New Active Duty Investor Looking for more properties

[Warren Golston]

Active duty navy here.

I joined this forum years ago but was more of a lurker and not quite active. I'm still a new investor. I purchased a duplex in 2017 about 4% below market. The property has appreciated nicely (a bonus). I'm house hacking it currently and with a roommate from my ship plus a tenant in the downstairs unit, I have accumulated a very nice cash flow. Over the past 3 years I have acquired a very comfortable amount of discretionary income, and after going through some real estate books, and internet blogs/forums, I've settled on a plan of purchasing one home a year for the next 5 years (minimum 5, maybe more but 5 is the plan for now).

I'm curious about options. What are some other resources besides MLS for finding homes. My Realtor sends me homes on my criteria, but i was wondering if there are other resources outside of MLS.I'm currently deployed until who knows when, but with this COVID-19 thing going on, perhaps there are potential sellers out there with a problem that don't even know they have a problem. Perhaps i can be a solution before the bank takes their home.

Finally, what are some strategies that some more of you veteran investors have taken. Your thoughts on joint ventures? Sorry if i'm all over the place. I'm just super excited to get my second property after the Duplex was so successful and I'm looking to repeat until I get out the navy. Thanks for the help.

EDIT: So i'm in the Norfolk/VA Beach area. My duplex is in Portsmouth and i have intentions of remaining in the area for the remainder of my time in the navy. I would like to acquire property in Chesapeake/Suffolk as the area seems overall nicer as well as the school system. Finally, I am single, so my risk tolerance is very high and I don't have too many bars on my risk capacity. No debt. Very good cash reserves

[Blake Dailey]

The good news is that there's a ton of creative ways you can find properties, but they will take more work than just getting notifications from a realtor. You could do direct mail by driving for dollars and finding physically distressed properties or you could buy a list from listsource.com or one of the over services and set your criteria for distressed sellers (behind on mortgage payments, etc). You could send ringless voicemails, do cold calls, or text messages to these people as well. You could go real old fashion and knock on doors. They key is it's as much work as you want to put in. Track your metrics and find what works and keep adapting to find what else could work in your local market (Craigslist adds, bandit signs, etc).