If someone drops you in a new town and tells you to find a good real estate deal in about 3 hours, here is what you should do.

The gurus tell you to do lots of marketing and make a lot of offers on houses, and you can do that if you have time. But if I wanted to find a deal fast, the first thing I would do is find the local wholesaler.

Not just any wholesaler, because in a large market there will probably be more than a few and that is where you want to invest. What you should look for is the Big dog wholesaler, the one who is selling more properties than anyone else. Look for somebody who is purchasing and selling 5 to 10 properties per month. That would be a true wholesaler.

A true real estate wholesaler marks up a deal a few thousand and goes to the next deal, nothing like many courses and real estate gurus talking of making 10, 20 or even 50k on a deal. These are not true wholesalers, they are flippers.

Flippers make home runs. They find a property and mark it up a lot and make a killing one deal. These will be the guys that do only one or two deals a month.

The true wholesalers will not make much money on each deal, that is why investors will be buying from them over and over again because they know they are getting the best deals.

In my opinion, devoting a lot of time and money to learn how to find real estate deals is a waste of time. I am one of the big dog wholesalers in my area and, after thinking about how I do business, I realized that before I became a wholesaler I spent a lot of time and money learning how to find deals. It does pay off if you want to be a wholesaler; but if you are just trying to flip a deal or build a rental portfolio it really does not make sense. You simply will not be able to find better deals than me.

Use the local wholesaler if you want to find great deals super fast. It is like having a buyer on your staff that is doing all the legwork for you. By using their expertise you will save time and money that is more than worth the mark up you will pay.

Where do you go when you want to buy something nowadays? Wal-Mart, Target, all of these stores are actually large wholesalers. They buy in bulk and then pass the savings on to the consumer. That is what the local wholesaler does in your real estate investing.