The Future of Wholesaling

Mike Hambright (00:33)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my good friend Chris Eymann and we’re gonna be talking about the future of wholesaling. Now Chris knows more than anyone, he’s done somewhere around 13, 14,000 transactions, has almost 25 years experience, still a super young guy, really spry. But we’re gonna be talking about what the future of wholesaling is in America. So welcome to the show. Chris, glad to have you buddy.

Chris Eymann (00:57)
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Mike Hambright (00:59)
It’s good to see you, yeah. I say this all the time. Part of the reason I do so many podcasts is because you and I have been friends for a long time, haven’t chatted for a little while, and so it’s always a great way to use it as a vehicle to shoot some good content, but also to catch up a little bit. So always good to see you.

Chris Eymann (01:14)
Yeah, no, it’s always like, that’s why I kind of jump on shows and actually I run a local podcast for my REIA just because like I get a, it’s an excuse to like catch up with people. And like you said, and share 30 minutes, whatever, 40 minutes, however long your podcast is, mine’s only 30, but yeah, it’s just a way to catch up.

Mike Hambright (01:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep, yep. you have your ear to the ground like few, but before we kind of jump into what’s going on with the future of wholesaling, maybe a little bit about what’s going on in today’s market, why don’t you share your background for those that don’t know you.

Chris Eymann (01:48)
Yeah, so I’m a local Phoenix guy, know, high school, college, played college basketball, did the tech world for about eight years, got laid off twice in the tech downturn. That was my kind of, ⁓ when you’ve been laid off twice, it’s like, well, this doesn’t work, so let me go find a place where I can go work and not be controlled or told what to do and when I can work and when I can’t. So ended up getting into real estate ⁓ and then…

coming a real estate wholesaler, really I was just buying houses the foreclosure steps, but this is like 2000, you know, so way before anybody and they’re like, what are you doing? You’re buying house at the courthouse? Like, yeah, I’m buying them. I fix them up. I sell them, make 20 grand, 25 grand. Like, can you get me one? And then anyway, before I know it, I was buying a house.

You know, this is before texting and all this stuff. You literally had to dial somebody’s number. I got 123 Main Street. I bought it for 100 grand. You can have it for 1025. I can set up the hard money for you. We gotta pay for it by 5 p.m. And I mean, I was a wholesaler, I think, before the word was invented.

Mike Hambright (03:00)
before it was cool. Yep. And just talk about the evolution. Talk about that a little bit more because you started doing it the way you just said. Obviously, and then what a lot of people don’t know is the auctions in Arizona are daily, right? Yeah.

Chris Eymann (03:15)
Yeah, daily. So yeah, I

Yeah. And then I started in Phoenix. I did a little, you know, the Texas stuff in the 04, 05 area, the Super Tuesday. You know, we were, yeah, one day a month. Yeah. So anyway, built a hard money company and ended up getting a hundred million dollar line of credit. So that’s about 2002, three, starting the hard money company. We started with a 25 million dollar line.

Mike Hambright (03:28)
Yeah, one day a month in Texas, right?

Chris Eymann (03:45)
Unfortunately that came with personal guarantee so when the music stopped I got wiped out in 08 I lost $4.8 million on my taxes and yeah then had to basically rebuild lost a million five of friends and family money that I spent from basically 09 to 15 paying back and then You know

Regrouped restarted went back to foreclosure sales. I was lucky lucky enough to get a Goldman Sachs account where My single purchase in one day at trustee sale was 27 houses There and they were only paying me fifteen hundred a house, but when it’s you know, ten a day fifteen a day, you know, you’re Definitely helps ⁓ and did that with my partners and some local lenders here that we ⁓ used because you had to buy it

Mike Hambright (04:34)
Yeah.

Chris Eymann (04:41)
hold it for 10 days till the title came in and then sell it to Goldman. And so was a, mean, the net net on it was probably only maybe less than a thousand a house, but I mean, it was, it was still busy and we’re still booming. And then obviously 2017, 18 comes around where equity’s really kind of hockey stick in. And that’s when I had to, that’s when I started, I went into a mastermind where I met you and then,

had to really win into that mastermind only because I needed to start transitioning from foreclosures to direct to seller and all the other acquisition strategies because just the auctions were coming down and I didn’t realize it was gonna come down as far as it did but I was still planning to keep the volume up but the trustee sales weren’t gonna keep it up.

Mike Hambright (05:36)
right.

I think the important thing here is like you’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been doing it for a long time, but not nearly as long as you. And it’s just when you’ve been through a few market cycles and you’ve been through, you know, some shifts in the model and stuff like that, like you, learn a lot about, you just gain a lot of wisdom about how to move forward. And on some levels, you know, I hate to use this word because you’ve got to knock on wood here, but it starts to make you a little bit bulletproof. Like, you know, what tools to pull out in which market. And I think the market we’re in right now,

A lot of people left just because they only knew an easy time. Things got hard and then they moved on to something else that for them seemingly was easy, but quite frankly, whatever it was will also get hard. And there’s a lot to be said for just riding the markets and figuring out how to ride those markets and use different tools rather than jump into the next shiny object, right?

Chris Eymann (06:18)
Yeah.

Well, and those shiny objects are great. Like call it, you know, late kind of 18, 19, cold calling shiny object worked really well. Follow that into, you know, early 2020 texting shiny object, but it worked really well. Right. So, um, some shiny objects are good when they, they get started out and then, you know, there’s some, you know, issues with them just, and to the point of like, uh,

Mike Hambright (06:51)
Yeah.

Chris Eymann (07:00)
You know, other shiny objects like disposition strategies, novations, shiny object. Guess what? When the market slows down or comes to a halt like it does, it did in 2022. Yeah, novation is great because it maximizes the dollars in in the that transaction. But if now of a sudden your transactions are, you know, 30 to 60 days and they go to six months, well.

I mean, I mean, hey, when you when you were talking to your seller and you’re saying like, hey, I’m to get you out of this house. And it it was kind of like a 30 to 60 day conversation versus a six month conversation. It’s completely different thing. like, you know, all the different shiny objects hit. like sooner or later, you got to be able to pivot those. And I think the I remember going to the mastermind like December of twenty twenty two. And it was like everybody had switched innovations. And it’s like this guy, they’re like, what are you doing, Chris?

Mike Hambright (07:46)
Yeah.

Chris Eymann (08:00)
always just been, yeah, I take an ovation every now and then, but the wholesale works, right? And they’re like, oh, the market sucks. I’m like, distressed people have to transact. So it’s just what point do they transact? Do they transact at 73 % or do they transact at 68 %? But they still have to transact.

Mike Hambright (08:19)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s talk about a little bit about kind of the role of legislation. Like you’ve seen a you’ve seen a lot over your years. And so there’s kind of more legislation than ever kind of happening right now. It’s been rolling out just the role that that has on the wholesaling market specifically.

Chris Eymann (08:38)
Yeah, so obviously you got the states that are…

like South Carolina that’s like wholesaling is illegal. I think Oregon was the same. Then you got other states that are just like, you have to be a licensed agent to wholesale. think Illinois is that way. know, Arizona put something in place, but it’s just like, hey, you have to disclose that you’re wholesaling. So your contract has to say, hey, so it’s just kind of, work around it by like, hey, we do a lot of different strategies. We do some fix and flip. We do some Airbnb. We do some wholesale, but it’s not like, hey, we’re

to wholesale this property we just kind of put it in the contract that hey we got a lot of different strategies we might wholesale this one but I mean that’s kind of our goal but I mean at the same time it’s not every goal if we get a really good one and you know that certain neighborhood that moves in 30 days no matter what the markets like we’ll fix and flip that one I mean you know if you know your market you know like hey we never see one in this neighborhood you know we’ll keep that one.

Mike Hambright (09:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let’s talk a little about the power of your list. I know you have a huge list. You’ve helped a of people with Dispo too, because you’ve been doing it for a long time. And there’s a lot of power in not just having a big list, but kind of having these relationships that ⁓ there’s people on there that are going to be transacting in any market, right? So let’s talk about kind of the power of the list and how you, I guess, kind of how you manage your list and those relationships.

Chris Eymann (10:08)
Yeah, so I mean, when you have a big list, it’s hard to like, you know, have kind of your pocket buyers, like, hey, I’m gonna give Steve his, you know, I mean, obviously you’re trying to, you’re trying to compete at the acquisition level. So you have to beat out those guys. So to beat out a lot of other guys, you got to be able to sell them for higher than everybody else. So that’s where the big list comes into play. Obviously being in the business 25 years helps because

I still have those guys that were in the business 10 years ago that joined the list and maybe they are not in the fix and flip business. And it’s kind of building a brand. When you’ve had a brand for 25 years in this business, mean, there’s actually something to be like, well, if you buy, well, I don’t know this guy that just started emailing me last week or last year, but this guy over here, if you watch his list, he’s been in the business for 25 years.

Not that wholesalers get a bad name, but some of them do, right? So it’s like, hey, so a little bit of a list and you see that email. I’m not one of those guys at wholesales where I send each individual house and I send you like six times a day. I’m like, one email, here’s my list. So.

Mike Hambright (11:13)
No doubt.

Yeah.

Yeah, so talk about the list, because there are a lot of wholesalers out there that put stuff out that are, they’re kind of bullshit numbers, right? And so people just like start to like unsubscribe or hit spam or whatever. So how do you kind of manage trying to sell for a maximum price, which you want to do, and putting out deals that people don’t just tune out to you because it seems like it’s too high. Like, how do you manage optimizing price and not pissing off your list?

Chris Eymann (11:36)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, it’s just kind of like once again, it’s that it’s that market.

You know, if it was COVID and I’m selling a house that’s gonna, you’re gonna put on the market and get multiple offers, $10,000 over. I mean, I’m probably selling that at 87 cents in the dollar. I mean, just that’s what it is. And if it’s current times and ⁓ MLS inventory’s up. And so some people, some wholesalers just, or some fix and flippers just like, there’s plenty right here on MLS. I’ll just shop that. I get my inspection period. You know, I can renegotiate the price. ⁓

Obviously then I gotta be selling stuff at, I gotta make you get off the fence to buy the house. I gotta be selling you stuff at 68, 69%, 70%. So yeah, it’s just market conditions that dictate that. I don’t know, the good thing about it is like, you know, I do the local REIA and you know, every good educator, well every educator, not even good educator, every educator, right, says,

Go check out your local RIA. You know any educator that doesn’t say that in their class? So I’m just like, I’m the, so and I don’t charge for my RIA, it’s every third Tuesday and you know it’s kinda, I put out, don’t spend a bunch of money marketing on it. I just, you know, it’s on Facebook, everybody refers, go to Chris’s, Phoenix RIA. All’s I’m doing is collecting your name and your email address and your phone number. That’s all I, it’s free, but ⁓ you know I,

I don’t know, 2,000 new names. And all they gotta do, all they’re saying is, I’m thinking about getting into the fix and flip space or the wholesale space. I went to somebody’s presentation, they said go to a local re-up, and here I am. So.

Mike Hambright (13:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about, obviously you talked a little bit about Fix and Flip. You’re a lender, so you lend to a lot of Fix and Flip folks or maybe some landlords, but you do a lot of wholesaling. So you’re involved in every extra strategy one way or another. And I think you would agree with this. It’s a little bit…

of ⁓ it’s a bad idea to really just kind of have one extra strategy and that’s all you do ever and you’re unwilling to do anything else. So maybe share some of your wisdom of all the deals and all the time you’ve been doing this about the importance of kind of having multiple extra strategies in your toolbox.

Chris Eymann (14:23)
Yeah, so I do, I

jump on a podcast with a buddy and he likes to, you know me, I’m not a super talkative guy, especially in rooms. So like, I can’t run a podcast without having a cohost that is good at putting all the little soundbites. His name’s Luke, but you know, obviously in 2021, 2022, like I said, you know, 10, 10 grand over asking all the stuff. I’m like,

Like how’s it going? He’s like, great, everything. I’m like, you’re not wholesaling any? And he’s like, no, I’m not, I’m not wholesaling any. I’m like, maybe you should like rehab 60 % and then wholesale 30 or 40%. He’s like, no, it’s just too much money, too much money. And then obviously when the music starts in April, May of 2022, like I’m like, how’s that keeping everything going for you? Because as we know, if you are a fixing flipper, it’s the down payment money.

you have a private lender that gives you 100 % or you got some gap funding, but it’s the down payment money, the rehab money, the Binser costs, and if you have interest payments to a hard money lender like me, mean, you get 10 to 15 projects.

and then money’s just going out the door, right? And then if they’re not selling as fast, then your cash cycle lengthens and the cash isn’t coming back in. It’s just, that’s why same thing that I talked about earlier with novations, like everybody was like, I’m gonna do novations. And then now all of a sudden contracts are instead of 30 to 60 days, there’s four months, five months, six months, you know.

Mike Hambright (15:36)
adds up. Yeah.

Chris Eymann (15:59)
you didn’t set that expectation with your seller is just like, that’s why I just, you know, I do my fix and flips, I do new builds, but my wholesale is just like the way to keep the cash machine moving. So, and then same with, you know, having, once again, when the wholesale slows down, it’s kind of interesting because I am a hard money lender. If the wholesale slows down, the cash doesn’t turn as fast, but the interest checks, they’ll keep coming in. So, once again, you get cash in the door.

Mike Hambright (16:29)
Yeah. And where do you see, where do you, mean, maybe share a little bit about where you see the market kind of headed. know Phoenix is not necessarily indicative of the whole country, but it’s been a hotbed for wholesaling activity. So where do you kind of see the marketplace going ⁓ over the next, you know, couple of years even?

Chris Eymann (16:48)
Obviously real estate is kind of, you know, super local. Obviously you have California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, all the kind of the, I think there’s only 10 to 12 states and you may know this answer better that, you know, make up kind of 85 % of the wholesaling transactions in this country. But Phoenix actually being one of them, we had, you know, a decent spike in inventory and it’s kind of come back down 20%. So.

I feel like it’s kind of leveled off. you know, I just think it might be weird for people to have just a normal stable market where you actually have to buy a house. You have to do a good job of rehabbing it. You have to market it properly, maybe even stage it and sell it. ⁓ You know, we’ve just…

We had the hockey stick up in 05, 04, 06. Then we had the complete crash. But literally from 9 to 22 was a steady. Now granted, we’d come down 80 % or 70%. But it was still a steady like 5, 10 % every little hill climb. So it’s interesting having a little extra inventory on the market.

actually having to get out your pen and paper and go back to the drawing board and restructure and do I actually have to stage this house to make it look right and make it look pretty because I just can’t throw it on the market and get multiple offers.

Mike Hambright (18:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think most people think that interest rates will start to come down, certainly by May of next year, because there’ll be a new Fed chairman by then at least. But, you know, it’s yet to be determined, like how big of an impact that will make on prices. Even if interest rates come down, prices are still, you know, I’m not a, don’t know if I believe that prices will come down. I just don’t feel like they will. Like interest rates help. But housing is just generally unaffordable in your market and my market. I Dallas,

Chris Eymann (18:35)
Yeah.

Well, I thought it was.

Mike Hambright (18:55)
It used to be an affordable market and it’s not anymore.

Chris Eymann (18:59)
Yeah, definitely a lot of people move from other parts of the country into places like Dallas, like Arizona. mean, Arizona definitely was affordable, but when we had so many people coming from California during COVID, they definitely bought a decent amount of property. you know, even…

Mike Hambright (19:06)
Sure.

Chris Eymann (19:17)
Like, stuff should adjust. I mean, like the jobs report that came out, whatever, two weeks ago, and then they adjusted May and June’s job report. Like, May’s job report was like, oh, we generated 170,000 jobs. Oops, let me change that one. It was only about 17,000 jobs. And I think the June numbers were very similar, so, you know, they expected this last jobs report to be like 170, 180,000.

Mike Hambright (19:39)
Yeah.

Chris Eymann (19:47)
and they came out with like, ⁓ it was like 70 something. Like, where do they adjust that down to? Like, we made zero jobs. So, I mean, if that keeps going in that direction, sooner or later, like, someone’s gotta say, ⁓ we gotta lower rates ⁓ to start picking up small businesses and, you know, get stuff moving. And I mean, you and I both know that like, hey, you lower rates for the fix and flip guys.

Mike Hambright (19:53)
Right.

Yeah.

Chris Eymann (20:15)
they’ll go start buying houses. And when the fix and flip guys are buying houses, they’re spending money everywhere. Their insurance, Home Depot, you know, paying trade people to do trades. Like everybody starts spending money.

Mike Hambright (20:27)
Right.

Yep. Yep.

So Chris, talk a little bit about the connection of you have a good size hard money business. You wholesale, so you are able to fund a lot of your wholesalers. Maybe just talk about, I guess, of multiple streams of income and how those things maybe fit together. It could be multiple streams of income without being a lender, but just talk about the importance of maybe having multiple streams of income, given that the markets go up and down and sometimes people need to have a little bit of a backup plan sometimes.

Chris Eymann (21:00)
Yeah,

I mean, it’s just, you know, even like, let’s say you’re a fix and flipper and you don’t have a hard money business. lot of fix and flippers do their fix and flip business and then they transition to like maybe even a real estate coach, right? So, you know, you could be a real estate coach and meets, you know, you’re in the business eight, 10 years. ⁓ You know, another guy that I know, Lex down in Florida, like he’s, he’s a real, he’s got his real estate.

Business then he transitioned to a real estate coach and then now he’s got such a big following in his real estate coaching business that he Wholesales to that and then he’s saved some money. He lends to those people like but yeah, just having Not just being the fix and flip guy or not just being the wholesale guy or any anything or you know for me it’s ⁓

wholesale and hard money, but like I said, when the wholesale transactions stop slow because the retail market slows, the money just stays out longer. So you have somebody still paying the interest payment. I don’t, my hard money company in Phoenix, because the rehabs aren’t so drastic. Now there are plenty of rehabs that are 100, 150 grand, but Phoenix is such a new city that most of the…

The rehabs are more cosmetic, so I don’t have to put out the rehab money. Generally, people come borrow money from me, still do their 20 or 30 grand, paint carpet, maybe some bathrooms and some cabinets. so after putting a down payment and putting money into it, generally they’re not gonna walk away. ⁓

Mike Hambright (22:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So awesome, Chris. So anything else going on in the market or anything else that’s kind of on your mind about maybe talk a little bit about just for wholesalers, like how they should be thinking about how to move forward. Some just have left the business, right? And they go back and get a job or they go do something else. But any kind of words of wisdom for folks that, let’s just say people that are kind of newer or new in the business, what they should be thinking about right now.

Chris Eymann (23:03)
Well obviously if you’re just starting out, I think the biggest thing that everybody has is just obviously, you know, taking that first step, right? Trying to do a house, whether you win or lose, if you think you’re always gonna win, that’s not gonna happen. I was telling you off the show, here I am, been in the business forever, and I thought, like, my daughter’s a real estate agent, let me do some fix and flips with her, and so she’ll have some retail listings.

I didn’t make any money this spring. I did five houses and I think I’m down like 15 or 16 grand. Now, my daughter did have like 25 to 30,000 in commissions, but I’d just rather given her the check than did all the work and give her the check. yeah, just, mean, obviously you’ve to take action to get the first deal. It’s a little bit of a slower market. So,

I always suggest going to a guy like myself if you’re getting ready to wholesale because it’s hard to do the acquisition and the disposition at the same time. maybe go to someone like myself in your local market. I’m sure there’s a guy in Dallas that wholesales a bunch and you know.

Reach out to him, see if he’ll buy it from you or partner to JV sell it from you. But then, you know, get your cash back in the door and figure out the marketing strategies that you like that are gonna bring leads in. All different kinds, PPL, PPC, those actually take a little bit more money. You know, all the free ones are the door knocking and, you know, that’s a whole different wholesale class. But yeah, just… ⁓

you know, get your first couple transactions, put it back into marketing and slowly grow your business.

Mike Hambright (24:50)
Yeah, I think that’s one of the problems with lot of newer investors is they try to get rich quick and if they don’t, they quit. And it’s like, well, just build the relationships. Don’t worry about hitting a home run on your first 10 deals. Just worry about learning so that you can get rich for sure, not necessarily quick.

Chris Eymann (24:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean,

I have a comfortable life. mean, if I didn’t have the tech or the financial crisis, I’d be way further down this road than I was now. you know, things happen. I mean, I’m sure a lot of people got hit in 2022. I know a lot of people that got hit and got out of the business. I know a lot of people that got hit and be like, oh, man, that was a rough 22. And I’m just like, yeah, you should have seen 07, 08.

Mike Hambright (25:36)
Yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, Chris, you got a lot of things going on. If folks wanted to learn more about you or connect in some way, you’ve got your Rio Club, you’ve got your lending business, you’ve got a lot of things going on in Phoenix, like where can they go? How do they connect?

Chris Eymann (25:49)
I’m

just at sellholesellhouses.com on IG. I’m obviously on Facebook and Instagram. I’m not on TikTok. just Chris Eiman. ⁓ There’s only I think two of us or three of us in the country. So you can find me pretty quickly.

Mike Hambright (26:08)
What

was the website that you gave out?

Chris Eymann (26:10)
I’m at sellwholesalehouses.com. That’s my wholesale website for Arizona, Florida. We’re in the Florida market. We’re heavy in Tampa, doing a little bit of Orlando, probably being Jacksonville, spring, so.

Mike Hambright (26:26)
Yeah, awesome. Well, folks, ⁓ make sure you go learn more about Chris and connect if you can. So Chris, thanks for joining us on the show today. Good to see you, Yeah.

Chris Eymann (26:33)
Yeah, great seeing you too.

Mike Hambright (26:35)
Everybody there’s a lot of ways to make money in this business. think the important thing is to get around some folks that have a lot of experience because if you haven’t ridden the wave of some different market cycles, ⁓ you have a very small perspective on what could change or what will change. And so I think guys like Chris that know that there are things that are going to come back around like like Bell Bottom. Some of the stuff is going to come back in style. It’s just a matter of time. And you got and you just have to have different tools in your tool belt is to like, here’s what we do in this market or here’s how we’re

Chris Eymann (27:00)
Exactly.

Mike Hambright (27:05)
going

to do things and there’ll be a time when some of the things that worked in the past will work again. It’s just a matter of kind of riding those cycles. So make sure you get around some smart people. Appreciate you guys for joining us on the show. We’ll see you next time.

Chris Eymann (27:14)
Yeah.