Buyers first or sellers first, in a market I have never set foot in

Sellers first, every time. I've never once had trouble finding a buyer for a contract that was actually cheap. I've had plenty of trouble finding a seller. The buyer list you build with no deal is a list of people who were polite to you on the phone, and half of them stop answering when you finally call with something real. Your $131,000 problem wasn't a buyer list problem, it was a comps problem, and you can fix comps in an afternoon.

Buyers first. flint, you can say comps fix it in an afternoon because you already know what a rehabber pays in your market. keystone doesn't know that in a market 700 miles out, and the assessor site won't tell him. Six months of research here and the single most useful thing I've collected is a spreadsheet of what four flippers in my target county actually said they'd pay per square foot. Took two weeks of calls and it cost nothing.

Both paths are answering the same question, which is what price a local investor will pay for the property in its current condition. That number is your buy box, meaning the range of price, area, and condition you're willing to put under contract. A cash buyer list is just a set of investors in that market who buy with their own money and don't need a lender's approval, so they can close on your timeline.

Calling buyers gets you that number directly from the people paying it. Calling sellers gets you a contract, and then the market tells you whether your number was right, which is a more expensive way to learn.

One thing worth knowing before you pick a market at all, keystone. Sale prices are not public record in roughly a dozen states, so in some markets you can pull recent sold comps from data platforms easily and in others you cannot, and you'll be relying more heavily on what investors and agents tell you. Check which kind of state you're entering.

Separately, the rules that govern how you advertise a property you have under contract but do not own, and whether that requires a license or specific written disclosure, are set state by state and have been changing. Confirm what applies in your new market with an attorney licensed in that state before your first call, and get the answer in writing. That answer sometimes changes which market is worth the 12 hours a week.

Dumb question from someone still figuring out which strategy fits. How do you find cash buyers in a place you've never been? I understand finding sellers, you pull a list and call it. Buyers seem invisible.

kestrel, not dumb. In my home market I got mine three ways. Public deed records where the buyer was an LLC and there was no mortgage recorded, which usually means a cash purchase. Two came from a title closer who'd seen the same names on ten settlement statements. And one walked up to me at a county auction. The records method transfers to any market where deeds are searchable online, which is most of them, though how much detail you get varies a lot by county.

Following this because I'm two weeks in and everything is new. How many buyers is enough to start? Four? Twenty?

rigging, I'd say enough that no single one of them can kill your deal. I'm still list building and not buying yet, but the buyer calls changed my thinking more than any course did. One guy told me he pays 68% of retail minus repairs in the outer zips and 74% closer in. I had been running 70% flat across the whole county. That one sentence would have saved keystone his earnest money.

Buyers first, and specifically ask them how they estimate repairs, because that's where the disagreement actually lives. I do the renovation side. Your buyer's number and your number differ mostly on scope. You look at a photo set and see paint and carpet, he's seen the same house four times and knows the panel and the sewer line are going too. That's another $14,000 and your assignment is dead. Ask two buyers what a full cosmetic rehab costs per square foot in that market and write down both answers.

What does each path actually cost though? Buyers first, as far as I can tell, is a phone and some hours. Sellers first is data subscription plus skip tracing plus dial minutes plus earnest money at risk. If I'm working out my first deal budget, the cheap path going first seems obvious. keystone, what did your first market cost you in the five weeks before that first contract?

Question before I vote. Does a buyer list go stale? If I spend three weeks in February collecting fifteen buyers and don't have a contract until June, are those conversations still worth anything, or am I starting over? I ask because I am slow at everything and this matters to me more than it might to flint.

anchor, they go partly stale. Buyers fill up. I sit on the money side and I've told wholesalers no in June that I'd have said yes to in February, purely because my cash was tied up in two projects. So the list keeps value but the availability doesn't.

keystone, the harder thing for you is that a contract alone doesn't move me. When someone I've never met sends me a deal, I want to know who they are, what they've closed, and whether the title company they picked has done an assignment like this before. Your three closed deals are worth something, but they're worth something in a market I don't operate in. Sellers first means your first buyer conversation is a cold pitch with a clock on it, and that's a weak position.

The paperwork answer sits with canton. If you're going sellers first, the whole plan rests on your inspection or due diligence window being long enough to find a buyer and get proof of funds you actually believe. I've read contracts where that window was seven days and the wholesaler had a five day marketing problem. Also check that your purchase contract is assignable on its face and that your state and your title company both accept the mechanism you plan to use, because that varies and title companies within one state don't all handle it the same way. Ask the closer directly, in writing, before you sign anything.

We do both in the same week on my small service team, because the two activities need different kinds of attention. Buyer calls are relationship work and they need me. Seller list pulling and first-touch texting is process work, and my part-timer does it for $18 an hour. keystone at 12 hours a week you don't have two people, so the parallel answer might not be available to you. That's the real constraint here, not the theory.

Worth saying the answer flips on asset type. I look at land, and there are maybe five real buyers for a given rural parcel type in a whole region. If I went sellers first on land I'd have contracts nobody wants. Houses have enough buyers that flint's approach can work. Thin buyer pool means you find the pool first.

Buyers first. It's slower and it's less exciting and it's the version where you don't lose $2,000 of earnest money learning something a phone call would have told you.

I'd put a step ahead of both. Before either list, find out what that state requires of you when you market a property you have under contract and don't own, and whether an assignment fee has to be disclosed in a specific form. Those rules are set state by state and several states have changed them recently, so an attorney licensed there needs to give you the answer. I say it first because if the answer is unfavorable, you've spent three weeks of a 12 hour week on a market you should skip. Structure before activity.

warrant is right that the order matters less than knowing the rules, but I'd add that one good local agent gets you a lot of both sides at once. I'm sitting for my license now and the agents I've talked to in my target area already know which investors close and which ones tie things up and walk. That's a buyer list with a credibility filter on it. keystone, the fourth poll option is underrated.

This argument is identical to whether you hire crew before you have jobs, which I dealt with for five years in a service business. I got burned doing it in that order. But I also spent a year turning down work I couldn't staff. What I settled on was one confirmed relationship on the supply side and then go sell hard. For keystone that's maybe three real buyers, not fifteen, then dial sellers.

Ask your buyers who their contractor is and then call the contractor. Trades talk, and he'll give you a straighter repair number than the investor will, because the investor is negotiating with you and the contractor isn't.

Reading as an outsider here. If the buyers tell you what they pay, doesn't every wholesaler in that market end up offering sellers the same number? Or do the buyers give different answers to different people?

Tried this today after reading the thread. Twenty deed records pulled, six numbers found, called all six, two answered, one said he's not buying until spring and one told me to email him. So one useful conversation out of twenty records. Slower than I expected but it cost me nothing and two hours.

marlow, they give different answers depending on how busy they are and whether they think you're real.

keystone, I'm the cautionary version of flint's plan. Contract at $88,500 on a small brick ranch, one buyer lined up, he'd bought two from me before. Nine days before closing his lender for a different project fell apart and he pulled out. I had four days and no second buyer in a market where I knew exactly one person. Got an extension by giving up $1,900 of a $10,400 fee. If I'd had three buyers instead of one that call takes twenty minutes.

quarry's story is the whole thread in one paragraph. The list isn't for finding a buyer, it's for having a second one.

Parallel, and I say that as someone whose main problem is analyzing forever. Pure buyers first gives me a legitimate reason to spend six weeks not calling sellers, and I know myself well enough to know I'd take it. Three buyer calls a week alongside the dialing keeps the deadline real. keystone, at 12 hours that's maybe an hour of buyer calls and the rest sellers.

Changing my vote to parallel after quarry and canton. My reasoning was that you need the number before you offer, and that holds. But three weeks of pure buyer research is exactly the trap I've been in for six months, and windlass named it. One hour a week of buyer calls forever is better than three weeks of them once.

keystone never answered my cost question so I'll guess from my own budget. Data platform $99 to $250 a month depending on what you pull, skip tracing maybe 8 to 20 cents a record, dialer another $100ish, earnest money $500 to $2,000 per contract at risk. Buyer calls are $0 and the deed records are free in most counties. That gap is why I'm voting buyers first even though half the thread landed on parallel. The cheap thing goes first when the expensive thing depends on it.