Self made landlord that just quit my 9-5 to invest in real estate full time, please help me find non mls listings!!

[Jesse Billadeau]

HI All,

My name is Jesse and I recently quit my 9-5  to invest in real estate full time. I've worked in real estate for the past 6 years for a large property management company with over 5000+ units in downtown Chicago. I was doing leasing and property management for this company and over my years I learned a lot regarding the Chicago market and the management process of a large amount of tenants. I stuck with it long enough to be able to buy and renovate my own 4 flat in the great neighborhood of Bucktown in Chicago. It took me 5 yrs of getting offers rejected and was anything but easy, but I'm happy to say I was able to purchase the property renovate it and am blessed enough to have a very nice place to live for free with a healthy cash flow each month.

I've also flipped a few properties in the past, and this is really what I want to do full time for my day job and to invest in more buy and hold rental property as my "retirement plan".  I just decided to quit my 9-5 to invest with my father who has had a construction company since I was born and has been flipping houses full time for several years now in the St Louis area. I'm really excited to grow our company and do this for real full time.

I  need some help. I've hit a bit off a wall when it comes to finding the off market non Mls deals. I've read a bunch of the posts on direct mail. But am really having difficultly finding the sort of lists of people I want to market to. I know my target audience is out of state or non owner occupied prop owners, estates, sometimes pre-forclosures etc. I've looked into realty trac and forclosures.com but ive heard there lists are fairly out dated and a waste of time. I've also heard that listsource can be a good source. I'm usually the do it your self kind of person and I've tried looking up some of these records through the county sights but they are ridiculously hard to navigate and I feel like I have to sort through endless amounts of data. Would love to find a good wholesaler but do good wholesalers actually exist or is it always people trying to sell crappy properties to people in bad areas??

If anyone knows any actual real wholesalers in the St Louis or Chicago markets please let me know. We have cash and are ready to close on the right deal.

We do very nice, high end renos in good neighborhoods with good school districts. Have been able to find deals on the mls in the past but things seem to be slowing down. Also have gone to a few auctions but they have been bought by owner occupants willing to pay more than investors.

Please teach me how to find good deals!!

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Thanks for any help

Here's to success in real estate

Jesse