How to Wholesale Real Estate, Step by Step

Wholesaling real estate means putting a house under contract with a motivated seller, then selling your right to buy it to a cash buyer for a fee. You never own the house and you rarely need your own money. If you want to know how to wholesale real estate, the steps are simple to list and hard to do well: check your state's rules, build a buyer list, find sellers, run the numbers, sign the contract, find the buyer, close.

I build the systems wholesalers run on: the dialers, the follow-up, the buyer matching, the CRM plumbing. So this guide walks through each step the way the textbooks do, then says where the work actually piles up and which parts are worth automating once you have deals coming in.

Assignment or double close

There are two ways to get paid.

Assignment. You sign a purchase contract with the seller that allows assignment. You then assign that contract to a cash buyer, who pays you an assignment fee and closes with the seller. One closing, low cost, and your fee shows on the settlement statement.

Double close. You buy the house from the seller and sell it to your buyer, usually the same day. Two closings, two sets of costs, and you need the money for the first purchase, often from a transactional lender. It keeps your spread private and works when a contract cannot be assigned.

Most beginners start with assignments. Check the next step before you do either.

Step 1: Check your state's rules first

Wholesaling used to be legal nearly everywhere with little oversight. That has changed, and the rules differ a lot by state. Three examples:

• Illinois treats doing it on two or more occasions in any 12-month period as a "pattern of business" that needs a broker license, under the Real Estate License Act (225 ILCS 454).
• Pennsylvania made wholesaling licensed real estate activity with Act 52 of 2024. The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors summarizes what that means for wholesalers.
• Oklahoma requires a written disclosure before the contract is signed that you intend to assign it for more than you are paying, a notice telling the homeowner to get legal advice, and a right to cancel within two business days. That is SB 1075, effective November 1, 2025.

Other states and some cities have their own rules, and more are coming. Read your state's statute or ask a local real estate attorney before you sign anything. This is not legal advice, and it changes often.

The rules for how you reach sellers are separate from the rules for the deal. Cold calls fall under the TCPA and Do Not Call rules, and the FCC ruled in 2024 that AI voices count as artificial voices under the TCPA, which needs prior consent. Texts need A2P 10DLC registration. I covered both in real estate cold calling costs and rules and SMS compliance for investors.

Step 2: Pick a market and a buy box

Pick one market you can learn well, ideally one with older houses, investor activity and prices your buyers can afford. Then write down what you will put under contract: property types, neighborhoods, price range, condition. That is your buy box, and it decides which lists you pull and which leads you drop.

Step 3: Build your buyer list before your first contract

A contract with no buyer is a deadline you will miss. Start the list now. Find the people who bought houses for cash in your area over the last year (county records, title companies, data tools like PropStream), plus local landlords, flippers, investor meetups and other wholesalers.

For each buyer, record what they actually buy: zip codes, price range, rehab level, whether they flip or hold, how fast they close. A list of 500 names you know nothing about is worth less than 50 buyers whose buy boxes you know.

Step 4: Find motivated sellers

Motivated sellers are owners who need to sell soon, usually because of a problem: an inherited house, a vacant property, tax debt, a pre-foreclosure, a tired landlord, major repairs. The common channels are:

• Direct mail to targeted lists
• Cold calling and SMS to skip-traced lists, within the rules in step 1
• Google Ads and SEO for "sell my house fast" searches
• Driving for dollars to find vacant and run-down houses
• Agents, probate attorneys and referrals

Whatever the channel, the deal goes to whoever calls back first and follows up longest. Most sellers are not ready on the first conversation. The motivated seller leads playbook goes through the channels in more detail, and our skip tracing comparison covers finding the phone numbers.

Step 5: Run the numbers

Your offer has to leave room for the buyer's profit, their repairs and your fee. The common rule of thumb is the 70% rule:

Maximum offer = (after-repair value × 0.70) − repairs − your fee

An illustration with round numbers: a house that would sell for $200,000 after repairs, needing $35,000 of work. $200,000 × 0.70 is $140,000, minus $35,000 is $105,000, which is roughly the most a flipper will pay. If you want a $10,000 fee, your offer to the seller tops out around $95,000.

Two numbers make or break this. The after-repair value has to come from real comparable sales, not an online estimate. And the repair estimate has to be honest, because your buyer will walk the house and do their own. Our post on property analysis and underwriting tools covers the software that speeds this up.

Step 6: Get it under contract

Use a purchase agreement written or reviewed by a local attorney. The clauses that matter for a wholesale deal:

• Assignability. The buyer is written as "your company and/or assigns", or the contract says it can be assigned.
• Inspection period. Enough days to find a buyer and walk the house.
• Earnest money. An amount the seller accepts, held by the title company.
• Disclosures. Whatever your state requires, in writing, before signing.

Then open escrow with a title company that handles assignments and double closings. Many do not, and finding out at closing is expensive.

Step 7: Market the contract to your buyers

Send the deal to the buyers whose buy box it fits first: address, photos, your numbers, access times and the deadline. Do not advertise it as if you own the house. In several states, publicly marketing a property you only have under contract is where wholesaling turns into unlicensed brokering.

Collect offers, pick a buyer who can actually close on time, and sign an assignment agreement with them. Take a non-refundable deposit from the buyer so a walkaway costs them, not you.

Step 8: Close and get paid

The title company runs the title search, coordinates the seller and the buyer, and pays your assignment fee at closing. On a double close they run both transactions. Stay in touch with all three parties until the deed records, because most deals that fall apart do it in the last week.

Where AI and automation fit

Once you have deals coming in, the work that buries wholesalers is volume: calling back every lead fast, following up for months, keeping lists clean, and getting each contract in front of the right buyers before the inspection period runs out. That is the work we automate, and it splits into three jobs.

Acquisitions. An AI voice and SMS agent calls back new leads in minutes, asks the qualifying questions (ownership, condition, timeline, price), books appointments with your closer, and keeps following up with the ones who are not ready. The human still negotiates and signs. Our lead generation stack runs at roughly 40,000 records sourced a month, 60 to 90 live transfers and 120 to 180 booked seller appointments a month, and replaced about four VA seats.

Dispo. When a contract is signed, an agent matches it against your buyers' buy boxes, sends it to the best fits first, answers the routine questions, and logs offers. The AI disposition agent post goes deeper.

Operations. Automations that dedupe and skip trace lists, update the CRM after every call, trigger follow-up sequences and send you a daily report. Usually n8n workflows, and the least glamorous part of the build.

Build them in that order, and only once each step works by hand. If your team cannot run acquisitions consistently, an agent will run it inconsistently and faster. A dispo agent with no contracts has nothing to do.

One client, Sean at Greenlight Offer, a Houston wholesaler, put it this way: "We tried two agencies and saw a 2.4x return. With White Space we are at a 10x return." That 10x is his projected profit on signed contracts, not collected revenue.

Mistakes that cost beginners their first deals

• Skipping step 1. A contract that breaks your state's disclosure rules can be cancelled, and in some states it is a fine.
• Guessing the ARV. Overpriced contracts do not assign. Pull real comps every time.
• No buyers before the contract. You find out during the inspection period that nobody wants it.
• Giving up on follow-up. Many sellers say no on the first call and yes months later to whoever was still calling.
• Using a title company that does not do investor deals. Ask before you open escrow.

If you are past your first few deals and the follow-up, dispo or data work is what is holding you back, that is what our AI for wholesalers service builds. You can see the whole stack in AI for real estate wholesalers, or get in touch to scope a build around your market and CRM.