Your best ways for leads

[Timothy Frazier]

Looking to get into RE investment. Have a sales license and am a member of local MLS. I'm very low volume in terms of typical buy or sell clients; I work full time and just pick up friends and family when they want a sale or buy rep.

Wanting to get into the rental side of the business. Mostly buy/hold or BRRR type of properties. No desire for wholesaling or complete gut job flip and sell. Have a good network of local contractors as I flipped the house I currently live in so I am not scared of some work but don't want an entire top to bottom demo.

So I am struggling to get going and buy anything.  I'm confident in my ability to run numbers.  And my problem isn't that I am not getting any leads whatsoever.  The problem is every lead I come across is either a) very cheap but extremely run down and maybe in a not very good part of town that would be hard to market and take a large amount of capital to fix up or b) nice and has tenants already in it (turn key type which is ideal scenario) but the owner is asking way too much for it to cash flow.

I'm not frustrated to the point where I am going to stop. But I don't feel like I am going about searching the right way and don't want to keep hitting a brick wall. Mainly I've just been going after expired listings on the MLS and looking at FSBO and trying to reach out like that.

What are some ways you got ahold of your first properties?  Is it worth trying to get a list from somewhere like postcardmania?  Did you use pay per click and set up a domain?  On one hand I'm apprehensive to spend a lot on marketing but on the other I feel like I need a different approach.  I am sure this answer is different market to market, just looking to see what most people did starting out.