Wholesaling deal pipeline stages, from lead to assignment

A wholesale deal has two sides that move at different speeds. On one side you are buying: finding a motivated seller, agreeing on a price and getting the property under contract. On the other you are selling: finding a cash buyer who will take over your contract before your deadlines run out. A pipeline that mixes those two jobs into a single "working" column hides the one thing that kills wholesale deals, which is time.

Here are the stages that hold up in practice, what should be true before a deal moves forward, and what to record at each step.

1. New seller leads

Every lead from direct mail, a driving-for-dollars list, a referral or your website lands here first. The only job at this stage is to make contact and find out whether there is a real reason to sell.

Record the seller's motivation in a structured field, not buried in a note. Foreclosure, probate, a tired landlord, relocation or divorce each call for a different conversation and a different urgency. When motivation is a field, you can filter for it later.

Move forward when: you have talked to the owner, confirmed they own the property, and know why they might sell.

2. Offer made

You have walked the property or gathered enough to estimate repairs, pulled comparable sales for an after-repair value (ARV), and made an offer. The offer should come from math, not from a gut feeling about what the seller will accept.

Most wholesalers start from the 70% rule: ARV times 70%, minus repairs, minus the assignment fee you want to keep. Our guide to calculating MAO with the 70% rule walks through it, and the free wholesale MAO calculator does the arithmetic.

Record the ARV, the repair estimate and the offer amount on the deal. When the seller calls back in three weeks, you want to know exactly what you offered and why.

Move forward when: the seller has accepted and signed a purchase agreement.

3. Under contract

Now the clock starts. Three things matter here, and each one belongs in its own field:

• Contract price. What you agreed to pay the seller.
• Earnest money (EMD). What you deposited, and with whom.
• Option or inspection deadline. The last day you can walk away under the contract's terms.

That deadline is the most important date in wholesaling. If you have not lined up a buyer by then, you either extend, renegotiate, close yourself or cancel. Put it on the card so it is in front of you every time you look at the board.

Move forward when: you start actively marketing the contract to buyers.

4. In dispo

Disposition is the selling side. You send the deal to your buyers list, show the property and collect offers. Track which buyers you sent it to and who responded, so you learn who actually closes and who only asks questions.

This is also where you confirm your assignment fee. The buyer's price minus your contract price is your spread. If the spread is thinner than you planned, it is better to know now than at the closing table.

Move forward when: a buyer has signed the assignment agreement and put down their deposit.

5. Assigned

The contract has been assigned and the title company has the paperwork. Your job now is to keep the closing on track: the buyer's funds, any title issues, and the seller's move-out. Record the assignment fee as a number so your reporting adds up at the end of the month.

Move forward when: the title company funds the deal.

6. Closed

The deal funded and you were paid. Closed deals are not just history. They are your best record of what your market really pays, which buyers perform, and which lead sources produce deals instead of calls.

Deals that die belong somewhere too. Mark them closed lost with a reason, such as seller backed out, title problems or no buyer at price. A month of lost reasons will tell you more about your business than a month of wins.

What to track on every card

If you track nothing else, track these on each deal:

1. Seller motivation
2. ARV and repair estimate
3. Your offer and your MAO
4. Contract price and earnest money
5. Option or inspection deadline
6. Assignment fee

Setting this up in a CRM

You can run this pipeline in a spreadsheet for a while. The trouble starts when you have more than a handful of deals under contract and the deadlines live in a column nobody sorts by. If you are at that point, our post on when to move from a spreadsheet to a CRM covers the signs.

Deal Harbor's Wholesale Real Estate template sets up exactly these six stages (New Seller Leads, Offer Made, Under Contract, In Dispo, Assigned, Closed) with fields for contract price, assignment fee, earnest money and option deadline. The Deal Analyzer on each deal works out MAO and a flip projection from your numbers. See Deal Harbor for wholesalers for the whole setup, or compare plans on the pricing page.