When a real estate market is hot, many of the professional investors will slow or stop their buying, but the speculators will be eating up the hype and frenzy and be actively looking to buy.  So during hot market times you want to be going to as many inexpensive investor networking events as possible to meet these speculators.  Many of these events have a time period allotted for attendees to present their opportunities in front of the group.  These events often have 30-40 investors in the room and very few real estate professionals, so this can be a prime opportunity to make some sales.  

You should definitely regularly attend the events where there is a business card rack where current and past attendees have left their business cards.  Take one of the cards for every investor.  This can be a great way of quickly ramping up your email database.  Also leave a large pile of your cards in the rack because if you’re not able to attend the next event, your cards can still be there to do some networking for you.

3)    The Renovators: this is the most sophisticated and difficult of the three investing strategies.  Consequently, these are usually done by experienced investors or people who have worked in home renovations.  Renovators have a trained eye for seeing diamonds in the rough.  They can quickly recognize when a worthwhile profit can be made from a fixer upper based on the property’s price and its condition.  These are consequently not the easiest types of properties for you to recognize and profit from either.  To do so, you will need a deep understanding of the homes in your local market and some knowledge about renovating.  You will also have to go out and personally inspect fixer upper type homes in your area.

One way of identifying likely fixer uppers in Canada is Power Of Sale Homes.  These homes have often been neglected or even damaged by disgruntled home owners going into foreclosure, so you will need to visit them and assess whether fixing them up would be worth the time and expense for any of the investors you know.

One thing to keep in mind is renovation properties can yield the quickest and largest financial returns of all three strategies.  Investors have been known to make over $100,000 profit on fixer upper properties with just a few months of renovating.  Investors who don’t know what they’re doing with fixer uppers have also been known to lose big time.

So within the professional investors you know, find out who the more experienced and enterprising ones are and ask them what their investing criteria is.  Many investors who have been Holders for a long time may want a more challenging and lucrative project such as a fixer upper requiring minor renovations.  Very few speculators buy fixer upper properties.