Meetups & Networking - Where Else Should I Look?

[Mike Schorah]

Hello BiggerPockets community!

My real estate journey is described in my post from last week.

Here’s where I’m looking to find out my next move. I currently can dedicate $500 per month towards marketing. My goal was to go Driving For Dollars and get a list of 400 vacant/distressed properties. After doing research, I was going to mail them every month for a year. This is where I’m stuck.

There aren’t any in-person real estate Meetups in my area. I thought there was one and I went to it yesterday to find out that they didn’t cancel their calendar of Meetups since COVID started. I don’t want this to hold up my progress.

All I’m looking for is someone that I can feed analyzed “deals” or leads to for free in exchange for being able to walk the property while it’s in rehabbed condition and under contract (taking a cue from J Scott’s The Book On Flipping Houses).

Since I can’t find anyone at Meetups to network with for the purpose of the above, where else should I look?

How do I avoid getting sucked into working for free for some mentor that will just use and abuse my time?