BiggerPockets

How does everyone feel about this hype over Doug Fath "Six figure student housing"?

I watched all of his videos and will join in on tonight's webinar. I like his ideas and his strategies. However I feel that having no expenses and earning that much cashflow monthly is a little far fetched.

Any thoughts, or experience in student housing or with Doug himself would be great.

Thanks
Greg

My jury is still out on the "guaranteed funding" aspect of Doug Fath's program. His material is good...some of it is excellent! But I've submitted 30+ deals so far and NOTHING has been funded yet. Still waiting! And waiting!

When I started the program, I took the "guaranteed funding" component of it VERY seriously. It was hyped, no doubt. It sounded like he had all the funds lined up...and a group of investors... and it was just a matter of finding the deals that met the criteria and, boof, he'd fund it in one of 3 ways.

So I approached the program with a set plan: to submit 10 great deals to him per week. I worked all week finding deals, and then, every Friday before 5, like clockwork, I submitted 10 deals. Every one of them meeting the criteria established in the program: 65% to ARV, 1.35% cash flow. And several other variables. All met. As we speak, I have 35 deals sitting somewhere in the ether-equivalent of his desk. And nothing has been funded yet. (This is the 5th week of the program. I stopped submitting until I see what is going to happen with this guaranteed funding.)

We eventually talked on the phone, and he asked me to just pick the top 3. That was a hard task. I had tied up houses in one of the most booming college towns in the country. I have houses ONE BLOCK from campus!!! I have houses with college kids living in them NOW! Picking 3 was a difficult task, but I did that.

I'm 5 weeks into what is supposed to be an 8 week program, and not ONE house has yet been funded.

Because I have prime properties tied up, I am now seeking other investors to pick up what I thought the "guaranteed funding" program would take care of.

But as I said, my jury is still out on the "guaranteed funding" aspect of the program. Doug seems like a very sharp guy, and he knows what he is talking about. His course materials are great...some of the things are priceless. I would recommend the materials to anyone wanting to learn about this particular niche market.

I will post again in 3 weeks to update you on the funding. Did my deals get funded? And how many out of 35? (I would think at least 1/3 of them would get some attention)

Time and patience will tell.

Well, I AM doing that now. Doug's "guaranteed funding" program seemed to take all the hassles out of having to do that. I really like his due-diligence system. He has a very extensive submission protocol that, in all reality, takes a good week to put 10 properties through. So I focused the last 5 weeks on finding properties to submit via the system. And now, you're right, I have these prime properties...some with students already in them...and although I would love to hold out for Doug's "guaranteed funding," I am not so sure it is going to come. And the season for getting college students lined up for next year is upon us. Soooo... I AM looking for other investors now. Thanks! Tom

Hi can someone give the highlights of the "program"......if anyone claims you can buy at 30% of market vale in a college town, it must be a very small college town! Won't happen within a couple miles of any of our colleges or the university, we have more than 6, so that swallows most of the city.....Bill

It sounds like you have many deals that could be flipped for cash. Find those buyers and assign the contract for smaller spread deals or consider transactional funding for deals with larger spreads.

Jon,
See above he taked about what this guy wants to fund.

I dont think you need a special lease for students. Your normal lease should cover everything. Leases and law differ from state to state so I would never use a lease a guru from another state drafted.

How do you find 35 good deals in a few weeks? Is the college going to leave and you didnt get the memo? I invest in an area close to a university and I might find one deal a year within walking distance of campus.

Well, my jury is finally in on the Doug Fath "guaranteed funding" fiasco. His actual program is good. But his "guaranteed funding" is an absolute sham! Of the 35 properties I submitted 0 were funded. ZERO!!!!!!! He made a lot of promises, but then started getting actually kinda bizarre: he started sending other students in the program to me, hoping that they could possibly find funding. But the other students, they were crunching the numbers on my properties and then THEY were submitting them for the guaranteed funding. Just an absolute sham. So, I ended up reporting his program to the Attorney General of Pennsylvania and am working with my own attorney now to either file suit individually or as a class action. Will keep everybody posted.

Build your properties like a freaking tank or they will trash it. I'm talking commercial grade tile/carpet and cinder block walls not drywalled and painted with thick, commercial grade, cheap paint.

Put a student in a padded room with nothing but a bowling ball and in 15 minutes they'll have broken it.

The only exception, and this is probably sexist to some people but it's totally true, is sororities or just general ladies-only housing. The ladies will consider a sorority an extension of themselves and will keep it cleaner than a 4 star hotel. The flip side is they are high maintenance tenants. A buddy of mine had one and had to deal with middle of the night calls to take care of leaky faucets and hair clogs in the midst of a dozen sorority girls in various night wear (not joking). How the heck I missed this market I still haven't figured out.

Another good example of why not to buy guru courses and explore this site. Perhaps there are not many posts concerning student housing here, I have not checked, but after twenty+ years of leasing to students the best advice I have is have the parents sign the lease and check them out as you would a tenant!

My rentals were very popular with the kids, spiral stairs, open floor plan split level. I leased to juniors and seniors, good families and they usually brought me their friends to lease it as they were moving out....very low vacancy, sometimes they cleaned the units as they moved in!

Not to hijack the subject, I would think that any college administrator/prof. would be in a great position to lease to the students and I know a few that do.

Other than the financing element of the program, I don't see much other value to it as it seems to me the information could be brought out here. We have many seasoned landlords on BP.

As to financing, I don't think I would give up 50% (especially 50%) for basically covering maybe 25% of the deal, since most cash flowing properties in good condition can be financed conventionally from local banks.

Sorry this program didn't pan out for you Dr. F. Good luck with it.....Bill

The Final Word on the Doug Fath scam is this: go to Rip Off Report and type in his name. There you will find my complaint, his VERY lame rebuttal, which really says it all!!!, and my response. What he's basically trying to do now, to cover up his "guaranteed funding" hoax, is say that my 35 properties didn't qualify. Not ONE of my 35 properties qualified! Please! The truth is, every single one of them qualified, but he didn't have anything set up to fund them. He was just using that "guaranteed funding" scheme to get people to sign up. Once they did sign up, the program was pretty much on auto pilot while we was out going to OTHER guru's seminars. Big Scam! Check out Rip Off Report.