Please help! I want to begin my investing journey, but I am struggling to learn the market and meet other investors.

I am on some Facebook groups but it has not helped much and I tried to do my own research but I keep getting stuck.

 How do I properly research the market? What kind of things should I look for to determine good and bad neighborhoods to wholesale or buy and hold? How do I get the market knowledge that I need in order to begin? If anyone has the slightest bit of advice for me please comment below, I am eternally grateful.

Hi Mizy, welcome to the group! Cincinnati has one of the best real estate associations. Join REIAGC to be able to network with other like minded people and attend so many useful focus groups pretty much every day. 

Hi Mizy, investing in real estate has many paths and options.  I think the best thing to do is to figure out your goals and your likes and dislikes.  Once you figure that out, it will be easier to guide you to the right path to make you successful.  As @Farida Mostajabi mentioned, https://www.cincinnatireia.com is a great place to start your journey.  

@Farida Mostajabi thank you! I will definitely sign up! Sounds like a great resource!

@Adam Walter thank you! I am considering a couple of things because my options with financing are limited, as I'm not working a W2 job. My goal is buy and hold, but maybe wholesaling to gain capital.

@Mizy Kalmanson are you local or out of state? That would definitely shape my approach on learning the market. If you are local, one of the best ways is to get out and actually drive the neighborhoods, you will learn the nice and rougher areas, you can look for distressed properties while you are at it. If you are out of state, I would connect with some agents, investors, and property managers here in Cincinnati to get some market insight. Either way, I would continue networking on BP and in the other investor groups here locally. @Joe Fairless has a monthly meet up as well that I attend, it is currently virtual due to covid. I hope that helps you get started!  

@Mizy Kalmanson I got some knowledge here, as I started investing in NYC and was like how do I turn this into a process??

So, you want to use data to inform your decision here. Don't use just feeling, or you think this area works. Prove it with numbers

Look up crime rates, property tax rates, schooling, etc.

I would do this for a few other cities and compare them to Cincinnati in order to know if that is even a good place to invest!

@Mizy Kalmanson Cincinnati has incredible investment learning opportunities between REIA and meetups. Please send me a direct message and I will give you a call to tell you what worked for me.

@Joseph Cornwell Thank you! I am local so I am definitely going to start driving around. I would also love to join these meetups! Where can I get the information?

@Antonio Cucciniello This is great advice, thank you! I am starting in Cincinnati because I am local here, but there are so many areas and neighborhoods that have both good and bad streets so it can be difficult to figure out.

@Mizy Kalmanson

It’s best to find a good local investor friendly agent in your city and they’ll be able to guide you

I've got a meetup that is listed in the BP events tab that meets on the first Thursday of each month. It is called Properties & Pints. Currently, we are at Madtree Brewery and I'd love to see more local investors there. If anyone is interested in Cincinnati but not local, I have a FB group that also hosts virtual events. The link to that FB group is in the listing for the Meetup. I'll look forward to meeting some new investors!

@Mizy Kalmanson

Try reaching out to @Joe Fairless or @Slocomb Reed for an invite to the meeting Facebook group for the virtual meetings, and they should be able to get you on the list for the monthly meets up whenever they start back up after Covid.