That's what I would say, Sean, just in short. And then we can dive in a little bit more on what it looks like.

But what do you think, man? I agree 100%. You hit it right on the head, man. If you're not in it to really help people and solve problems, it's going to be a miserable climb, and, uh, you're not going to understand what you're in it for. Your why is not going to be big enough.

100%. Because, like, you know, in the beginning when I first started doing this, I'll be real, man, I was just like, I just wanted to make some money, right? That's when I first started. I was like, oh, this is a fast way to make money, no problem. And I found out quickly that it's not easy. It's not easy. So then I started realizing, like, okay, what's gonna actually help me to get this done? And when I started learning that it's not about the home, it's not about real estate necessarily and wholesaling, it's about solving problems and solving issues and loving and caring for people. And I know a lot of people are probably like, what, you're taking their houses at a discount? How is that loving them? Shawn, you want to explain a little bit more about how we help people?

100%, man. Just like I said, man, we're not out here looking for deals. We're looking out here to help people with problems that we can help them solve. So in exchange for price, we provide speed and convenience. We provide them a good peace of mind. And you're saying to yourself, well, why would someone even sell their house for a discounted rate? Well, why would someone take a Super Bowl ring into a pawn shop? Well, it's an urgency. They need, you know, speed and convenience. So in What do they exchange for that? They exchange that for discounted price. It's the same thing, guys. We're out here helping people solve problems.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a car— I always think about car dealerships too, because people are like, why would you sell your car to a car dealership? They're just going to rip you off, right? Well, why do people do that? Because they don't want to deal with selling it themselves. They don't have to deal with all the people that are going to lowball them. That's what we deal with, right? We deal with the people that just, again, want the speed, convenience, ease. They don't want to hassle with it. I have my house right now listed on the real estate market with a real estate agent. It's not convenient. I have people coming into my house every day, people that say they're going to buy it, they don't make offers. You know, people that go, they sign the paperwork, they back out, and they don't really give excuses or a real, real reason why they're backing out. So selling your home traditionally is not very convenient. Maybe it can— you can get lucky and it can go quick sometimes, but traditionally it's not very convenient.

Right, right. And most people don't know that until they find out, you know.

Yeah. And you find out quick once you list the house, you get a lot of people coming in, a lot of people promises, and then, you know, it doesn't end up working working out like you think. I just had a— my house is under contract. Uh, sorry, it was under contract. It was on the market for a week and a half, went under contract. The day before due diligence ends, she gets, uh, the buyer backs out, doesn't really give a good reason. Now we're back on the market, wasted what, 2, 3— no, there was 2 weeks of due diligence after the week and a half, so we've wasted almost a month, you know. And, and that's, that's frustrating. And if you have to sell your house fast, that's annoying, right?

Annoying.

Now luckily I don't need to sell, like I'm not in a rush, but there are people that are in a rush. There are people that have so much money that they don't care about listing and going through all the rigmarole of all that. They just want to get it done. I did a deal with this guy who was a millionaire, multimillionaire, and he had a tenant in one of his million-dollar mansions that he was renting out, and he didn't want to deal with the tenant. The tenant stopped paying. The tenant was a bodybuilder. He had tats everywhere. He had like tattoos on his cheeks, and he was a giant. He was scary. And the old man that was a multimillionaire was like, I don't want to deal with that, man. I got money. I got things to do. I don't want to deal with this guy that could beat me up. Just buy it from me at a price that makes sense, and let's get this done.

Run with.

So I bought it, took care of his problem. So it's not, it's not always about the money for, uh, when people sell to investors. It's about, again, speed, convenience, and ease. Wholesaling doesn't have to be complicated or lonely. Join my free Facebook group, Painless Flipping: Wholesaling Real Estate Simplified, where we're building a community of wholesalers crushing their goals. You're going to get access not only to free training but tools and even one-on-one help to land your next deal. The link is in the description, so don't miss out. So I'm sure you have some experiences, Sean, that you've helped some people. Obviously we help people almost on every transaction.

Exactly.

You have anything that's popping in your mind, man?

I just have a situation, uh, that was a creative deal that actually turned into a creative deal. It was going to be a wholesale deal, but this is right when I was getting started. I had really no clue what I was doing. I was feeling my way forward, but I knew I wanted to help this couple. It was a couple whose husband worked for the airlines. I won't mention the airlines, but he was about to be laid off. It was during the time when a lot of airlines were laying folks off, and they didn't want to run the risk of foreclosure. So there I came in able to provide speed and convenience in exchange for a good price. Turns out that the house was in much better condition than I initially thought it was. So, uh, instead of doing a wholesale electric strategy, I ended up doing what's called a sandwich lease option. So I was able to get them out of the property, get them into another property because, you know, of course it's a long process, but guys, I was able to help somebody out. And that was my first deal thinking that it was going to be a wholesale deal, but the exit strategy ended up being what made most sense for the seller and for myself. And for the new tenant buyer that got in place.

I love it. I love it. And I have someone on here that's watching on TikTok saying he prefers wholesaling. Now, wholesaling, that's the beautiful thing about what we do. When I say wholesaling, it's just like a— it's a term that encompasses pretty much what we do. But really what we do is we structure the deal to make sense. Like you said, sandwich lease. Wholesaling is another option. You buy it, you close on it, and then you fix— you lipstick on a pig. You just put paint and carpet and you resell it. Great strategy. What we do is we just look at the problem. And how do we solve that problem with sub-to, creative, novation? It doesn't matter. There's a lot of extra strategies. But when we say, is wholesaling real estate worth it? I would say maybe change the word wholesaling and say, is real investing in real estate worth it?

Right, right. Yeah, that's a much better question. I think that puts it into much better perspective because when have you ever heard that it's not good to invest in real estate? Usually here you should have bought yesterday. It's always how it goes, right? So if you look at it from that perspective, I think you'll look at it from the true value that actually wholesaling does bring to the market. It's looking where you can add value to a marketplace, or again, help somebody out who's helping to add value to their community or marketplace. It's all about adding value.

Yeah. And when I teach the clients I work with about, you know, real estate investing, wholesaling is one of the strategies or tools that they use, right? It's not just the only thing you do. And if that's the only thing you do, you're not going to get a lot of deals because you're offering lower prices for quick closes. And sometimes people are like, well, you know, I don't want to get that, you know, take an offer that low. So you got to have other, other exit strategies. So is wholesaling real estate worth it? Let's kind of dive a little bit deeper into it. So I would say it is. I would say yes, it is worth it getting into it. But I would say if you're just in it for a season, if you're just in it like, hey, I'm going to try it for a couple of months and I'm going to get out, I would say it's not going to be worth your time because this is a skill set you're learning. I know there's some people that watch videos and like, oh, I just have to drive for dollars. I have to do this and I'll just do a little bit and I'll make a ton of money. And that's how the business goes. That's not really how the business works. Okay, like you might get lucky. There's people out there that get lucky, but you're not going to be able to build a business off of luck. So if you're just in it for a short period of time, Shaun, I don't know, I don't think it's worth it to get in for a short period of time.

It's a total waste of money. It's a total waste of money. And those who are in it for a short period, Nathan Payne, they are attracted to the low barrier of entry that they hear wholesaling, you know, has attached to it. You know, I don't need any money, no credit, So it attaches a particular group of people that are looking for like a get-rich-overnight kind of scheme to an extent. You know, I'm not telling you that that's all that it attracts, but definitely it attracts a large portion of people who are, like you say, they're in it for a quick season. They're going to figure out how they can, you know, get as much as they can out of it. They think they can do just what you said, spend a Saturday, drive around town for about 2 or 3 hours and, you know, write down, you know, 5 or 6 houses. And they're like, man, we found 5 or 6 of these, man, we're about to be rich. And, you know, then they understand that, hey, this is a numbers game. It takes hundreds of houses to get to a deal. It takes hundreds of leads to get to a deal. And what does it take to even get to the leads themselves? Hundreds and hundreds of calls or marketing dollars. So you've got to be in it for the long haul, man.

I love that you said that because a lot of people, they do think— I think there are people that pop in, watch some YouTube videos, and they think they're going to get the deal over a weekend.

They do. And people make— there's some gurus out here that are making it kind of seem like that as well. You mentioned it as well. You're like, yeah, some people can. And yeah, they're super lucky. They're shooting stars every day. But can I bet on a shooting star?

No.

I mean, can I track it? You know, I can't.

Well, you know, it's interesting. I was at like a coaching, like a mentorship event a while ago, and the mentor was talking about one guy who like made like 3 calls and he made a call and he got someone that is going through— they were on the tax lien list and they were going through some tax issues. He got the guy just at the right time. He ended up making like $240,000 on this deal. Right. But it was like his 3 or 4 calls that he had done deep. So that's amazing, right? Like, whoa. Great job. But do you think that guy— I don't think that guy lasted long in the business because the thing is, if you win that fast, that's your expectation, right? You're going to be like, oh, that's just what it's like. So when you don't get a deal for another month or 2 or 3 or 6 months because you're not prepared, then you're going to think it doesn't work and you're going to be out. So I think it's almost a disservice to get a deal that fast. My deal, my first deal freaking was a lot of work, bro. And I was prepared and I knew it was the road ahead was maybe it was going to get easier, maybe not. But at least I knew what I was in for.

I don't know about you. Nathan, it took me a whole year. I bought this super expensive course. I went down to the airport, spent, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on this crazy course. I had no clue what I was doing, and I thought this is what you had to do. A year went by with nothing happening. I said, hey, if I can't figure this out in the next 30 days, I've got to go back to, you know, a job. I'm getting job offers. I've got a family to take care of. And man, I dug deep and I made it happen. And I think it took that year for me to really understand. But I'm going to tell you this, guys. Nathan said something that was— that And it really resonated with me because once I did hit the ground after that 30 days, I just had this tenacity about myself and I was attracting deals and it was so easy. I'm like, oh my God, this is easy. I should have been doing this since graduation. But I wasn't setting up the proper systems. I didn't have the proper things and tools in place to ensure that I would continue having success. I was thinking, oh, only thing I'll do is this is what I'll do. I'll just repeat what I just did. No, you've gotta continuously repeat it. So you'll get kicked in the butt a couple of times doing this business. That's how you learn, guys. You've got to fail your way forward.

You got to— there's a quote that I like. It says you have to find joy in the afflictions. You got to find joy in the tribulations and the trials. It's the journey that we should enjoy, not the end destination. If your end destination that you're looking for and you're only going to be happy is when you're sitting on the beach sipping a piña colada because you've made it, that— you got a long way to go. You got to enjoy getting yelled at. You got to enjoy— bro, I remember when I was looking for houses, when I was on the streets knocking or like driving for dollars, I like crawled into a condemned house when I was brand new because I was like, oh, let me look at the condition of the house. I didn't know you didn't need to look at a condemned house. No, you don't need to look at the condemned house. But I was like, let me look. So I go in there, it's condemned, bro. It's like falling apart. It's terrible. And now looking back, I'm like, bro, that's part of the journey. I don't know why I would never go in a condemned house again, but you learn, right? So you learn. One thing I want to wrap up with and say is if you think you can just come into this business without experience of like calling or like you can just do deals without being willing to talk to people, I'd say it's it's not worth it for you. If you don't like talking to people or you're not willing to get on the phone and have a discussion, don't do it. Because I think there's too many people that get in this business that think they can make this work without calling people.

Yeah, exactly.

You got to talk to people. And, and the thing is, a lot of people think that they can spend their way to success with producing tons and tons of leads, and that it's the leads problem that, uh, why they're not getting deals. So that's two things I want everyone to know. Is it worth it? Well, if you think you don't have to talk to people, no, get out of here, it's not worth it. And if you think you can spend money to make it worth it, be careful because a lot of people, they come in, they spend a ton of money on marketing, they just fill themselves up with tons of leads and they're like, well, I'm not making any money. I'm not converting. You have to get good at the process of taking them through a sales process in order to convert. Um, not buy a ton of leads and hopefully you're going to get a low-hanging fruit, which is like the shooting star, right?

Right. That's that shooting star. So, I mean, I see it every day, Nathan. We see it all the time where people try to throw money at the problem just as well. They say, hey, well, I've got, you know, I've got, I've got the money, so I'm just going to spit— no, you, You got to know where you're spending your dollars. You got to measure it. You got to see what's working, what's not working. You got to be able to scale back whether you like it or not. You got to be able to hit the gas where you don't like it. You've got to pay attention to the numbers because this is a numbers— wholesaling is very much a numbers game. And you got to understand that.

It's the worst to run your business like I used to run it when I first started. I was just— I just do effort, effort, effort, and I would not know if I was going to get a deal. I was like, well, it's got to be coming soon because I didn't track anything. I just was like, let me just talk to as many people as I can. I don't know how many I did, how many offers I made, but really, like you said, it's an offer— it's a numbers game. So another thing is getting into wholesaling, I believe, and real estate investing is worth it, but it's not worth it if you're not willing to keep track of your numbers, be a legit entrepreneur, run a business, talk to people, and do all the things we talked about. This is not a fly-by-night business where again you just roll the dice and you can make $20K. This is a legit business that I think a lot of people, as time goes on, they're going to exit because the barrier to entry is going to get you know, higher. And, uh, yeah, this is legit. You got to be legit if you want to do this business and be profitable. There's a question that came through here, Shawn. I want you to answer it, and then we'll wrap up. Do we only wholesale, or do we do— do we work with sellers and buyers too?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we definitely do other deals aside from wholesale. Like Nathan Payne mentioned earlier, wholesaling is one strategy. Um, once you actually become a good problem solver, you put the best exit strategy in place that makes sense for yourself and for that seller's problem. So there's also a phrase that you kind of want to remember, which is keep the best, wholesale the rest. So the The reason why people say that is because you want to, again, not just be tunnel vision on just getting that quick transactional cash. Sometimes these deals can yield you long-term wealth if you look at it the right way.

Yeah, man. I was actually— I was on a call yesterday with Jerry Norton, and he was saying that he's been able to see that wholesaling is actually the least amount of money you can make on all the extra strategies that are available. It is the quickest, right? It's the most risk-averse. Like, you're not going to accrue— like, have a ton of risk on yourself because you don't own the property. But if take something and wholesale it, you're going to make more money. Like generally, like if you just like compared wholesaling to wholesaling, wholesaling is usually going to make more because you're taking it down. You're getting a buyer who is not an investor that's not looking to make money off of it, but they want to live in it. So if you can do any of those other extra strategies, I would say they would make more sense. But wholesaling, it's just, it's easier for people to wrap their head around when they're new. But no, yeah, definitely. To answer your question, we definitely do do more than just wholesaling because You can make more money doing other stuff too. Well, Shaun, I mean, I think we did a really good job breaking it down. Do you have anything else you want to talk about on answering the question, is wholesaling real estate worth it?

Man, I think we about wrapped it up, brother. But this is definitely what I want to say, guys, go out there and make it happen. Wholesaling is worth it, but it's, again, it depends on how you approach it. Approach it like a business, be willing to solve problems, be willing to talk to people, and know that this is a journey. Enjoy the journey. You're going to reach the destination, but don't focus on the destination. Enjoy the journey.

Yeah, and I'll add to that reason why I got started wholesaling back in the day. I'm sure it was with Sean and most people is because I saw it as a stepping stone to owning more real estate, to being able to pick and choose the right ones. And I've been able to get some rentals. I've been able to do some cool things like I have an Airbnb, you know, an Airbnb in Florida that I never thought I would have. Like, there's some cool things that happen. But if again, if you're just looking to make money and you don't care about the people or owning more real estate in the future, maybe go do— go sell insurance or something, you know?

Right. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, don't come in our industry and, you know, mess around, you know. Yeah, but if you come here and do the right thing, by all means, we welcome you, man.

Yeah. And again, to wrap up, if you like what we're talking about, Sean has got an amazing virtual assistance company. What— how can they reach out to you, Sean, if they want to check that out?

If you guys are looking for a professionally trained, monitored, managed virtual assistant that uses AI technology, head over to reiworldsolutions.com. Let me know that you saw me here with Nathan Payne. I'll take great care I love it.

And for me, guys, if you want to get into wholesaling or real estate investing and you don't know where to start, maybe you've joined a couple different programs and you feel really overwhelmed and you're like, man, I wish I had someone that could hold my hand. That's what we do at Painless Flipping. We make the investing journey painless by working with you one-on-one and taking you through a really structured process that teaches you how to win along the way instead of just getting overwhelmed and feeling like, I don't know what to do. I got your back. That's what we do. Check out painlessflipping.com. And Sean, we'll see you next week. All right, so here's your next step, everybody. Join my free Facebook group called Painless Flipping Wholesaling Real Estate Simplified. If you're ready to take action and close your deals faster, this is where you need to be. You're going to be getting live trainings, free resources, and support all along your way. Link is below in the description, so just click it there. And don't stop there, watch the next video here to learn more about wholesaling strategies that will help you get your next deal faster. Click it now and let's keep the momentum going.