Step 1: Market Analysis

 How should I start with leads or creating my buyers list? Well I bought the book Finding & Funding Great Deals: The Hands-on Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by Anson Young, and this first things is to start with leads/deals. So that's where I'm going to start. 

Evaluating My Market

So I live in the Central Valley of California, so this would be a good place to start my Market Research. Since I'm still trying to find a friendly real estate investor in my area, I'm going to use Redfin.com to analyze my market.

Objective: Find the highest concentration of properties recently sold to investors

Filters

Single Family House

3 Bed 2 Bath 

1,500 sqft

Zip Code 1

$50,000 to $100,000

Results: 0

$100,000 to $150,000

Results: 0

$150,000 to $200,000

Results: 3

$200,000 to $300,000

Results: 3

$250,000 to $300,000

Results: 11

Zip Code 2

$50,000 to $100,000

Results: 1

$100,000 to $150,000

Results: 2

$150,000 to $200,000

Results: 3

$200,000 to $300,000

Results: 19

$250,000 to $300,000

Results: 26

So now that I've looked at the prices it's time to establish a base price for what investors are paying for these houses.

Zipcode 1 Baseline: No houses

Zipcode 2 Baseline: $160,000

Conclusion:

It doesn't look like I'll be having much luck in Zipcode 1 since that is the nicer part of town which is closest to the university. My town probably isn't an ideal place to do wholesale. Tomorrow we'll do a Market Research on the surrounding towns to see if there is opportunity there and to continue to develop my REI toolkit.