An Offer a Day Keeps the Bill Collectors Away
Over the years I've received thousands of emails from new wholesalers and investors trying to figure out why they aren't getting deals. They inspect properties, they identify what look like opportunities, they get excited — and then nothing happens. The deals don't close. The sellers say no, or someone else pays more, or the offer just disappears into silence.
One of the most common emails I get goes something like this:
"Steve, I recently looked at 20 homes in my area. After inspecting them, I decided to make 2 offers — but the sellers' agents basically laughed me out of the conversation. I'm getting nothing accepted. I don't think deals like yours exist where I live. Most homes here sell at asking price or above. Can you help?"
I call this person Discouraged Newbie. And I want to tell Discouraged Newbie — and everyone who relates to this email — something important: where I live, most homes also sell at or above asking price. That's not the problem. The problem is almost always one of two things, and sometimes both.
They're not targeting motivated sellers. And they're not making nearly enough offers.
Let's fix both.
Mistake #1: Not Targeting Motivated Sellers
The retail market — the MLS, the listed properties, the homes with fresh paint and a lockbox — is not where most investor deals come from. Those sellers have agents, comps, and confidence. They're not selling at a discount because they don't need to.
The deals come from motivated sellers. People and institutions with a reason to sell quickly, or sell at less than market value, or simply get the thing off their plate. In my experience, the single best indicator of motivation is a vacant property that needs work.
Vacant properties are a burden. The owner is carrying taxes, insurance, and risk on a property that is generating nothing — and often deteriorating. Every month it sits empty is a month they're paying to own a problem. That's motivation.
This doesn't mean every vacant distressed property is a deal. It means your offer-making energy should be concentrated where motivation is most likely to exist. Banks with REO inventory. Absentee owners. Estates. Properties that have been sitting. People in pre-foreclosure. These are the sellers who have a reason to negotiate — and negotiation is where investor deals are made.
Don't waste your time trying to convince a non-motivated seller to take a discount. Find the sellers who already have a reason to say yes, and make your offers there.
Mistake #2: Not Making Enough Offers
This is the bigger issue for most new investors, and it's worth being completely direct about it.
Even when you are targeting the right sellers, most of them are going to say no. That is not a sign that something is wrong with your market, your offer, or your approach. It is simply how the numbers work in this business.
I make 40 or more offers in a typical month. In a productive stretch, I once made 40 offers over a single weekend and bought 9 houses on Monday. That's a remarkable conversion — roughly one in four — and it still means 31 of those 40 sellers said no. The 31 rejections were not failures. They were the cost of finding the 9 yeses. For a beginning wholesaler just building their pipeline, 20 to 30 offers per month is a realistic and productive target — enough to let the math work in your favor.
When Discouraged Newbie looked at 20 homes and made 2 offers, they weren't giving the math a chance to work. They were essentially hand-picking which sellers they thought would accept — and that's not how you find motivated sellers. You don't find them by predicting them. You find them by making offers and letting the motivated ones identify themselves.
My low offers fish out the sellers who are motivated enough to respond. Making offers is the easiest and most reliable way to find out who actually wants to sell. Too many investors try to predict who that is — and they're usually wrong.
How I Think About Making Offers
When I look at 20 homes, I make 20 offers. Sometimes 30. I make offers on properties I've inspected and properties I haven't been inside yet. I make offers on properties priced too high and properties already priced well. I make offers in good areas and bad ones.
My criteria is simple: if I think the seller might be motivated and there's a number that works for me, I make the offer. I don't try to predict which sellers will say yes. I let the offers do that work.
Here's how I think about the numbers on any given property:
There is a price at which every property makes sense for an investor. Every single one.
My job is to figure out what that number is and offer it — regardless of what the seller is asking.
If no number works for me, I still might make an offer. On a few occasions I've asked sellers to pay me to take a property, because that was the only number that made sense given its condition and location.
Most of those offers get rejected. That's fine. I'm not trying to win every negotiation. I'm trying to find the sellers who are ready to make a deal.
The offers that get accepted are the only ones that matter. And you never find those if you're not making the ones that get rejected first.
The Pipeline Problem
Here's a business reality that doesn't get talked about enough: you cannot make money in real estate investing without inventory. No deals in your pipeline means no income. It's that simple.
The way you keep inventory in your pipeline is by making offers consistently. Not when you feel ready, not when the market feels right, not when you've done enough research. Consistently. Every week, every month, without stopping.
I've talked to investors who tell me they look at homes all the time but never buy anything. They say they find motivated sellers but no deals ever close. My first question is always the same: how many written offers have you actually made?
The answer is almost always a number you can count on one hand.
Looking at houses is not the same as making offers. Identifying motivated sellers is not the same as making offers. Thinking about a deal is not the same as making offers. The offer is the action that moves everything forward. It's the only thing that forces a yes or a no — and both answers are useful.
A yes puts a deal in your pipeline. A no tells you to move on and stop spending mental energy on that property. Either way, making the offer is how you make progress.
What "An Offer a Day" Actually Looks Like
I'm not suggesting every investor needs to be making 40 offers a month from day one. Your volume will depend on your market, your strategy, and where you are in building your business. But the principle holds regardless of scale.
If you make it a goal to average one offer per day — 20 to 30 offers per month — and you're targeting the right sellers, deals will happen. Not on every offer. Not even on most of them. But enough of them, and with enough consistency, your pipeline fills up and stays full.
Here's a practical framework for building your offer volume:
Set a weekly offer target and treat it like a non-negotiable business metric. Not a goal — a requirement.
Stop pre-qualifying sellers in your head before you make the offer. Let the offer do that work.
Track your offer-to-acceptance ratio. Over time you'll develop a feel for your conversion rate, which makes it easier to project how many offers you need to hit your acquisition goals.
Don't let rejection slow you down. A no is not a setback — it is information. Move to the next one.
Make offers even on properties you haven't physically inspected yet, particularly if you're targeting vacant distressed properties in markets you know well.
About Getting Laughed At
Let's address the Realtor laughing at Discouraged Newbie's offer. This happens. It will probably happen to you if it hasn't already. An agent represents a seller, and their job is to maximize the seller's outcome. A low offer can feel like an insult to them.
Here's how I think about it: I'm not making offers to make agents happy. I'm making offers to find motivated sellers. An agent who laughs at an offer is an agent whose seller isn't motivated enough. That's useful information — and it cost me nothing to find it out.
Develop a thick skin and a short memory. What happened on the last offer is irrelevant to the next one. Each offer is its own event. The investors who get rattled by rejection and slow down their offer volume are the ones who struggle. The ones who treat no as neutral information and keep going are the ones who build real portfolios.
One More Thing About Your Market
If you're thinking "this doesn't work in my market because everything sells at full price" — I want to push back on that directly.
I have operated in markets exactly like yours. I still do. The retail market moves fast and sellers get full price. That's the market most people are looking at. But underneath that market, in every city in every state, there are vacant properties with owners who are tired of carrying them. There are estates being settled by heirs who never asked to be landlords. There are landlords who are done being landlords. There are situations.
Motivated sellers exist everywhere. They are just not hanging a sign out front. You find them by knowing where to look and by making enough offers to let the motivated ones raise their hand.
Your market is not the problem. Your offer volume — and possibly your targeting — is where to look first.
The formula is simple: find motivated sellers, make offers consistently, and let the numbers do the work. Making offers on distressed properties every single day is the most reliable path to building a real estate wholesaling business that actually produces deals.
Frequently Asked Questions About Making Offers
How many offers should I make per month as a beginning wholesaler?
A good starting target is 20 to 30 offers per month — roughly one per business day. That volume gives the math a chance to work. If you're targeting motivated sellers on vacant, distressed properties, you can reasonably expect one to three of those offers to result in an accepted deal each month, depending on your market and your pricing.
What is a motivated seller in real estate?
A motivated seller is someone who has a specific reason to sell quickly or at a discount — not just someone who listed their house. The clearest signal of motivation is a vacant property that needs work. The owner is carrying costs on something generating zero income and often deteriorating. Other motivated sellers include banks with REO inventory, estate heirs, absentee landlords, and homeowners in pre-foreclosure.
Why aren't my real estate offers getting accepted?
Almost always one of two reasons: you're not targeting motivated sellers, or you're not making enough offers. If you're submitting two or three offers a month on retail-listed properties, the math will never work in your favor. Shift your focus to vacant distressed properties and dramatically increase your offer volume before concluding that something is wrong with your market or your strategy.
Should I make offers on houses I haven't inspected?
Yes — particularly on vacant distressed properties in markets you know well. You can make a reasonable offer based on comparable sales and estimated renovation costs without physically walking every property. The offer itself is low-cost to make and forces a response. If a seller engages, that's when you invest more time in due diligence. Don't let the inability to inspect a property stop you from making an offer.
How do I handle rejection when making low offers?
Develop a short memory. A no is not a failure — it's information. It tells you that seller isn't motivated enough at your price, and it frees you to move your attention to the next opportunity. The investors who build strong portfolios treat rejection as a neutral data point, not a discouragement. Volume is your protection against any single rejection mattering too much.
Ready to Start Making Offers?
If you want to talk through your market, your targeting strategy, or what's actually holding your offer volume back, come join the conversation. The community we've built is full of investors who are doing deals right now — in all kinds of markets, at all experience levels.
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