Wholesaling Houses: The Pros of Working With Real Estate Agents

Can real estate investors really save $100,000 a year by wholesaling houses with the help of real estate agents?

Investors are commonly programmed to instinctively despise realtors and often their very first encounters with them confirm their suspicions, resulting in endless rants and swearing never to get involved in a transaction involving an agent again. So why is it that some extremely successful investors are doing so well at wholesaling properties with realtors and are able to make so much money?

Why Wholesalers & Realtors Hate Each Other So Much

The animosity between these two groups of real estate players isn’t that much different to any multi-decade feud. Both are taught to hate each other from superiors who are bitter about their prior experiences and the slightest issue only confirms this education and fosters another generation of distrust and snobbery.

Realtors hate their time being wasted by inexperienced investors fresh off a late night infomercial real estate education program that is now outdated and useless, leaving them with unrealistic expectations. While investors are often rubbed the wrong way by the realtor’s snobbery and dismissal of their ideas and hopes to flip hundreds of homes for big money with no money down.

Then there are the typical points of contention including:

· Conflicts of interest
· Amounts of earnest money deposits
· Form of contracts used
· Creative financing
· Contract contingencies
· Offer prices

Is There Hope of a Ceasefire?

Savvy real estate agents and investors can find common ground and work together to feed both of their best interests.

In fact, wholesalers can use agents for wholesaling MLS properties. Acquiring deals and selling deals through the MLS or realtors can work and there are a number of important benefits for those who can find a good match.

It all starts with investors finding a partner agent who is hungry for their business, open to working their way, will appreciate the commissions and be loyal. When this is found, those flipping houses will often find that they can significantly negotiate fees down in exchange for a higher volume of business and even 1% per deal isn’t out of the question.

3 Benefits of Wholesaling Homes with Real Estate Agents

1. Protection from Liability

This is sadly overlooked all the time. All other benefits aside, having a realtor act as your bullet proof vest and be a third party in the middle can eliminate a huge amount of liability, saving investors from countless lawsuits, claims and bankruptcy. It doesn’t matter if you are doing anything wrong today or on purpose, people will set their attorneys on you and it’s a lot better to let them face off against an agent with E&O insurance than go after your assets.

2. Savings

Yes, realtors get commissions but only for performance. Contrast this with hiring a whole team of virtual assistants to hunt for and evaluate deals, send offers, crank out marketing, negotiate, handle transfer issues, etc. Who is the pro, who brings more to the table for you, who requires less management and training? Outsourcing is great but perhaps this could be an option which could easily save tens of thousands of dollars a year too.

3. Free Time

Real estate wholesalers may make a little less profit on MLS properties in many cases but they can also leverage an entire real estate brokerage to do so many other tasks for them that they can easily crank up deal volume and can actually increase net income without doing much work at all. The extra free time and peace of mind is often priceless.