If a Rental Was Built BEFORE This Decade, We’d Be Concerne

Profitable Property
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24 Video Views·Jul 23, 2026
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Video Summary
AI GeneratedDave Meyer and Henry Washington discuss the complexities of real estate investing, focusing on the risks of older homes, the pitfalls of new construction for beginners, and the strategic use of wholesalers. They emphasize rigorous due diligence, the importance of specialized inspections, and the necessity of automated systems for scaling a rental portfolio.
Would you ever buy a house built in the early 1900s?
If you answered no, you might be overlooking the best deals in your market.
In some areas of the country, most houses are old,
especially the affordable ones investors target.
So if your buy box starts in the 1960s, you're filtering out a huge chunk of inventory,
including some potential home runs.
Old houses do require a different playbook.
Some repairs are surprisingly cheap, like new electrical might run you only five grand.
But foundation issues or bad plumbing
could turn your promising new rental properties into a long-term money pit.
The key is spotting those differences before you close.
So today, we're breaking it down.
How to spot the old houses that are actually safe bets,
which systems you absolutely need to inspect before closing,
and the most common surprises hiding behind those old walls.
Plus, we'll reveal the single best construction area to target on your next deal,
the sweet spot where you can add value with modern updates,
but the original build quality still holds up.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Dave Meyer, here with my co-host, Henry Washington.
Today, we're answering questions from real investors in the BiggerPockets forums,
and we're going to spend a lot of this episode
talking about how to safely buy older houses.
But our first question comes from an investor named Kyler in Birmingham.
He says,
Hey, everyone.
Me and my fiance just got engaged.
Congratulations, Kyler.
And I've somehow convinced her to house hack for our first home in Oxford, Alabama.
I don't know anything about Oxford, Alabama,
but it sounds like it feats, so congratulations on that too.
He goes on to say,
Being in a smaller city,
there's not a ton of residential multifamily properties in the area.
Would it make sense to build a duplex as our first home,
utilizing an FHA construction loan?
I can't find much information on people taking this approach
instead of finding a preexisting home.
I understand that the cost will be higher
and there won't be any opportunities to add value through renovation,
but I wasn't sure if those were big enough reasons
to look into a different direction.
I mean, this is a good question though, right?
I mean, new construction has become pretty popular these days.
Henry, what's your take?
Don't do it.
Sorry, Kyler.
I guess don't do it is the simple answer here, but why?
Yeah, in all seriousness,
I think that if you had construction experience
or you're in a situation where you have the resources necessary to pull this off,
like you've got a great contractor that has a proven track record,
you've vetted them appropriately,
you've got the funds and everything all lined up,
and you've got the time horizon to wait for it to be finished,
then potentially, yeah, that's a really good idea
because you're going to get the benefits of new construction and lower costs.
But building isn't easy.
It's something typically that investors start to take on
after they've had some experience doing some regular real estate deals,
some value-add deals,
once they've got some more skills under their belt.
So does it mean you can't have one built?
I mean, people have personal homes built all the time.
So if you were going to build a new home and you hire a builder
and they take care of it all for you and the numbers make sense,
then yeah, it might be a decent thing to do.
But if it is something where you've got to go find the team,
you've got to go get the loan and you've got to find the plans
and hire the engineers.
That's just a lot.
It's quite an undertaking and you can make a lot of mistakes
and it could not be as profitable or as easy
as just going to buy something on the market.
Yeah, I'm with you.
I think this idea of build to rent,
which is essentially what he's talking about,
build to rent combined with a house hack, good idea.
I mean, I think the numbers probably would make sense,
but execution-wise, it's difficult for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost,
if you already had to convince your fiance to house hack
and she was maybe a little resistant to that,
I'm just going to throw out there
that managing a construction project
that you've never done before
might put some strain on your relationship.
I don't know you guys,
but I'm just going to throw that out there
that one could imagine that it might do that a little bit.
The second thing I would ask you, Kyler,
is why not just somewhere else?
Maybe you live in Oxford,
you're passionate about this place, I just looked it up,
it looks like a small town,
but is there another place
where you could buy a multifamily
and it would be existing and it wouldn't be that hard?
I say this, one, for everything Henry pointed out,
the complexity of it,
but the other thing I think a lot of people overlook
is if there's not a lot of multifamily in this market
and you build something that's unusual,
you may have a really hard time renting it out.
If everyone else in that market
is used to renting single family homes
because that's what's available in that market,
you could come in with a new product
and it can be beautiful,
but it might not be in high demand
just because people in this area
want single family homes.
My guess is the reason
there aren't multifamily homes in this area
is because there's not demand for it.
So I think you also have to just think about
the product you're building
and if it's actually applicable
or an appropriate thing to be investing in in that market.
So if I were you,
I would either choose a different market
or maybe don't go with the house hacking strategy,
rent something and buy a investment property.
There's a lot of great markets in Alabama
to buy just regular old rental properties, for example.
It looks like Oxford, I'm looking this up,
is not that far from Birmingham.
There's good rentals there.
Huntsville is a great market.
You're not even that far from Atlanta,
some parts of Georgia.
There are places that you could invest in.
So for your first deal,
I would recommend doing that,
even if that means giving up on house hacking,
which obviously has a lot of benefit.
All right, our next question
comes from an investor named Nicole.
Now, Nicole asks,
on the BiggerPockets forum,
I'm starting to look at some older properties,
pre-1960s in Columbus, Ohio.
Previously, my buy box was post-1964,
trying to avoid knob and tube wiring
and other challenges with older homes.
But that is becoming a barrier to buying.
So I'm thinking about expanding my buy box
and looking for any advice on things
to be cautious about or questions to ask.
Here's what I would look out for in older properties.
It's yes, obviously knob and tube wiring.
So the same thing applies.
I'm always looking at the big five.
I'm looking at plumbing, electrical,
roofs, HVAC, and foundation.
But these older properties,
I think where they really can hurt somebody is foundations.
Especially in the Midwest.
Some of them have the old cinder block foundations.
They're super wobbly.
And sometimes even when you fix these foundations
and you can spend 20, 30, 40, 50 grand to do it,
the house still is sloped and wobbly.
Like it's not like you can just
completely remedy these things.
So it's something you have to consider
when owning in this asset class.
And more so, even if you buy a property that's older
and you fix the foundation problems,
if it's still a little kwonkity on the inside.
Kwonkity?
What is kwonkity?
You know, a little wobbly, a little wobbly.
Okay, kwonkity.
You may have to sell that property eventually.
And trying to convince somebody else
that even though you spent 20, 30 grand
on fixing that foundation, it may be a hard sell.
So the first thing I'd tell you to look out for
is to always have a specialist, a foundation specialist,
take a look at the foundation of that property
and give you their fair assessment
on how structurally sound they think it is
and how long they think it's gonna last.
Or if it's not, what's it gonna cost to fix it?
Because foundation work is I think the number one thing
that's gonna cause you a big pain in the butt.
Next is probably plumbing issues with old pipes
and make sure that you get a quote
for what it's gonna cost
if you've got to re-plumb that entire house
up to new plumbing standards.
Because especially if it's an older property
and it's a buy and hold,
if you're planning on holding this
for five, 10, 15, 20 years,
at some point that falls on you to take care of, right?
Yeah, I'm doing this right now, re-plumbing a whole house.
I think I've been telling you this for nine months
because it's been going on for nine months.
And what's it costing you?
80 grand.
Woo, that's a house.
Yeah, well, for you.
For me, yes.
For me, the things to watch out for in older properties
is always going to be plumbing and foundations.
Electrical, yeah, everybody says watch out for an oven too,
but electricals, between five and 10 grand,
you put new electrical in.
It's not the end of the world on electrical.
Roof is fine.
But yeah, roof, 10, 15 grand,
depending on how big the property is.
Not the end of the world.
But plumbing and foundation,
you can get up there into almost six figures
and having to fix some of those problems.
So you definitely want to have an understanding
of what's going on with those things
prior to you buying or closing on an older property.
I really like this question
because I don't think there's a right answer.
I think in the first eight years of my investing career,
I didn't buy something that was after 1940.
Everything I bought in Colorado was 1890s, 1920s,
that kind of stuff,
because that's what I could afford
and those are the deals that I can do.
So I feel like I've learned a lot about this.
I would still buy older properties.
I think what you need to think through though
is how recently renovated the property has been
when you're buying it.
Because if it hasn't really been touched,
if no one's done the work Henry was talking about
making sure the foundation is good,
making sure the plumbing is up to date,
you don't want to do that.
Most people don't want to do that
unless you have a lot of experience
with this kind of thing.
I even talked to James, our mutual friend, Flipper.
He said that there's only a certain number of contractors
he uses and he has done thousands of deals
for these older type homes
because it is really specialized
to be able to do this effectively.
So I think the challenge here
is that a lot of people look at these older homes
and say, oh, that's a great value-add opportunity.
And there is if you can execute it.
And there are some things
that I've been able to do successfully,
but I will say everything costs more
when you're doing these renovations
than if you take out a tub,
all of a sudden, literally this happens
and you're like, oh, that's a drain
I've never seen before.
You can't get a part.
So you wind up having to replace the whole thing.
The other thing I would say
is that doing a lot of the value-add
that is most valuable,
like redoing a layout,
is very, very difficult.
And so I think it's the kind of situation
where you can buy an old home
if the layout is good,
if the plumbing has been upgraded,
ideally electrical,
but as Henry said, it's not crazy,
but ideally it's been updated.
If all that's true
and you're just doing cosmetic
or someone's done a great job
and it's a really cool old house
that's been renovated,
go for that.
That's fine.
But I think it's the like,
hey, this is cheap.
I'm going to renovate it cheap.
It's tough.
Another thing to be cognizant of
is your heat and air situation.
Some of these old homes have boilers.
Oh, and these things vary
depending on what part of the country you're in.
But if you've got to update that
to modern heating and cooling,
especially if it's a property
that's never been ducted before,
your price goes through the roof
in terms of what it costs
to put modern heat and air in there
if you have to do all new ducts
and actually duct a house.
Instead of you spending five to eight grand,
you spend 16 to 20 grand or more
putting in HVAC and modernizing HVAC.
So another thing to watch out for.
What is your sweet spot year?
Like if you could pick a year
for a house to be from,
what would you pick?
70 to like 75.
Yeah.
Because the layouts are cool.
They have big rooms.
They might even have a sunken living room
with like one of those weird couches.
Built-in couches, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's the sweet spot
because yeah,
you don't have the risk of knob and tube.
60s is good,
but you still have some asbestos risk in the 60s.
So yeah, lead paint.
Like if you get into like the mid 70s,
the lumber quality was better than it is today.
It's true.
Like if there's some really funny like memes,
you can go look at the size of a two by four over time.
Like it used to actually be two by four.
Now it is far from that.
But yeah,
like a lot of the quality of the construction
was really good back in the 70s.
And I agree.
You see a lot like mid century kind of style homes.
That layout is popular right now again.
So I'd still try and find 1960s or more recent,
but you might be able to find some gems in there
in the older stock that has been upgraded
where someone bought it in the 80s,
upgraded it a lot.
And now most of the systems are 80s quality.
Like that's a little different than something
that truly is like a time capsule,
hasn't been changed in a really long time.
All right.
Great question though, Nicole.
Really interesting one.
I think a real predicament
and thing to think about for anyone investing,
especially in the Midwest and the Northeast,
you see a lot of these old homes.
It's an important thing to consider.
We got to take a quick break,
but we'll be back with more
BiggerPockets community questions right after this.
Stick with us.
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Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast.
Henry and I are here answering your question
or BiggerPockets community questions
about anything to do with real estate.
By the way,
we are answering these from the BiggerPockets forums.
If you have questions about your own investing,
go post them on the BiggerPockets forums.
You can get dozens or hundreds of responses
from experienced investors.
There are three and a half million people
on BiggerPockets.com
answering these kinds of questions
and we might just pick one of your questions
for these episodes.
Our next question is from Allie in Houston
who has a question about renovation budgets.
She asks,
for investors using hard money,
private money or renovation loans,
how detailed does your rehab budget need to be?
I've seen some lenders accept
a pretty simple breakdown.
For example,
roof cost,
HVAC cost,
interior cost,
and contingency.
But others seem to want line item scope
including trades,
assumptions,
draw schedule logic,
and proof that the numbers are realistic.
For people who have done this a few times,
what makes a rehab budget
quote-unquote lender-ready in your experience?
Uh-oh, Henry's giggling.
No, it's a good question.
It's a good question?
What do you do?
Just write $50,000 on a piece of paper
and hand it over?
Yeah, I give them a napkin
with like Cheeto dust on it
and then I write a number.
In my experience,
let me put it this way.
I've done hundreds of deals.
I've used the exact same template
for a rehab budget
to send to a lender every single time.
And it's just-
Across lenders.
Different lenders.
And it is a very simple,
high-level renovation budget breakdown.
So I'll do a detailed scope.
But when I send it to the lender,
I roll it up to high level.
And so I'm just gonna read
some of the line items that I have
on one of my most recent renovation budgets.
So I'm gonna share my screen
so you can see what it is
that I submit to the bank.
So I've been using the same template here.
And it really is just the trade in one column
and then the total cost for that trade
on the other column.
And I'd say it's a fair mix
between enough detail
so that the bank knows what I plan to do,
but not so much detail
that it's annoying for me to put it together.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
You're prioritizing how annoying is this for you.
Right?
Absolutely.
I like that.
Absolutely.
So you're thinking about it just so,
like, the way your mind is working on this
is these are the different vendors,
like, trades that you're going to and paying to.
So you're not saying, like,
oh, I'm putting down X square feet of Y product.
Correct.
Of flooring.
You're just, like, flooring six grand.
Yeah.
So for me, flooring six grand.
That includes the tile I'll use,
the LVP that I'll use.
It includes the carpet that I'll use in the bedrooms.
It's just all rolled up into one.
Interior paint, that's just interior paint.
If I was gonna paint the kitchen cabinets,
it would be in this same number.
Labor and materials, right?
There's some individual items that I'll purchase in here.
You know, toilets, appliances.
Yeah, you get granular with some of it.
Some of it gets a little granular.
But for the most, I consider this high level
because you can get a lot more detailed.
And behind the scenes,
if I were to unhide some of these columns,
you'll see, like, the detail behind it.
How many square feet of flooring or paint.
But I don't show that to them.
I just roll it up and show them.
So when I'm building the spreadsheet,
I'm doing it in detail.
And then I'll roll it up to give to the bank.
But let me ask you this,
because you do far more flips than I can ever dream of,
but aren't you doing this anyway?
Like, aren't you creating this budget
when you're underwriting the deal?
So like, what additional work are you really doing here
even to talk to the lender?
Yeah, you are doing this work
or you should be doing this work.
Where this gets annoying for the investor,
is if you're shopping lenders,
what they will do is,
a lot of them have their own templates for this
that they want you to fill out.
And it becomes very tedious and annoying
to have to keep converting your spreadsheet
into whatever versions they have.
So I just use my own and I send that to them.
And I tell them,
if you have your own template, that's great.
You can put this in your template.
But I'm just going to do this one time.
And I do it, like I said,
I do it at the detailed level,
but then I can roll it up
because I have to do it anyway.
So I'm not really spending any extra time
to build this for a particular lender.
It's something I have to build anyway.
I just give them a simplified version.
And like you've never,
regardless of who you're talking to,
what lenders you're talking to,
fine, no one's pushing back on this?
No one's ever pushed back and said,
you must put this in our template.
I have had people say,
we want this in our template.
And then I just say,
you can absolutely put that in your own template.
Yeah, go for it.
Have fun, do whatever you want.
Have at it.
I get that it's annoying to do it,
but like, if you go to the level of detail
Henry has done here,
which doesn't seem onerous, right?
Like it's not crazy.
You're just going to give people
a lot more confidence in you.
So like, I don't see why you wouldn't.
I don't see like, quote unquote,
just writing interiors 50,000
or doing what Henry's talking about
is a difference of what, 30 minutes of work?
Like just do that and get the loan.
Absolutely.
Yes, it'll give lenders confidence.
You're right.
They're just going to do a gut check.
And honestly, if I gave them this
and they came back to me
questioning the details of it,
that's not a lender I'm going to use
because that's telling me
that the rest of this process
is going to be equally as annoying.
The one thing I will say
is if you're a newer investor,
expect a higher degree of scrutiny
and that's okay.
Like that you have to put yourself
in the lender's shoes.
And if they're going to make you jump
through a couple extra hoops to say like,
look, I've done my research.
I've gotten multiple quotes.
I have good people lined up.
Just do it.
Like I know it's annoying,
but it's like a couple hours of work.
You have to think about the scale
of what you're asking for.
Usually you're asking tens
or hundreds of thousands of dollars
for someone to lend you.
It's not that big of a problem to do this
because you should be doing it anyway
for your underwriting.
All right, Dave, we have another question
coming in from Andrea in Houston.
Andrea has a classic question
about house hacking a duplex.
She says I purchased a duplex
and I'm planning to live in one unit
and rent the other one.
I don't want the renters to know
that I'm the owner,
but I'm not sure how to do that.
I have a realtor who will list
and show the property,
but I'll be the property manager
and sign the lease agreement.
I'd appreciate any tips
on minimizing issues.
When I first house hacked
for several years,
I did this exact thing.
I said that I was the property manager
and that I had a partner,
which is true.
And so when they would ask me questions,
I would say like,
oh, I got to go talk to my partner,
which is true.
But there were times
when I just kind of like,
you know,
you want to distance yourself from it.
And so this can be useful.
I will just say,
like, looking back on it now,
I probably wouldn't have done that.
Like, I guess I've just gotten
to a more mature place in my life
where I just feel more comfortable
having direct conversations with people
about like what you're comfortable with
and not comfortable with.
I was just young
and I like didn't want to have hard conversations
and I was trying to avoid conflict
and it worked fine.
But you don't need to do this.
I just think you need,
you can be the owner.
It's okay to own the property.
It's okay to say no
when someone asks for something
that's unreasonable.
And I think honestly,
it just builds trust.
I kind of look back on that.
I'm like,
I wish I was honest about that.
The truth was I was a part owner.
So like that,
I could have just said that
and have it been fine.
I just think realistically,
like you're going to tie yourself in knots
to like create an illusion
that doesn't need to exist.
This is all based,
I think,
in like some like one bad story
or myth or something
that's made its way around.
I've never done this.
Anytime I've house hacked,
they knew I was the owner
and I didn't have problems
and I didn't get excessive questions.
No one bothered me.
It was fine.
It's not a big deal.
I would also think about the upsides
of telling them you're an owner.
If they know the owner of the house
and not just some random property manager
is sitting next door,
they might take more care of the property.
Maybe you could just focus on
forming a strong relationship
with your tenants
and then they'll stay forever
and they'll like living there.
I think that part I did get right
even though I wasn't fully honest
about my ownership stake in these things.
When I house hacked,
I just tried to get along well with people
and before they moved in,
I would sit down with them
and explain what I've explained
to every tenant I've ever had.
I am a very reasonable person.
I will pay for the things
that need to be fixed.
I'm not trying to nickel and dime you.
I want you to have a good experience in this home.
All of those things are true
and I would ask in return
for them to be reasonable.
If they are going to be late,
if they have a problem,
just tell me and we'll talk about it
and it was always fine.
It was always fine.
So I just think that
that is the better long-term approach.
I just see people recommending this
I think out of fear
instead of realizing that
the best thing to do
is just have an honest
and good relationship with your tenants.
My initial thought process
when I was becoming a landlord
and I was going to House Hack
was that I just assumed
if they knew I was the owner
and I lived next door
that they'd probably
take better care of the property
and I was more concerned about that.
But I do the same thing
you did with tenants
when they moved in.
I just sit down
and have an honest,
upfront,
just open conversation
because there's just such a stigma
between tenants and landlords.
It goes both ways a lot of the times
and tenants just want a landlord
who's going to take them seriously
if they have a real problem
and landlords just want a tenant
who's going to pay rent on time.
And so I just sit down
and have that conversation
like, hey, my job,
what I want to do
is to provide you a safe,
clean, comfortable place to live.
If something's wrong,
like I want to fix it.
I don't want you to fix it.
I want to do my job.
And so as long as you let me do my job,
I want you to do your job,
which is to pay rent on time.
And if there's something
that's stopping you,
let's just talk about it.
It's always set a good tone.
Our next question comes from
Corey in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Corey asks,
should you work with wholesalers
or avoid them altogether?
Pretty straight up question, right?
Goes on to say,
on one hand,
wholesalers seem like a great way
to get off market deals
without having to build
a full marketing machine.
On the other hand,
I've heard mixed opinions
about deals being marked up too much,
numbers not penciling out
or getting blasted on massive buyers
lists with the same property.
For those of you who have experience,
do you work with wholesalers?
Do you prefer to source deals yourself?
And if you do use them,
how do you filter out the good ones
from people pushing bad deals?
Henry, I think this is,
it's got your name all over this.
My general answer to this question is,
sure, you should work with wholesalers.
I think where the question comes from
is because there are
a lot of bad wholesalers
that kind of give the business a bad rap.
And maybe it's disproportionate
in wholesaling,
but there's bad operators
in every business,
and we still use other businesses, right?
There's bad realtors.
You still hire a realtor.
There's, you know,
there's bad contractors.
You still hire a contractor.
So, and that's scary when you're new
because it's hard to know
what to evaluate or how to evaluate
if a wholesaler is a good wholesaler.
And I also think there's two parts
to this question slash answer.
If you bought a bad deal from a wholesaler,
chances are that's your fault
and not their fault, right?
That means you didn't evaluate
the deal properly.
Maybe you took the wholesaler at their word
on what they said the property ARV was,
or maybe you took the wholesaler
at their word on what they said
the renovation was going to cost.
When I look at a deal from a wholesaler,
I pretend anything they say isn't there.
I don't care how much they think the ARV is.
I don't care how much
they think the renovation is.
I don't care how much
they're asking for the property.
I agree.
It has absolutely nothing to do
with what I'm willing to pay for the property.
The only thing that matters
on a wholesaler sheet
when they send me a property
is the address.
So I can do my own due diligence
and so that I can underwrite
that property myself.
I can determine what
the renovation budget is myself
and I can figure out
what my offer price is.
And even if my offer price
is $50,000 or $100,000
less than their asking price,
guess what?
I make the offer anyway.
So the first part
that I think you're concerned about,
which is probably buying a bad deal
from a wholesaler,
that's on you.
You have to evaluate every deal
on your own with your own research
and come up with your own number
and then decide whether
you want to buy that deal or not.
Now, the second part about this
is fear of working with wholesalers
because you get yourself
into some sort of legal trouble
because things weren't done
the right way
from a legal perspective.
This is a different problem
in my opinion.
And this does happen sometimes.
Wholesalers will market deals
as if they have them under contract
when really they're just available
on the MLS.
Or wholesalers will daisy chain a deal,
meaning they don't have the contract
on the property.
Somebody else has the contract
on the property.
They found that deal
that's already under contract.
Maybe they said,
all right, this wholesaler's
got it in the contract
and is trying to sell it
for a hundred thousand dollars.
I'm going to pitch it to this guy
for a hundred and five thousand dollars.
And if I get this guy to say yes,
then I'll go to the wholesaler
who has it and say,
hey, put me in this deal.
I got you a buyer for a hundred and five.
I just want to make my five.
Like that's the kind of stuff
you need to watch out for, right?
That's the kind of stuff
that takes a little more knowledge
to be able to know
what to look out for
and what questions to ask.
So I would always make sure
you ask the question
of the wholesaler.
Hey, are you in direct contract
with the seller, right?
That's a very upfront question.
And they should be able to answer that.
Yes.
If that answer sounds funky or funny
or it sounds like there's
some other stuff going on,
then you should probably just stay away.
There's other deals
that may be able to get done
a lot cleaner than that.
Two, I would ask them
about their experience.
How many deals have they done?
Ask them where they close those deals
and then call that title company
to verify that they've
done transactions before
and ask that title company.
Did they go smooth?
Did everything work out OK?
Does this seem like somebody
that I should be able to trust
based on the deals
that they've done in the past
so you can verify their experience
through the title company
that closed their previous deals?
If they don't want to share
any of their experience
or the title company
that closed their deal,
I'd probably stay away from it.
I probably wouldn't do it.
And then always, always, always
ask to see the original contract
between the wholesaler
and the seller
before you sign the assignment contract.
Because an assignment contract
is just an addendum
to the original contract
the wholesaler has with the seller.
And when you sign that addendum,
you're agreeing to take
the wholesaler's place
in the original contract.
And so if there are things
in that original contract
that you don't agree with,
you can't perform on
or you don't like,
you are already saying
that you will do those things.
So never sign an assignment contract
without seeing the original contract.
And now wholesalers
may have an issue with this
because typically that's going to let you
know how much they make.
To get around this,
I just tell them,
you can redact
the original purchase price
and you can redact
how much your assignment fee.
I don't care about that.
I need to see what everything else
in the contract says
so that I can make sure
that I can perform to this contract
that I will now be legally obligated
to perform on.
I mean, that's perfect.
I have very few things to add to that.
That was an incredibly good,
holistic answer.
I will just say this.
I think you should view wholesalers
the same way you look at
all of your deal flow.
You wouldn't just take a listing
that you saw on Zillow
or sent to you by an agent
or a pocket listing and be like,
oh, that's the price I should pay
because this person sent it to me.
I'm going to buy it
and I'm going to trust it.
You would verify everything
and just treat wholesalers
the same way.
The second thing I'll just say is
this idea that it's marked up too much.
I hear this a lot.
I understand that it does not
feel good to do that.
But your job is not to figure out
who's making what
before you get your hands on it.
It's to figure out,
am I willing to pay the price
that we've agreed on?
If it works at that price,
what does it matter
who's going to the wholesaler
and what's going to the seller?
It doesn't matter.
I know it gets in your brain.
I've had those thoughts too.
But at the end of the day,
if you're getting the deal
at the price you need it to be at,
don't care.
Absolutely.
Good for you.
You got it.
That's what you want.
Don't be mad because
they made some money too.
I think that's the right way
to think about it.
The last deal I closed
from a wholesaler,
I made $50,000 on.
I found out as I closed
that the wholesaler
also made $50,000.
I'm not going to lie to you.
I was a little like,
man, you made 50 grand
and you didn't have to do anything.
But would I do that exact same deal
all over again?
100% I would.
I mean, you're just a little jealous.
You did way less work than me.
It's annoying,
but you still made money.
I made money.
You got to just kind of
look at it from the big picture.
Well, these were fun.
Great questions
from the BiggerPockets community.
Again, if you have them,
go check them out
on BiggerPockets forums
or answer some for yourself.
If you can answer these questions,
go help out another investor
on the BiggerPockets community.
That's what the whole thing is about.
Henry, thanks as always, man.
This was a lot of fun.
Thanks, man.
Good to be here.
And thank you all
for watching this episode
of the BiggerPockets podcast.
We'll see you next time.
