Start in the state I live in or start in the best market I can find? I've argued myself both ways for a month

I manage property, so I see the end of these deals. The buyers I work with care about one thing from a wholesaler, whether the condition described matches the house. You learn that skill by being wrong about a house in person a few times. Hard to get that from photos taken by someone you pay $200.

Asking the thing I'd have been too embarrassed to ask: is your expensive metro actually thin on spreads, or does it just look that way because the deals there don't come from listed cash sales? Distressed sellers in a high price market can be worth a lot more per deal even at a lower percentage. Have you actually run a $10,000 fee against your local price points, or is that a vibe?

I voted home first, but I'd want that math before I trusted my own vote.

I started from zero eight months ago and picked a market 600 miles out because it was cheap, and I'd do it differently. Not because remote is wrong. Because I couldn't tell a good conversation from a bad one for the first three months and I had nobody to ask in person. The isolation is the cost nobody puts in the pitch.

@compass is asking the right question but there's a second one. @windlass, do you have buyers in either shortlisted market yet, or just cash sale records? Because the buyer side is what determines whether a market is real, and it takes phone calls in either case. If you have to make those calls anyway, the 1,100 miles stops mattering much.

Two terms worth pinning down before you vote, since they change what this question means.

An assignment is when you sign a purchase contract with the seller and then sell your position in that contract to an end buyer for a fee. You never own the house. A double close is when you actually buy and then resell, usually the same day, using short term funds. Some markets and some title companies will do one and not the other.

What your home state does affect: the rules that apply to a wholesale transaction generally follow the state where the property sits, and several states have added specific requirements in recent years around disclosing to a seller that you intend to assign, and around how you may advertise a property you have under contract but do not own. A few also have licensing triggers that depend on how you market. These rules differ state to state and they have been changing, so the only reliable answer is from an attorney licensed in the state where the property is.

The practical consequence for your choice: every additional state you work in is another set of contract forms, another disclosure practice, and another set of title companies with their own internal policies about what they will close. That's a real cost, and it's the reason many people start with one market regardless of which one. Whether the cheaper market is worth paying that cost twice depends on numbers you can get by calling buyers in both places this week.

Voted home first, with a caveat. If your metro is genuinely priced so that a $10,000 fee needs a 6% miss by the seller, you'll be practicing on the hardest version of the job. I'd rather someone learn to swim in water they can stand up in.

I've got deals running in two states right now and the honest cost of the second one was about $1,800 in legal review and six weeks of figuring out which closing offices would even talk to me. That's the number your poll is really about. It isn't the mileage.

Also I'd push back on the idea that local skills don't transfer. Reading a seller's actual motivation transfers completely. Reading a neighborhood does not. You want your first deals where the second skill is cheap to acquire, and standing on the street is the cheapest way there is.

Option three is a trap and I say that as someone who tried it. Two markets means two buyer lists, two sets of forms, two contractors you're building trust with, and your attention split at exactly the stage where you don't know what you're doing yet. I came from construction and I still couldn't hold both.

@windlass, one more thing on your home market. If you close one deal locally you'll have a buyer who watched you perform, and that person will take your calls forever. Remote, your first buyer has no reason to trust you and every reason to try to go around you to the seller. That's worth something to me, and it's why I voted home first even though the spreads here are worse.