Behind the Curtain to Wholesaling

Host (Mike Ponte): This is the Savvy Investor Podcast. Welcome everybody to another episode. I'm your host Mike Ponte, founder of Savvy Investor and also a long-time Canadian real estate investor. How do you get started investing in real estate when you just don't have any of the money? And that's probably one of the most common questions I get from new investors. I don't have any money, so where do I begin? And almost every single time that question gets asked, the same strategy tends to come up. What about wholesaling? I've been seeing it on podcasts and webinars and all sorts of stuff. It does make sense, especially when you're a new investor and you really don't have money to begin with. You don't need to come up with a down payment. You don't have to set up a mortgage and you don't have to do any renovations. All you have to do is find a property, put it under contract, and assign it to another investor. And once it's done properly, it can actually be an extremely lucrative and profitable business.

But here's the thing: wholesaling isn't really as easy as people think. It requires a ton of work, especially at the very beginning of your investing journey. You need to talk to and connect with a lot of motivated sellers. You're negotiating deals to make sure it works for the seller, yourself, and the buyer. You're sourcing buyers and ensuring there's enough opportunity for them to make a profit. All the while structuring the deal carefully so everybody's winning. You need to stay extremely persistent.

So how do you do this day in and day out and create a successful wholesaling business? This is where my guest, Wade Fenner, comes in to share decades of experience and knowledge. Wade's been buying, selling, flipping, holding rentals, and navigating different markets through all kinds of investment cycles. Over time he's leaned very heavily into wholesaling and creative deal structuring, building systems around sourcing off-market opportunities and connecting with investors who can execute. In this episode we get into how he's sourcing off-market deals in this current environment, what a good wholesaling deal looks like, the typical seller's mindset, where investors are overestimating values, and how to protect his fees when negotiating with sellers and buyers. We also talk about how to generate leads, follow-up systems, building a buyer's list, and the true reality of how much work this strategy takes.

Before we jump in, I'd like to highlight this episode's sponsor. This episode's trusted partner sponsor is Green Mortgages. Are you looking for a quality mortgage broker for your investment team? Reach out to Kyle Green and his team. Green Mortgages has been specializing in working with real estate investors since 2008. Eighty percent of their clients are real estate investors, and they've successfully funded over a billion dollars worth of both commercial and residential mortgages. See the show notes to visit their website.

Host: Contact Green Mortgages to get your mortgage approved today. Welcome everybody. I've got a real treat. This one is great for me because I'm very honored to be inviting somebody that I looked up to when I first got started in real estate -- Wade Fenner. We're going to be talking about a topic we haven't covered on this podcast: wholesaling. Wade, thank you so much for being here.

Wade Fenner: I'm excited too. Good morning. It's good to see you again. It's been a long time. We've known each other for probably a couple of decades almost.

Host: A couple of decades from the REIN group. Yeah, you're aging me. Thanks, Wade.

Wade: [laughs] I don't know where you are and you don't have to admit anything. It's all good.

Host: For those that know Wade or were part of the Real Estate Investment Networks group -- REIN -- he was a very pronounced figure and you saw him a lot talking about wholesaling. It is an avenue that a lot of investors start in for many different reasons. Wade, if people don't necessarily know who you are or where you began, tell us a little bit about yourself and your real estate investing journey, especially when it comes to wholesaling.

Wade: Okay, so people that have known me for a long time know me as the bicycle guy. I was living in Vancouver back in the 90s. I studied late-night infomercials for years going back into the 80s -- all this entrepreneurship stuff, too broke to pay for any seminars. I watched a lot of late-night infomercials, attended free events. I finally joined REIN in November of 1995 at a REIN Nanaimo event. I was working for a high-rise development company in Vancouver, and they transferred me to Nanaimo for a year and a half as head safety coordinator and head first-aid attendant.

After 18 months I got transferred back to Vancouver. The first week back at work on a new high-rise project, I had a seizure on the job site. I was the head safety guy -- the one that got hauled away by the paramedics. So I lost my driver's license for 18 months and the company waited three months and then fired me.

During that time, I was too scared to quit my job before getting fired. On a Wednesday, I finally got brave enough to buy a plane ticket to fly to Calgary on Friday night after work, with the intention of coming back on Sunday. I bought the ticket Wednesday, got fired Thursday. So when I got on the plane Friday, I didn't have a job to come back to anyway. I might as well extend my return ticket. I stayed for 10 days, rented an apartment during that time, flew back to Vancouver, packed my bags, moved to Calgary.

I spent the first two months taking the bus everywhere, looking at houses and looking for work. At that time, in Alberta -- up until 2006 -- you could assume a mortgage without having to qualify. The superintendent I worked with in Nanaimo put me onto the idea of assumable mortgages, and Calgary was kind of the entrepreneurial capital of Canada at the time.

So I moved to Calgary. I spent the first two months taking transit. I hated standing around waiting for a bus, so I bought a mountain bike for transportation. A month later, I did my first house deal. I bought on an assumable mortgage with some creative financing. I owned it for nine days, made $9,000, and quit looking for work.

In the last nine months of my first year in Calgary, I flipped seven houses. And from 1997 to the end of 2007, I flipped over 100 houses, owned 30, and did my first 110 deals without qualifying for a dime -- including doing a 20-acre land development project and buying a commercial property.

Wade: Around 2004, I started doing my own two-day seminar course for other investors. I ran that program 30-plus times. For about a year we had a monthly mentoring group where we'd meet every month in Red Deer. People from Calgary and Edmonton would come together. I did it as a four-hour open mic Q&A at a hotel that had a big Saturday buffet. We'd get 15 to 30 people firing questions at me. Then 20 or 30 of us would go for the buffet lunch, hang out, and drive back. It was a lot of fun.

Then the big global economic meltdown of 2008-09-10 happened. I got out of flipping and held my realtor's license for six and a half years. I loved real estate, but I didn't enjoy being a realtor. I wanted to get back to becoming a creative entrepreneur. So I started Concrete Replacement Experts -- all brightly branded in orange. I'm not an operator though. I'm a startup guy, a rocket launcher. I couldn't find good on-site management. I finally got out of that mid-2024, and then in the last few months of 2025 really focused on marketing for WadeByHouses.com.

I printed 50,000 flyers back in December. January 2026, I'm hitting it hard. I sent out a bunch in the first week and got seven calls. I've got three deals I'm working on. Two I'm probably going to close on right away. One I've already wholesaled -- the buyer takes possession on Tuesday. There's another one that is really messy. There's a bankruptcy registered from 2012. The trustee fired them in 2015. That's still lingering, with a $40,000 writ behind it. I spent six weeks just dealing with the lawyers and trustees. But I'm loving it.

Host: It's kind of neat to see you going full circle back into the real estate side with the wholesaling side. It's funny how people get so dependent on their job, and when it disappears, they're just like -- now what? This is one of the reasons we do real estate investing -- it provides options in case things go a little bit sideways.

Now I want to dig into this. Why did you choose wholesaling versus anything else? Back then there was really no internet, no Facebook, none of this stuff. A lot of us were going into buy and hold. But there were a lot of people talking about wholesaling as a strategy. So two questions: what is wholesaling, for the most layman of audiences, and why did you choose that versus a different strategy?

Wade: Okay. Wholesaling in a nutshell is getting a property under contract and selling the contract instead of taking title to the house. You've got to have a property under contract at a really good price so you can sell the paper in days or a couple of weeks, because you can't jam up the homeowner for months while you're trying to sell the paper. You're not selling pretty houses at retail. It's got to be a wholesale price. And that's why you're able to do it in a couple of weeks or a couple of days. I've got some people I can sell a house to on a phone call because I know they want that type of property. They're a serious renovation person. They're not buying off the MLS. I'm generating leads from my own marketing, so I can get better prices than a seller being coached by a realtor.

Wade: A realtor tells sellers, oh, you can get higher than that -- we'll put it on MLS. They're trying to get the listing so they jack the price up. The seller gets months of exposure. I send out flyers, people call me, they're motivated. I'm over there that day. I can give them an offer that day or the next morning. If they want, I can close in a matter of days. If they're that motivated to sell quickly and they don't want to list and take months, I can get a good price and pass a lot of that savings on to a renovation buyer. And I can wholesale the contract. So it's not retail pricing. They get a good deal and I become the source for their next deal, maybe.

Host: So why do owners actually choose wholesalers versus a realtor? Because a lot of individuals are just going to list, sell, and be done. Why would they choose a wholesaler over the conventional route?

Wade: People can't always explain why they do what they do. A lot of people think, oh, wholesalers -- you're slimy because you're taking advantage of people. Let me give you the two deals I'm working on right now, which are complete polar opposites.

The first deal has a bankruptcy from 2012 that they never finished. The trustee fired them. So they have a first mortgage, a bankruptcy, and a $38,000 writ from something else that happened years after the bankruptcy. The people have moved out of the house. Their adult kids are living there for a few more months. They're staying current on the payment, but as soon as the kids move out, they're not going to keep paying. They were going to toss the keys in the snow. They got my flyer, called me, I went out and looked at it, and we did a deal.

From that same batch of flyers, somebody that lived in Spruce Grove owns a rental house on Alberta Avenue in Edmonton -- an old hundred-year-old neighbourhood. The house is paid for. The owners are in their 70s. They used to finance their son's house-building operation. So they're relatively affluent. They got my flyer, called me, told me what they wanted for the house. We met at the house. A couple days later, I went to their place in Spruce Grove, sat there for three hours, and made them three proposals. They came to my house the next day, picked one, and we did the contract. I got it below market value and flipped the contract to a renovator.

Why did these people sell cheap? They're affluent. The house is paid for. There's no financial desperation. They got my flyer, called me, met with me, liked me, and sold the house cheap. On the phone call, the husband said, "The tax-assessed value is $194,000. I think that's way too high. I think it's only worth $125,000, so that's my price." One of my three offers was at $125,000 but with seller financing. Another price was much lower, all cash. There was a middle option with middle terms. They accepted it.

Host: Right. So with the first deal, they're not getting a lot of money, but they're getting the monkey off their back. And would you agree that a lot of sellers are dealing with circumstances that make wholesaling attractive?

Wade: Right. The first deal -- they're not getting any money out of it, but they're getting the monkey off their back. If they call a realtor, a realtor would look at that and go, there's a bankruptcy and a writ, I can't deal with that. I spent six weeks emailing lawyers and trustees, getting a lawyer for the seller, a different lawyer for me, getting the house appraised for the bankruptcy proceeding, getting it inspected. Six weeks of work before we could even come to an agreement on transferring title. A realtor is not going to do that.

My old seminar was called Foreclosures Made Easy. I became a data source for foreclosures by doing a particular type of research. Nobody in Canada -- especially in Alberta -- was doing that. I bought 85 or 90 houses out of foreclosure by dealing directly with the homeowner. So I got used to dealing with messy titles and I taught others how to do it. This situation was right up my alley.

For them: if they didn't call me, maybe they call a realtor. The realtor looks at it and goes, this is too complicated. They were going to throw the keys in the snow and go into foreclosure. So instead, they let Wade deal with it for six weeks. I made a deal with the trustee's lawyer. The seller knew they were going to get their wages garnished because this had been going on for a long time. Through conversations with the lawyers, we came to an agreement that the trustee will take whatever cash comes at closing, remove the writ, and continue collecting from the homeowner directly.

Host: Sometimes these properties are in disrepair, realtors don't want to touch them, and the seller feels they have no options. Then you show up and say, I can provide you an option. I think these are some of the circumstances you tend to deal with. Would you say that's right?

Wade: Well, there are a lot of wholesalers, but very few that really know how to deal with problems. I know more wholesalers in Edmonton than anywhere because this is where I live. There are some people who know how to deal with extreme problems and are very creative, but the bulk of wholesalers -- especially newer ones -- have no idea how to deal with a dormant bankruptcy and a $40,000 writ. So most wholesalers don't. But if you want to become a good wholesaler, learn how to solve problems. I'm always looking for the low-hanging fruit, but a problem like this is low-hanging fruit to me because I don't find it that complicated to deal with.

Host: So as a new wholesaler, what would you recommend they learn? What do they need to understand in order to be a solution to problems?

Wade: Okay. The biggest mistake I see a lot of people making is not being active. They might go to meetups, but they're not doing anything to make the phone ring. I don't want to deal with a super-proactive seller -- if the house is already appraised, they've talked to 10 realtors, they've got it on Kijiji, they've got it on Facebook Marketplace, they've got a for-sale sign in the front yard. It's really hard to get a good deal from somebody who's already market-aware.

So I quit calling for-sale-by-owners probably a year after I got here in 1997. Put some money into marketing -- whether it's bandit signs, postcard flyers, or something. If they're doing flyers, they don't have to go across the whole city. Pick an older area and keep hitting a couple of districts. Rotate between them, back and forth. Generating your own phone calls from a lazy seller or a spontaneous seller -- that's the idea.

The really good thing about a wholesaler learning marketing is this: marketing is something that matters whether you're doing your first deal or your hundredth deal. If you're not good at marketing, you're not going to be good at any business. You'll probably end up paying somebody else to do your marketing, and if you don't understand it, you won't know whether you're getting ripped off.

So for the wholesaler who's starting out, they need to be a value add to more experienced investors who are renovating one, two, three houses at a time. Those renovators are busy overseeing work, managing contractors, and they're not out pounding the pavement looking for deals. That's why experienced renovation investors like what I'm doing -- because I don't need 100 buyers on my buyer's list. I need three teams that are good at renovating. And they want me to call them as soon as I get something.

For a new wholesaler, come across a situation, try to deal with it, ask other investors, get on Facebook groups. Hey, I've got a seller with a dormant bankruptcy -- how do you deal with that? And you learn. I learned what I know one day at a time, adding to my toolbox.

Wade: It's the same way you got started. When you bought your first property, you probably didn't know jack either. And now you're a multifamily guy, you're coaching, you're podcasting, you're an expert in a lot of different fields. Just like a baby: you roll over, you learn how to crawl, you learn how to stand up. Ten years later, you run a marathon.

Host: It's the truth. You have to persevere. Especially in wholesaling, because you'll probably get a ton of no's. It's just part of it. You've got to build thicker skin over time. And the more you persevere, the better you become.

Actually, quick story: I bought a multifamily property off another investor who could not close. I said, I'll take that off your hands. I paid them a $40,000 wholesaling fee for the transfer of paper. For me, I saw the opportunity because I could increase the value on that multifamily. I was happy to pay that number. So there are circumstances where a contract holder is in a state where they need to sell, and at the same time, there are buyers who are open to investment opportunities if it makes fundamental sense.

I think for you, Wade, a lot of your buyers do fix-and-flips, renovations, or the BRRRR strategy. So let's dig into the marketing side. Some people are knocking on doors looking for run-down homes. Some are going after expired listings. And the more aggressive approach is a marketing investment. What has been successful for finding owners who want to reach out to you to do wholesaling?

Wade: Back in the beginning when we could still do assumable mortgages without qualifying, I did go after expired listings. I had a realtor print off any listing under $25,000 to $30,000 cash to mortgage on a weekly basis. And I would just mail letters. If some were nearby with pretty low cash to mortgage, I would go knock on the door or hang a note. "Are you interested in selling your house?"

Let's say it was advertised at $30,000 cash to mortgage. I'd ask them, "What would have been the lowest price you would have sold through the realtor?" I don't ask what's the lowest cash to mortgage -- I ask what's the lowest price. Then I take the cash to mortgage from the listing and work backwards from the price they just told me. I'd say, "So if you sold to the realtor, you would have paid this commission." So I'm lowering the cash required to close by using logic, and they're nodding along. It comes down to a number and I say, "If I offer you that remaining cash to mortgage we arrived at, will you sell me your house?" And people get this look on their face and they go, "Heck yeah."

So expired listings could be an avenue. But because the seller has already been informed on market value and has a high price in their head, I would rather just do a shotgun approach and send flyers to an older area where houses are more likely to be run down, where somebody's been in there for 30 years.

Wade: Pick an older part of town. Whatever your budget is, break that area into a couple of sections, send flyers this week, two weeks from now hit another part of that same area, two weeks later come back to the first part. So you're rotating between two districts, each district getting a flyer every month. Figure out what your monthly budget is. Can you spend $1,000 a month? Work out your print cost, your mail cost, break that into two territories. Send however many you can in the first mailing. Two weeks later, hit the other part. Two weeks later -- which is now a four-week rotation -- come back to the first area, hit it again.

The more flyers you can send out consistently, the better. Experts say a customer has to see you nine times before they call. It might not be this month. Maybe they take that flyer and pin it on the cork board by their kitchen desk. I had a guy -- I sent flyers to a small town just north of Edmonton called Redwater, population maybe 3,000. He called me off an old flyer. He had my yellow postcard pinned to his cork board for nine years before he called me.

Those little postcards are little worker bees. If you send out a lot in the beginning, you might get a call in the first week, or it might take a month, or it might take a year. You might mail flyers for six months and want to give up. Don't change your phone number, because somebody could call you five years from now. The return on investment compounds. The more flyers you send out, the more likelihood you're going to get a call eventually.

That's why I made a mistake early on by using a number provided by a call center in my marketing. A month later, I realized if I don't like this call center, I'm going to lose that phone number and lose all the future calls. So I make sure I own my numbers. If I use a call answering service, I forward my marketing number to their number so I keep control.

Host: That's brilliant. Really good. And I think you've got to persevere. You may not have that $1,000 a month budget to begin with. But just start. Sometimes it is knocking on doors. Sometimes it is going after listings that haven't completed. But you've got to try different angles. And as you continue to grow your business, make that first sale, reinvest back in to up the ante a little bit.

Now, I know back in your day you were doing "Wade Buys Houses." Can you talk about bandit signs? Is there a real response to those types of ads?

Wade: Yeah, there is. You do get a response off bandit signs. But going back to the late 90s and 2000s, it was probably more beneficial than it is now. It's also very time-consuming. The signs blow over, they get kicked over, bylaw picks them up. If you have a lot of time and you don't have a budget, it's something you can do.

Any marketing I do, I want to stand out. People say, "Oh, you're the guy that puts up those yellow signs." Those yellow signs have 20 different phone numbers and 20 different people behind them, but callers think it's one guy. So I would do something to stand out differently. I didn't just do plain yellow. I would do a three-color sign, more tall than wide, so it stands out. People don't think I'm just the same as the other "We Buy Houses" sign.

One idea that came to me while we were talking: as a wholesaler who hasn't got the $1,000 a month, go around and talk to investors that are kicking ass. Active renovators. Approach them with an idea. "You're renovating two houses at a time. You've got a budget. I don't have a budget. So here's my proposal: why don't I be your marketing guy? Give me a phone number. I'll design the postcard. You pay for the print. It's your number. Have it directed to me. I'll take the calls, do all the legwork. But the deals come to you. And I get a payment for bringing the deal."

A wholesaler could do that with five different investors. Five different investors, same postcard design, five different phone numbers -- each investor owns their number. That wholesaler can mail out from each of those five numbers to the same area. The wholesaler just has to make sure they can track which number was called and make sure that deal goes back to the right investor.

You have to have a little credibility -- the investor has to trust you're not going to steal his deals. But if you present well and have a good idea, as a renovator who's busy and not doing marketing, why not trust somebody? Give them a $1,000 monthly budget. A wholesaler with zero budget could do that with 10 different investors, 10 different phone numbers, and get the ball going.

I mean, I showed up jobless and penniless on a bicycle on unemployment insurance after losing my job. I made nine grand in nine days of ownership starting with a cash advance off two credit cards, a cell phone, and a bicycle. There are things somebody can do to start marketing with a creative approach.

Host: I quite like that approach. Reaching out to good active renovators. Really creative. So here you are, the middleman bridging this relationship. You're finding deals and also knowing which ones are going to work for your eventual buyer -- because technically that's where you get paid. Let's talk about that. What are buyers looking for in a wholesale deal from you? Who is your ideal buyer? What types of properties should a wholesaler be looking for to attract an investor buyer?

Wade: Facebook is awesome for this. Being in real estate investor groups -- not necessarily Marketplace, because a Marketplace buyer might not understand how to buy an assignment -- being in real estate investor Facebook groups is the best place to find buyers. There are thousands of people in different Facebook groups in Alberta.

If I get a house under contract at $450,000 that's worth $500,000, I put it on an investor group. It might not be a renovator, but it might be somebody who knows somebody looking for a house like that, or an investor who goes, "At $50,000 below market, I'll buy it, flip it, and retail it."

There are lots of investors doing rent-to-own programs. If they have a buyer for a $500,000 house that they can get for $450,000, they can still mark it up above today's retail because they're doing a three-year deal, but they're also capturing $50,000 of equity.

There are hundreds of different types of investors out there. If it's a good deal -- under market value -- it doesn't matter whether it's a beautiful $500,000 house or a fixer-upper. I just met a builder who wants knockdowns. Anything under market value. If I found a 1974 Ford Pinto in great condition and got it cheap, I'd put it on Marketplace and somebody out there will buy it. So I don't cater to a specific niche. I'm blasting flyers everywhere and I'll try to do something with anything that comes to me.

Host: And you're trying to build a database of sellers and buyers together. You mentioned earlier that ideally you don't need 100 buyers -- just some really good quality buyers who want to do a rinse-and-repeat model. Same approach as raising capital: looking for quality investors who want to do this over and over again.

Wade: So even though I've done 145 deals, I've never had a buyer's list until now. I just created one a couple of weeks ago with my tech guy. And I'm already thinking: I don't want a buyer's list with an email format. I'm a face-to-face kind of guy. People see me at events. Don't email me -- go to Facebook and send me a message on Messenger.

What I want to do quickly is just create a group for my deals. People can see my posts, get to know me better. I'm not going to put together an email newsletter. I'll post on Facebook and put it in my own group.

Wade: And as a wholesaler, I want to do an Alberta wholesaling group -- no realtors, no listed properties, no stuff that doesn't fit. Because I see so many groups full of junk. There's one called Alberta Wholesalers, and realtors are listing $700,000 beautiful homes just to get a plug in. A lot of group owners don't moderate. I would just ban those guys. If you've got a true off-market deal, great. But if it's a $750,000 house at full retail, nobody in that group cares. Investors are looking for something they're going to flip, renovate, rent out, add a suite to. Not $750,000 houses at full retail.

Host: I think that's a great strategy. Now, one of the questions everybody's going to be asking is about the money. They're all wondering: what kind of money can I make on a wholesale deal? You mentioned $9,000 to begin with. Is there a specific number you're always looking for?

Wade: Okay. One of the things I do differently -- and I wish wholesalers would stop doing the other thing -- is this: here's my deal, it's 300 grand, and my assignment fee is $10,000. Don't tell anybody what your assignment fee is. They don't need to know. This is my house. It's $350,000. Do you like the deal or not?

The way I do it is I get people to commit -- go unconditional with a bank draft -- and then I open my deal and they see what I'm making. I don't advertise it. What I'm making is nobody's business and I don't say what that number is. My assignment fee does not become part of the negotiation.

It's a smoking deal to the buyer or it's not. I've got a fixer-upper house in Millwoods, 1,220 square feet. My price is $320,000. I think the after-repair value is $480,000. I'm selling it at X. Is it a smoking deal or is it not? The deal has to be good enough that a renovation buyer bounces on it. Historically on my wholesale deals, nine times out of ten the first warm body I show the house to buys it. Because my price is that good.

And I'm a hard-ass when it comes to terms. If somebody comes and looks at it and wants to put pen to paper, I agree to a number and a possession date in theory. But I won't let them go on an open condition. If somebody else comes along who wants to give me a bank draft of $5,000, I'm going to give you 12 hours' notice to go unconditional or the deal is gone. I don't allow people to tie up my deal for financing or inspections. If you're an experienced renovator, you should be able to walk in and give me a bank draft within an hour. My deals go fast.

Wade: So the number I'm advertising has to be low enough that somebody is going to commit to me within a week. The number has to be so good that the renovation buyer drops his hammer and comes across town right now because the price is that good.

One deal last year -- a four-year-old half-duplex. The buyer was a realtor-broker with a small team. He knew the value, saw the logic, was the first guy to look at it, bought it, did about a $3,000 to $4,000 cleanup, then listed it. When a seasoned buyer races across town because it's a freaking good deal, your fee -- whatever is in there -- is built into the price you set. I didn't tell him the number. I told him my price. Once he went unconditional and paid a deposit, I showed him what I paid and what my assignment fee was. And it's like, holy -- good job, Wade. He still made money and couldn't care less what I was making.

Host: I agree with that concept. As a buyer, as long as the deal makes sense for me, I really don't care how much the wholesaler makes. So the key for everyone listening: find the good opportunities and your compensation is based on that. But it's got to be a win-win-win for all parties.

I'll be honest -- the deal I'm doing right now that I just assigned, it's half a year's income for some people, and it's still a damn good deal for the guy buying it.

Wade: Exactly. And it's a really old house in a really old part of Edmonton. I went around and took pictures of builder signs -- the ones that go with a city permit for a demolition or a fourplex build -- and I texted the pictures and a message to the builders. "I saw this sign. I've got a lot in the area. This is what I want for it." I started a dialogue with a bunch of builders.

One builder told me my original asking price was too high. A couple days later I came back and said, "Okay, this is what I want." He said, "It's still a bit high, but I'll take it." By that time I also had another investor who wanted it as a renovation job. But by finding builders in that area and starting a conversation, I got really lucky. The guy I connected with is 35 years old, started building duplex infill stuff at 22, and is now doing 40 multi-plexes a year with over 200 projects completed.

Wade: The particular house I sold was built in 1910, so it's going to an infill builder. That area is good for it -- there are 120 to 140-year-old houses still standing. Little 600-square-foot shacks that are going to get knocked down. It's really close to 118th Avenue, historically a rough area. Getting multiplexes, fourplexes, and sixplexes in there is going to rejuvenate the entire neighbourhood. It's an area where that redevelopment is good.

I don't want to be selling knockdowns in a neighbourhood like mine, which is pretty affluent. I don't want to see eight-plexes going up next to an $800,000 house in a ravine neighbourhood, overwhelming everything around them. That ruins values in good areas. But in poor areas, multiplexes are a good thing.

Host: Okay, so let's wrap up here. I always ask our guests for final words of wisdom. You've been doing this a long time. What would be your words of wisdom for someone looking to get into the wholesaling space, or for those who might be struggling?

Wade: Number one thing that irks me: yes, as a rookie wholesaler, you've got to go to investor meetup groups and meet other people. But you've got to get off your ass. Don't just sit there calling for-sale-by-owners. Get on the street. Get out writing deals. Don't just talk on the phone and text deal numbers to some for-sale-by-owner guy. Get out and meet people. Meet the homeowner. Put pen to paper and be real.

To this day I still do 90% of my contracts with a pen and a piece of paper. I go to them. If the guy doesn't want my deal, I don't leave the offer with them -- I take it. But so many times I get calls from wholesalers who tell me they texted the seller an offer. You are not going to get anywhere texting offers. Go meet the person with a written offer. If they're not accepting, take it back. Keep the conversation going. Try again in a few weeks. If you want to get wet, you've got to stand in the rain.

I'm 60 years old and I'm still doing it. I'm driving around and I see an ugly house with an overgrown lawn, I'll go knock on the door. Nothing makes me hit the brakes faster in my truck than seeing an ugly junker house with an overgrown lawn. Get out there. Take a picture of the address, take a picture of the house, take a GPS screenshot so you know where you were. Email or text yourself those pictures. Add the address to your mailing list later. But they're still going to get something in the mailbox while you're standing there.

Wade: Get off your ass. Get a haircut, put on a nice shirt, show up, sit down, talk to them, make rapport.

Host: Love that. Take action. That's where success is. Now, people wanting to learn more about you and connect with you. Where's the best place to go?

Wade: Facebook. Send me a message on Messenger. I'm an in-person kind of communicator. I don't like email. I like Messenger because the whole conversation is in one thread. I see their face on Facebook as a person, I remember them. I'm a visual, hands-on, tactile kind of guy. Wade Fenner on Facebook. Send me a message on Messenger first.

Host: Well, as we do with all our guests, we'll post Wade's contact information in the show notes below. Wade, I really appreciate you being here and sharing your knowledge with our community. Great to see you again.

Wade: Thanks for having me, Mike.

Host: Okay, take care.