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How to Build a Wholesale Real Estate Investor List

Wholesaling is one of the more popular methods of real estate investing. This is largely due to its simplicity and low barrier to entry. Almost anyone can get started wholesaling with very little experience required. However, if you want to take wholesaling from a nice side hustle and turn it into a full-blown income source for you and your family, you must learn how to scale it. This means building a list of potential buyers.

The Money is in Your Wholesale Real Estate Investor List

As a wholesaler, you’re essentially a middleman in a real estate deal. In other words, there are two sides to your business that require your attention. On the one side, you need a constant flow of leads for potential properties that you can wholesale. On the other side, you need a list of potential buyers to purchase properties when you find them. If you’re lacking on one side of the equation, there’s no balance. (And no balance means no money.)

The reality is that it’s often easier to find a residential property to wholesale than it is to find a buyer. That’s why, if you study the most successful residential wholesale investors, you’ll find that they focus most of their time on building a buyer list. This is where the money is. 

A good buyer list is deep and diverse. When you purchase the rights to a property, you need to have multiple options so that you can present the property to different people and find the right person to assign the contract. The worst thing that can happen is that you spend a lot of time and effort finding a property to wholesale, but you don’t have anyone to assign it to. The deeper your buyer list, the less likely this scenario is.

Tips & Ideas for Building a Wholesale Buyer List for Real Estate

Building a buyer list is essentially like creating your own catalog of investors or individuals who may be interested in purchasing a property. This list should contain names, contact information, and notes about the types of investment opportunities they’re interested in. A basic list can be kept in a spreadsheet, while more sophisticated wholesalers use CRM software like HubSpot to keep detailed files. Regardless of the method you use, here are several tips for building your buyer list:

Drive Traffic to Your Website

One option is to create a website and focus on driving traffic to dedicated pages on that site. This gives you a chance to educate people and build a steady source of passive interest. Something simple like a blog post with a two-field opt-in form for a lead magnet is good for building a list.

Build a Social Media Presence

While a website can work, it requires a pretty solid investment in web design, SEO, and possibly even paid traffic to get results. (Either that, or a whole lot of patience.) Another option is to build up a social media presence and leverage high-touch engagement to build your list.

In addition to platforms like Facebook and Instagram, consider LinkedIn. This is a professional social networking site, which means people log onto the platform in “business mode.” It’s also the platform with the most high net worth individuals. Theoretically, this means a better pool of potential buyers. 

If you’re going to use LinkedIn as a source for building your list, make sure you go all-in. I’d recommend using your “title” as a space for including a unique sales proposition (USP). This USP should clearly explain what you do and how you can help people. For example:

“I help Florida real estate investors find residential properties that will cash flow from day one, without having to sift through hundreds of different opportunities.”

Do you see how specific that is? While most wholesalers simply put something like “Real Estate Investor” in their title, a USP gives you a chance to stand out. Combine this with a Sales Navigator account and you can proactively connect with people in your target market.

Create Original Content

People partner with people they trust. If you can position yourself as a trustworthy person who knows what you’re talking about, investors will line up at the door to work with you. They’ll basically beg to have their name on your list. And one way you can do this in the digital age is by creating your own original content.

There are two options that are both working really well right now: YouTube and Podcasts. You don’t necessarily need to be on both (though it’s actually pretty easy to repurpose the same content on both channels), but you should pick one and run with it.

Your content should be focused on real estate investing, wealth building, entrepreneurship, or some related topic. As you grow your audience, people will start to see you as the authority in your niche. In turn, you’ll build a list of people who want to work with you.

Browse Online Forums

For the most part, I’ve discussed fairly passive methods of building your list. But in some cases, you actually need to proactively pursue people. In other words, you have to go on the offensive. One way to do this is by browsing online forums.

There are literally hundreds of real estate forums on the internet. Find a few that are active and spend a few minutes on them each day. You’ll start to identify people who are investors. You’ll also build up a reputation as a trustworthy “deal maker” who can help them find properties that aren’t on their radar. 

Join Networking Groups

While I’ve focused on digital methods of list building up until now, don’t discount good old-fashioned face-to-face networking. It might not have the same scale and reach as something like LinkedIn or podcasting, but it’s arguably the best way to develop deep relationships with individual investors.

My suggestion is to join local networking groups that have people who are already interested in real estate investing. Local real estate investor clubs are great for this. Entrepreneurship groups are as well. 

Let Us Help You Build Your Wholesale Real Estate Investor List

At InvestNet, we exist to help connect investors with deals. If you’d like to learn more about getting connected with investors who are interested in a wide range of deals (real estate or otherwise), we’d love to be a resource. Contact us today to learn more!

Sky Richardson
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