Investing Newbie Advice (Columbia, SC)

[Ryan Copeland]

Hello BP Community,

I am ready to start my real estate investing journey. 

Work Done Thus Far

To help increase my knowledge, I reached out to a few people I knew were investing in real estate and started to learn from them.  In addition to that, I began listening to audiobooks.  Thus far, I've listened to the following:

1. How to Make Big Money in Small Apartments (by Lance A. Edwards)
2. Crushing It in Apartments and Commercial Real Estate (by Brian H. Murray)
3. The Millionaire Real Estate Investor (by Gary Keller)
4. Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat (by David M. Greene)

These books along with the 3 investors that I've talked to have helped to learn a LOT about investing. They have given me the confidence to be able to "start" and find my first deal.

I have also been trying to learn my market (Columbia, SC). Learning where people rent, what is a "deal" in this market, learning what investors do in this market, etc. I've been looking on Zillow and Realtor.com a lot just looking at properties and leanring.

The biggest thing I've learned thus far is to "buy right"! Learning the numbers has been critical in helping me understand how to even begin to try to buy right.  I have a long way to go, but I feel pretty confident enough to purchase now.

My Strategy

My plan is to find single-family homes and apply the BRRRR method. I'm looking for 3BR homes with 2BR, if they don't have 2BR I will look to add a bathroom. David Greene mentioned this as a great way to add equity in the BRRRR audiobook. Right now I'm looking for properties that will have an ARV of $150,000. I think that'll be safer approach for me for the first few deals.

When I can, I will also flip properties. I also want to buy multi-family properties for cash flow. I'm thinking I will stay around the max of $250,000 ARV for these properties.

Finding Deals??

My biggest hurdle right now is finding deals. It seems like people find deals everywhere.  From what I've been reading it's all about networking and finding a "rockstar" real estate angent that understands investing and through wholeselling.  Any advice here?

How successful have people been buying from sites like auction.com? Where should I look for deals as a newbie? What approach should I take?