After years of building up courage, I think I found my first off-market deal. The timing is terrible as the rehab period is right in the middle of a change in my primary residence. I don't have much capital to risk at this point, very little liquidity, and the additional debt from hard money lenders may be a problem when qualifying for a mortgage on my primary.

I've been trying to analyze the deal by reaching out to lenders, my realtor, and a GC who also flips properties for a living. All of these people have a network of very large investors. I'm afraid they're going to steal the deal from me by passing it off. I've been avoiding giving them too much info for now. Is there a way to protect myself in this situation?

That's not stealing the deal...that's getting there before you.  If you lead them there, and don't move right away, just because you did all the leg work up to this point, doesn't give you exclusive rights to it.  It's your deal when you have a contract.

Originally posted by @Joe Villeneuve :

That's not stealing the deal...that's getting there before you.  If you lead them there, and don't move right away, just because you did all the leg work up to this point, doesn't give you exclusive rights to it.  It's your deal when you have a contract.

 You're absolutely correct. My concern is that I need these resources to help me evaluate the deal but these people are much more connected to investors with huge pockets and teams ready to move a heck of a lot faster.

I was afraid to have my realtor pull comps or give the details to lenders because there are so many investors fighting competition in this market and they have clients they work with frequently asking for leads.

I guess my question is does anyone have tips on how to build a network of resources and/or analyze deals while protecting the opportunity?

Easy.  Learn how to do it on your own.  Not hard.  It's actually the preferred way.  I don't trust all those people you mentioned with any analysis anyway.  They all have their own way of doing things, and reasons for over or under valuing.  Just look up your own comps, and analyze markets instead of just properties.

One more thing.  Go outside, stand on your porch, close your eyes.  Now open them and count how many properties there are in your line of sight.  Project that over the entire area you are interested in investing in.  How many properties are there?  How many opportunities are there, would you imagine?

There's always another opportunity.  Don't worry about the ones you missed or you'll start rationalizing bad deals into good ones, just because you are focusing on not missing something.  Sometimes the best deals, are the ones you don't make.

From everything you said, you shouldn't be doing the deal right now for yourself anyway. You should healthily pass it off to a colleague who may return the favor later. Maybe you can pull in a partner. When you are in a bad spot to get the deal, trying to hide it from others isn't the problem, it's that you are in a bad spot to do the deal.