How to Build a Cash Buyer’s List for Real Estate Wholesaling

Becoming a successful real estate wholesaler involves many parts but a huge player in the business is your wholesale buyers list.

Your wholesale buyers list, also known as a “cash buyers list,” is a list of real estate investors you have compiled to turn to when you come across a potential investment property to wholesale to them.

If you find a property well under market value and have it under contract with the seller then you need to market it to your wholesale buyers list and see which investor wants to purchase the property to rehab and do whatever they choose.

Once you find a wholesale buyer to get the property off your hands you can take them the assignment contract to sign which results in you earning a wholesaling commission for simply matching a buyer to a seller.

No capital was required on your behalf.

No credit was required on your behalf.

This is why wholesaling is great for the beginner real estate investor to get into real estate investing who doesn’t have much money or maybe lacks a decent credit score to use for a mortgage.

I covered wholesaling in a few different articles you can glance over if you have no idea what wholesaling is or how to wholesale still.

Read: What is Wholesaling?
Watch: First Step as a Wholesaler
Read: Building Your Real Estate Dream Team
Read: Beginner’s Guide to Wholesaling

What is a Wholesale Buyer’s List?

A wholesale buyer’s list is a list of investors or cash buyers you have compiled and cataloged in your database.

Having a CRM like Copper or a simple Microsoft excel / google spreadsheet can help you stay organized and give you structure to building your wholesaling buyer list.

In your real estate CRM database, you can categorize your buyers as cash buyers, by price range, by investment criteria, by neighborhood or zip code, and many other ways to filter data. This helps you put the wholesale deal in front of the right buyer and avoid spamming your buyer’s list to where they no longer want to be part of it.

Start off with the basics. Name, Phone, Email, and add to it as you get to know them and their criteria.

Resources:

Building Your Wholesale Buyers List Step by Step

Now we can get into the meat of the article where you will learn some simple techniques to build or expand your wholesale buyers list.

Online investor forums
Facebook Groups / Marketplace
Craigslist
Local Real Estate Investor Meet-Ups
Bandit Signs
Realtor
Attorney
County Auditor’s Website

Online Investor Forums

Hopping into an online forum like BiggerPockets or Reddit can be a great way to connect and meet other real estate investors. Building connections in forums could lead to partners on deals in your local market.

Many investors shop outside the market they actually live in, so don’t be surprised to find investors willing to buy wholesale deals in your market many hundreds of miles away.

Facebook Groups & Marketplace

If you want to connect with local investors, search different local Facebook Groups you could join. Most cities have investor meet up groups on Facebook as well as Buy/Sell property groups where people can share properties for sale in that local market.

Facebook Marketplace is another common place people post things for sale, including real estate. This could be a place to attract buyers and investors for a wholesale real estate deal.

Craigslist

Building your wholesale buyers list on craigslist is the route I would recommend first. It’s easy to do as well.

Step 1: Go onto craigslist.com and find your local city.

Step 2: Under the housing section, click on “real estate for sale”

Step 3: Click in the upper left of the screen “By Owner” to filter results to only posts from “for-sale-by-owner” sellers.

Step 4: Look through postings from today, yesterday, and previous days for posts that signal it is an investor or fellow wholesaler selling the property. Signs may include:

Title – “Recently Rehabbed” or “Updated & Move In Ready”
Package Deals – seller is offering multiple properties for sale as a package deal
Description/Post Body easily conveys it’s clearly an investor

Step 5: Find the contact details in the post description or in the Reply tab on the page.

Step 6: Contact them and let them know you wholesale properties in the area and would like to work with them to find them deals.

Step 7: Record your wholesale buyers list in an excel sheet. Put their name, contact information, and their criteria they gave you for characteristics they look for in an investment property.

Local Real Estate Investor Meet-Ups

Local meet-ups are great way to network and meet new investors in your area. The following steps will help you master networking at these events.

Step 1: Google “Local REIA Meetings”, “local real estate investors”, “local real estate investing clubs”

Step 2: Visit the websites of the results or clubs you find and copy down the days they meet up. Some clubs charge members and non-members so look for a free coupon for first timers on their website.

Step 3: Attend the meeting. Usually they’ll be held at a hotel or office building in a conference room. When you arrive find the room and there should be a check in table outside of it for you to pay, get details, etc. It varies from club to club and meeting to meeting but there may be 20 people and there may be 100 people so expect limited seating. Arrive early if possible.

Step 4: Listen to the speakers at the meeting and take notes to help your business depending on the topics being covered at the meeting

Step 5: After the speakers presentations are over people will network generally. This is your time to shine. Go around the room and introduce yourself to people and inform them it’s your first meeting. They should welcome you and some will provide you with tips and talk about the club a little.

Step 6: After you have built some conversation and felt out the situation, ask them if they are going to be purchasing property anytime soon. Let them know you are a wholesaler and that you can be of assistance to their business. If they are not in need of any help finding deals at the time then see who they know that they could refer you to.

Step 7: Hand them your business card. It will help you come across more professional and maybe change their mind about needing assistance or who they may know. Your business card ~~should~~ MUST have a website address on it. You want them to have some way to learn more about you later after the night ends and everyone departs home. A website will be great at capturing their interest in your wholesaling business along with proving you are serious and professional. Your website can even have a form for investors to fill out so you can capture leads that come to your website ultimately building your wholesale buyers list.

Here is a link to Creating a Website for Your Real Estate Business

Bandit Signs

Bandit signs are great for marketing your wholesale business. A bandit sign is a white sign with some sort of printed or written information such as “Investors Wanted” or “We Buy Houses” and then a phone number to be reached.

Read; How to create a we buy houses website

You may have seen similar signs on telephone poles in your local city. Other signs are stuck in the ground at the corner of intersections using H stakes.

Overall, this is a good way to get your business out there as investors who drive around looking for properties will come across your signs.

Realtor

Your real estate agent is heavily connected in the community and should be able to help you build your wholesale buyers list.

They work with investors, sell to investors, etc and would be able to recommend or connect you with other investors in the area.

If you don’t have a realtor yet, get one. Google local brokerage companies like Re/Max or Coldwell Banker or whoever is near you and scan the realtors listed from that office until you find some to contact that you would like to work with.

I would contact only one per office so Person A from XXXX company and Person B from ZZZZ company, never person A and B from XXXX company.

Once a realtor responds to you fill them in on your situation and see how they can be of help.

If they are not of help then find a new realtor to work with.

Be considerate of their time though as they are very busy and don’t want to waste time helping someone who may not end up every buying or selling a property through them.

Attorney

Attorney’s seem to get a lot of buzz for helping real estate investors build their networks.

Most likely because a lot of real estate investor’s create LLC’s for their business or properties in order to protect their personal assets as well as their business.

The attorney works with a lot of investors as a result and therefore is a good resource to use for finding cash buyers to add to your wholesale buyers list.

Contact your attorney if you have one and see how they can be of help to building your wholesale buyers list.

If you don’t have an attorney you should be contacting one to meet with an become a client of.

It’s part of building your Wholesaling Real Estate Investing Team.

You need an attorney for looking over your wholesale contracts to make sure you are legally allowed to assign a contract to your wholesale buyers list after contracting a property with a seller.

The $300 fee to get set up legally shouldn’t be of concern to you when each wholesale deal you complete should make you $1,000-$20,000 in profits.

Plus the protection is worth the cost because getting sued and not having an attorney to save you could ruin your wholesaling business.

County Auditor’s Website

Your county auditor’s website lists public records for all properties in that county. You can see the owners, property information, property tax information, and more. This step is a little more complicated so I’ll try to make it simple for you by giving just 3 steps.

Zillow.com – When you get to Zillow.com enter the property address of the property that you have signed contracts on. Once you enter the property address and hit search, the property details will come up.

Then you will need to click on the property address link inside the small box that shows up.

Once you do that, if you scroll down the page a little bit, on the right hand side of the screen there will be a section that says “Nearby Similar Sales”. Once you spot that section you will want to click on the “See similar sales link in that section”.

After clicking on that link a bunch of recent properties that have sold will show up. What you need to do next is jot down all of the properties that sold within a 1/2 mile radius of the subject property.

Cross reference the “SOLD” Properties – Once you have the addresses of the sold properties, you need to go to your county tax assessors website to find out who the new owners of those are and jot down their mailing addresses. If the mailing addresses are different than the properties that they have bought, then these are potential cash buyers.
Contact the Potential Cash Buyers – Send the potential cash buyers a letter stating that you have a property for sale within the vicinity of the property that they have recently purchased. Give them a flyer with some information on the property and let them know that you are willing to offer them a great deal on the property. Give them your contact info and website address (if you are have a site), and wait for the phone to ring.

This is an easy way to increase your chances of selling your properties and finding more cash buyers in your area in today’s market.

Remember, you can’t focus on just one strategy to sell properties you have to combine strategies in order to be successful in this business as a wholesale real estate investor. Add this strategy to your arsenal and get out there and take MASSIVE ACTION in order to get MASSIVE RESULTS.

Get Started

As you can see you have many options for building your wholesale buyers list from Facebook, to Craigslist, to Realtors who work with investors, to meet ups, and more.

I would recommend taking daily action to build your cash buyers list. Perform one or more of these methods on a consistent basis.

Find a go to strategy for building your wholesale buyers list that adds investors to your list each week and then add in the other methods from time to time.

Craigslist is probably the easiest method for building your wholesale buyers list that you can implement into your schedule on a consistent basis.

Overall, you decide what’s best for your situation and grow that list!

Real Estate Investing Course & Resource Library

Save yourself hours of searching the internet for advice on how to invest in real estate. Instead, read through our 30+ PDF guides on every real estate investing topic you need to know.

This is an in-depth course where I teach you all the steps to buying a real estate investment property that I learned first hand growing my portfolio from 0 to 9 rental property units in 3.5 years from age 20 to 24.

Click here to see all the course topics and modules