Wholesaling 101: The Complete System

Wholesaling is finding a property below market value, getting it under contract, and selling that contract to a cash buyer for a fee. You never buy the house. You never fix anything. You find the deal, connect the buyer, and collect a check at closing.

The assignment process works like this: you sign a purchase agreement with the seller that includes "and/or assigns" language. That clause gives you the right to transfer the contract to someone else. Your buyer pays the original purchase price plus your assignment fee, and the title company handles the rest.

Most wholesalers piece together five or six different tools to run their business. One app for driving neighborhoods. Another for skip tracing. A separate dialer. Some kind of CRM, usually a spreadsheet. Maybe a project management tool on top of all that. Every tool is another login, another monthly bill, another place where data falls through the cracks.

FlipMantis puts the entire workflow in one place. Open the dashboard and you can see your lead pipeline, active deals, recent calls, and upcoming follow-ups without switching tabs. The D4D tool feeds into the skip tracer, which feeds into the dialer, which feeds into the CRM. One platform, one data set, no copy-pasting between apps.

Wholesaling works because motivated sellers exist everywhere. Someone is going through foreclosure right now in your market. Someone just inherited a house they don't want. A landlord is fed up with tenants. These situations create deals, and they happen regardless of interest rates or market cycles.

Your deals come from people who need to sell fast. Not people who want top dollar and are willing to wait. The gap between those two groups is where your profit lives.

The FlipMantis List Builder lets you pull motivated seller lists straight from the platform. Start by selecting your target area on the map. Then stack your filters: absentee owners, tax delinquent properties, pre-foreclosure filings, high equity, long-term ownership. Each filter you add narrows the list to higher-probability sellers. A property that hits three or more indicators is worth your time.

Driving for dollars is still the best way to find properties nobody else knows about. Open FlipMantis D4D mode on your phone, drive your farm area, and tap to capture any property showing distress signals. Overgrown yard, boarded windows, code violation notice on the door. The app pulls the owner info automatically using ATTOM data, and you can skip trace them with one tap before you finish the block.

The combination is powerful. Your D4D routes catch the properties that are too new or too small for the data aggregators. Your list builder catches the ones you can't see from the street, like an out-of-state owner with a tax lien. Run both and you're covering ground that most investors miss completely.

Once the leads are in FlipMantis, they're already organized by source, status, and motivation level. No exporting CSVs, no importing into a separate CRM. The data lives where you're going to work it.

Before you make any offer, you need to know two numbers: what the property is worth fixed up, and what it costs to get there. Everything else is math.

ARV, or After Repair Value, comes from comparable sales. In FlipMantis, pull the property address and the comp tool shows you recent sales within a half-mile radius. You're looking for 3 to 5 properties that sold in the last six months with similar bed count, bath count, and square footage. The tool plots them on a map so you can see exactly where they are relative to your subject property.

Adjust for differences. A comp with a pool when your property doesn't have one needs a downward adjustment. A comp that's 300 square feet larger needs a per-foot deduction. FlipMantis lets you make line-item adjustments and saves them to your underwriting report.

Once you have your ARV, the underwriting calculator does the MAO math. Plug in the repair estimate, your assignment fee, and the tool shows you the maximum you can pay. It runs the numbers for wholesale, flip, and BRRRR scenarios side by side so you can see which exit strategy works best for each deal.

The Mantis Score adds another layer. It analyzes the property data, distress signals, and market conditions to give you a confidence rating from 0 to 100. A score above 70 means the deal looks solid across multiple factors. Below 40, something is off and you should dig deeper before making an offer. It's not a replacement for your own judgment, but it catches things you might miss when you're moving fast.

You've got the lead. You've got the phone number. Now you need a conversation.

The FlipMantis Power Dialer loads your list and starts calling. When someone picks up, their property details, owner info, and any previous contact history appear on screen. You're not fumbling through notes or opening a separate tab. Everything you need to have an informed conversation is right there.

Keep the opener simple: "Hey, this is [your name]. I'm a local investor calling about your property on [address]. Have you thought about selling?" That's it. Don't overcomplicate it. If they say yes, ask about their timeline and what price they need. If they say no, ask what would change their mind. Log the disposition and move to the next call.

One call almost never closes a deal. The 7-Day Strike sequence handles the follow-up. Day one, you call. Day two, automated text. Day three, another call at a different time. Day four, ringless voicemail. Day five, call. Day six, text with a different angle. Day seven, final attempt. The whole thing runs automatically inside FlipMantis once you set it up.

For leads you can't get to personally, AI Voice Agents handle the initial screening. They call the lead, ask qualifying questions, and log the results. When someone shows real interest, you get notified to take over the conversation. It's not a replacement for you on the phone. It's how you get to more leads than you could reach alone.

You got a verbal yes. The seller agrees to your price. Now you need to get it on paper and find your buyer.

Assignment is the standard path. You sign a purchase agreement with the seller, then sign a separate assignment agreement with your buyer. The buyer pays the original price plus your fee. One closing, one set of closing costs. The title company handles the paperwork. Your assignment fee shows up on the settlement statement, which means both the seller and buyer can see what you're making. Most of the time that's fine. When it's not, you double close.

A double close uses two separate transactions. You buy from the seller, then immediately sell to your buyer. Two closings, two sets of closing costs, but your fee stays private. You need transactional funding for the gap between closings, which typically costs a flat fee or 1-2% of the purchase price.

Inside FlipMantis, move the deal through your pipeline stages as it progresses: under contract, buyer found, title ordered, closing scheduled. Upload your purchase agreement, assignment agreement, and any inspection reports to the document vault so everything is in one place. The activity timeline tracks every status change, call, and note so you have a complete record of the deal from first contact to close.

Get a real estate attorney in your state to review your contracts before you use them. This is a one-time cost of a few hundred dollars and it keeps you out of legal trouble. Different states have different disclosure requirements for wholesalers, and getting this wrong is an expensive mistake.