BRRRing in Pittsburgh

[Shadi Ayyoubi]

My name is Shadi Ayyoubi and I live in Falls Church Virginia. I purchased my first home in May of 2019 with my business partner and we are currently housing hacking. We purchased a 4 person house and are renting out the other two rooms. We have been doing research on BRRRRing and we just don't have the capital to BRRRR here in Northern Virginia. While looking into other locations that might meet our price range, we came across Pittsburgh, PA. While looking at Zillow, we were able to find prices around $30-50k. After reading the Bigger Pockets BRRRR book, the "find your Rockstar" emphasized finding a rockstar real estate agent first. Unless I am misinformed or my logic is flawed I don't see why a real estate agent would bother with such a low value deal? In that case, would it be more beneficial to start with searching for wholesalers in that area? Any thoughts and recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time, insight, and expertise!

[Jeremy Pace]

The reality is that realtors will tell you that you need a rockstar realtor.

Truthfully, any property listed by a realtor has already made it past too many people to be a great deal.  Don't get me wrong you can still make money, but it won't be a triple-A deal.  If you want the best deals, you have to get the deal direct from the seller, whether they come to you or you actively solicit them.  

As a contractor in Pittsburgh, I can tell you that listing agents just don't give a **** about places listed below maybe $40k.  And truthfully, why would they, the best they're gonna get is 1.5%, , maybe 2%.  I'll give you a tip, if you see a non-realtor lockbox on a realtor listed property, you're going to have to pester them to death to do anything, to view it (99% of the time they just text me the code so they don't have to come out), to submit and offer ... anything.