Just a few years ago, Cody was selling insurance and didn’t know much about Real Estate. He heard about a little niche known as “Wholesaling” and got interested. He quickly decided to go “All in” on Wholesaling and generated over $500,000 in his first year and has since created a 7 figure Wholesaling business.
After going to a seminar in Utah, Cody jumped in to wholesaling. He took on what advice he was given and found a mentor. In 2015, Cody started listening to every real estate investing podcast he could find and that was it. He found a mentor and got in to wholesaling as fast as he could!
Wholesaling appealed to Cody because it was a great start. “I started with the end in mind,” he says. “You’ve got to build a cash buyers list. If you don’t have an end game in mind, it doesn’t matter because you can’t do anything with it.”
Building cash buyers is simple. There are a few ways to find them:
1 - Go to REIA meetings in your local town.
2 - Get on the phone on Craigslist. Call land lords or people trying to sell their rentals, they’re always interested in listening to what a wholesaler has to say. You want to look at a vacant landlord. See if those landlords are willing to sell. If they are, great! If they’re not, then try to see if they’re interested in becoming a cash buyer. Take notes from them on where they would prefer their properties to be, and boom. You just got another buyer to add to your list!
3 - Get with a realtor and have them run all of the cash deals that have been done in a certain market. From that list, look for the address and names of the buyer on the title and add them to your direct mail list. By doing this, you can see what they’re willing to buy for, and how active they are in purchasing for cash.
The bigger the buyers list, the better. 600 or more is preferable for such a large market like Salt Lake City. If you can get 20 people to inspect a home at the same time, you’ve just build up a feeding frenzy. Making scarcity and providing competition drives up your properties prices, which makes your profit even better. You want people to pay top dollar for your deals.
Because Cody markets the contract and not the property, he sends out a suggested price for the house in the promotional material material. That way, you can use that as a negotiation point to drive your profit.
Cody does anywhere from 7 - 10 deals a month, and every time there are always multiple buyers interested. Even though the market has been competitive, Cody is still bringing in a great flow of business!
A question Cody gets asked a lot is “Why don’t you just keep the properties to fix and flip?” The answer is simple:
If Cody can focus on one thing really well, and continue to do it really well, then why not keep doing that? With house flippers, you have to focus on so many things. You have to deal with contractors, title companies, realtors, all of that. When you’re wholesaling, you don’t have to. “I’m in and out quick,” Cody said.
When it comes to marketing, it’s about 3 things.
The right thing, to the right person, at the right time.
In his first year, Cody had a budget of $1200 for marketing with direct mail. He was told to get uncomfortable because that’s where the profit comes from. At day 44 in his mentoring program, his first deal landed him $24,000.
That covered the course, the marketing, and still had a lot left over. So now, Cody puts aside 50% of his profit toward marketing so that he can continue to grow his business.
Over all, marketing is expensive. It needs to be. But you have to hit a lot of people or else you won’t hear back. $1200 is a great starting point, but you need to keep your marketing budget up to make sure you’re marketing the right way.
