Wholesale Real Estate: How Brandon Made $12,000 On His First Wholesaling Deal!

Brandon is in his young twenties & had zero real estate experience when he joined the Pro Wholesaler VIP Program by Real Estate Skills. Now, with zero experience & with spending $0 in marketing, Brandon made $12,000 on his first wholesale real estate deal!

In this interview you will learn:

- How Brandon went from knowing nothing about real estate & wholesaling to making $12,000 on his first wholesale real estate deal!

- How he was able to wholesale a house with only a laptop and phone

- How he was skeptical about wholesaling real estate at first, but not anymore

- How we smash the misconception that finding cash buyers for your wholesale deals is difficult (Brandon found all the cash buyers he needed in just 5 days)

- How he found his first properties to wholesale on the MLS

- How he got access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service)

- How Brandon submitted 15 wholesale offers, got 2 wholesale deals under contract, and closed one of them for $12,000, while spending $0 on marketing

- How he utilized the Pro Wholesaler Q&A calls to continue progressing

- How we protect ourselves as real estate wholesalers on each and every deal

- Why wholesaling houses is absolutely the best way to get started as a real estate investor

- Priceless keys to success for those looking to get started in wholesaling real estate

- How Brandon feels confident knowing his KPIs and ready to scale from $10,000+ a month to $30,000+ a month

- Advice for those looking to join the Pro Wholesaler Program!

Here's the transcription of the video for those who enjoy reading:

Alex Martinez: Alright guys. Hey, I'm here with Brandon Burrows. Brandon Burrows is a student of mine in the Pro Wholesaler Program and he got his first wholesale real estate deal recently and made $12,000! So, congrats Brandon, and really wanted to get you on here as soon as possible to talk about the deal while it's still fresh in your mind and talk about that experience.

Brandon: Thank you, yeah.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, of course. So, the first deal was $12,000, right?

Brandon: Yes, yes sir.

Alex Martinez: Awesome. Did you have real estate experience before this?

Brandon: No.

Alex Martinez: No?

Brandon: It was always something that intrigued me because I know that wholesale real estate is a reliable way to make money if you know what you're doing. And that a lot of the wealthiest people, even if they're not involved in real estate as their main source of income, have a portfolio. And so that's something that as I got into my early to mid-twenties that I wanted to start looking into.

Alex Martinez: Absolutely.

Brandon: But no, I've never had real estate experience before.

Alex Martinez: Awesome. And you're not licensed, right?

Brandon: No.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, awesome. So, most people, they have these beliefs that you have to be licensed or you need tons of real estate experience to do your first deal and I think you're a walking contradiction to that, which is pretty cool.

You joined the program and you've been there for a while but you really just, you put the work right back in. I remember about six weeks ago and you said, "Hey, I'm gonna make this happen. Let's get back and do it." And then you actually got two deals under contract but one didn't work out, right?

Brandon: Correct, yes.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, okay. Let's talk about, first just wanna mention sometimes we get deals under contract and they don't work out and that's okay. And sometimes it's because maybe we don't have enough buyers that can buy our wholesale real estate deals, or sometimes those buyers can drop the ball. Let's just start off that first one that failed, that was the main reason for that one that didn't work out?

Brandon: I think that he decided it was too risky and they actually issued a last-minute notice to perform the day of and they only gave him a few hours to get it together and he couldn't do it so it just fell off.

Alex Martinez: Okay, awesome. But you had two properties under contract, so let's talk about the one where you made $12,000 then.

Brandon: Yeah. That was actually the first one that I got on the project. It was a while ago, the whole process. I don't think that this is typical but it ended up taking about six weeks from when we got escrow started because there was a lot of hiccups.

So, this one was a little complicated and a little daunting as my first wholesale real estate deal because it was an eviction and so I had to double-check and make sure that my cash buyer was able to do evictions, which he was. So, that was part of my method in selecting that particular person.

I went and visited because it was no blind offers. I noticed that I was going to the same neighborhood a lot in LA before that to visit homes, and so I ended up just looking in that area the most because it was a hot street. And so that's how I found that one. It wasn't even that recent as far as on the MLS, it was an older listing.

So, I got it and there was a lot of, like, escrow kept messing up. They had some issues with it, I used an automatic proof of funds generator and they tried to contact those people even though that wasn't the actual proof of funds that I was gonna be using so it was like, "Hey, what's going on?" And that's what they told me and so we fixed that.

And then there were just some other technical difficulties that ended up delaying the process. But it finally happened and now I have the money.

Alex Martinez: Awesome, awesome. So, it's real, right? You got a real wholesale check, $12,000?

Brandon: Yeah, it's real. I was also skeptical of it because all I have is a laptop and a car, but yeah, it is, it's real.

Alex Martinez: Awesome, awesome. That's exciting, man. Your first one, it's always the first one's the hardest. So, now you've done it. You even got a property that had people in it, they needed to do an eviction. Most people take the easy route on their first deal but you bit off a lot and you made it happen. So, this next one, I'm sure it's gonna be even easier for you. Right?

Brandon: I didn't really have a choice, I had to do an eviction. But hopefully here's to smoother sailing in the future.

Alex Martinez: There we go, awesome. So, first, most people think that finding the buyers for your wholesale real estate deal should take six months or you need some crazy list of like a thousand cash buyers.

Brandon: No.

Alex Martinez: How did you go about finding your buyers for this deal?

Brandon: I would say it took about ... I put in a little bit of time each day. I was doing that for a bit then I was checking the MLS, so over the four hours or whatever a day I was working. So, I did a few a day for about a week and then I had my cash buyers list.

I just wanted to make sure that they had all the qualities that you suggested that they have and I was really clear about what their criteria was so that I knew whether or not I could be the person that could bring them the deals that they wanted.

And so, yeah, I think about at the end of four or five days I had a pretty solid cash buyers list with all of the criteria that I needed to know in order to proceed.

The tricky part and I still am working on this, is some of them don't want to release more confidential information about how they borrow money and stuff. So, that makes it a little bit trickier with the deal calculator and stuff if I don't exactly know the rates that they're borrowing at. But hopefully, as I progress in my relationships with them they'll be able to give me that information.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, absolutely. And that will happen, that will definitely happen. So, just to reiterate, took you about five days to find, have enough buyers on your list for you to confidently go out there and go after a wholesale real estate deal?

Brandon: You could probably do it in two days if you just did that for two days and just ... I just did the Google trick that you told me. So, I just Googled, "Cash buyers Los Angeles," and then I went down the list. And some of them were harder to contact because they were larger corporations.

I'm finding it's easier to work with smaller ones that I can have a one-on-one relationship with the person and I have their numbers in my phone so it's not like a giant corporation that only wants to be contacted through email like that. So, yeah.

Alex Martinez: Awesome, awesome. So okay, you got the buyers and now let's talk about the MLS. Because a lot of people, when they hear the MLS they think a couple of things; one, you can't wholesale deal with the MLS, but Brandon just did that and we've been doing that for six years. Two, there's not enough room on deals to wholesale them off the MLS. Three, they just don't think you can do it.

But you got mls access as an unlicensed person. It's something we talk about, it's called mls assistant access. And so how long did it take you to do that when you tried to do that, get that mls access?

Brandon: That was definitely the hardest thing to do. I probably should have gone to some REIAs but I didn't. I ended up just making a friend who was an agent that agreed to give me mls assistant access but-

Alex Martinez: Awesome.

Brandon: Yeah.

Alex Martinez: Awesome, there we go. So, you got assistant access, you got access to the MLS. That's most, 99.9% of investors, that's their roadblock, they don't go after the MLS. And then two, they believe there's not enough wholesale real estate deals on there to get on the MLS but I think using the strategies we talked about ... You submitted about 15 offers and got one deal and-

Brandon: I got two.

Alex Martinez: You got two. Did you do any offers today? Are you working today? Or you said you were moving.

Brandon: No, I've been setting up my room 'cause-

Alex Martinez: Okay.

Brandon: ... I just moved, yeah.

Alex Martinez: But one reason why we like the MLS is because there's new leads on it every day.

Brandon: Yes.

Alex Martinez: And that's the truth. And so where a lot of people like to dig and dig and spend thousands of dollars on marketing, we just take the opposite approach, go where the deals are. And so I love asking this question, did you spend any money on marketing?

Brandon: No. No, of course not.

Alex Martinez: Why spend money when you don't need to, right?

Brandon: I don't know, yeah, I wouldn't.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, awesome. All right, cool. So, we've gone into the tactics behind it. Let's definitely chat about the numbers on the wholesale real estate deal, if you remember those. I know you're working on a lot of numbers each day but ... Because the initial fee you were looking at was actually $25,000, right?

Brandon: Yes, that's what I had put it at originally. I went to the house and the real estate agent able to let me in. So, I had to take a look. At this point I had done a few of these because I had been going to so many houses practicing the repair cheat sheet.

So, I did that, I left extra room and I think, I believe I put the repair costs around $75,000. I was trying to be really conservative so I added up everything that I possibly thought needed to be fixed, given the information that I had from the agents, and added another margin of error just so I could be pretty sure about it because it was my first deal so the numbers do need to be exact.

So, the cash buyer brought in a contractor and the repairs, I actually found the sheet before this call, they ended up totaling to $120,000 which was way higher than I had expected. And so I thought it would be the most fair to take some of that extra expense out of my fee and then some out of the profit margin.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, so it went from $25k to $12,000, right? Okay. Awesome, yeah. And you made it happen and-

Brandon: Yeah. There was also a price reduction involved in that so there was a lot of moving parts.

Alex Martinez: You're a Pro Wholesaler already, all it took was one wholesale real estate deal. Well, awesome. For someone starting out, I think this is awesome because there are a lot of people that wanna get into real estate or wanna get into wholesaling houses, they're afraid, they don't know what to do. You just made it happen from not knowing a lot about wholesale real estate and so you're at this perfect stage. I did my first deal six years ago, but you're at this perfect stage where it just happened.

What were maybe just some keys to success? You don't have to have a lot, just what was something that stuck out that you think really helped you?

Brandon: Okay, so for me I like to know as much as I can going in and not having surprises. It is a class, but I treated it like a class. I went through all of the videos that you made that were short and to the point. I took notes and I studied those notes, made sure I knew what the first step was, what the second step was, and who to talk to for this situation.

And then any holes or questions that I had I asked on the weekly calls with you or messaged you or asked the group and someone got back to me. And you can't know everything before you start, but at that point when I felt like I knew enough I just went and did it.

Alex Martinez: There you go, that's the secret sauce, you just went and did it, you took action.

Brandon: Yeah.

Alex Martinez: That's awesome. And-

Brandon: I was a little afraid because I felt like, yeah, I would get exposed for not knowing something or whatever but it didn't happen the first time, so ...

Alex Martinez: Awesome. Yeah, that's a big thing that holds people back, they're afraid that they'll have to buy this property too. That's a big thing that holds people back, they think they have to buy the property. From the outside looking in, they think if they get a property under contract and they don't find a cash buyer -

Brandon: Yeah.

Alex Martinez: ... they have to buy it for half a million. But the way we work is we always include the contingency that protects yourself so you can back out. So, that first deal you had under contract, it didn't work out. You backed out, right, and everything was fine?

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, it was fine.

Alex Martinez: Exactly. And that's the cool thing about wholesaling. And that's why I recommend, anyone who wants to get started I recommend wholesaling houses first. Because if you wanna buy and start flipping houses, usually you borrow half a million dollars or however much money you need to do it. And when starting out I'd rather ... If you're serious about real estate investing just do a wholesale real estate deal first, learn the process, get familiar with it, develop these relationships with people already fixing and flipping like this cash buyer just did it. And now you can stop by that project I'm pretty sure probably any time you want.

Brandon: Yeah.

Alex Martinez: You can check it out, you can learn from this person as well. They now wanna work with you 'cause you just got them a good deal.

Brandon: Yeah.

Alex Martinez: And now they're gonna be another buyer for you down the road.

Brandon: Yeah. His company also holds instructional seminars and so he was inviting me to a lot of those. I didn't actually get to go 'cause they were two hours away, but it seemed like he wanted to help me learn a little bit.

Alex Martinez: That's awesome.

Brandon: Yeah. 

Alex Martinez: So, we met and game-planned after this on how you can now scale this, and we'll continue to do that in the weekly calls and everything like that. So, do you feel confident, knowing your KPIs now and where you're at, really scaling this thing and probably doing at least two, three, four wholesale deals a month now?

Brandon: Yeah, that's the goal. I have known that this whole time my struggle has been to be consistent, but now I know that I just need to get a certain amount of calls done per day, I need to get a certain amount of offers sent out per week, and then that's how the deals are gonna happen with some consistency.

Alex Martinez: Absolutely. Anything else in the pipeline as of right now?

Brandon: Not right now, no.

Alex Martinez: Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm sure once you're all moved in you'll be able to get some more houses in the pipeline.

Brandon: Yeah, exactly. I'm a little preoccupied right now.

Alex Martinez: You got a $12,000 check. You gonna treat yourself to anything?

Brandon: A lot of it's going to my security deposit, my first month's rent, setting up my room. So hopefully the next two.

Alex Martinez: All right man. Yeah, that's LA for you, right?

Brandon: Yeah.

Alex Martinez: For someone else who wants to get started, would you recommend the Pro Wholesaler System and Program for them?

Brandon: Yes. If you're serious about it and you wanna take the time to learn. It's not rocket science but it's not free money either. So if you wanna do it, take the training, listen, ask questions, learn, go do it.

Alex Martinez: Awesome. Any other words of wisdom? You shared a lot!

Brandon: Be consistent, 'cause I have had a few times where I haven't logged onto the MLS in a week and then I have to go through 150 listings and it's not fun. So, just do 15 a day instead.

Alex Martinez: Great. Well, thanks for hopping on here. I'm glad we were able to talk about your first deal. Glad we could share with the world that, one, wholesaling is real, two, you can get wholesale real estate deals off the MLS, and three, if you wanna join a cool group that's doing this right now, not just in California but across the nation we have people doing deals, more than happy to have you in here. They can hop in here with Brandon, help on the Q&A calls, and we can all keep wholesaling houses.

Brandon: Yeah, thank you Alex.

Alex Martinez: Awesome. Appreciate your review of the Pro Wholesaler Program!

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