15 Properties In 15 Years: Finding Helpful Connections For Buying Real Estate

This post is part of a series that covers key learnings we’ve had over 15 years of purchasing real estate:

• How We Got Started
• Finding Helpful Connections (current post)
• Investing For Cashflow vs Appreciation
• Turnkey Can Add Value But Is Not Completely Turn-Key

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If you are interested in real estate, but don’t know where to start and don’t have network of real estate professionals to lean on, don’t worry – we didn’t either when we started.  

The most important thing we did to start was to let other people know that we were looking to buy.

Lead on our first property was through a friend

We didn’t really know where we wanted to buy our first property when we started looking in 2001, but since it would be a weekend home, it needed to be reasonably close to New York City.  While that helped narrow things down a bit, the tri-state area is enormous, and there were many places we could consider.

I started telling all of my friends that we were thinking of buying a weekend home, and one of my friends, someone I worked for in college and stayed in touch with over the years, told me about the place where she grew up (Little Silver, New Jersey), which met many of our criteria for places we wanted to be, and ultimately we ended up buying there.

This friend was not in the real estate field, did not have an interest in real estate, and didn’t even own real estate – she works in higher education, helping students to find jobs after graduation.  But, she proved very useful in giving us the lead on the place we wanted to look.

Other friends had told us about other places they knew of, such as Kingston NY and Brewster NY, which didn’t quite meet our criteria, but were helpful in helping us narrow down what we wanted.

Lead on Asheville realtor and property manager came from a friend in retail

In 2005, we were ready to buy our first investment property.  We knew we could not afford real estate in New York City, or in the US Northeast, so would need to find an affordable market elsewhere.  Some of the key criteria we used to narrow down the market was that it should be a place we could drive to, and also be a place we might want to spend time during retirement, the idea being if we held the property long enough, we be able to use it ourselves in retirement.

Asheville, North Carolina was one of the places that met our criteria, as we kept seeing it listed as a desirable retirement destination.  Even more importantly though, we had a friend who lived in Asheville.  I met her several years earlier while taking an acting class, and in the intervening years we had stayed close, and eventually she married and followed her husband to where he grew up, which was Asheville.

Her husband did construction work for a builder in Asheville, who also ran a real estate brokerage, and they made the introduction for us.  It turned out that we liked what we saw from the realtor, also liked their property management business, and we ended up purchasing three properties in Asheville over the next three years.

Again, this friend was not in the real estate business, but as a result of staying in touch with her over the years, we were able to utilize the connection that she lived in a market we were interested in, and that her husband had real estate contacts in the market.

In this case it was our contact at the second degree of separation (friend’s husband) that proved to be useful. Since you never know what connections friends may have within their families, it is important to talk to people about what you are doing because you never know if someone in their network might be of help.

Lead on home equity line was a colleague from a professional association

As the value of our Little Silver house increased, we opened a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) on the property and started to use it to make down payments on our next investment properties in North Carolina.  Back in 2009, after the real estate market crash, our Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) was called by the bank (ie: CLOSED!), which was potentially disastrous since we’d have to come up with the money to pay back the loan.

Again I started talking to the people in my circles about the situation to see if I could find a lead on getting another HELOC.  At the time, I was participating in a local chapter of a professional organization (BNI Group) for the purpose of networking and generating leads for my business, and someone in the group was able to refer us to another bank who was able to issue us a line of credit.

As with the first example above, the person who gave us this lead was not in the real estate field at all, just happened to be part of a professional organization I was a part of, and happened to work for a bank.

While the organization I was a part of was professional in nature and related to my business, it could easily have been a social organization or a local rotary club that provided the connection.

Lead on Jacksonville as a market came from a distant family member who worked in technology

Fast forward to 2013. We had our weekend house in Little Silver, and owned two additional properties in Asheville (we originally had three, but ended up selling one). We had fully caught the real estate bug, enjoyed receiving monthly rent checks on the Asheville properties, but were unsure how to expand as the Asheville market had become too expensive for purchasing investment properties.

One day we were having lunch with a distant cousin of Scott, and the cousins wife, and they told us about an investment property they just purchased in Jacksonville, Florida. They were aware of the market because someone he worked with had recently retired from corporate life and relocated to Jacksonville to become a realtor.

We had not really been aware, but Florida real estate was hit really hard in the 2008-2009 recession and it took a very long time for the real estate prices to bottom out and start to rebound. In 2013 they were just starting to rebound in Jacksonville, and it turned out there definitely was real estate available that worked as rental investments. Within a couple of months, we visited Jacksonville ourselves, met with the realtor, and ended up purchasing three properties during that recovery period of 2013 and 2014.

In this case, the lead came from staying in touch with a distant relative.  This relative worked in the tech industry, not real estate, and while they invested in real estate, they had only a few investments, so for them real estate was more of a hobby.  They probably didn’t share their real estate dealings with many people, but they were eager to share with us because they knew we were also real estate investors.  While we were already established as real estate investors and that is why they told us about their deal in Jacksonville, they likely would have shared the same information with us if we were just starting out.

Lead on Costa Rica real estate came from a non-real estate professional introduction

On our first visit to Guanacaste and Tamarindo, we wanted to look at real estate but didn’t know where to start.  We literally drove around looking for open house signs and looked in the windows of realtor offices.  Unsurprisingly, we didn’t get very far.  The realtor most helpful only wanted to sell us high end houses or condo units, and tried hard to steer us in that direction.

But, I had again tapped into my network, and it paid dividends.  Prior to that first trip, I again let people know that I was going to Costa Rica, and someone who worked with me on my website referred me to someone that she knew who lived in Tamarindo, an American expat who ran her own wellness business.  I reached out to her and we connected on the phone so I could learn more about Costa Rica, get suggestions on the itinerary for our trip, and connect about our respective small businesses.  When our travels took us to Tamarindo, where she lived, we ended up getting dinner together.  When she heard about the struggles we were having in looking at properties, she gave us the name of a local lawyer she knew and respected, and who might be able to help.

When we got home, we reached out to the lawyer, who gave us really good explanations of how purchasing real estate worked in Costa Rica, and he introduced us both to the realtor we’ve been working with and a property manager we also have been working with.  With these new contacts in place locally, our subsequent visits were more productive as the realtor was able to work with us closely to find properties that met our criteria.

In this case, the introduction to local real estate contacts came from a person living in Tamarindo, but the introduction to that person came from someone who was part of my professional circle, who I had simply told about our upcoming trip to Costa Rica.  As with the other examples above, the person I was introduced to locally was not interested in real estate and did not own property, and was not even expecting to help us in that area, but she offhandedly gave us a name when she heard about our struggles.

Next steps for you

We didn’t build our real estate professional network overnight, nor did we purchase our properties overnight.  It all takes time and careful due diligence, and we started slow.

My best advice for getting started is to start small, and to share your plans with everyone in your circles, because you never know who might be able to help you, or when a friend has a friend or family member who can help.

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This post is part of a series that covers key learnings we’ve had over 15 years of purchasing real estate:

• How We Got Started
• Finding Helpful Connections (current post)
• Investing For Cashflow vs Appreciation
• Turnkey Can Add Value But Is Not Completely Turn-Key