BiggerPockets

Does having diarrhea make one an Expert on Toilets?

Just because one investor, in one part of the country, during a specific time period, uses a specific technique (s) to make money in real estate, does not make him or her a Real Estate Expert.

Over the last few years, I have seen hundreds of Guru courses hit the market on every imaginable topic. Many of these seem to be taught by RE Entrepreneurs who in a SPECIFIC MARKET, using a SPECIFIC TECHNIQUE may or may not have actually made money from the technique. . Either way, they package the technique into a course and sell it as TNBT (the next big thing).

After having created that specific technique, they package it with pretty video's, tons of written documents, nice web sites, fancy squeeze pages and other materials and call it "The New Secret Sauce" for Real Estate Investing and they market it nationwide.

There is a distinct difference between a Real Estate Investor and a Real Estate Entreprneur.

Examples:

The Realtor in South Carolina who prior to the bubble bursting sold 15 properties in 15 minutes to a list of buyers he had been building for years. After the Bubble Burst, he creates a course about how to pull this feat off and sells it all over the country. What he doesn't tell his audience is that in his little part of the country, the market had been depressed for several years both before and during the Booming 1999 to 2005 years and that the average price of those 15 homes was most likely under $30,000.

The Poor Marine Corp Pilot who gave up his commission, was out of work and collecting unemployment (sob, sob) who found a defunct multi family property and was able to make a deal with the seller (who couldn't give the property away) using a "Master Lease Option". He then creates a Course with lots of pretty videos etc and sells the course using a slew of JV partners and pays the partners a whopping 80% commission on his over $2000 course.

The orange haired kid from Florida who does quite well for himself with short sales in a Florida Market using a specific tecnique who joins forces with a local attorney who just happens to own a slew of real estate offices and then creates a course that teaches every one else to do the same supposidly in any market. Problem being that the Florida Market is entirely different than almost every other market in the country.

And there are hundreds if not thousands of other examples I could give.

At a time when most of the Gurus are telling us that Buying, rehabbing and flipping SF is DEAD, I personnally have bought, rehabbed and flipped or rented and held 22 single families using a specific technique that I developed and have been using for more than 20 years in every type of market. I guess I should create a course and sell it to others, but there is no way to actively invest in real estate (investor) and also create a course and all the marketing material (entrepreneur).

I have also followed several of the posts about those and other courses here on BP. Many comments both Pro & Con have been posted both about the need for paid education vs finding it for free and about the Specific Courses for which the thread was started.

It always seems that the Positive Comments come from one of two sources. People who have purchased the course recently and are excited about all the money "they think they will make", and from associates of the Guru that sold the course.

Many of the positive comments seem to come from members that I know for a fact (from having received offers from them as JV partners) of the course being written about

I chose the three examples above because they all are courses that were initially created and sold 2 - 5 years prior to this post.

Now, I would like feed back from anyone (preferably not JV Partners of any course) who has purchased a course of any kind form any Guru and had a good or bad experience with the course. If you purchased one of the courses above great, but in general I want to hear from people who purchased a course from a Guru and actually had time to use the course, time to apply the techniques taught in the course. Was the purchase worth while, did you make money with it, was it all that it was cracked up to be.

Please don't reply if you just finished the course and are still Hyped by "all the money you WILL make with the course"

I want to hear from people who bought the course and either DID or DID NOT make money with it and why in either case.

Thanx in advance.

:D :D

Mat

Thanx for the post, but, and I don't mean any disrespect, you sound like an Agent..

The problem is that many novice investors don't know what questions to ask the agent and we live in an instant gratification society. People are searching for answers and they want them yesterday.

There is nothing wrong with courses and if nothing else, a good course will give one a list of questions that they can then seek the answers to either from an agent or from other sources.

The problem is in figuring out which course is good and which course is a bunch of hyped up BS. Many courses introduced to the market over the last five years are created by Information Marketers who turned from selling e-books on "How to teach your Parrot to Talk" to how to "Make Millions in REI".

What many novice investors may not realize is that the number of REI Websites grew after the bubble burst by 10,000 fold. That tells me that many a Guru went from Investing in Real Estate to selling How to's on Real Estate Investing and learned their marketing skills from Internet Marketing Gurus like Frank Kern who did in fact create and market the e-book on "How to teach your Parrot to talk.

Many of the Guru Course Websites are just filled with Testimonials from people who are happy to tell us how much they "WILL" make after having taken a particular course.

What I am looking for is responces from people who actually DID or DID NOT make money from a course they purchased.

In this way, I hope to find out if the information being marketed is fact worthwhile or is in fact just hyper BS.

My guess is that you won't get much feedback from those who DID NOT make money from the courses they purchased -- those people are probably not here, and instead are probably looking for another way to get rich quick.

As for those who have made a lot of money from courses, I'm sure there are plenty of them. But I'm also guessing they are in the small minority. In my experience, most people that take courses never translate the material to real-world success.

No. Being a landlord makes one an expert on toilets.

Great assessment, J!

I have read many of the books from some of the old style gurus. I never got around to taking the courses as they were too hardsell in their tactics and the prices were way out there. $3000-$5000 for a 3-day "boot camp" to learn more than what we will tell you today. By reading some of the books and attending the free hype session, you can pick up a few things that happen to mesh with your style and adapt them into your overall plan. I started reading the books in the 1980's, but was only involved with single family homes until losing my JOB in 1994. My wife then had me start looking for an apartment to buy and 3 months after losing that JOB we had a 27-unit apartment building. Two months later my wife quit her JOB and we have been full time real estate investors since 1994. Got burnt out on apartments in 2003 so moved into MHPs in 2004. So far are still enjoying MHPs and if had money partners, would probably seek more properties. The problem we have now is trying to slow down and not let our drive get us overextended and into hot water like many other investors!

Here is my take... Most who take classes are looking to "strike the gold".. as was said above. Gurus teach no risk, all reward and a walk in the park. I know many of them and some have more merits than others.. and some have none at all.

This is what I can tell you: I can barely turn a screwdriver, I have never painted even 1 wall and if my sink is dripping I am calling a plumber. That being said I work 70 hrs a week as a full time RE investor. Life is good and there is money to be made but nothing comes for free. There is no magic pill. I hire people to do my labor not because I could not learn it myself but because it is not the most efficient use of my time. I have nearly 100 units and spend my time on how to sell some and how to buy more as cheaply as possible. I spend my time on providing deals to my buyers that will make them want to buy more deals. I spend my time making relationships with sellers that make them think of me 1st when the need to dump an asset. I love what I do but there is no "secret" to millions!

All this being said I have never spent a nickel on "guru" classes.. but I am actually real close to making a deal with 2 of them.. one who can help simplify my processes and one who can help set up a private equity firm.. There is some substance to some programs out there. Just make sure the deal works for both of you.

Perhaps if you tell us your motivation for finding this information, we may be able to help. Are you looking to replicate the systems that "work?" Are you looking to learn more yourself? Are you looking to create your own courses?

Well, Like you, I am currently doing between 20 and 30 flips a year. Over the last few years, I have purchased everything from SF to MF to Small shopping centers. This past summer, I travelled throughout Europe and purchased a 23 room Hotel in Switzerland that came with a 2008 Bentley Continental Supersport (the car in my Profile Photo) and a secondary building that for the sake of description I'll just call a Duplex. Then I traveled to Kranjska Gora Slovenia where I sold off the hotel for what I paid for the whole package and kept the Duplex and the Bentley.

I havn't really considered creating my own course, but if I did, I suspect the reason I'd considered it might surprize you.

I considered it because it infureates me to see NUGUS selling Real Estate Investment courses that I suspect are total ********. It infureates me because what they really create is a bunch of idiots running around with less than half the knowledge necessary to invest correctly.

(I don't have the time to purchase every course out here in www land, so I am hoping to hear from those that have purchased them.)

I gave you the example of the Foreclosure Riches crap in a previous post. All those Foreclosure Courses did was create a Hyper Market for foreclosures which inturn caused entities like the FHA, VA, and Fannae Mae to start offering their foreclosed properties at market value as opposed to what they could get and the worst part is that novice investors were sucking them up through straws.

Prior to 2005 I purchased several apartment buildings in Charlotte NC. In those pre-2005 years, apartment buildings in this area could be purchased at 5-6 times gross. The same scenario is also true of the Alleghany County (Pittsburgh Pa) market, the Buffalo, Rochester, NY Markets, some areas of Ohio especially Toledo,

When the Bubble Popped in early 05, novice investors who had been making some serious money in the big 5 or 6 Bubble-ized states began running for cover and doing everything possible to unload the last properties they had purchased. It was Crap Investment Courses that helped to get the Bubble expanding in the first place and it was those same crap courses that lead to all the novice investors to NEED to unload the bad investments they had recently made.

Putting property under contract with the goal of flipping that property for a higher price prior to closing, selling the contract, purchasing property for the sole purpose of simply waiting for the price to go up 20% is NOT INVESTING, it is SPECULATING.

These Novice investors began searching for ways and places to keep their momentum going forward.

Up stepped the NUGUS. (New Guru's) with all sorts of Investment Riches Courses. Some of these Nugus were the same Novices who made money pre bubble, some were information marketers who turned their attention from selling e-books on internet marketing to selling e-books on Real Estate Investing.

Every ezine, Newpaper and web site in the country began talking about the Under Valued Charlotte Market. An entrepreneur from California who was under indictment by the Feds for fraudulent real estate schemes purchased a very large tract of land in Charlotte and began building townhouses. When they didn't sell he hired a company called Convergent Aquisitions to create a 50 page white paper that basically over glorified the Charlotte MSA and began advertising all over the Web.

By mid 2006, Charlotte Multifamilies were selling at 10-12 times gross with no underlying reason for the sudden increase in value. Novice investors armed with nothing more than the knowledge they had gained from other crap courses began sucking everything in sight up through straws. No Income & Expense projections, No thorough understanding of Cap Rate analysis, No knowledge of Vacancy rates, nothing. Just pure unadulterated HYPE.

I sold every property I owned in that market and made out like a bandit, hey I am human. I figure, if they want to stick their heads in the sand and ignore reality, somone is goin to smack their butts.

About the same time all sorts of Wholesaling companies began popping up in places like Pittsburg Pa, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester NY, and many of the Ohio Markets.

I could expand on all of them, but then this post might be taken as Course on What not to do in Real Estate.

What I will expand on is a company in the Pittsburgh area called Penny Foreclosure. With money from California Investors this company began purchasing large blocks of property that had been boarded up for 20 + years due to the steel industry going belly up. They began marketing this crap using bogus Market Analysis's created by an obviously novice Realtor in the area. They pushed the idea of the would be investor purchasing the property and paying cash for it and the repairs, hiring their company to do the remodel, and their company to manage the property. They were buying property for $2000.00, selling to people on the list they were building for $15,000 to $20,000, adding repairs of $6000 -$10,000 and did it with a bogus market analysis that showed comps in the $45,000 range, but always suggesting that the investor should plan to hold the property as a rental for 3-5 years.

It is my opinion that they always pushed cash purchasing because they knew no bank would finance the property and they pushed holding for 3-5 years because they knew there was no market for the property.

How was that for a tangent? :mrgreen:

Now, today, I see every imaginable scheme under the sun coming accross my desk top. From more shortsale courses, to tieing property up with subject too's, while applying to the bank for Mortgage rate and Balance adjustments, to more foreclosure courses, to Tax lien Certificates, Probate courses, etc.

The Banner ad at the top of this page comes to mind as I write this. The advertiser has taught "hundreds of students How To Grow" a 6 figure real estate business in under 6 months without using any of their own money or credit. Oh please, will somebody please give me some boots.

So, I am simply trying to:

1. Find out what courses have been
purchased, hopefully used and that
actually work or don't work so
that....

2. I might raise awareness that much of
what is available may be BS, and

3. Enlighten wanna-be's as to how to tell
the difference between the sand and
the water.

Like I said, I hadn't really considered creating my own course, but if I ever do, I will send all of you folks a free copy to you can critique it for me and tell me when I have run off on a tangent :)

JM