Finding a reliable RE agent

[Meesam R.]

Hi all,

I’m a first time investor out of California that is trying to invest out of state. My goal is to find a property with some rehab fix it up and just hold for some cash flow. I’m reaching out to you because of a frustration I’m facing when trying to build trust with real estate agents out of state.

I began my journey by combing through the forums here and found that Columbus Ohio might be a good place to invest. I found a RE agent on the forum and began getting MLS listings for properties that were just under my price range. No deals. Just random list of properties. On occasion, the agent would send a featured property that they had done some due diligence on and pushed to sell it to me. The numbers seemed to good to be true and from crime statistics and researching the area on Google something didn't add up. Luckily I found an investor locally here that invests in Columbus who owns 100+ doors to stay away from the are the RE agent was encouraging me to invest in. I lost trust in the agent and stopped my search for a property.

Fast forward to about a month ago I began looking at the San Antonio/Houston markets and thought I found a very promising RE agent again. They did much more due dillegence and told me they would send me good deals only. I got my first set of deals and they had done some calculations showing me how it cash flowed. I ran the numbers on my own and broke even and I hadn’t even added a basic vacancy or maintenance reserve. Once I added those it cash flowed negative. What surprised me was that I was still encouraged to purchase the property. Maybe I wasn’t seeing something so I hop back on the forum to see if anyone bought negative cash flow property. There were some rare cases but for someone in my case it was a unanimous no.

I’m quite frustrated at this point because I am not a conservative investor at all (stocks) and will put down money and do the deal but I’d like to at least have everything on the up and up from the get go. How do new investors find RE agents that will actually go to bat for them? How do you build trust as a new investor? I know David Green has given tips in his book that you should give a little bonus after you find a good deal and I totally plan to but I can’t even get the first deal. Any help would be appreciated.