Virtual wholesaling is one of the few businesses where you can enter a completely new market with no physical presence, no local contacts, and no prior experience in that area, and close deals within a matter of weeks. The process is repeatable, scalable, and does not require you to move or build a local network first. For a comparison of how it stacks up against the traditional approach, see virtual wholesaling vs. traditional wholesaling.
What it does require is a clear system. Here is how to build one from scratch.
Step 1: Choose Your Market Strategically
The biggest mistake new virtual wholesalers make is picking a market based on where they live or where they have heard deals are happening. The right market for a virtual operation is determined by data, not geography.
Look for markets with:
- Active investor activity: cash buyers already operating means you have an exit for your deals
- Distressed inventory: pre-foreclosures, tax delinquencies, high absentee owner rates
- Reasonable ARVs: markets where deals pencil at 65 to 70% of ARV minus repairs
- Population over 100k: enough deal flow to build a pipeline without exhausting your list
Midwest and Southeast markets consistently work well for virtual wholesaling. High cost-of-living markets on the coasts can work but require larger deal sizes to justify the margins.
Start with one market. Wholesalers who try to work three markets at once rarely master any of them. Pick one, get your first deal, then expand.
Step 2: Build Your Buyer List Before You Market
This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that costs them the most time. If you put a deal under contract without a buyer lined up, you are in a race against your closing deadline.
To build a buyer list remotely:
- Search recent cash sales on Propstream or the county records in your target market
- Identify who is buying repeatedly (these are your active investors)
- Find their contact info and reach out directly: "I am a wholesaler bringing deals in [market], are you actively buying?"
- Attend virtual real estate investing meetups in the target market
- Join Facebook groups for real estate investors in your target area
A buyer list of 10 to 15 active investors who know your name is enough to move deals consistently.
Step 3: Set Up Your Tool Stack
A lean virtual wholesale stack covers five functions:
- List building and skip tracing: BatchLeads or Propstream
- Outreach: a multi-line dialer or an SMS platform like Launch Control
- CRM: REsimpli or a simple pipeline tracker to manage follow-ups
- Property documentation: SellerSubmit for seller-submitted photos
- Contracts and closing: DocuSign and a local title company or real estate attorney
Total monthly cost for this stack: roughly $250 to $400. That is your entire operating cost before you start spending on marketing lists.
Step 4: Generate Motivated Seller Leads
Pull a targeted list from BatchLeads or Propstream using distress filters: pre-foreclosure, vacant, absentee owner, high equity. Skip trace the list to get phone numbers. Load into your dialer and start calling.
You are looking for sellers who have a reason to sell fast and flexibility on price. The conversation is about motivation first, price second. "How soon are you looking to move?" is a more important question than "What do you want for the house?" early in the call.
Set up follow-up sequences in your CRM for everyone who does not close on the first call. Most deals in wholesaling come from follow-up, not first contact.
Step 5: Get Property Condition Data Without a Site Visit
This is the step that separates functional virtual wholesale operations from ones that stall out. You need property photos to underwrite. The options for getting them remotely are:
- Ask the seller to text photos (slow, incomplete, unreliable)
- Hire BOTG (expensive, slow, requires local contacts)
- Send a guided seller submission link (fast, complete, works in any market)
The right answer is the third option. Send the seller a SellerSubmit link immediately after your initial call. They complete a guided room-by-room photo flow in under 10 minutes. You get a complete, validated photo set in your dashboard the same day. Underwrite the deal and call them back with an offer while they are still warm.
Speed is everything in virtual wholesaling. Every hour between your initial call and your offer is an hour the seller could talk to someone else. A same-day offer on a motivated seller closes at a dramatically higher rate than a 48-hour turnaround.
Step 6: Underwrite and Make the Offer
Pull comps in Propstream or from an investor-friendly agent. Set your ARV conservatively. Review the seller-submitted photos to scope repairs by category: systems versus cosmetics. Apply your buyer's formula (typically ARV x 0.65 to 0.70 minus repairs). Add a remote buffer of 15 to 20%. Build your offer with room to negotiate.
Call the seller back the same day. Frame the offer around speed and certainty, not price. Motivated sellers are choosing between your offer and the uncertainty of a retail listing. Make that trade-off explicit.
Step 7: Assign the Contract and Collect Your Fee
Once you are under contract, send the deal to your buyer list with a deal package: address, ARV, repair estimate, asking price, and the seller-submitted photos. Set a short deadline. Collect a non-refundable deposit from the buyer when they accept. Coordinate with the title company through closing.
Your assignment fee is the spread between your contract price and what the buyer pays. On a typical virtual deal in a Midwest market, that is $5,000 to $15,000 per transaction.
How Long Does It Take to Close the First Deal?
With a focused effort, most new virtual wholesalers close their first deal within 60 to 90 days of starting. The variable is not talent. It is how fast you can build a pipeline of motivated leads and how quickly you can move on them when one is ready to sell. Tools that remove friction from the process, especially on the property documentation side, directly compress that timeline.