How do I determine where active investors are buying in my area

[Frank Pilipauskas]

Hey BP!

Right now I have email alerts to notify me once certain criteria have hit the markets for the suburbs that I am looking at. These areas are ones I personally know, but I want to investigate what areas I may not be aware of that are only a short drive away. How do i determine where active investors are buying in my area? I know some areas will be better for buy and hold, and others for rehab so I am curious how I would go about obtaining additional information. Do i contact local realtors? I've heard listsource mentioned before for absentee owners as well. Would purchasing a list be beneficial to understanding what I may be missing?

I want to focus on buy and hold, specifically multi-families. These do not come on the market everyday though, so I am willing to expand my scope and look into other opportunities. If anyone has some suggesstions around the Chicago region, I'd love to connect and talk! 

[Van Blackman]

Hi @Frank Pilipauskas!

Do you have a RE license? If so, having MLS access is really all that you would need. If not, I've heard some of my associates are using Realtor.com to access the same information.

All you need to do is simply "map search" any area you'd like to do some research on, and then thumb through photos of the recently sold comps. You'll be able to tell by the look and feel of those properties' interiors if they were done by investors or not.

Then you can go to the Cook County Assessor's Website (or whatever county you're searching in), search the address of that particular house and you can find the tax record with the owner information on it. Sometimes you'll come across individual investors who do 1-5 per year, and other times you'll come across larger LLC's that do 1-5 per month.

With MFR, not sure if it would be the exact same process, but I doubt it would by MUCH different.

Give that a try!

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help!

Thanks,

Van