Beware of Websites Posing as ‘Resources for Investors’

All of us have attended at least one educational seminar that turned out to be one, big sales pitch. Remember how you felt when you realized you’d been hooked into a big pitch session rather than a real educational seminar?

  These days it’s all done on the web. Big websites pose as if they are resource websites for investors, when they are just businesses pushing unfiltered crap. They offer advertising slots in the form of articles and blog posts, and these are just ads in disguise.

  A good example is REIClub.com. I am a member of my local chapter and our chapter leader always asks me to speak about lending scams. So I tried to become a guest blogger on the site and sent them a blog post, ‘How to Avoid Lending Scams.’ I was puzzled when I never heard back from REIClub.com after submitting my content and following up numerous times. But then I noticed the same so-called, “guest bloggers” were always appearing on the site. So I emailed the owner of the site. In an email to me he wrote, “Yes this (guest blogger) is my friend and it’s not meant to be fair it’s a business.”

  A great resource for investors, right? REIClub.com poses as a resource for investors but is really an outlet for this guy’s “friends” to promote their wares. Not to mention, if you go to the list of hard money lenders listed on the REIClub.com website, BEWARE. Over half of the so-called lenders listed on the website are bogus, fee collector lenders. But if they pay $99 per month to be listed on the site as a “resource,” they can be listed on the REIClub.com website as a lender. Is this really a good resource for investors?

  Make sure the websites that you are getting your knowledge and resources from are really legitimate websites. The Biggerpockets Forum is a “real” forum that provides “real” resources for real estate investors, and it isn’t just one big spam fest. I saw where the owner of the site actually asked a lender to provide references for their company. Now that’s a step in the right direction.

  Posted by Corey Curwick of Private Money Utah on October 1, 2012 – Read more about hard money loans at: http://privatemoneyutah.com/blog