5 Key Strategies for Successful Wholesaling in Real Estate with Trent Ellingford

Dylan Silver (00:00.92)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast by Investor Fuel, the nation’s premier real estate mastermind. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show, have Trent Ellingford. Trent is an entrepreneur who has built and scaled multiple multimillion dollar companies from the ground up. He specializes in commercial real estate and commercial wholesaling. Trent, welcome to the show.

Trent Ellingford (00:28.326)
Hey, thanks Dylan. Pleasure to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:30.69)
Before we hopped on, was saying, you know, I’m a little jealous that you’re in Arizona. I have had a number of guests from the Arizona area and everybody says the same thing. I didn’t know necessarily that I would this would be my forever home, but I got here and it feels like it is.

Trent Ellingford (00:45.5)
Yeah, my forever home I thought was Salt Lake City. We moved here a little over five years ago and just fell in love with it and now this is definitely home.

Dylan Silver (00:54.798)
Trent, you know, I always like to ask my guests about how they got into the real estate space. Not everyone’s journey is the same and sometimes people have similar stories, but everyone’s unique.

Trent Ellingford (01:05.369)
Yeah, the way I got into real estate and what I was doing then is not what I’m doing now, but I was in my early twenties, twenty one, twenty two. I was in college and I during the summer got a job where at the time I thought I was making decent money. mean, perspective has changed. That’s kind of laughable now, but at that time it was decent money and I saw a lot of people making money in real estate. And so I.

I did a lot of things the way I wouldn’t do them now, but I got a realtor, pre-qualified for a loan, ended up buying a property. I dropped out of college and it was a 2-2 with an unfinished basement. finished the basement, I made it a 4-2 and I started renting it out to college kids. And that was my first deal, was a rental property.

Dylan Silver (01:54.338)
At that time you had a separate residence and you were renting out the full house. Interesting, okay. So did anyone show you the ropes where you kind of just dive in and yourself figure it out as you go?

Trent Ellingford (01:58.659)
Correct.

Trent Ellingford (02:05.429)
No, I just dove in figuring out as I was going. so that’s why I say I would do things a lot of things differently, but there’s no replacement for just jumping in and learning. mean, you can just waste time trying to educate yourself and never taking action. I’m a big believer in imperfect action beats perfect planning every day of the week.

Dylan Silver (02:25.774)
every single time. Trent, what was the next steps for you? You had that rental property. Did you know about wholesale and what was that like?

Trent Ellingford (02:34.315)
I didn’t know anything about wholesaling. Yeah, was not familiar with that concept at that time. I thought there were two ways to make money in real estate. One was to buy a property and rent it out. And the other was to do a fix and flip. That was my basic understanding. So my next step was to just duplicate what I had done before. And I leveraged some of the equity that I had in that property. And then I bought another property and just duplicated it.

Dylan Silver (03:01.678)
Okay, there’s some success there and at this point in time, are you working a job outside of this? Is real estate your full-time career at this point?

Trent Ellingford (03:12.982)
Real estate wasn’t my full-time career. It was more of an investment strategy and a retirement strategy at that point. And kind of fast forward, I maybe got a little bit of an ego because I was having some success. I was really young. And so I thought I knew more than I knew. And I invested in something significantly larger that I didn’t fully understand if I’m just being transparent.

and then I’m a lot older than you, then the recession hit. And when that happened and the rug was kind of pulled out from everything, I learned a lot about what I didn’t know. You you pay for education one way for another and that was a very expensive learning experience for me. But I learned a ton and I learned what not to do the next time around and how to better prepare myself to capitalize on opportunities because had I positioned myself differently,

That was the best time to be buying, right? I should have been buying like crazy. And so learned a ton, kept my head above water, survived, came out of that, stayed in real estate, but wasn’t full foot on the gas pedal, I guess I could say, because I was still working another job. And my career started to take off and I started making really good money. And…

I always say that when you’re comfortable, that complacency, it breeds mediocrity, right? Because you don’t have to do more. I had good income, I had a nice house, I had nice cars. My family and I, took vacations. We had a very comfortable lifestyle and you should always have your foot on the gas pedal and be going. But kind of fast forward, I reached a point as my family grew, I have four daughters.

I was traveling a ton for work. So even though the money was good, it wasn’t providing what I wanted, which was time with those that were important to me and freedom and control. And that’s when I decided I needed to go all in on real estate. And it wasn’t a lateral move. I’ll just put it that way. it was learning. So that was tough, you know, to go from a certain lifestyle and then have to pull back and

Trent Ellingford (05:34.333)
I started a business to generate additional income, which the first one I started didn’t work. I actually lost money on it. so, you know, I just really think that all, when you go through those things, they’re preparing you to be the person you need to be to get to where you want to be. So it’s really never a straight line, but if you’re putting one foot in front of the other, the pieces are going to fall together. And so don’t be scared.

If you’re just sitting where you’re comfortable, you’re never going to grow. anyway, fast forward and we can talk a little bit more about it now. I never would have guessed I’m doing what I’m doing now, but now that I’m doing, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Dylan Silver (06:16.301)
The freedom that it provides is incredible. Being able to dictate your own schedule, you really understand the time, the value of time when you are able to control your own schedule. And I think most people, that’s appealing to them, but then when you actually get a taste of it, it’s kind of remarkable that there was any other way. But Trent, going from that space where you had an established career and you had your rental properties, but…

weren’t involved in wholesale to then being a full-time wholesaler. How was that process and how did it come about?

Trent Ellingford (06:50.781)
So I was introduced to a gentleman here who’s a mentor. He’s a good friend of mine here in Phoenix, Arizona. And that’s kind of how I ended up here. And I flew out here to see his model and he was very active in the commercial real estate space. Now, at this point, I now understand what wholesaling is. I’m not a wholesaler, but conceptually, I get what it is. And I knew several residential wholesalers. I’d actually wholesale the residential property because it wasn’t.

It was too far for me. I didn’t want to keep it as a rental. So I flipped the paper to another investor, but I was not a wholesaler by any means. And then I met a gentleman here in Phoenix and saw his market in commercial. And for me, that was kind of like an aha moment. holy shit, like what you’re doing is not more difficult really than what I’m doing, but the upside is disproportionately larger. And so I should be doing this. And so.

We partnered on a couple different ventures. That’s what eventually led me to Phoenix, because I felt like I was coming out here all the time. And so I convinced my wife and daughters to move here for a year. That was the agreement. And if you ask my wife, in her mind, it was a year long vacation in Phoenix. And then we were going to move back home. But Salt Lake City, well, home’s Phoenix now. Yeah, Phoenix is home now. But yeah, we’re still here. We fell in love with it. But so I learned that model and

Dylan Silver (08:04.406)
was home. That’s right.

Trent Ellingford (08:16.827)
That was my focus at that point. But here’s where the whole selling piece really took off or how it started.

He and I and a partner had a large commercial property under contract and he had found another property that he had more interest in. So he’s gonna let it fall out of escrow. And I’m looking at it, I’m like, okay, I get it, but this is still a deal. It’s a deal for somebody, you know, if we’re not gonna buy it. And he said, well, we’ve got seven days until the money goes hard. So we got to pull the earnest money in seven days. So if you find it by,

buyer for a pool, if not, we’re gonna pull the plug. And so again, when pressure’s on you, you figure stuff out. And I had no idea what I was doing, but I found a buyer, was able to put that deal together, got a purchase agreement and assignment contract agreement signed. And that was the first deal. We signed that commercial contract for multiple six figures. And that was the next aha moment. It’s like, why did I never put together

the concept of wholesaling with commercial real estate. I’ve never heard anybody talk about this. I don’t know if anybody’s out there doing it. And so then the question for me was, can I duplicate this? Can I systemize it and compartmentalize the steps so I can get more predictable results and do it again and do it again? And that just became my focus.

Dylan Silver (09:32.088)
Yeah, me neither.

Dylan Silver (09:49.134)
How did you find that first buyer,

Trent Ellingford (09:52.302)
through social media and networking and just making some phone calls. And luckily found somebody that had interest and they flew out from California, walked the property, then their partners came in, walked the property. there’s a little to it, me too, working because they were going to do a conversion and convert it to multifamily and seeing if the city was going to work with them and give them the approval they need, getting the seller to give them the time frame they needed to get the permitting and the zoning change. But

Again, it’s just jumping in and kind of building the plane while it’s in the air, not having all the answers. It’s taking the steps and saying, OK, and then figuring it out.

Dylan Silver (10:32.022)
One of the biggest things, Trent, that I’ve noticed about the real estate space, I’ve been in real estate since July of 2023, so a year and a half, almost two years now. If you’re in real estate over decades, you’re a problem solver. You’re a problem solver. That’s basically your biggest skill set, I feel, as a real estate investor. There’s gonna be things that come up, new challenges, markets could disappear, markets could appear, increased competition, inflation.

deflation right there’s so many different things that can happen and It’s a hallmark. I feel like of a high level operator is to be able to be agile When things are hard, right? So you had a contract your earnest money was gonna go hard, right? You were gonna lose that earnest money, you know liquid damages if you will and Instead you found a way, know So was this the first time that you had heard of anybody doing a commercial wholesale?

Trent Ellingford (11:31.719)
Yes, yeah, I’ve never heard of it before. that I’m in the space, I know other people that are. It’s nothing like residential. It’s a pretty small space. I see new people jumping in and trying, which great credit to you. You should try. mean, that’s how it happened for me. But a lot of times they’re operating kind of amateurish. It is a different space. It is a little more sophisticated.

Conceptually, it’s the same steps, but there’s a little bit more to it. if you’re, what that does is it weeds a lot of people out. And for those who are willing to just put their head down and learn it, well, the upside is significant. But I couldn’t agree with you more. Like I agree with you 100%. Like ultimately we’re problem solvers and being adaptable. Because, you know, during the recession, some people got hit hard. Some people created wealth in a very short period of time. When COVID hit, you know, a lot of,

Asset classes were struck really hard, like hotels, because nobody could travel anymore. They were bleeding money off the space because everybody is working from home. Others were killing, like multifamily and industrial. We’re at 98, 99 % occupancy in most cities in the country, and cap rates kept getting compressed. So there’s always money being made in every fluctuation of the market. Money’s not lost at exchange’s hands.

Dylan Silver (12:35.683)
Yeah.

Trent Ellingford (12:55.474)
And so it’s understanding how to identify those opportunities and position yourself on the right side of the opportunity.

Dylan Silver (13:02.254)
money’s not lost at exchanges. So true. And the industrial space, probably weren’t aware just how much that expanded. I mean, you have to think these COVID masks and all the things that people were purchasing from home had to be stored somewhere. And you saw whatever percentage X increase in the amount of people purchasing from home. So these items were indeed stored somewhere. And then, you know, where were they stored? Industrial facilities, right?

So when you’re in the commercial space at that point in time, are you now shifting maybe away from let’s just say business complexes where people were not there to then industrial.

Trent Ellingford (13:42.185)
I have done industrial. It’s not a primary focus. It’s a vertical that I want to give a little more intention now as we’ve stabilized some others to build out because there’s huge demand and huge opportunity there. What were things really started to kind of take off was during COVID because when just we I just talked about it, know, hotels and and office space getting hit hard. Well, commercial real estate values based on income, not comps.

Right? So the more income it generates to the bottom line, to the NOI back into a cap rate, that’s the value of the property. Well, hotels were, some of them were vacant for a couple of years. And so they couldn’t service their debt. They had very little to no income coming in. And so they had to get rid of these properties. But if you look at the last 12 months of income or 24 months of income, there was very little. the valuation was here. And so I was

lucky enough and I say lucky, you know, the harder I work, the luckier I get. It happened because I was in the trenches doing it lucky enough to be kind of ahead of the curve of hotel conversions to multifamily because multifamily was the exact opposite. There was was not enough affordable housing. So the demand was sky high, which increased the pricing. And so we were able to pick up hotels at significant discounts on a price per door.

and then turn that paper to developers that were converting it to multifamily because the demand was there. And so things really started to spur there and markets change. That was my focus at that point was primarily hotels, had done a couple industrial deals and then I got into self storage and self storage demand was really high. There were a couple good players.

in the wholesale space and it just made a ton of sense. know, good, good friends of mine, JV partners of mine now as I’ve just got to know them. And then I met a gentleman that was in the RV park space. And so I’ve learned that space and that’s a huge part of our business right now. And I believe it’s an emerging asset because it trades at a higher cap. Institutional money wasn’t investing in RV parks just a couple of years ago, but now we see that money starting to move in. And so.

Dylan Silver (16:05.112)
Yeah. Yep.

Trent Ellingford (16:08.005)
And back to your point, it’s about being adaptive.

Dylan Silver (16:11.47)
Trent, is so, we could probably have a whole other podcast about different, you know, sort of funnels for this space. to me and to our listeners, it’s probably very new to a lot of people, probably, you know, they’re, they’re perking up listening to this thinking, I didn’t know I could be doing this. I didn’t realize there were people doing this. And as you, you previously mentioned, there are some competitors in the space, but it’s not like single family, right? Single family wholesaling. You mentioned storage and then,

You also mentioned a couple other different areas of commercial wholesale that you got into. And the RV parks really piqued my interest because as we’re thinking about the rising price of real property throughout the country, you know, I’m in Dallas. I have family in a suburb of Newark, New Jersey, Hoboken area, right? I have many guests who are in California. And I said I would love to live in Miami, right?

Trent Ellingford (17:00.527)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (17:08.61)
The price of real estate in these markets is rising precipitously and you’re seeing more and more kind of newer ways that people are still owning but not being a renter in a traditional sense, renting an apartment, whether it’s an Amazon home, which you’re seeing, right? These pods or RVs and I’ve seen so many more RV parks pop up.

Trent Ellingford (17:20.484)
you

Okay.

Dylan Silver (17:33.57)
And I’m imagining that you saw this and saw this as an opportunity because you’re saying, look, institutional money is going to come in. They’re going to need to source these deals and I can source those deals for them.

Trent Ellingford (17:45.249)
Yeah, you’re, you’re absolutely right. I mean, the demand for affordable housing is always there and always will be there, but it’s, as housing prices have soared, people look for alternative ways. And so a lot of RV parks, they’re not the transient vacationer coming through. That’s where they live. so, and a lot of parks, it’s a balance between the two. So you have your long-term tenants, which give you your stable cashflow that is coming in. And then where you really get the upside is on, on the transient. So.

There’s huge demand there. There’s going to continue to be, I see that space continuing to grow. In fact, we’re working on a couple of deals right in your backyard in Dallas right now. But what will happen in my opinion is, know, the RV parks have been trading at 10 caps, maybe 11 caps. And a lot of the buyers we work with maybe aren’t institutional, but they’re

come from private equity groups or family offices and they’re well funded. They see the opportunity. So they’re acquiring as many as they can that meet their buy criteria. Look, we move small ones too, but these are the bigger parks with good gross income and net income that they can expand, get a nice lift in value. But if they can pick those up at a nine cap or a 10 cap, let’s say, and build a portfolio of that.

and then exit those to a hedgefond at a 7 cap.

I mean, that’s, yeah, that’s huge money.

Dylan Silver (19:17.614)
that’s a win all day. And so when they when they are seeing this strategy, are they aware? And are you connecting the dots for them? Are they let’s say they haven’t previously, you know, thought about the RV park space? Are you bringing it to them? Or is it vice versa?

Trent Ellingford (19:37.45)
But it’s the other way around. So on the big ones that we work, these are like 100 sites plus, you know, maybe they’re generating anywhere from 600 to a couple million dollars a year in revenue. The groups that we work with that are buying those, they know the opportunity. They’re super sophisticated and they’re actively going after these. But we provide something that they don’t necessarily have. Now, do they have acquisitions? Yeah.

They have internal acquisitions. They’re networking with brokers and different agents to find these. But if you take a look at a group like that, they’re also buying these, they’re stabilizing them, they’re also running development crews to expand them. They have operations and marketing and it’s a huge operation. My operation’s different. It’s hyper-focused on one thing, off-market acquisition. That’s all we do. And because of it, we’re really fucking good at it. we’re, I, they’re,

They can’t do it at what we do. They’re impressed at the pricing that we get. Like, how do you get these sellers’ heads out of the clouds trying to sell this at a five, five and a half cap? How did you get it at a 10? Not that I’m gonna give them all of my secret sauce because I want that relationship, but my point being is it’s a very symbiotic relationship, right? They have no, that’s something I’ve found some people have a hard time wrapping their heads around. Why would they pay you four or $500,000 for

this property. We got to put it into perspective on a $10 million asset that barely moves the needle in their pricing and debt and in everything. They would pay that all day long as long as it pencils for them so they can get the asset at a price that makes sense and they have a ton of upside. And so we want to give them more deals, but they’re asking us, hey, we need more deal flow. What do you have now on the, on the other side? We’ll work small stuff too. Small stuff.

is around that million dollar range, you’re not going to build in four or five hundred thousand bucks on a million bucks. But can you build in a hundred thousand? Yeah, you could. And so you just got to keep that in mind. Once you get into stuff that’s like five, six hundred thousand dollars, well, you might as well be wholesaling a house at that point, right? Because it’s very similar. So I like to focus on the big stuff, but the smaller stuff is a great place for people to start.

Trent Ellingford (22:03.582)
So you learn the language, learn how to have those conversations that will prepare you for when you start speaking with the more sophisticated sellers. And one other thing you got to keep in mind, you don’t have to do, you know, 10 deals a month or whatever that is to get your number. It’s like, OK, I think for most people, if they really put their head down and did this and did one deal their first year, that could be good money for one person. For other people, it would be life changing.

For a lot of people, it could be more money than they make an entire year working for somebody else. But what will change is what they’ve done is they’ve sharpened their skill set and they’ve become an expert now in that field and they build a pipeline. And you know, in this space, it’s all about follow up. But when you start, you don’t have any follow up. So year two, you start to have all these deals that are coming back from six months ago, nine months ago. If somebody now,

And I’m talking about just working as one individual, not building a team, not scouting. If they could start to do one deal a quarter.

They have the freedom and the control that they want in life. They have the financial security that they want. They can build the lifestyle that they want. yes, you still have to work. You still have to bust your ass, but they do it on their own terms, right?

Dylan Silver (23:25.422)
You know, Trent, when I hear you talk about that, the thing that comes to mind is it’s all hard, right? It’s all hard. I mentioned before we hopped on here that I sat for my real estate exam, passed, will be getting my license here soon. And, you know, it wasn’t easy. A lot of people fail. This is my experience, right? I’m not where you’re at. I’m still trying to get deeds in my name, right? I’m on the beginning portion of the journey here. But when I hear people like you talk, and I hear some of my guests talk, it’s like,

you know, my journey to get here wasn’t easy. I might as well do the thing that seems hard because this is going to be hard to it’s like one fixing one hand half dozen in the other. What information is there out there right now? For people who are trying to learn about commercial wholesaling? Is there anything?

Trent Ellingford (24:04.452)
Yep.

Trent Ellingford (24:17.668)
There’s not much and I’ll answer that question. I just wanna say one thing to what you said because I agree, it’s all hard. It’s all hard, right? Wholesaling a house, it’s gonna be tough if you’ve never done it before figuring it out. Rental properties, fix and flips, and now you’re taking on financial risk as well. So your risk is higher. Look, it’s all hard. So if you’re gonna have to go through a learning curve, my opinion is pick an activity that gives you the highest…

potential returns. Now, everybody’s circumstances are different. Like if you have to have a return in 30 days, wholesaling commercial is not for you. It’s gonna take a minute to learn it. It’s gonna take a minute to get a contract. It’s gonna take longer to close than a residential property. But once you get one done, I mean, you can start running with it. So there’s no right or wrong strategy in real estate. That’s the crazy thing about real estate, right? Is there’s so many different ways to make money. So pick a lane and commit to it.

and stick to it and don’t get distracted by shiny objects. As far as information out there about wholesaling commercial real estate, I don’t really know of any. I know other wholesalers that focus solely on commercial, but they’re not selling programs or doing trainings. They don’t have YouTube channels. And my information, I’m the only one I know that’s really just out there talking about it.

I put it out on my Instagram channel, which is just my name, Trent Ellingford. And so there’s a lot of content out there. give, you know, a lot of times I’ll give away scripts that we use or here’s how we find the off market property. Here’s how you get past the gatekeeper. Just, you know, the how to’s of it, because I don’t have a scarcity mindset. There’s enough out there for everybody and.

I strongly believe if I can help somebody get their first deal done, well, we’re both going to benefit from that because they’re probably going to lean on me for a buyer or for a dispo, know, so can JV on that deal. So, yeah, there is information out there, but there’s not a ton.

Dylan Silver (26:30.252)
One of the follow ups that I have Trent is in some ways is there, and I don’t wanna say less regulation, but is there somewhat less scrutiny because single family residential wholesale has been outlawed in some states, you have to have a license, so on and so forth. Do you find that commercial wholesale you can do in any market or is it still kind of like your Texas, your Florida’s, these areas it’s better for it?

Trent Ellingford (27:01.074)
It’s 100 % less regulated, but I’m not an attorney, so I’m not going to give legal advice. mean, check with your own legal counsel on what you can and can’t do. I’ll just say this. My understanding is that same regulations don’t apply to commercial assets. It’s to protect the homeowner, right? Because it’s different. A homeowner that’s maybe in a tough spot losing their house, they’ve lost their job, they’re in a distressed situation. They’re not a sophisticated investor. A commercial seller, it’s a

It’s just a different game. The contracts are different. The protections, the laws are in place are different. And so yeah, they’re two separate things.

Dylan Silver (27:40.022)
Interesting, you know, this is really piqued my interest. I think a lot of our listeners, you know, I come from the wholesale background that’s how I did my first dozen deals and it was new to me at the time and then I got it down and Then decided hey, I’m gonna go get my license and now I’m hearing about commercial wholesale I’m thinking man Can I do that and I know a lot of our listeners are probably thinking the same? Trent we are coming up on time here though. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Trent Ellingford (28:08.853)
The best place is just Instagram. Like I said, it’s Trent Ellingford. You can check out my website as well as trentellingford.com. there’s, like I said, there’s a ton of information, a ton of free information out there that you can get on how to get started. You know, if it resonates with you and it’s something that piques your interest, you have interest in check it out.

Dylan Silver (28:33.07)
And I would say the same thing. know, again, this is such a new area for me and for probably many of our listeners. Many people are probably going to be Googling chat GPT and anything else to see what they can do in the commercial wholesale space if it’s something that would fit their strategy. But that wraps up another episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast. Trent, thank you for coming on the show today.

Trent Ellingford (28:58.056)
Yeah, thanks for having me.