AMA (Ask Meyer Anything): Seller Financing, A Better "BRRRR", & Do You Need an LLC?

When is seller financing worth it (as a buyer AND a seller)? Do you need an LLC to start investing in real estate, and will it help you buy more deals? Can you BRRRR (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) your primary residence to realize some serious home equity gains? We’re getting into these topics and more as we answer YOUR questions from the BiggerPockets Forums. First, a seller has been presented with an interesting seller finance offer. Should they take it? How do they vet the buyer before giving them the house in exchange for monthly payments? We’ll explain when seller financing makes sense for sellers and how buyers can create compelling offers. Next, do one-bed, one-bath rentals do well, or are they too small for most areas? How can you use your primary residence to build wealth without renting to tenants? We’re talking about the new BRRRR, or as Dave calls it, the LIFLOC (we’ll describe it in detail!). Do you need an LLC to invest? Most new investors get this totally wrong. Finally, why do investors and agents think so poorly of wholesalers? Do we ever use them? And how do you tell a good one from a bad one? Looking to invest? Need answers? Ask your question on the BiggerPockets Forums! In This Episode We Cover: Whether or not you should accept a seller finance offer on your house vs. a loan or cash Why we LOVE small rental properties (one bed, one bath) even though most investors avoid them Using the “BRRRR” method to turn your primary residence into a wealth-building property LLCs for real estate, when you need one, and whether they’ll help you buy more deals Working with real estate wholesalers and the legitimate reason why so many investors/agents avoid them And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube Invest in High-ROI Turnkey Rentals with Rent to Retirement Grab the “BRRRR” Book Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area What Is Seller Financing in Real Estate? Connect with Henry Connect with Dave (00:00) Intro (00:54) Should I Seller Finance? (07:38) Buy 1 Bed/1 Bath Rentals? (12:51) Best Home Investment Ever? (18:21) Do I Need an LLC? (22:51) Working with Wholesalers Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1057 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  You've got real estate questions. Henry Washington and I have answers.

• 0:09Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone. It's Dave here with Henry, and we're back with a format that everyone has seemed to really enjoy since we've been doing it the last few weeks. Once again, we're going to take a trip into the BiggerPockets forums to find a couple of questions from the community, and we'll discuss them and give you our opinions on what the posters should do. A few of the topics on the list are, is seller financing always a good idea? Can you burr a primary residence? And stick around, because towards the end of the show, Henry and I are going to talk about why a lot of investors seem to have a problem with wholesalers and what that whole feud or gripe seems to be about. Henry, you ready?

• 0:49Henry Washington?

  Let's do it.

• 0:50Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, question one says seller financing, good idea? Question mark. We're selling a few houses in Memphis, and we have interest, a letter of intent, on one house that's requesting seller financing. They're offering a few thousand more than asking, and will also pay agent fees. Our agent is not an expert on this type of deal, but suggested a short-term loan of three or four years, and a balloon payment and written up by a lawyer could work. I've always steered clear of anything like these offers. Has anyone done anything like these types of deals? Thanks for any knowledge on this.

• 1:25Henry Washington?

  This is cool. This is interesting, because this is from the perspective of the seller. So the seller is considering taking a seller financing offer. Normally, when we're talking about this, we're talking from the perspective of the buyer, and should you buy on seller finance? So A, I love buying on seller finance in the right situations. And B, selling on seller finance can be very beneficial for a seller in the right situation. And so the key with this is, it has to be a need on both sides, right? The whole goal with seller financing is you want to structure the financing in a way that is a win for both parties. So if you are the seller, you've got these properties free and clear, you like

• 2:10Henry Washington?

  The cash flow and don't necessarily need a lump sum of cash to go do something else. And you want to limit your tax burden? Then yeah, selling on seller finance is a great idea for that seller. If that's the situation that they're in. But if they're in a situation where they need a lot of cash and they don't mind the tax burden, because the need for the amount of cash is more important, then seller finance is a bad idea for that seller. So it really is just a matter of what do you need? And does the seller finance terms offer you the solution to your problem?

• 2:44Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it's a question of goal and then can you actually execute on it? Like you said, this is going to be a strategy that probably offers you pretty good cash flow. Because let's just make an assumption, the the poster here doesn't say what the offered interest rate is. But the average 30 or fix right now is probably around 7%. If I'm selling this house, I'd need at least a point or two above that. So you're talking about maybe 8%, 9% loan. I know a lot of people go into seller financing, you know, from the buy side thinking, oh, I can get a lower rate because this is not a bank. I wouldn't look at it that way as a seller personally. Because I am not as sophisticated as a bank.

• 3:28Dave Meyer?

  I will try and do my best to underwrite this deal as best as possible. But I'm not going to be as good at it as underwriting creditworthiness from a bank perspective. And so I would want to increase the risk premium and make sure that I was getting a pretty good cash on cash return that was as good or likely better than what I would do with the money. Right? If I could just sell it all out, go reinvest in a property and get an 8% cash on cash return, I'd probably do that rather than seller finance it. But if you're just going to have it sit in a savings account and you can earn an 8% cash on cash return, go ahead and seller finance it. So I totally agree with that.

• 4:10Henry Washington?

  I agree. Seller financing terms, I think of them like a teeter totter, right? In other words, if I was going to consider selling something on seller finance. And let's say I didn't need the money, but liked the cash flow, then I would be open to the idea. But it's a matter of a teeter totter, meaning so that if I am gonna ask for above market on the interest rate, I would probably expect that that person buying it would want to put less down, right?

• 4:41Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Henry Washington?

  If you think of the terms of a seller finance loan, if they're all gonna be in favor of one party or the other, then it doesn't make sense to do the deal for anybody. So if I want a high down payment, if I want the tippy top market price, if I want a high interest rate and I want, you know, a three or five year term, well, then that buyer has no reason to do that deal, right?

• 5:06Dave Meyer?

  Right.

• 5:06Henry Washington?

  But if, but if I say, okay, I want an eight percent interest rate, and they say, okay, well, then I can only put $10,000 down. And then we come meet somewhere in the middle on the rest of the terms, then that's probably something reasonable. So this is really about what is it that you need or want as a buyer? And what is it that you need or want as a seller? And can you structure the terms to help you meet those goals? Like, it's not a one size fits all with seller financing ever.

• 5:32Dave Meyer?

  I think there's good ways to do this, but I, I do think this is, at least from a person who does a little bit of private lending perspective, I think this is a good example of why it's hard to accept lending to people who haven't really done this kind of thing before, because they go into it with sort of an unsophisticated offer. And it's hard to build trust based off that. And it's why a lot of the times, I know a lot of people educate about seller financing, how to do it. The people who tend to get seller financing deals are the ones who have already done it before and who have figured this out and have become really good at it. And so just recommend that if you are looking for seller financing,

• 6:16Dave Meyer?

  think about what the things Henry was just saying and just get really good at it. Maybe even before you approach your first seller.

• 6:22Henry Washington?

  Absolutely.

• 6:23Dave Meyer?

  Because the seller's not gonna want to teach you how to do this. You know, like you have to go in with a very sophisticated, attractive package and offer to get someone's attention, especially in this type of market where this seller could probably just sell it to someone else.

• 6:36Henry Washington?

  In other words, if you are the seller in this situation, this needs to sound like a no brainer.

• 6:42Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Henry Washington?

  And if it doesn't sound like a no brainer, then just go the traditional route.

• 6:46Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, that's a really good point. And it probably, I think, you know, you said this earlier, but it's right, that this is probably not a good offer, because if if this buyer was doing their job correctly, this would seem like a no brainer. Everything would have been explained and buttoned up, and the seller would probably feel pretty comfortable with the the offer that's in front of them.

• 7:09Henry Washington?

  100%.

• 7:10Dave Meyer?

  All right. That was a good conversation. I like that one. I one day, I would love to be in a position where I own my rental screen clear and have this problem.

• 7:20Henry Washington?

  That's the goal.

• 7:22Dave Meyer?

  All right. So before we move on to question two, we do have to take a quick break. But after that break, we're going to talk about the ups and downs of buying all one bedroom apartments. We'll be right back. A lot of insurance companies compete on one thing, speed. But if you're protecting an investment property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, should speed really be the priority? NREG believes strong coverage starts with understanding the property, the risks, and the realities of ownership. That's why they don't rush the process. Their policies are designed for real world claims, not just quick quotes. If you want insurance built to protect your investment when it matters most, visit nreg.com/bpllc and learn more

• 8:07Dave Meyer?

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• 8:08Henry Washington?

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• 8:52Henry Washington?

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• 9:11Dave Meyer?

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• 9:53Dave Meyer?

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• 10:36Dave Meyer?

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• 10:55Dave Meyer?

  Hey everyone. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Henry and I just talked about the pros and cons of seller financing from the seller's perspective. Now we're talking about a really interesting question, and I am looking forward to talking to you about, Henry. The question title is "Up and downsides of buying all one-bedroom apartments." The question comes from Charles Burgess. He says, "Hello all. Looking at a few options of apartment complexes for my next deal. A 24-unit just entered the market, and all units are one-bed, one-bath. Outside of normal deal analysis, like market info, cash flow, etc., are there any particular upsides or downsides of purchasing all single-bedroom

• 11:36Dave Meyer?

  units versus a more traditional mix of units for a property that size? Thanks for the feedback." Henry, have you done anything like this before?

• 11:44Henry Washington?

  I've never bought an entire building of one-bedroom units. I do have an entire building of two-bedroom, one-bath units, and they stay full. I do have some one-bedroom rentals, and I rarely have vacancies in them.

• 12:01Dave Meyer?

  Same.

• 12:02Henry Washington?

  Rarely. And they rent for really great rents, because it's still a standalone unit. And so it's not much less than the two-bedroom, but you're renting it to typically less foot traffic, so less wear and tear. They're essentially recession-proof. I mean, we have an affordable housing problem. You're talking about buying a building full of affordable housing. That sounds like a win to me. I don't know. I really, really like one-bedroom rentals.

• 12:31Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I actually think if I were buying single-family homes, I prefer the more bedrooms, the better. That's kind of my approach. So if you want a family, or you want a house with multiple units, because that actually makes it more affordable. I like to think about it sort of on a per-bedroom basis. Like, if you're buying a four-bedroom house, can I get 600 bucks a bedroom? Can I get 700 bucks a bedroom? Because a lot of the places I buy rentals, there's just a lot of young people. They're sharing houses. And so I'm sort of thinking about it that way. But when it comes to large Multifamily, I don't necessarily think the same thing applies. First and foremost, the smaller the apartment, the higher revenue per square foot you're getting, right? For every, for every inch of that property, you're maximizing your revenue.

• 13:16Dave Meyer?

  So I think that the revenue upside of a, of a model like this is actually really high. The question to me just becomes about maintenance because let's just say instead you bought 12 two bedrooms. We have probably the same amount of tenants. You now have double the number of kitchens. You probably have double the number of bathrooms. And so the condition of those key, you know, systems is going to be really important. And the replicability of them, I would want to look at a deal like this. Where the layouts are pretty similar, the finishes are pretty similar. And so you can get some efficiency of scale in maintaining this type of property and not, you know, making up

• 13:59Dave Meyer?

  something every single time and needing custom parts and doing a lot of work for every time there's going to be a maintenance call.

• 14:04Henry Washington?

  Yeah, I agree with you. You're, you're gonna have to watch the wear and tear. But the cost per square foot can help with some of that, right?

• 14:11Dave Meyer?

  Exactly.

• 14:12Henry Washington?

  And the decreased turnover is also going to help with that. Because I think you'll have less turn in one bedrooms. I, I mean, that's been proven in my portfolio.

• 14:21Dave Meyer?

  I have a couple of one bedrooms in Denver still. I don't know if I've ever had a month of vacancy in any of that in like 15 years. Like I really mean it. I don't know if I've ever had one.

• 14:31Henry Washington?

  No, that they go so fast. People want them and look, six years ago, five years ago. You might've had a little more vacancy, a little more turn. But as affordability has become more of a problem over the last, especially two to three years. A whole lot more people who would have never considered living in a one bedroom would consider it now. And so what I think you'll need to watch out for in this one bedroom scenario is, uh, how many people are going to try to live there?

• 14:59Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Henry Washington?

  Right? Are you going to get people who try to have, you know, a roommate or two in this one bedroom situation? And are you okay with that? Like that's, that's what you'll need to be able to watch because like I said, affordability is a problem. If you've got people who can't afford the one bed- Bedroom, they might bring in a roommate and then do you want that in that situation? But other than that, I love this.

• 15:18Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I think it's a great plan. If it were me, I would want to find one bedrooms that had a little bit of space. So not like micro units, studio units. Uh, I just because ideally you want people to stay for a long time and you want it to be a comfortable experience and not have that turnover because if you did.

• 15:36Henry Washington?

  Great point.

• 15:36Dave Meyer?

  Even though you probably have low vacancy, you, I can imagine a scenario if they're small units and people see them sort of as transitionary that they would be coming in and out of it relatively quickly. But man, if you can attract a couple.

• 15:49Henry Washington?

  Yes.

• 15:50Dave Meyer?

  You know, two incomes for a single family home, they're going to be able to usually afford that pretty easily. Hopefully they're happy there, stay a long time. That, that seems like a great situation. All right, well, I, I think that's a good one. Let us know how that one works out, Charles. That sounds like a potentially pretty interesting deal. Moving on to our third question, which is about burring a primary residence. If you've never heard this acronym, BURSTANT, or buy, rehab, refinance, rent and repeat. And this question from Brody Villier. I didn't hear that French accent. Was that good? I took French for six years.

• 16:27Henry Washington?

  Villier?

• 16:29Dave Meyer?

  There we go.

• 16:32Henry Washington?

  Sorry, Brody.

• 16:34Dave Meyer?

  Sorry, Brody. I, I hope I pronounced your last name correctly. The question is, is it ever a good idea to burr a primary residence minus the renting part? Just buying a distressed home, renovating it and refinancing it to recoup the costs that can be used for future investments, then living in it permanently. What do you think about this one?

• 16:55Henry Washington?

  I love it.

• 16:56Dave Meyer?

  Same.

• 16:57Henry Washington?

  Love it.

• 16:57Dave Meyer?

  This is a no brainer, right?

• 16:58Henry Washington?

  It's easy peasy.

• 16:59Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Henry Washington?

  Absolutely. Now, there are several caveats. Uh, first and foremost is if you're buying a rental property and you're buying it on a 30 year fixed and you're putting your own money into it to renovate it, then refinancing that money out.

• 17:20Henry Washington?

  I think that makes sense because you want to pull your own money out. If you're doing a situation where you're buying it, maybe on like a short term loan, hard money loan, something like that. And then, um, then you are gonna need to refinance that property again to pull that money out. But if you're buying it and you're not doing some sort of short term loan, you're not using your own cash to put in there, you don't necessarily need to refinance it. You can get a line of credit on it.

• 17:49Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Henry Washington?

  And then use that line of credit if you need to, to buy your next property. Because the refinance, what a lot of people don't mention is that refinance is restructuring your loan at a higher amount, which makes your mortgage payment and your living expenses higher.

• 18:04Dave Meyer?

  And resets your amortization schedule. So you're paying more interest.

• 18:08Henry Washington?

  Yeah. So in other words, if you're using on the primary purchase, if you're not using a loan that you're gonna have to refinance out of to satisfy the lenders because there's some sort of high interest rate, or you've got to get your money back for the renovation because you put your own hardworking dollars into that renovation money, then I would consider a HELOC instead of a refinance in that situation.

• 18:30Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Henry Washington?

  Other than that, you have to refinance because you're doing a high interest loan, or you gotta get your cash back out of it.

• 18:36Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I agree with everything you just said. And I think this, this strategy just makes so much sense. I am very tired of people saying that your primary residence is not an investment. Like, it, it's just such a nonsense thing to say. Like, I know, like Grant Cardone is like always out there like, oh, yeah, it's not an investment.

• 18:55Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Dave Meyer?

  But if you want your primary home to be an investment, it is probably one of the better investments you will make in your entire real estate investing career. Because one, you're living there. You get much better financing on owner occupied properties. The benefit, if you sell it, is tax free. So like, there's just so many benefits to, to being able to do this. So I actually, Brody here is calling it a burr. I actually think this is more like a live in flip, if you've ever heard this term. It's basically, you're just renovating your primary residence.

• 19:29Henry Washington?

  Yep.

• 19:29Dave Meyer?

  And the benefit of live in flip is that if you live in a property for two out of the last five years, when you go sell it, that Gains, all the equity you build by renovating that property is tax-free. You don't even need to do a 1031 exchange. You could take it and do whatever you want with it, tax-free. That is such an enormous advantage. So instead of the, uh, okay, going over the do acrody here. Instead of a live-in flip or a BRRRR, I would call this the, the lift lock or a life lock. It's a live-in flip line of credit, right? You, you live in it, you renovate it, you jack up the equity. And then when you need money to do your next deal, rather than refinancing,

• 20:11Dave Meyer?

  you take out a HELOC and line of credit and use that money to, to go and get your next deal. But I think this is a fantastic strategy.

• 20:19Henry Washington?

  Listen, I don't think that this is said enough, but you can literally become a real estate millionaire by doing this with small multifamilies.

• 20:31Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 20:32Henry Washington?

  Over the course of like five or six years.

• 20:34Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 20:34Henry Washington?

  Like if you just did this on duplexes and quadplexes for about like one a year for about four or five years. And in 20 to 30 years, those things are paid off. You'll have over a million dollars in net worth like this. You never have to do any of these crazy strategies that I do, like off-market deals. Like you can literally just do owner occupied loans.

• 20:54Dave Meyer?

  Yep.

• 20:54Henry Washington?

  And become a very successful real estate investor on just a few properties.

• 20:58Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I don't know if you saw our buddy, James Danard posted something on Instagram about this the other day. Like how he just like leveled up his primary residence and it's gotten pretty damn big.

• 21:09Henry Washington?

  It's pretty stupid. It's pretty stupid now, but yeah.

• 21:12Dave Meyer?

  It is. Yeah, it's like his house is now the size of multiple apartment buildings. But he really did do this strategy over what 20-ish years. Um, and he's just practiced what he preaches and it, and it really does work.

• 21:25Henry Washington?

  James's primary residence is that 24-unit, one-bedroom, one-bath apartment building.

• 21:32Dave Meyer?

  He's just got 24 bedrooms for himself.

• 21:34Henry Washington?

  Right.

• 21:37Dave Meyer?

  All right, moving on to question four, which is a classic. I don't know how many times I've seen this question, heard this question, but people still ask. And so we are going to address this question from Charlie Martin. Who wants to know, should I purchase under an LLC or not? Charlie says, hello, I'm hoping to buy my first property next year and I'm wondering if I should create an LLC to do so. The reason is I want to separate my personal debt to income ratio from my real estate investing business. And of course, reduce personal risk. Is complete separation even possible? Thanks. Henry, what's your take?

• 22:16Henry Washington?

  I don't care.

• 22:20Henry Washington?

  Here's, here's, here's what I mean by that. What happens a lot of the times is people are fearful of getting started. And so they just go back and forth on trying to figure out what they should do. And then they spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what their LLC name should be and then what their logo is. And they do all this stuff to kind of just feel like they're making progress. When at the end of the day, you should just buy a deal. And if this is going to stop you and get in your way, then forget about it. Just buy the deal and then start your LLC later and you can, it's not very hard to transition a property out of your personal name into an LLC, depending on the loan you use. If you use an FHA loan, you can't have an LLC anyway. So like, it's really not that big of a deal. Don't let it hinder your process. That's the general answer.

• 23:04Henry Washington?

  Now, here's the, here's the, the business answer. If you are confident you are going to buy a property, this is just a formality for you, like you were getting in this business. I just want to set things up so that I'm doing it the right way, then absolutely talk to an accountant, talk to an attorney, figure out what the best entity structure is for you and the type of protection that you want. Set up that entity structure and then buy the property in that entity structure. It will make your life easier. If you already know those things and are confident in it, but if you're not, just go do a deal and figure it out later.

• 23:39Dave Meyer?

  I personally buy all of my deals in LLCs. That's just a decision I made a long time ago, mostly because I've done deals with different partners, with different structures, and I find it easier to just have LLCs to, each one has its own operating agreement, each one has its own rules, we take minutes for, you know, for meetings, like, it's just, it's just a cleaner way to do it in my mind, and I just like liability protection. And so I think those things are the main reasons to do it. The other reason I love doing it is I just, I love filling out paperwork. I just,

• 24:19Dave Meyer?

  I love every year that I get to file my periodic status reports with the government. I got to do my FinCEN reporting now to the federal government. It just makes it even more fun. I just, I love that stuff. So.

• 24:32Henry Washington?

  Yes, yes.

• 24:33Dave Meyer?

  The reason I do it.

• 24:35Henry Washington?

  Yes, you should be protecting yourself. I think if you're going to start a business, you should treat it like a business and having and buying in the entity is the right thing to do, but do not let it slow you down or stop you. If you're just on the fence about it, just go get the deal and figure it out later.

• 24:51Dave Meyer?

  Yeah. And if you're buying a deal just yourself, no partner, you and your, your spouse, like, you really don't need to do an LLC for the first one, but it's, that's up to you. The one thing I will mention, though, that Charlie said that he wants to separate his personal debt to income ratio for real estate investing business, that's not what an LLC.

• 25:09Henry Washington?

  Not a thing.

• 25:09Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, that's not an LLC. An LLC is something called a pass-through entity. And so all of the income, all of the debt from those LLCs, no matter how you structured the LLC, they are going to pass through to your personal tax returns. So it is not going to matter in that regard. LLC is a liability tax legal structure that helps you in case you get sued. It helps you mitigate conflict with partners or figure out structure with partners. It does not change your DTI at all. All right. Well, we have hit some very good topics so far. We've talked about seller financing, one-bedroom apartments, burring your primary residence, or purchasing in an LLC. We are going to take a quick break,

• 25:53Dave Meyer?

  but when we come back, we got a hot button issue, one of the most controversial topics in real estate. We're talking about wholesalers right after the break. For my wife's birthday, I wanted to make her a new website for her landscape design business. So I researched a lot of different options. I tried out a couple, but honestly, it was really overwhelming. It was pretty time consuming and still, the site wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to. Then I tried Hostinger and everything was super simple. I asked Hostinger's AI to build a clean site for her business and it had a working version up in minutes. No coding or designer needed. Plus, its AI

• 26:34Dave Meyer?

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• 27:04Henry Washington?

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• 30:38Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Henry, we get to, I think, I feel like I'm, I'm just like setting up a soapbox for you to just start ranting right now.

• 30:46Henry Washington?

  My wife loves it when I rant.

• 30:48Dave Meyer?

  Please, sir, step up onto your soapbox and let me read you this question. The question is, "Why don't agents and investors like wholesalers?" This comes from Ashley Mieres. She says, "I'm considering getting into wholesaling, but from videos and some research I have done, it seems like a lot of investors and agents just don't like wholesalers. I'm assuming it's because the wholesaler is basically the middleman. I would love some advice on wholesaling from the experts here on BP. Thank you." Sir, the stage is yours.

• 31:19Henry Washington?

  Look, I feel like this question is missing a word because what it should really say is, "Why don't agents and investors like bad wholesalers?" Because that's the real problem, right? The problem is that there are a lot of bad wholesalers. But if you are a good wholesaler, there are agents who love to work with a good wholesaler. There are agents and investors who love to work with a good wholesaler. There are investors who need to work with good wholesalers. The problem is they're few and far between. And so, most people, most agents and most investors who have had experience with wholesalers have had bad experiences with wholesalers.

• 32:02Henry Washington?

  And if you want to do that business, man, you've, there's just not a lot of people who are doing it in a way that is beneficial to the seller and beneficial to the end buyer. I think you find a lot of people who are doing it in ways that are only self-beneficial, beneficial to them. And I think that that's where the problem is. Because middlemanning is a thing in almost every industry. There's a ton of money in middlemanning.

• 32:31Dave Meyer?

  Basically, the whole economy.

• 32:33Henry Washington?

  So it needs to be done in the proper way. And what I think, my experience with wholesalers is typically, they don't know how to eat underwrite deals. And so, they find bad deals. They put selves in a bad situation by saying they're going to pay overpay for a deal. And then they back out of that deal and who gets hurt is the seller who is in a distressed situation who needs to sell. Right. And then it creates this stain on the industry. I think a good wholesaler is worth their weight in gold, but you it they it's just hard to find them.

• 33:06Dave Meyer?

  To Henry's point, you absolutely need to do this ethically. I think particularly on the seller side and be candid about what's going on. But as an investor, like I'm, you know this about me because I'm sort of a lazy investor. I'm just more I work full time. I don't have time to do the work of finding deals myself. I'd be happy to pay a wholesaler for finding me a good deal. It just makes sense, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna do more deals because I can pay a wholesaler. I'm flipping my first house. I'm doing none of the work, but I'm James and I partnered on a, on a flip. We paid a wholesaler. I was happy to pay the wholesaler. That's just, it's, they found us a great deal in a good amount of time and it worked out well. And they worked well with the seller and everything worked out well for everyone.

• 33:48Henry Washington?

  I think the mentality of the industry of wholesaling is, is wrong. And, and what I mean by that is for every other business. What makes you good at that business? Is that you are serving the needs of your client, your end buyer, your customer, you're providing them value. And I don't think that it's seen that way in the wholesaling market. As a wholesaler, your customer is the end buyer. You want your customer to be able to be profitable. You want your customer to come back to you for return business. But your customer is also twofold because your customer is also the seller who is selling the house.

• 34:29Henry Washington?

  And so you have to be able to provide a service on both sides of that transaction to the seller. And to your buyer, and that's a delicate balance. Like that's a hard business. All right. And it takes some industry expertise to be able to get good at that. But if you can solve that problem. Then I think that you can have a ton of success in the wholesaling industry. Because if some, like you said, you're happy to pay a wholesaler to bring you a deal. That's gonna be profitable for you, right? So there's gotta be profit on the backside, which means your wholesale fee might not be able to be as, as massive as you want it to be. I feel like there is a place in the industry where all of this can be done correctly.

• 35:13Henry Washington?

  But you've got to learn the truth kind of about wholesaling is that you have to be able to run a very tough business with multiple layers of customers. And it's not going to be something easy. And I think what happens is people get into it thinking it's going to be easy. They see how challenging it is. They get themselves into some sticky situations and then it gives wholesalers a bad name.

• 35:34Dave Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Henry Washington?

  But it doesn't mean that they're all bad. If you play this game the right way, I think there's a way to do it profitably and ethically and take care of both the sellers and provide investors opportunities to make money.

• 35:47Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I, I think wholesaling just like has a bad rap and it's like not properly named. Actually, when I first got into this industry and people calling it wholesale, I was like, what is this talking about? Cause wholesale in like every like Costco is a wholesale club, right? It's like large quantities of goods sold at low margin for resale.

• 36:08Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Dave Meyer?

  And so if you do think about that definition of it, it kind of makes sense, right? Like you are selling individual deals, but they typically, being a middleman is a low margin business. Like you have to do a lot of volume. And I just think, yeah, the years were really good from like 2018 to 2022, where you could get these like huge five digit 25 grand, you know, assignment fees. But like to, I just don't know if that's normal or it's going to be the case going forward. And so you're just gonna have to be, if you're a wholesaler, you're gonna have to be really good at this job. And you're just gonna have to be able to do a good amount of volume to make a living

• 36:49Dave Meyer?

  off of it because no one wants to pay a middleman an exorbitant amount of fee just because that's what you need to eat. Like I, I mean no offense, but no one cares. Like they, they're gonna pay what, what the value is to them.

• 37:01Henry Washington?

  Yep.

• 37:01Dave Meyer?

  And like, I, I don't know. I just, I think that. We often in this whole industry sort of like have come to this point where we like anchor our expectation to returns to this like magical time in the late 2010s where things were particularly amazing. And I don't know if we're going back to that. So I think wholesalers just need to reset their expectations. And if they do, then sellers, agents, buyers are all going to be happy to work with you if you're providing a appropriate amount of value at an appropriate price.

• 37:31Henry Washington?

  Absolutely. 100%.

• 37:33Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, we hit it. We had some big ones today.

• 37:36Henry Washington?

  Big stuff.

• 37:37Dave Meyer?

  LLCs, wholesaler, seller financing. These were some good topics. Thanks a lot for being here, man.

• 37:42Henry Washington?

  Hey, that was a lot of fun. Happy to do it, guys.

• 37:44Dave Meyer?

  All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to leave us a review on either Apple or Spotify, or give us that thumbs up if you're watching here on YouTube. We'll see you very soon for another episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast in just a couple of days. I'm Dave Meyer. He's Henry Washington. See you soon.