Real Estate Wholesaling-Report from the Field

From the desk of C.J Lauria

As a real estate mentor with students across the U.S., I have been getting reports from my joint venture protégés about their individual experiences.  The company I founded, Mentor for Life!™, works with driven entrepreneurs in their respective local territories.  There is one comment I am getting more than all else and it has to do with the challenges each small business person typically encounters on their own.

Before I get to that I want to address the fact that anyone that desires to make a go of it in real estate investing needs to assess their intentions and frame of mind prior to writing their first offer.  In fact, I feel it is imperative that every new prospective real estate investor, whether wholesaler or “Fix and Flipper,” should be mentally prepared to 1) make sacrifices and 2) wait patiently.

Those in Mentor for Life!™ often hear me talk about “stuffing the pipeline” with deals.  There are very good reasons for this.  For one thing, many deals take time to close for one reason or another.  It would be foolish to start prospecting for a property and then do nothing at all until the transaction actually closes.  Stuff the pipeline with deals so multiple opportunities can be cultivated simultaneously.

Secondly, it’s a fact of business that deals “go south” or fall through.  How many offers might you make before one is accepted?  Anyway, if we have the proverbial pipeline stuffed with prospects we won’t as likely be overtaken with disappointment if we lose one.  There would be others in the mix.

Now let’s return to the field.  I often hear my new students overly-anxious about closing on a certain property and as a result I have to get them to step back momentarily and take a breather from the negotiations.  If their frame of mind is in a state of scarcity they will likely enter negotiations handicapped and either leave money on the table or lose the opportunity altogether.  This is just another advantage of having over two decades of real, hands on experience.  It is experience that I am glad to share with all my JV partners.