Best States to Wholesale Real Estate in 2026: A Data-Backed Way to Pick Your Market

Most people pick a wholesaling market the wrong way. They watch a YouTube video, hear someone made $30K in Dallas, and pull a list there the next morning. Then they spend three months calling into a market that's saturated, mispriced for their buyers, or in a state that quietly made their playbook illegal. The list cost money. The skip tracing cost money. The dial time cost money. None of it was wasted because the strategy was bad. It was wasted because the market was never checked.

This guide does the checking up front. There is no single best state to wholesale real estate, and anyone who hands you a clean ranking is selling you something. What there is is a repeatable way to judge a market on hard numbers, then match it to the buyers you can actually sell to. That's what separates a market that produces deals from one that just produces phone bills.

1. How to Judge a Wholesaling Market

A wholesaling market is just a two-sided marketplace. On one side you need distressed sellers who have a reason to move fast and accept a cash offer below retail. On the other side you need cash buyers who will take the contract off your hands at an assignment fee. A market is good when both sides are deep, the price point fits your buyer list, and the law lets you operate. That's the whole thing. Everything else is commentary.

The trap is judging a market on the wrong number. Average home price doesn't tell you whether sellers are motivated. Population growth doesn't tell you whether cash buyers are active right now. A flashy headline about a hot metro doesn't tell you how many other wholesalers are already dialing the same list. You have to look at supply, demand, price, and legality together, because a market can score great on one and fail on another.

The good news is the supply and demand data is public and fairly current. ATTOM publishes foreclosure activity by state and metro. Redfin publishes all-cash purchase share by metro. State legislatures publish the bills. You don't have to guess. You have to pull the numbers and read them honestly, which is exactly what most people skip. For the raw supply picture, our 2026 foreclosure statistics and motivated seller statistics break the national data down further.

2. The Five Criteria That Matter

Here are the five things to score for any state or metro you're considering. Rank a market on all five before you spend a dollar. A market that wins on supply but loses on legality is not a market you can run, full stop.

A quick word on each. Distressed supply is your raw material, and the two ATTOM numbers say different things, so don't confuse them. Foreclosure rate is how concentrated the distress is per housing unit. Foreclosure starts is the raw count of new cases. A small state can have a high rate but low total volume, and a big state can have a lower rate but more raw deals than anywhere else. You'll see exactly that in the next section.

Cash-buyer depth is the side most beginners forget. A great motivated-seller list is worthless if you can't assign the contract. Markets with a high all-cash purchase share have a deeper pool of buyers ready to close quickly, which is the whole point of wholesaling. Price point is where your buyer list comes in: a $400K contract is only a deal if you have buyers who close $400K properties. And competition is the quiet one. The most-talked-about metros are usually the most worked, so a slightly cooler market with less investor density can convert better even with thinner supply.

3. Top States by Distressed Supply

Let's start with the supply side, because it's the most concrete. According to ATTOM's 2025 year-end foreclosure market report, 367,460 U.S. properties had a foreclosure filing in 2025. That's up 14% from 2024 and the highest level since 2019, equal to 0.26% of all U.S. housing units. The headline matters for one reason: motivated-seller supply is climbing nationally, not shrinking. The pool of people in distress is bigger than it was a year ago.

Highest foreclosure rates (concentration of distress)

By foreclosure rate, ATTOM's full-year 2025 numbers put these five states on top. Florida leads, and the rest cluster close behind.

Most foreclosure starts (raw volume of new cases)

Now the volume view. These are the states with the most foreclosure starts in 2025 per ATTOM, which is where you'll find the deepest raw pool of new distressed leads.

Florida is the one state that shows up near the top of both lists, which is why it gets called the textbook wholesaling market. But high supply plus a famous name means everyone's already there. Texas wins on raw volume and has the added pull of no state income tax, so a lot of investors land there too. If you want supply with less competition, the move is often a state that ranks lower on the national list. Tennessee is a good example: a much lower foreclosure rate than Florida, but also far fewer wholesalers fighting over the same sellers, and no state income tax.

One thing on the cash-buyer side that ties back to demand. Redfin reported that about 29% of U.S. home purchases were all-cash in December 2025, down from 30.3% a year earlier and the lowest December share since 2020 (full-year 2024 was 32.6%). Cash buying is trending down nationally, not surging, so buyer depth matters more than ever. And it's concentrated. Florida metros led the country: West Palm Beach at 47.2% all-cash, Jacksonville and Miami both at 39.3%. The expensive coastal metros were the opposite, with Seattle at 17.3% and San Jose around 18.1%, which makes them tough places to find a quick cash exit. Pair high distress supply with a high cash-buyer share and you've got the two-sided market wholesaling actually needs.

4. Watch the 2026 Regulation Changes

This is the section people skip and then regret. Wholesaling is not legal everywhere the same way it used to be. A wave of state laws in 2024 through 2026 added disclosure rules, registration requirements, and in one case an effective licensing requirement. A market with great supply is useless if your model is restricted there. Pull the current statute for any state before you build a list. The summary below is a starting point, not legal advice, and we link the primary sources in section after this one.

South Carolina: an effective near-ban via licensing

South Carolina's H4754, signed May 29, 2024, is the big one. It adds Article 9 to Title 40, Chapter 57 and defines wholesaling as brokerage activity that requires a real estate license. It also explicitly prohibits licensed brokerage firms and their subagents from wholesaling. Per South Carolina REALTORS, the nuance is important: marketing a property you don't own for compensation is treated as unlicensed brokerage, while pure contract assignment language is handled separately. For the traditional unlicensed wholesaler, it functions as a near-ban. Don't read it as a flat "wholesaling is illegal" statute, but do treat South Carolina as off the table unless you're licensed or restructuring the model.

Oklahoma, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Connecticut: disclosure and registration

None of these laws ban wholesaling outright the way South Carolina's licensing rule effectively does, but each one changes how you have to operate. Oklahoma's SB 1075 is the strictest of the disclosure laws: it forces written resale-intent disclosure before the seller signs, gives the seller a 48-hour window to cancel, bans clouding the title, and voids contracts that miss required terms. Connecticut's registration requirement is future-dated to July 1, 2026, so if you're reading this around the publish date, plan for it rather than assume it's already live. The pattern across all of these is the same: states want the seller told, in writing, that you intend to assign. Build that into your process and most of these markets stay open to you. Ignore it and you're exposed.

For a state-by-state breakdown that stays current, we keep a dedicated reference at our wholesaling laws by state guide. Use it as your first stop before any new market, not your last.

5. Best Markets for Virtual Wholesaling

You don't have to wholesale in your own backyard. Virtual wholesaling means running the whole thing remote: pulling lists, calling sellers, and assigning contracts in a market you've never set foot in. It widens your options to the entire country, which is exactly why the criteria in section 2 matter even more. When you can pick any state, you should pick the one where the numbers line up, not the one closest to your house.

For remote operators, a few state-level metrics help frame entry. These figures come from RealEstateSkills (an industry source, so treat them as approximate market context, ideally cross-checked against Zillow, Redfin, or Census before you anchor a strategy to them). They're useful for sizing the price band you'd be working in.

Notice the price spread. Ohio around $245K is the cheapest of the group, which is a real advantage when you're starting out: your marketing budget covers more deals because each list and skip trace cycle works a cheaper inventory. But cheap doesn't mean better. A lower-priced market only pays if your cash buyers want that band. Typical wholesale assignment fees run roughly $5,000 to $20,000 per deal depending on market and experience (an industry-cited range, not a promise), and that range holds across price points, so the deciding factor is always whether a buyer will take the contract, not the sticker price of the house.

For remote operators specifically, the practical winners tend to be the states that combine decent distress supply, a workable price band, and lighter competition: Ohio for cheap entry and volume per dollar, Texas for raw supply and growth, and Tennessee for lower competition with no state income tax. Florida is still the supply-and-demand heavyweight, but you're competing with everyone. If you want the full remote playbook, our virtual wholesaling guide walks through the operational side of running a market you can't drive to.

6. Putting Your Shortlist Together

Here's how to turn all of this into a decision instead of a research rabbit hole. The order matters, because the cheapest filter to apply is the one that can disqualify a state outright.

Step 1: Run the legal filter first. Before anything else, check whether your model is allowed. Cross South Carolina off unless you're licensed. For Oklahoma, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, and Connecticut, confirm you can meet the disclosure or registration rule and build it into your contracts. There's no point scoring a state on supply if you can't legally operate there.

Step 2: Score the survivors on supply. For each remaining state, pull the ATTOM foreclosure rate and starts. Decide whether you want a high-concentration market (high rate, like Florida) or a high-volume one (high starts, like Texas). Both work. They just suit different strategies.

Step 3: Check cash-buyer depth. Layer Redfin's all-cash share over your supply picture. A market with strong distress and a high cash-buyer share is a complete two-sided market. Strong distress with thin cash demand means you'll struggle to assign, so weight this heavily.

Step 4: Match the price point to your buyers. Look at the market's price band and ask one question: do I have cash buyers who close at this price? If you're starting out with a thin buyer list, a cheaper market like Ohio lowers the bar. If you've got buyers in a specific band, pick the market that feeds them.

Step 5: Weigh competition last. Between two markets that score similarly, pick the one with fewer wholesalers already working it. A slightly cooler market you can dominate usually beats a famous one where your list is the tenth call that seller got this week.

Once you've picked the market, the work shifts from research to execution: pulling a clean list, scrubbing it for compliance, and running consistent outbound to the sellers on it. That's the part where most operators stall, because a good market still needs disciplined, daily calling to produce deals. Picking the state is step one. Working it every day is what actually closes.

Sources

Every data point above is attributed to one of these primary or industry sources. Where a figure comes from an industry blog rather than a government or institutional dataset, it's labeled as approximate in the text.

• ATTOM 2025 Year-End U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. 367,460 foreclosure filings in 2025, up 14% year over year, highest since 2019; state foreclosure rates (FL 1 in 230, DE 1 in 240, SC 1 in 242, IL 1 in 248, NV 1 in 248); top starts Texas 37,215, Florida 34,336, California 29,777.
• Redfin: All-Cash Home Purchases Ended 2025 at Five-Year Low. 29% of U.S. purchases all-cash in Dec 2025, down from 30.3% year over year; top metros West Palm Beach 47.2%, Jacksonville 39.3%, Miami 39.3%; lowest Seattle 17.3%.
• Redfin News: 29% of U.S. Home Purchases Made in Cash. cash share hovering near 29-30% through 2025; full-year 2024 was 32.6%.
• South Carolina REALTORS: SC Regulates Wholesaling in New RE License Law (H4754). H4754 (signed May 29, 2024) defines wholesaling as brokerage requiring a license and bars brokerage firms and subagents from wholesaling.
• Oklahoma SB 1075 (enrolled bill text). effective Nov 1, 2025: written resale-intent disclosure, 48-hour cancellation, lien and title-cloud ban, voided contracts if elements missing.
• Leonine: New State Laws for Real Estate Wholesaling in 2025. 2024-2025 wave of state restrictions across MD, OH, OR, CT and others requiring disclosure or registration.
• RealEstateSkills: 11 Best States To Wholesale Real Estate (2026). approximate state-level home values, population and job growth, and assignment fee range ($5,000-$20,000); treat as industry context.