Transcription
How I'd make money wholesaling real estate in 2026 if I literally had to start all over. Guys, my name is Rick and in this video, I'm going to walk through detailed plans of what I would do right now, 2026, to actually make money in wholesaling and give you a long-term strategy so you can survive in wholesaling. But before I do that, do me this favor. Make sure you smash that like button, hit that subscribe button, share this video with someone who wants to learn how to make money wholesaling real estate.
So, we're in 2026 and I've been doing wholesaling for 24 years. And I'm kind of an old-timer, but I've learned I've had to really open my mind and understanding how to make money today in wholesaling and where I see the future of wholesaling going. And to me, it's never been clearer than I've ever seen in wholesaling because I can give you a macro perspective from where I started and where it is now. Now, I'm not going to go back in time because you really don't care and I don't blame you. But the fundamentals of wholesaling will always be the same. Find people that need to sell the house. Listen to what problem they want to solve. Connect with them. Form a relationship and use their information, their intel to help them solve the problem and create a win-win situation. That is the goal of wholesaling. That will never change. The technology, the speed, and how we have to deal with everybody else wholesaling, that has massively changed. And that's what we're going to talk about today.
You see, wholesaling still works no matter how much you see other people like it doesn't work anymore. And to be honest with you, I've heard this pitch since 2003, and it is like a broken record in 2026. Are there challenges? Are there headwinds? Absolutely. Most people don't understand what we do in wholesaling. It gets labeled a scam right off the bat because we do not accept being average. And you're you're going to be asked to do things that are just not what you consider normal. And when this gets in the wrong hand, sometimes people do stupid things and they put a black eye on our industry. Like a lot of you guys see what's going on in the in the the subject to industry. It's crazy. Now, it's not so much the people that are educating it. It's what people are just they're taking basic information and they're manipulating. If they're bad people, they're bad people. And it doesn't matter if they're a cop, a wholesaler, a teacher, a nurse. Bad people, in my opinion, are just bad people. And we have to do everything we can to filter them out.
So, let's talk about what we can do right now and where I see wholesaling heading. Because I'm honest with you, I have survived so many hardships in wholesaling. Here's the one thing you have to understand. You just have to survive and keep going forward. This is not your 9 to five job where you're going to get your paycheck on Friday and you get paid twice a month. It is so far from that. And a lot of you have already felt that struggle. And that takes a year or two just to survive that part of it. But I don't care if you're just starting out now or you've been doing this 5 10 years plus. You have to just keep going. So, don't quit. That's rule number one.
Now, I want you to think about what the average wholesaler is learning in wholesaling real estate right now. Think about it for a second. Think about it. They're going to go out and find anybody who's got a house for sale, which is my opinion the absolute wrong way to do it. Because if you do not know exactly what you're looking for, you're not going to be able to find it. It's like going to a friend's house and they give you an address, but you have no map, no GPS. Yeah, I used to use maps. I'm sorry. So, how are you going to get there? What? Like, you got to use a compass. You got to like ask everyone for directions. It's going to take you forever to get there. It's no different in wholesaling. So, here's what the average wholesaler wants. They have very low patience. They want to take the shortest, most direct course they can. Sometimes they think it's paying $5, $7, $10,000, which honestly doesn't guarantee anyone's success because at the end of the day, it's just a random number. They're going to go out and find someone who wants to sell a house. Absolutely wrong way to do it because everybody wants to sell a house. And they're going to find stuff they can get a deal on right away. And a lot of them make $3 to $5,000 and then they they lose their mind chasing those deals around. Now, I'm not saying don't do those deals. But remember, that's what the average person does in wholesaling. They're just skimming the surface. They're going through the motions, and if I just like keep this basic effort up, I'll make a few bucks. They won't survive doing that. Most of them do it locally, and most of them avoid going into multiple markets and are scared to do stuff virtually. So, if that is your average wholesaler, I just want you to understand when you say you have a saturated market, your saturation is just at the surface level. There is a huge amount of wholesaler sitting right here. I'm going to teach you to be that wholesaler down here because I've been through this 24 years. You have to get through that first subsurface to survive in wholesaling.
Now, I'm all about low-hanging fruit, guys. Like easy deals. Low hanging fruit means the branch is bending over. The fruit is beautiful. It's soft. It's it's voluptuous and you want to eat it, right? There's not a ton of those out there, though. Let's let's just be brutally honest. And if everyone's just chasing the low-hanging fruit, this is why people are starving and wholesaling. This is why there's a 90 to 95% failure ratio in this business, because you're just set up to grab the low-hanging fruit. And I'm telling you, going into 2026, I personally would lean into wholesaling more now in 2026 than I ever have. You know why? Because everybody's leaving. And I learned back in 2008, the entire wholesaling market was basically reset from 2008 to 2010. Why? Because the people just chasing the low-hanging fruit, they starved and they left. And I see an announcement almost on a daily, if not weekly, basis about some real estate coach leaving. They're leaving because they don't understand how to adapt in 2026. And they can't see the future of wholesaling. Guys, I see it crystal clear. And I want you to hear me out in this video. By no means do am I going to have you stop chasing low-hanging fruit. But I'm telling you, I started out doing all wholesaling local. And why? Cuz I could at the time. I didn't understand virtual. I was one of the first people to reach out and do virtual. I did Ohio. And it was scary. And I did lose money when I first started, but I figured it out after a while. And I thought doing one market super scary. I'll do up to 10 15 different markets right now. I don't care because I need a bigger fruit trees. Like I need more fruit trees to find that low-hanging fruit.
So, what I want you to do in 2026 is just I would double down on virtual wholesaling because you need a wider array to find people that need to sell their house. If you do this local, there's only so many people that need to sell their house and you're under extreme competition between realtors and all these other cash buyers. I just don't think there's enough deals to feed it. And that's one thing we talk about. So, going virtually and doing the entire country nationwide is really smart. And right there, you can find enough low-hanging fruit to get your bills paid, to make good money, and learn how goes.
Now, the challenge with virtual marketing, I'm going to tell you right up front, is you're going to have to find JV partners, hopefully with other local wholesalers that know the market that can help you get it sold quickly. You're going to have to split profits. Just lean into it because you need speed. You cannot be tying up people's properties if you cannot move them and you don't have local market knowledge. Remember, all real estate is local.
Now, how are you going to attack virtual markets? In my opinion right now, I would go out and get an XLEADS account. Go to xleads.com and as I shoot this video, you get a 14-day free trial period and you get 10,000 skip traces. Not only do that, I'm going to let you do the market research 100% for free. Test it out. And now you can evaluate markets. You can compare them. You can find out where the flips are going. You can find out what the price points are in in from zip code to city to county to state, whatever you want to do. I've never seen better data in my life. And the use of AI and all these integrations, guys, it's phenomenal. And with your XLEADS account, you can get between 25,000 for the base account and 60,000 leads a month. You want to talk about grabbing that low-hanging fruit hanging all over the country? You're going to have to spread this out nationwide. It's just the truth. This is where me and Zach have leaned in the last 3 years. I still do local. But I'm going to be honest with you, Florida is not a great investment for most people, and people aren't coming into Florida to invest like they normally would have before because the prices have gone up so high. So, I've had to adapt and I'm teaching you how to adapt. Looking at wholesaling nationwide, in my opinion, is one of the best ways to move forward because now you have technology like XLEADS that will help you do market research. I used to pay thousands of dollars for this market research. It's it's all at your fingertips, guys. Go to xleads.com and why not harvest between 25,000 and 60,000 leads a month because that's what's going to take. You can grab probates in whatever state, county you want to do. You can grab the vacancy list. You can grab tax delinquencies. These are all people that need to sell. The problem is there's only so much people in your backyard and we're going to have to branch out. You're going to have to learn to form relationships with people all over the country. Me and Zach make a full-time living doing this and we absolutely love it. Is it scary at first? Absolutely. But tools like XLEADS will help you navigate through and get it all done. It'll also let you use your GoHighLevel account to manage complex CRM follow-ups. All the workflows are built into you. We automate AI. I don't expect you to call 25,000 people a month and do follow-ups, but AI can actually do it while you're sleeping. It's phenomenal. All your contract signing can be done there. All your your comping, especially in non-disclosure states like Texas, you can do it all inside of XLEADS, guys. It's just like a no-brainer. And honestly, starting at $97 bucks a month, it's one of the easiest decisions you'll ever make. This is where I see stuff going. In the old days, we used to use nine different platforms. That's right. I said nine different platforms, nine different credit card charges, nine different training sites, nine different logins. It's ridiculous. And none of them talk to each other. Now, you can all get it in one platform, xleads.com.
So, as we're using XLEADS to find the low-hanging fruit virtually across the entire nation, that is what we're going to do to just harvest and get regular income. The problem is depending on the amount of volume you can do and if you're going to do it yourself, you're going to do it with a staff, that's completely up to you. I teach you where you can easily do it all by yourself and get to the point where you need help because you get filled up with so many leads. If you're not there, don't worry about hiring anyone right now because most people don't make it out of the stage very often. Wholesaling, it's just the truth. I'm not telling you to scare you, but you need to create a problem where you have no more time back and you need to buy it back by bringing on either additional partners or bringing on people to help you grow your wholesaling business. Remember, I got to get you your first deal, get you your first $100 grand. If you're not there, don't even worry about hiring other people cuz you don't need them right off the bat. We have to survive wholesaling.
So once we're done picking that low-hanging fruit, I'm going to teach you to do the complete opposite what every other wholesaler does. And this is where I see 2026 in the future going wholesaling. Everybody just skims that sub layer like we talked that low-hanging fruit. What if we find the fruit at the top of the tree that's deep inside that nobody can get to, nobody knows what to do, and everybody skims over it because I can't make money today. That's short-term thinking. If you're going to be in the business like me 24 years plus, think long term. Let me tell you, if I told you I'm gonna bury a dollar bill and if you wait one year, you come back, it'll be a $100, would you do it? Hell yes. And that's what I'm going to teach you. I'm going to teach you how to go deep and find the biggest problems in wholesaling. And I know what you're saying, go, Rick, I shoot, I don't even know. Like, I'm just trying to do the basics for the low-hanging fruit. I get it. But remember, your number one job as a wholesaler is what? To locate people's problems in real estate. people that need to sell that they just can't figure it out on their own. They've tried realtors. They've talked to everybody else. Everyone's given up on them. Now, why are these properties so valuable? Because everybody runs from them. I don't know what to do. It's complicated. Let me give you a list of items you can look for on these types of deals. And they're going to come across your regular wholesaling marketing when you do it. Let me share them with you.
Deceased owners. There's people own properties that aren't even alive anymore. They need help. Period. Is it a probate? Is it a legal maneuver? Is it a quiet title? It doesn't matter. If you can get deceased owner data, which you can get inside of XLEADS now. Crazy. You have such a strategic marketing advantage over every other wholesaler. But Rick, what am I going to do if I find them? Bear with me. I'm going to show you.
Next one. Title issues. Stuff's titled wrong. The title the the chain of title's broken. I'm not trying to talk over your head. I'm just telling you these problems exist all the time. And if they don't have clear and clean title, which is what's required in wholesaling, they cannot sell the property. If they cannot sell the property, nobody else can help them out. And most of the time, they think they got to go hire an expensive lawyer. The reality is they just need someone who understands how to navigate it through it. Now, let me just keep going through the list and I'll show you how to fix it.
Pre-probate. You guys heard about this. This is when you have a deceased owner and the family doesn't know what to do because they think lawyers are complicated. They don't understand probate and they just ignore it. I've seen it ignored as much as 20 to 25 years. Guys, these are free and clear properties that there's just so much equity in it and the owners, they want it solved, but they can't find. It's like finding a needle in haystack. The same thing we do trying to find regular wholesale deals. These complicated deals, the sellers are trying to find that needle in haystack past the lawyer to someone that will help them out. That's you. That's me.
Severe tax delinquencies. I've seen stuff 7 9 10 years behind. How they get foreclosed on? It's like a miracle. But some of these bills are huge. $30, $40, $50,000. They don't know what to do with it. And if they don't take action, they're eventually going to lose the property. It is an easy problem to solve in my opinion.
What about like partnerships that go bad on rental properties? What about divorce has gone bad where one walked away and the other one? Do you know that you actually have the ability to take a controlling interest in the property? Wait a minute. That sounds like what we do in wholesaling. Yes, it's just much more complex.
Guys, all these issues I just showed you, your job is just to locate them. I know what you're saying, Rick. What do I do when I locate them? That's the easy part. We're going to teach you how to go deep and how to solve the biggest problems. Here's a really cool thing. Me and Zach specialize in these types of deals. They require lawyers. They require specialized title people. They require people with capital because it usually takes money. The average deal we're going to fix with a title issue or like a probate is anywhere from $5 to $50,000. Now, if there's money in the deal and we can underwrite it, I'm willing to put the money up for you and split it with you 50/50. Like, oh crap, here we go. He's splitting it again. Listen to me. You wouldn't have made a dime with these. And most of the low-hanging fruit you're chasing around is maybe three, five, seven, 10,000 if you're lucky. And there's no money to do a JV. I don't want to split those deals with you. They're just not worth my time. I'm being brutally honest with you. But these deals, if they have money, here's the key is they got to have at least $50,000 of equity or more in it. Often, most of them have six figures. I'm doing right one right now. That's over $150,000 of equity. It will take about 9 to 12 months to get it the ship righted. Meaning use lawyers, legal people, use title people. But guys, think about this. Do you think me and Zach want to partner up with you on a deal that's got $100 grand? Heck yeah. And you can make $50 grand. Check this out. Just by locating the deal. Now, it's going to take some time. And I'll actually give you options if you want to own it with me or something. We can actually create cash flow in the long term because I love to do that. But I can't guarantee that. It depends on deal. If you find deals like this in your marketing, reach out to me and Zach cuz we just love these deals. Why? Because I've been doing them over 15 years. I'm pretty much an expert at fixing title issues and doing everything. And I have an entire staff. They're completely dedicated to solving these problems. And I'll also teach you how to do it along the way because if the bigger the problem you solve, the more money you're going to make.
Now, it's critical before you take on these monstrous deals that you determine one thing. Is there equity in the deal? If there's not at least 50K in it, it's often not worth the fight because there's capital risk, there's time risk, and I'm not going to go in for a deal for 10 or $20,000 because I can't really split it with you. But we can find $50, $75, $100,000, two, $300,000 all day long. And we underwrite the deal to see what we think it's going to take to fix it, how much time it is going to be, and we're going to share that information with you. And you just sit back and wait. You're basically a partner on the deal. And guys, every other wholesaler out in the market is just trying to just grab that low-hanging fruit. You can do it. I want you to use an XLEADS account to do that because it'll allow you to go nationwide and you get 10,000 free skip traces. You can test it out and do all the market research and find the market you want to penetrate now. But it'll also allow you to find those deep underlying problems, the title issues, the pre-probate issues, the deceased owner issues, the the partner that wants out of their deal, like how do I get rid of this property and how do I solve my other partner that won't talk to me? All you got to do is locate them, identify the equity in it, the real equity, like what is it worth and roughly what do they owe and is there at least a $50,000 spread? If there is, that gives you ability to solve problems that most wholesalers would have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to find someone like me to actually train them for years. Why not make money together? It is a win-win situation. Remember, wholesaling is all about minimizing your risk and maximizing reward by go you go out and chasing that low-hanging fruit and then finding the deep problems and pairing up with someone like me or Zach or just find someone that wants to work with you that has the skill sets, has the experience over 20 years experience and has capital to solve these problems, you can hit it out of the park. It would be phenomenal.
Guys, this is how I'm doing wholesaling right now in 2026 and go forward. I'll always grab the low hanging fruit and I love doing JV deals with you guys. and they're quick and easy, but like it's not as motivating to split a $10 or $20,000 deal when I can split a $100,000 deal with you. So, do the low hanging fruit and guys, go out and find big problems. The key to making a ton of money in wholesaling is find big problems and partner up people who have the experience and the capital and you can learn from it. Who doesn't want to earn $50,000 just by providing a lead? And guys, you do a deal with me, you are a partner for life with me. And these are the people that I use my marketing skills. Freeh wholesaling.com, xleads.com. Everything me and Zach do online is to find people that want to go out there and make a difference in this world. The bigger the problem, the more money you're going to make. It doesn't mean you skip the low hanging fruit. It just means you do them in combination. Guys, this one two punch is the future of wholesaling. And I've been doing it for over 15 years. I basically took nine years to master like the low hanging fruit. And once I did that, I was very comfortable taking on much bigger problems and getting experts to help me out with it. Lawyers, CPAs, and title specialists. I have all that at my disposal. Go find us the big problems. Let's partner up together or find somebody that'll help you out. The bottom line is guys, stop just scraping the surface. Scrape the surface and go deep. Do it in combination cuz nobody teaches these methods anymore. I don't know why. Remember, the bigger the problem, the bigger the solution needed, the bigger the paycheck. You deserve it.
So guys, use this one two approach going into 2026. You can make money both ways. Just sometimes you got to make an investment in time and mostly marketing. If you can do that, you go out and find problems cuz the real money is always going to be in marketing and wholesaling. So don't depend on these third party companies to derive all these ridiculous leads. Go out and find the biggest problems that people need to sell their house that nobody else can solve and grab that low hanging fruit. Let me know in the comments which of these techniques you're going to use. And as usual, if you got value from this video, do me a favor. Make sure you smash that like button. Hit that subscribe button and share this video with someone who wants to learn the truth about wholesaling going into 2026. Guys, when everybody's leaving wholesaling, that's when you run in. My favorite part is I started out wholesaling when it was super hot in 2003. And then 2008, everybody left. And there was just very few players. And this is where I made my money in wholesaling. I see 2026 being the exact same way. Don't believe me? Look at everybody who's leaving wholesaling. Look at the people that initially taught wholesaling. They're all gone. But you know what? The gins are still here. The gins aren't going anywhere. And I'm here to help you out. Let's partner up together. I love you guys. I appreciate you. I'll see you in the next video.