We Stopped Letting Wholesalers Tie Up Our Land. Here’s Why.

We’ve had a lot of wholesalers reach out to us lately, so I figured it was probably time to just explain our stance on it.

The short version is this:

We generally don’t work with wholesalers unless they’re willing to put 20% of the purchase price down as earnest money with the title company within two business days.

That probably sounds a little strict.

But this policy came from experience. Unfortunately, too much experience.

We wish we didn’t (have to) have this rule

When Evan and I first started getting calls and messages from wholesalers, we were pretty open to it.

Someone would tell us they had a buyer, or a list of buyers, or that they were confident they could get the property sold, sounds perfect!

We’d agree on a price, sign the contract, send everything over to title, and mark the property as pending, everything seeming normal.

But then we’d wait.

And WAY too often, the wholesaler would just... disappear.

Sometimes the wholesaler would tell us their buyer backed out.

Maybe they couldn’t find anyone to take the contract.

But mostly, they’d stop answering altogether.

Meanwhile, we had taken the property off the market.

That meant telling other people who reached out, “Sorry, it’s under contract.”

Which is the part that really started to cost us.

We are investors, which means we have personally tied up our capital into these properties. That means that we strongly believe in our ability to sell a property. We think it’s only fair to ask you to put up a deposit that shows us that you believe in your ability to sell the property too.

It’s not really about the title fees…

There can be title work involved before closing, and depending on the title company and situation, sometimes there are costs that come with that. We have had to ‘eat’ the costs of title searches and municipal lien searches just to never hear back from the person we have an agreement with. (And yes, of course we have a signed and legally binding agreement.. but we all know that eating these costs is cheaper than dealing with attorney fees, which is probably unfortunately how wholesalers got so ballsy in the first place/

But that’s honestly not the part that gets to us the most…

It’s the time.

It’s holding a property for someone for weeks because they SWEAR they have a buyer, while turning other away people who may have actually wanted to purchase it.

Then the contract falls apart and we’re right back where we started.

Except now we’ve lost a few weeks, and the other interested buyers have usually moved on.

We’ve had this happen more than 20 times. And we have been in this business for 8 years now, so that may not seem like a huge number..

But in 2026, the number of people looking to assign contracts has skyrocket. We get 20 messages a day, and at least 3 emails a week from people who ‘have a buyer’ ready.

So no, we don’t hate wholesalers

I want to be really clear about that because I know this can turn into a weird “investors vs. wholesalers” conversation pretty quickly.

That’s not what this is.

There are good wholesalers. We know that. We have worked with some!

There are people who know their market, know their buyers, communicate well, and close deals.

We would absolutely work with someone like that. Again and again.

What we’re not willing to do anymore is take a property off the market for someone who has very little at risk if the deal doesn’t work out.

That’s where the 20% earnest money requirement comes in.

If you plan to assign the contract, here’s our policy

If you intend to assign the contract, we ask for 20% of the agreed purchase price as earnest money.

That money needs to be deposited with the title company within two business days.

The earnest money is refundable according to the terms of the contract.

But simply not being able to find someone to buy the contract isn’t a reason to get the deposit back.

If we’re going to take the property off the market and give you time to find an end buyer, we need to know you’re committed to the deal too.

Why 20%?

Because $100 doesn’t really mean much if you’re tying up a property for several weeks.

If the deal works, great.

If it doesn’t, walking away from $100 is pretty easy.

For us, though, that same few weeks may mean turning away several other buyers and having to restart the whole sales process afterward. It means that we may have turned away the ‘right’ buyer.

So we decided that if someone wants the right to control the property while they find another buyer, they need to have some real skin in the game.

Twenty percent felt fair.

It’s enough that you probably aren’t putting a property under contract unless you’ve actually looked at the numbers and believe you can close.

And that’s really all we’re asking for.

“But I already have a buyer.”

We hear this a lot.

And I’m sure plenty of people who tell us that really do have someone interested.

The problem is that we’ve also heard it right before deals fell apart.

The fact of the matter is that buyers change their minds.

People stop responding.

The money doesn’t come through.

And we get it, things happen.

But we also can’t run our business based on how confident someone sounds when they first message us.

We have to look at what happens if the deal doesn’t close.

Evan still works a full-time job, and we’ve built Paradise Parcels alongside that. This business takes a lot of our nights, weekends, time, and energy. When we have a property tied up for weeks and then have to start over, that loss of time is very real for us.

That’s really what this policy is protecting.

It isn’t personal!

If you reach out to us about wholesaling one of our properties and we give you this requirement, please don’t take it as us assuming you’re going to flake.

We don’t know you yet.

That’s kind of the point.

We’ve had enough people sound completely serious, tell us they had buyers, and then disappear that we finally had to stop making exceptions based on a good conversation.

The policy is the policy.

If you’re serious and the numbers work, great. We’re happy to talk.

If putting 20% down makes the deal too risky for you, we completely understand that too.

It probably just means it isn’t a deal we should do together.

We’re not saying, “We will never work with wholesalers.”

We’re saying:

We won’t tie up our land for weeks while someone tests whether they can find a buyer for it with almost nothing at stake.

There’s a difference.

If you know your numbers, have buyers, communicate well, and are comfortable putting meaningful earnest money behind the contract, we’re absolutely open to working together.

We just need both sides to have something on the line.

After 20+ deals that went nowhere, we think that’s pretty reasonable.

Chloe & Evan
Paradise Parcels