I am a 23 year old real estate investor in Wisconsin, and purchased my first property in April of 2025. I'm on track to have the funds to purchase another property in my buy box I've defined by the end of this year hopefully, but I'm working in advance in order to prepare a network for myself in order to find better deals faster and easier. I have a realtor that sends me mls listings, which is how I acquired my first property. 

But I was looking to get into off market deal flow as in my area; most homes are older than what I'd like to purchase off the MLS (I'd like 1940s or newer, most proprrties for sale in my area were built between then and the 1880s). There are good quality deals on the MLS, but usually get bought up pretty quick that are in my buy box, so I'd simply like access to more opportunities to find deals.

I was wondering how an experienced investor builds up their network of people they get deals / advice from. I've heard a variety of ways people network to find deals, from going to meet ups to talking to local realtors or brokers in their town. So far, I have done the following methods to try and network:

- gone to realtor offices around my town and letting them know I'm an investor and gave them my buy box. I also asked some questions and got some good insights into my market this way, but realtors don't seem too keen to work with someone that isnt gonna buy something relatively soon, which I totally understand

- tried to research and search for meetups locally, but have had little success with this

any other methods anyone would like to share for building up a real estate network for finding better deals would be appreciated. I'm sure I'm missing some obvious ones.