To dispo a wholesale deal fast, price it so the buyer's purchase price plus repairs lands near 75–78% of a defensible ARV, send a complete deal package to your best buyers first, hold one showing window, and pick the buyer with the most certain close. Collect their earnest money, sign the assignment, and line up a backup.
Educational only. This explains how these situations generally work. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and the rules differ by state — talk to an attorney or CPA about your own situation before you act on any of it.
Most newer wholesalers plan dispo around the closing date on the purchase contract. That is the wrong clock. The one that matters is your inspection, option or due-diligence period — the window in which you can still walk away without losing your own earnest money. Once it passes, a deal you cannot sell becomes your problem in cash.
So work backward. If your inspection period ends on day 10, you want a signed assignment and the end buyer's deposit at title by day 7. That leaves three days to renegotiate with the seller, try a second buyer list, or cancel cleanly if the deal simply is not there. Every system below is built to hit that day-7 line in roughly 72 hours of actual marketing.
A second reason to move fast: buyers can tell a stale deal. A property that has been texted to the same list for two weeks gets read as “something is wrong with it,” even when nothing is.
Cash buyers who fix and resell run nearly the same test on every deal: purchase price plus repairs, divided by after-repair value. If that number is too high, they do not call back, no matter how good your photos are. Your job is to know the answer before they do.
Here is one deal priced five ways. ARV is $200,000, repairs are $35,000, and your contract with the seller is $105,000.
| Your asking price | Buyer all-in (price + repairs) | All-in as % of ARV | Your assignment fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| $110,000 | $145,000 | 72.5% | $5,000 |
| $118,000 | $153,000 | 76.5% | $13,000 |
| $121,000 | $156,000 | 78.0% | $16,000 |
| $135,000 | $170,000 | 85.0% | $30,000 |
| $140,000 | $175,000 | 87.5% | $35,000 |
Why 78% is a common ceiling: at $156,000 all-in, the buyer has $44,000 of spread on a $200,000 resale. Take out roughly 10% ($20,000) for closing, holding and resale costs and about $24,000 — 12% of ARV — is left as profit. That is the margin most flippers need to justify the risk. At 85% the same buyer is down to about $10,000 of profit on a $200,000 house, and only a buyer with cheaper labor or a rental plan will bite.
The operator move is to ask for the fee the math supports, not the fee you wanted when you signed. At $118,000 you get a fast sale and a real fee. At $140,000 you get silence, then a price cut on day 5, and every buyer who saw the first price now assumes the second one is still too high. For the full formula and how buyers adjust ARV, read our MAO formula guide.
Serious buyers are deciding whether to spend an hour driving to your property. Give them everything they need to make that call from their phone:
The non-obvious part is the photo order. When a buyer finds a collapsed basement wall at the showing that was not in your package, they do not just pass on this deal. They stop opening your texts. Leading with the worst photos filters out people who were never going to close, and it makes you the wholesaler whose packages can be trusted, which is what gets your next deal answered first.
On comps: Fannie Mae's appraisal rules expect at least three closed comparable sales, generally closed within the last 12 months and similar in size, style and condition to the subject; our MAO guide covers this in detail. Buyers are not appraisers, but the ones who resell to financed retail buyers think the same way, because their exit has to appraise.
Do not blast the whole list first. Split it into tiers and give the top tier a short exclusive window at a fixed price.
Tier 1 gets the package with a clear line: the price, and that it goes to the wider list at a specific time tomorrow. That is honest scarcity, and it rewards the buyers who actually close. If none of them bite in 24 hours, that is information — usually about price — before you have burned the deal on the full list. If you do not have a tier 1 yet, our guide on how to find cash buyers for wholesale deals covers where they come from and how to verify them.
Do not invent competing offers to push a buyer. Local investor circles are small, buyers compare notes, and a made-up offer that gets found out costs you the list.
Schedule one 60–90 minute window and send everyone to it. You avoid ten separate trips, and buyers who see real competition at the house decide faster without you having to say a word. If the seller still lives there, get their written OK for the window, keep it tight, and never let buyers talk price or terms with the seller directly.
Before the showing, confirm by phone with each buyer who said yes. The night before and an hour prior, send a short reminder. Afterward, call everyone who attended, including those who did not make an offer; the ones who liked it but think the price is wrong will tell you exactly what number works.
Pick the buyer most likely to close, not the highest number. Ask each finalist for proof of funds in their own name or entity, one or two addresses they have closed on recently, and whether they need an inspection or any financing contingency. A $3,000 higher offer from someone using a hard-money lender they have never closed with is often worth less than a clean cash offer.
Then lock it down:
Check the disclosure rules where the house sits. Several states now require written notice to the seller that you intend to assign, and some add a seller cancellation right — Maryland lets the owner cancel if the disclosures are missing, and Oklahoma gives the owner two business days to cancel (summary of 2025 state wholesaling laws). A deal that gets rescinded on day 20 is a failed dispo no matter how well you marketed it.
Educational only — talk to a real estate attorney in your state before you rely on this.
The worst moment in a wholesale deal is when your chosen buyer goes quiet a week before closing. Protect against it before it happens: tell the second-best buyer they are in backup position, get a written backup offer at a stated price, and agree they step in if the first buyer does not perform by a set date. It costs nothing and it turns a dead deal into a two-day delay.
If paperwork is what slows you down between signed assignment and closing — title openings, EMD receipts, deadline tracking — that is exactly what our transaction coordination service handles.
No offers after a clean first-look window and a full-list blast almost always means the price, the ARV or the repair number is wrong, in that order. Go back to the table above and put in the numbers buyers told you at the showing. Our checklist for why your wholesale deal isn't selling walks through each cause with a 48-hour fix. If the math still does not work at your contract price, renegotiate with the seller or cancel inside your inspection window. Cancelling cleanly is not a failure; carrying a contract you cannot perform is.
We are a family-owned principal buyer of single-family homes, and we buy in our own name in the markets listed on our Where-we-buy page. If you have a contract in one of those markets, you can submit the deal to us at the same time you send it to your tier 1 list.
Trevor McAmis underwrites every submission personally. We reply the same business day, and we either make an offer to take the assignment or tell you straight why not. Our screen is public: a deal fits when contract price plus repairs is at or under 78% of ARV, and we will look closely up to 85%. Above that we still review it and tell you what price would work. The form on the submit-a-deal page shows you that verdict as you type, and it always submits.
What we will not do: promise to buy a deal before we have underwritten it, tie up your contract with a vague maybe, or pay a number the math does not support. If we pass, you get the reason in plain terms, which is usually the same reason other buyers are passing.
Send it to us. We reply the same business day with an offer or a straight answer on why not. Submit a deal.
All wholesaler services · Submit a deal · Transaction coordination · Where we buy
Keep reading: What Is Dispo in Real Estate? The Wholesale Dispositions Guide · Selling a Wholesale Contract to a Direct Buyer vs. a Buyer List · How to Find Cash Buyers for Wholesale Deals
