There was definitely fear and loathing in Las Vegas at last week’s meeting of The Real Estate Insiders Club. As I’ve stated in previous articles, you get the most out of your local real estate club (Article) by networking with the other investors.  The recent spate of extraordinary events made this more true than ever. The difference in the atmosphere from the September meeting to the one in October was palpable. As I worked my way around the room talking with other investors the reasons were clear.

The Fear

There were a number of investors, novice and veteran alike, who had recently been through a foreclosure seminar and were excited about the possibilities in the market. However, it was the more experienced investors who were most fearful. Many of them had been investing for many years, if not decades, and had never seen anything like what we are experiencing now. There were mortgage brokers who were unable to get deals through because of the credit freeze and realtors who couldn’t make deals happen because their buyers couldn’t get loans. The big question seemed to be, would the whole house of cards that is the economy come crashing down?

Generally speaking, savvy investors can make profitable deals in any market, up, down or sideways. The concern is that there is a total lack of direction, they don’t know which way to turn. The Government bailout (now being called a rescue) is a big pile of money without a clear set of instructions on how it is going to be used. A big fear is that it is going to become a big cesspool of corruption, much like Washington itself.

The Loathing

The other thing that jumped out at me as I worked the room was the anger that people felt. There was anger that irresponsible behavior was being rewarded, why should those who made idiotic mistakes be bailed out? They were mad about the CEO’s who were rewarded with excessive pay, perks and parachutes as the companies they ran crumbled. There was resentment over the fact that greed had run rampant and left common sense in its wake along with the wreckage of banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies.

However the real loathing was reserved for our elected officials. The caped crusaders of the beltway who are supposed to be looking out for us, can’t seem to rise above their own self-interest. The House of Representatives couldn’t bring the $700 Billion bailout package to a vote without the House Speaker making a self-serving partisan speech that ultimately doomed the bill. It was left to the Senate to push a bill through but they couldn’t get it done without larding it up with billions more in pork. While Democrats and Republicans were busy playing the blame game and pointing fingers at each other, the members of the real estate club couldn’t believe that these clowns didn’t get it, people are fed up!

Economic Course Correction

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Tags: bailout, real estate club, real estate investing

Real Estate Groups Getting Lots of Attention

Since the launch of our groups feature, our members have flocked to create or join groups meeting their interests. I thought I’d remind everyone of groups today because we just had one (the Private Money Group) pass the 100 member mark for the first time!

Who Would Benefit From Real Estate Groups?

A sampling of people who would find groups helpful include:

• Investors who want to network locally might join or create a group for investors in their city.
• Real Estate Agents may want to set up or join referral groups to share business.
• Real Estate Clubs may want to set up a group to draw new traffic to their group.
• Landlords, wholesalers, or people of some other real estate specialty may want to create or join a group designed for people sharing the same interest.

Real Estate Group Features Include:

• Group members have their own private forum
• Group founders (administrators) and moderators (set by the admin) can post news or announcements for the group, where members are notified by email and kept in the loop (you can shut your notifications off in your settings tab of the Dashboard).
• Group members can invite any of their colleagues to the group, or they can invite people who are not yet members of BiggerPockets with the email invite function. Once someone joins the site through this method, they automatically are registered as a member of your group.
• Groups allow people to essentially create mini communities within the overall BiggerPockets community.
• Group members can subscribe to discussions and be notified of new posts.
• Coming soon - group members will be able to get periodic notifications of new topics in their groups.

Real Estate Group Examples:

Here are a few examples of groups on the site - 64 Total Groups as of 9/11/08:
Out of State Investors, Lenders Place, Personal REO Investing, Bulk REO Group, Pennsylvania Investors, Phoenix, Arizona Investors, Twitter Addicts For Real Estate, etc.

What Are You Waiting For?
Join or create a group today!

Tags: biggerpockets groups, groups, local networking, networking, networking groups, real estate, real estate club, real estate group, real estate networking, social network

Those who run real estate investment clubs have a big challenge in lining up speakers for each meeting.  Clubs do not usually have the kind of budget that would allow them to pay for speakers, therefore they need to do their best to locate those that will speak for free.  This invariably results in the talk being given by someone who has a specific agenda or something to sell.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, you just need to keep the speakers ultimate motivation in mind when you listen to the spiel.

Some of these speakers are quite good and their knowledge is obvious.  On the other hand, some of the speakers leave you scratching your head and wondering if they have ever owned an investment property.  Investing veterans have little difficulty in separating the fakes from those who are the real deal.  Novice investors may mistakenly assume that if someone is speaking to a group he must know something.  Hopefully they will learn before they are burned by one of these phonies. 

 My primary purpose for attending monthly club meetings is for the networking and resulting connections ( see: Getting the Most From Your Real Estate Club ), however I do enjoy hearing from good presenters. My local real estate club had two very well qualified speakers at a couple of recent meetings.  While both were very obviously qualified to speak about real estate investing, their styles and agendas were a world apart.  

 Guru #1

At our May 2008 club meeting we had a speaker who specialized in foreclosures.  Certainly a timely topic and on that I was looking to learn more about.  I had seen this speaker once before and knew that he was a good presenter and very knowledgeable.  After introducing himself and providing his background, he openly stated his agenda.  He was not there to sell books, tapes or home-study courses, in fact he didn’t have any of that.  The business model for his company was to purchase bank REO (foreclosures) properties in bulk.  He then sold these properties as-is or after light rehab to investors at wholesale prices.  To do that he needed two things, properties to buy from banks and investors to sell them to.

What he was pitching was a two day seminar on how to locate, buy and finance the acquisition of these properties.  He was charging $1800 for the seminar with the guarantee that he would refund your money after the first day if you didn’t feel it was worth it.  He then proceeded to spend the next hour sharing some of his knowledge of the subject.  He was truly impressive and it was a great example of what you would get in his workshop.  He had over twenty people sign up and most of them were veteran investors who are not easily impressed.

 Guru #2

At our most recent club meeting we had another speaker with impressive credentials.  He is currently featured on one the house flipping shows and has a real estate company on the east coast.  The club heavily promoted the meeting because they do not usually have a name speaker and the resulting attendance was much larger than normal.  Many of the regular meeting segments were cut short to allow this speaker to have as much time as possible.

This speaker had an array of tapes and course material displayed, so his agenda was obvious to anyone who was paying attention.  He began his talk with his background in real estate and talked about all of the mistakes he made when he began.  He kept telling us that he was going to teach us how to do this, that, and the other thing during his talk.  I kept waiting for him to actually “teach” something but all he really did was talk about what he was going to tell us.

As the talk progressed it was laced with sales pitches for a computer program, home-study courses and his five-day boot camp.  Some of the pitches were very subtle while others were blatant commercials.  After 90 minutes he closed with a final pitch for his boot camp.  The regular price was $5,000, but is you signed up now it was only $2,497.  But wait, there’s more! He would include a $500 credit for your travel expenses and the first few people to sign up would receive the $2,000 computer program for $1!

A handful of people did sign up.  From what I saw they were newcomers to the club or novice investors.  None of the veterans were impressed enough to part with their cash. 

The Bottom Line

Both of the gurus were qualified to speak about real estate.  However their value was very different.  One was geared to marketing courses and boot camps to novice investors.  Those who sign up would most likely gain valuable knowledge, but would it really be worth the price?  The second guru was targeting experienced investors with a desire to participate in the foreclosure market.  I spoke to several of the attendees who agreed that there was definite value, but it was not for everyone.

If you are ever inclined to sign up for some gurus course, do so with your eyes wide open.  Is the course geared to someone with your level of experience?  What do you hope to gain from the seminar or boot camp?  Will you be able to implement what you learn or are you just falling for a sales pitch from a smooth-talking speaker? Buyer beware.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
George Santayana

Tags: guru, Learn Real Estate, real estate club, real estate guru, real estate investing