A YouTube interview (Feb 25, 2021) where Scott Bossman asks Mike Zaino how to buy a first property from a wholesaler. Key advice: treat a wholesale listing as an accepted offer and run your own due diligence (verify very recent comps—within the last month—check for a provided due-diligence report and photos, run a chain-of-title search). Transaction notes: typically no doc fee (but some sellers accept a small good-faith payment, e.g., ~$100, to start paperwork); closing is a simple deed recording. Recommended comp sources: Lands of America, Zillow, LandMoto, Google searches for subdivision listings, and county assessor/sales records.
Chapters
Here's his question. This is a good, good question for you, Mike Zaino. What are the steps I should take if I'm buying my first property from a wholesaler? Any specific steps I should take? I'm new to the toolkit. That's a great question.
Treat the. Treat the wholesale deal as an accepted offer. What do I mean by that? Still do your due diligence. Don't just say, hey, this is not a land investor, good to go. Treat it like an accepted offer. Make sure you do your own due diligence. Make sure you double check the comps, and that's number one. I think the first thing I would say to that, Scott, is treat it like it's an accepted offer and work from there. As I hear you cracking the beer.
Switching from whiskey to beer. Yes. I mean, what would you say? So, you know, I think there might be a tendency to be very trustworthy of someone in our land. Geek group. Now, that could be good and bad. Right. So I think what Mike says, I think you need to stay. Stay true to your principles, the principles within your business, and treat it like an accepted offer. Do your due diligence. Because you may find in your due diligence. We just talked about this, Mike, on the roundtable this week. We talked about wholesaling and how some people in the community think that there are some really aggressive wholesale prices out there right now. And, And I would agree. I think I see that sometimes. But wholesale, retail. Wholesale, yeah. But. But what it comes down to is you really need to analyze what the market is doing right now. And you know, you're pricing from three, four months ago, six. Six to 12 months ago. Your idea of the price in an area that may have just simply changed with how aggressive the market is right now. So you need to go back in, do exactly like you said, treat this like an accepted offer. Find some recent comps, like really recent comps within the last month, and do not only your property, due diligence. Now, they may have a due diligence report, which is nice. So, Kempton, I would just ask them, you know, do you have a due diligence report that I can see? Do you have any pictures I can see? Do your own due diligence. Do your own kind of chain of title search, that type of thing.
That's a great point, because I don't necessarily mean to run the whole due diligence again. I think mostly I'm meaning to do what you're saying, run the current comps.
Right? Yeah. A lot of times you don't have to do like a property report, something like that. The investor may have something for you and it's okay to ask a lot of people when they, when they market their wholesale property, Mike, they'll have a link to a due diligence report so you can go there and see all the information regarding the property and the county regs and that type of thing.
Short of that, it's just a simple transaction where you're gonna probably make a payment, approve the deed, they'll record the deed and it's in your name.
Yeah. Question, Mike, should he pay a doc fee?
No. Sometimes what I would do is pay a portion of it, like $100 of it up front first, not as a doc fee, but as just a good faith payment to get. To get the paperwork rolling, you know, so on and so forth. But no, no, typically there's not a doc fee involved. Not to say that some people might not charge one, but I wouldn't.
Yeah. I think it's a general consensus, I think in the community not to charge a doc fee. You know, I think to me the doc fee justifies some of the work you've done. Right. Like, yeah, it's not. Not hard. It's honestly not hard to sell a property wholesale.
No.
Like you don't have to market that.
Thing and the Right. And the doc fee gets you some more money for the marketing and all that is what you're saying on our traditional kind of.
You recoup your costs. Right?
Yeah.
So she. With the marketing, that type of thing. So anyway, Dave lefurb, the. I can never say his name. Dave lefurber, February. It's like Favre. It's like Favre, Dave. He says hello. Captain's Captain says so for comps, Mike, in looking at these property or at this property, he's using Lands of America and Zillow. Where else should he look for comps?
I would look on land Moto for sure. And you know, I think Google search just the subdivision and see what you come up with for. Because you'll find other land sellers, their websites will pop up with what they're selling it for. So I think the ones you're using land Moto for sure. And then get the subdivision and Google search it, land for sale, the acreage and you'll come up with some comps.
Yeah. The other thing I would recommend, Kempton, is go to the county website and putz around on the assessor website. You'd be surprised what reports you can pull on the assessor website. A lot of these counties, you can pull sales from the last month in a particular subdivision, so that's another place to check out. Agree.
