These relationships became the foundation of my journey, providing me with insights that couldn’t be found in books or online courses.Building Relationships with Intentionality: Beyond TransactionsOne of the biggest lessons I learned early on is that relationships in real estate are about more than just business transactions.

The number of people who have called many of us saying they saw some article online or watched some tickytok video and did something COMPELTELY wrong is staggering.  

If you can befriend and connect with them you can "borrow/steal" their resources such as reputable contractors, agents etc.

I hired a contractor with a solid reputation for working with international investors, and we agreed on a total cost of $495K, to be paid in stages.

They hold their sale in four different locations, and have each locations sales listed separately online. 

You can often look online for the county/city zoning map, parcel info, and zoning laws.  

Most are online, at civicsource.com  and happen once a month.

Use a reputable expert like @Dave Foster and you’ll be covered.

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.

Check county recordsUse online search tools like PropStream, Reonomy, PropertyShark, etc.Use local GIS mapping tools (ask your county)Search online directories for LLC or TrustTalk to neighborsHire a skip tracerSend a letter to the propertyThere are a lot of options.