This is the most asked question that new investors ask. They ask it for obvious reasons; to know when they will get their investment in the course back, to determine if it is worth their time or because they are desperate to make money.

I have heard all sorts of claims by national gurus that it should only take a week or 30 days for a new real estate investor to get a deal. Let’s start by defining what a “deal” is and what it is not. A deal is a completed real estate transaction, both a purchase and a sale, where the investor makes a profit. It is not simply getting a property under contract and hoping for the best. It is not buying a property at 5% below the listed price on the MLS® and going to rehab it. It is completing the life cycle of a deal from purchase or contracting to sale.

An investor can start in the conventional manner of buying a property and reselling it to an end-buyer or he can look to do wholesaling to other investors to start. We will look at both options to show the dramatic differences.

Wholesaling – I mentioned contracting above because in wholesaling an investor only needs to contract the property to sell it. He does not have to purchase the property, close and wait for a buyer. This is true for those investors who understand the real nature of wholesaling. This is the fastest way to get a deal closed and cash in the bank for new investors.

Rehabbing – If the investor wants to and has the money to purchase a property, he can simply find one on the MLS® that needs repairs and go for it. If he wants to stay in the business long-term, he will have to develop marketing techniques to find good deals – essentially what wholesalers do. His time frame to make a completed deal will usually be in the area of 2 – 3 months and longer if the buyer of his rehab has to get conventional financing. Some deals will take longer to complete, but they will all require the money for the purchase, carrying costs and the expenses of the rehab.

The process of getting a deal first entails finding one. There are at least fifty ways to prospect for motivated sellers to find a property for sale. The next step is to determine if the seller is motivated, if not, it is a waste of time for the investor. This isn’t to say the seller won’t be motivated in the future, but currently the seller’s interest is only the price he will get. Experienced investors know that the real money is in the follow-up and not the initial offer.

In wholesaling, the next step after a seller is determined to be motivated and receptive to your offer is to determine what price to offer. A motivated seller is distinguished from a non-motivated seller because he is interested in a solution to his personal problem, not just the price he gets. What price to offer usually entails determining the repair costs and after repaired value and then making an offer at enough of a discount to be able to resell it to another investor and make a profit spread – without having to do any repairs.

Assuming a new investor gets a seller to sign a contract and in a week he finds a buyer who will purchase the property or his contract (Assignment of Contract), the closing will usually take place in 3 – 4 weeks for a cash buyers. It is possible to close sooner but the title work can take as much as 30 days to complete.

So in summary and not counting the initial time required to find and put a contract on a property, it should take 30 days to do a wholesale deal – if all goes exactly as planned. For doing rehabs, the time after the property is found and contracted will likely be an average of 120 days in most areas.

If someone tells you that you can do a deal in seven to 30 days, you may be in for a surprise unless you have a lot of structure in your business and have continuous prospects in your pipeline. The more important question is, “can you sustain a deal every 7 to 30 days?” The answer to this question is all up to your perseverance and management capabilities as you get more and more prospects in your system and have more and more closings on the horizon.