Step 8: Get It Under Contract

Step 8.1 — What the contract actually does

A purchase contract binds a specific buyer and seller to a specific property at a specific price, on a timeline, under stated conditions. For a wholesaler, the contract — or a separate assignment agreement — is also the asset that gets assigned in Step 9. Use the standard contract form for your state or a form your attorney has reviewed, fill every blank deliberately, and never sign a form you have not read in full. Plain-English summaries, including our contracts guide linked below, explain the moving parts; they never replace the actual document or legal advice about it.

Step 8.2 — The terms that decide whether you are protected

Read these twice: price and earnest money (how much, when, held by whom), closing date and extension rights, inspection or due-diligence period, financing or proof-of-funds terms, title requirements, and the exact language on assignment if you intend to assign. Each term is a risk dial. A long inspection period protects you and worries a seller; strong earnest money reassures a seller and risks your cash. Set the dials to match the deal in front of you, and make sure every date you promise is a date you can hit.

Step 8.3 — Earnest money, deadlines, and paper discipline

Deliver earnest money exactly where and when the contract says, and keep the receipt with the file. Put every deadline — inspection end, title objection period, closing — on a calendar with reminders days ahead, not hours. Keep one clean file per deal: signed contract, amendments in writing, disclosures, and correspondence. Deals that go sideways are won and lost on paperwork. The operator with the complete file and the met deadlines is the operator a title company, a buyer, and if necessary a court takes seriously.

Step 8.4 — Disclosures and honesty obligations

Sellers have disclosure duties, and in many places buyers and wholesalers have duties too — including, in a growing number of states, disclosing that you are a wholesaler or that you intend to assign. Never hide your role, your intent, or a material fact to get a signature. If your state licenses or restricts wholesaling activity, Step 15 and our law pages summarize the landscape, and your attorney confirms your exact obligations. A deal built on a hidden fact is not closed; it is merely postponed trouble with a date on it.

Step 8.5 — From signature to the next step

Once signed, open title immediately, confirm the seller has what they need from you, and communicate the timeline to everyone: seller, buyer if one is already matched, lender if any, and the title company. Then move directly to Step 9's decision — assign the contract or close on the house yourself — early enough that the choice is strategic rather than desperate. Contracts reward operators who decide fast and document everything, and they punish drift. Treat signature day as the start of a countdown you manage daily, not a finish line.

Do this step now

Do not just read this step — work it. Open the Wholesaling Calculator and run one real or practice property through it, then read the full guide for this step: Contracts and Assignments Explained. Write down what you produced — a number, a list, a decision — in a deal file you will keep. Every later step assumes that artifact exists. If a term on this page is new to you, the glossary defines it with a worked example, and the topic hubs gather everything on the subject in one place. Progress in this business is mostly finished paperwork and honest numbers, repeated until they compound.

How you'll know this step is done

This step is done when you can point to the artifact it produced — a written decision, a worked number, a list, a signed paper, or a log entry — and explain, in plain language, how you got it and what would change it. If you can only say you read about it, the step is not done yet, and moving on anyway is how gaps hide until a live deal finds them at the worst price. It is also done when you know your own weak point inside it: the input you estimated instead of verified, the conversation you are avoiding, the deadline you have not calendared. Name that weak point in your deal file and give it a date. Steps in this path are not school subjects to pass once; they are stations you will revisit on every deal, faster each time, because the artifact from the last deal becomes the template for the next one.