Active syndicators are frequently quoted in news articles or have entire articles written about them in trade and mainstream publications.

Those meetups are a great way to soak up relevant info from other active investors.

Hey Bigger Pockets community, I'm just starting out in Step 1 (get educated) on what I want to become a successful career in real estate investment.I also currently run an e-commerce business that is currently completely online, but would benefit from having a brick & mortar storefront, and I had an idea that maybe using the investment capital I'm looking to allocate into real estate into a commercial property my business can operate out of until I decide to sell the property in or rent it out to another business.I am obviously very naive when it comes to the complexity of any good real estate deal (especially commercial VS residential), but I'm hoping to spend as much time learning from everyone here who is on their journey as well.My main concern with the idea of buying commercial to operate my business out of it that I might struggle to rent it out afterwards and that there may likely be depreciation in the commercial real estate market over the next 5 years.I understand there is a lot of nuance depending on the local market but I'm guessing commercial is even less of a "safe" bet than finding a solid residential deal to leverage in some way.

I'm actively working through this process somewhat now so I can roll funds into a bigger boutique hotel project.

There are a lot of active agents in Columbus on here.

Under the same scenario, a GP with a fixed percent return would probably make the choice to sell and take profits because they would see the 20/80 decision as a bad bet. 

In the meantime though, I'd try to just actively build your platform here on Bigger Pockets and just casually connect with people. 

When it comes to turnkey investments you are paying for convenience essentially you are approaching it like a stock or paper asset when it is very much not... meaning that at some point it needs to be actively managed and evaluated and etc., etc., etc. for example finding cash flowing investment properties which meet your ROI goal of 9% is NOT HARD heck almost every state (and likely every state) has a market which will achieve that but what does 9% mean without a dollar value if 9% is = to $200 or more okay that’s okay but if 9% means $25/mo. or alternatively if 50% ROI means $25/mo. doesn’t really matter much since although labor differs from area to area it doesn’t differ that much and also doesn’t really leave much room for error — so your minimum accepted ROI should also be couple within a minimum accepted $$ value (cash flow) and other minimums as well (i.e. min. equity, property types, property classes, etc.)Lastly as I mentioned achieving a 9% ROI is not hard and is achievable in every state; the HARDER part is to 1) achieve that AND 2) achieve 10-20% min.equity on the buy in or ARV AND 3) meeting your min. $ value AND 4) buying in a good/stable neighborhood/market AND 5) buying with some type of upside AND 6) etc. etc. etc. —- Again I’m not saying you have to do these things; it all depends what type of investor you are and what you are looking for however it is important to understand that if you shift the responsibility of either identifying the invest property or managing or any other aspect there WILL be a trade off — in this case the turnkey company has delivered on your goal of 8-9% ROI (projected... so TBC) and in return you have traded some of the other benefits of investing in RE for the convenience of not having to do much more than to look over the properties they have sent you and funding it from the comfort of your home, office, etc. ... again if this is the goal then you are on point but if the goal is to also partake in ALL of the other benefits of RE then you should understand that and not be surprised that it’s not a ‘stellar’ investment that checks all the boxes.

I always check active rentals to see what the competition is currently looking like for if a rental were to go live that month too.

Essentially, I am betting that rates won't go low enough where it makes sense to refinance.