One-Stop Shopping For Wholesalers

Good wholesalers do their research. They have to. Otherwise they don’t do much wholesaling.

Think about it.

Wholesalers have a challenge. First they have to find properties that are below the market. Then they have to negotiate the price down far enough that they can add their profit to the price and still have an attractive deal for other investors.

To ‘steal’ houses, they have to really know their neighborhoods. They need to know:

The prices of retail properties – also called ‘after repaired value’ or ARV.
The cost to fix properties.
The people who would be willing to buy those properties.

Traditionally, wholesalers and all other real estate investors relied on many different sources to find out what the ARV is, as well as finding those cash buyers. Now there is a website that can help them with both problems.

Where to Find the Good Stuff

That website is FindCompsNow. Find Comps Now is a very simple website. Just plug in the property address and hit enter. You can also register for free but it doesn’t seem like registering provides you with any more information.

Once you enter the address and hit search, Find Comps Now gives you an estimate of the property’s value, a map of other properties sold in the local area, and a list what your offer should be based on the property’s value.

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You can see from the map that there are three different types of comparable properties:

Cash Buyers
People who purchased using hard money or private lenders
Retail buyers

Many of the comps seem pretty accurate – in many cases, more accurate than sites like Zillow. As you can see from the screen shot above, you can also hover your mouse over other properties in the surrounding area to see what similar properties sold for.

But wait – there’s more.

When you scroll down on the screen, you see a list of the properties purchased by cash buyers:

Then another list for private lenders:

And finally a list for retail buyers:

The first two lists can be like crack for wholesalers. A list of cash buyers and people who used private money – are the ones most likely to purchase the wholesaler’s deals. All the wholesaler has to do now is reach out to them.

The retail buyers can give you a real clue as to the ARV of your property. From there, you can estimate how low you have to buy the property in order to make it profitable.

What actually makes Find Comps Now ‘comparable’ or even a little better than the MLS is that the MLS relies on sales by Realtors. When wholesalers or other investors sell their properties without a Realtor, they do not report the sale to the MLS.

Is it Really One Stop Shopping?

The good wholesalers know that you really can’t just rely on one website for information about comps alone. In addition, wholesalers want to keep growing their buyer’s list every way they can.

Find Comps Now can give you a really good idea of how much a property is worth, but you still might want to verify with the MLS if you have access. In addition, it would be good to use sites like Zillow and Trulia to see pictures of both the property you are considering AND other properties to see what kind of shape they are in.

You can also use Netronline to search nationwide public records. The public records can show tax values, some sales (although maybe not so recent), and information about the property.

Holla at Us

Have you had experience with this site? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Do Your Research – ‘You make money when you buy the house’ is a favorite real estate investor quote. But you won’t make any money unless you buy right.

Become the Expert in Your Neighborhood – Knowing your neighborhood like the back of your hand means you can move faster when a great deal comes up. Another real estate quote is “You can’t steal in slow motion.”

Trust but Verify – Never rely solely on one piece of information. The more you can verify property and neighborhood information from several different sources, the more you mitigate your risk.