Has anyone taken his 7 week workshop? I attended a introduction webinar the other day and am interested to hear from those who have signed up for the program.
Thanks!
Interesting. I looked up some (4-5) of their flips (all by the same LLC) since I am familiar with several of the cities in their ad (e.g. Canal Fulton) and I have to say there seems to be no exaggeration in the beginning/end sales numbers. I don't know what they put in as far as repairs, though. Many on the list they put together were properties in Stark and Summit county, OH. And from public record the 4 or 5 I looked at are/were REO purchases as they state.
With the amount they seem to be making (with the claim "without doing any of the work ourselves") in their business, why would they bother with seminars? If I were them, I'd focus on the business at hand. I'd have to think that they believe going forward that seminars will be more profitable than the actual flip business. Maybe they see the end of the REO-giveaway cycle.
If I were a shark on Shark Tank, I'd say: 'Because they can't decide what business they want to be in, I'm out'.
Interesting. I looked up some (4-5) of their flips (all by the same LLC) since I am familiar with several of the cities in their ad (e.g. Canal Fulton) and I have to say there seems to be no exaggeration in the beginning/end sales numbers. I don't know what they put in as far as repairs, though. Many on the list they put together were properties in Stark and Summit county, OH. And from public record the 4 or 5 I looked at are/were REO purchases as they state.
With the amount they seem to be making (with the claim "without doing any of the work ourselves") in their business, why would they bother with seminars? If I were them, I'd focus on the business at hand. I'd have to think that they believe going forward that seminars will be more profitable than the actual flip business. Maybe they see the end of the REO-giveaway cycle.
If I were a shark on Shark Tank, I'd say: 'Because they can't decide what business they want to be in, I'm out'.
I too am trying to figure this guy out. I am an agent and listed reos and short sales in California and the banks did not take low offers. Also, their California example in Seaside show the last recorded sale at $555k as they showed in their webinar, but there is no sale recorded after that, so I don't see how that is an example. Also, what private investor would give their money to someone without a track record, which is probably 100% of his students. I can look up public record in most of CA, so I'd like to get more addresses of property they claim to have a part of. Does anyone here have more info from those who went through his training?
How do you look up public record information on properties?
@Christopher Harrison you can get information from the county assessors office.
@Joe Yobaccio I agree, I wouldn't even take someone's money to do my first deal and some of these tactics border on unethical. Rather than convincing someone to use their retirement funds to be my ginny pig I would rather work with a hard money lender that will make sure it's a good deal and add some value in the process.
I don't know anything about these specific guys, but my theory for many gurus is that it's easier to find people to buy their course than it is to find and buy really low-priced houses to flip in the right neighborhoods. Those who are doing both have found a way to systematize their real estate investing so that they have time to do the guru circuit as well.
Side Note...
How ethical are most gurus?
I mean, is it possible that these are true examples of flips? Or, are these properties found by students, brought to the gurus "network" of lenders, turned down because they were "too thin" then rehabbed by the very people "teaching" the craft? That is a way to sell seminars and buy great deals nationwide. As you can tell, I'm not very fond of the overpriced "gurus"
Carry on...
@Greg B. The properties I looked at in the two counties in Ohio were all completed flips by one LLC. I don't know if these deals were found by students or not, but given that all of the flips I looked at were REOs (listed in MLS) I'd say it is likely they were bought directly by the company. I saw no signs of double close transactions. And REOs are notorious for being non-assignable, so students most likely didn't assign to the company.
I don't think there is any magic about the Ohio deals I looked at... older properties, low price because of extensive rehab required, REOs, property with high DOM, in the rust belt, ... leper properties. If you have a good rehab crew, make low cash offers and some will stick. Will this method work elsewhere? I don't know. Personally, I'm not interested in their workshop. Anyone around central NC can take a flip class from an experienced flipper where I am (class 115331 at Wake Tech, 03/04/2014 to 05/06/2014, $125) that is relevant to my area and market. I took it a few years ago. I'd suggest it's worth looking into local resources like community college courses, etc.
We are in the same mls market area, I recognized a couple of the houses in his webinar. I had one of my guys run the addresses on each of the properties he referred to, information is a bit exaggerated, to put it mildly ... I will do a summary later this week but you might find a couple of these interesting ... especially when you consider his comments about
1. Josh ... "paraphrasing" You dont need to be able to figure out ARV we have a system where top realtors will get you solid ARV numbers.
4034 Manchester Rd Akron , listed 139,900 sold 110,000 (solid prediction, wow!)
2284 Bailey Rd Cuyahoga Falls, listed 114,900 sold 89,900 (little wobbly)
2. We have a Propritiatory Property Launch Program to sell houses really fast
4034 Manchester Rd Akron , Days on Market 341
(lightning fast proprietary system) I think I will keep my non proprietary system, we are under 30dom market average the past four years same area)
2284 Bailey Rd Cuyahoga Falls, Days on Market 221
(hate to see what his DOM was before he figured out his proprietary system)
All except one property shows up on the MLS, so much for his many sources of deals, buying direct from the government, wholesalers etc.
Also .... Two of the properties on the market for a loooong time, dont show any sold dates on the mls and appear to have been turned into rentals.
To be fair not all his houses took that long to sell, but I notice at least one took longer ... quick crunching of his average dom, looks like 180.8 dom for 14 of the properties that he used in his presentation (he says to verify his information look it up on zillow, I noticed he didn't say, look it up on mls and alalyze the data for real.
Thought you might find this info entertaining if nothing else.
@Joe Yobaccio that was also one of my questions, does he have some in, how much below list price is he getting the houses for...
I will just run the first three on my list
193 heights dr northfield , dom 176, listed at 49,900, bought for 45,000
1467 sunnyacres copley, dom 83, listed at 63,900, bought for 53,500
3331 myersville rd uniontown, dom 127, listed at 47,900, bought for 46,000
I dont see any "secrets" here, nothing unusual or exceptionial in these "discounts" for our area.
I'm currently enrolled in the program. I am learning a lot and I like the way Josh is teaching!
2. We have a Propritiatory Property Launch Program to sell houses really fast
4034 Manchester Rd Akron , Days on Market 341
(lightning fast proprietary system) I think I will keep my non proprietary system, we are under 30dom market average the past four years same area)
2284 Bailey Rd Cuyahoga Falls, Days on Market 221
(hate to see what his DOM was before he figured out his proprietary system)
Yeah, sounds like you are good with whatever "non proprietary system" you are using. Hard to be even curious about what the secret is, isn't it?
My husband and I were comparing notes the other day about over-used and meaningless words in our work, one of his worlds being non-profits that focus on public engagement, and mine being RE. "Asset class". Everything is endlessly and creatively "leveraged". "Cross sector". "Proprietary" is up there.
I hate to think I'm getting set in my ways (and old), but could there be anything new under the sun when it comes to selling houses "really fast".
@K. Marie Poe ..... I got my start with the gurus, spent a lot of money to learn all the "secrets" .
The truth is about the only credit I can give to any of them is that they got me interested in realestate and got me motivated to get involved in the game, the rest I learned by trial and error, people in the business and the biggerpockets of the 90s; creonline, who had people like you giving good advise to newbies for free.
Although I rarely watch any of the gurus promotionial materials these days, the 40k flip program caught my attention enough to watch the pitch, especially when I saw him mentioning N.E. Ohio, my back yard. I thought maybe I could learn something new, hopefully I am not too old for that.
Didnt learn any secrets, unless it was, after I tried to verify his information, that the proprietary system they use to sells their houses actually sells them slower than the average for the entire neohrex mls system.
I did have an interesting conversation with their "director of education" who spends an hour to see if potential students have what it takes to qualify for their limited number of coaching slots...in less than a half hour he decided I wasnt a good fit for their program, and hung up on me :-)
My non proprietary "secret" is; think about who the buyer is, figure out what they want and give it to them.
We decided to focus on time home buyers, which is typically a young couple with kids looking for; a good school district, a backyard, 3bed room two bath, home, two car garage, a basement, an updated kitchen and bathroom, all painted an interesting neutral color scheme.
We dedided to do all the details exceptionally well, make sure we are in the top 10% from a quality, design, renovation standpoint when compared to our competition. Although many people priced their houses below the competition in order to sell their homes a 3-5 years ago, we consistently listed at or above the competition and sell at or very close to list.
So theres there is my real secret....now if I could just get 1,000 people to pay me 995.000 for that :-)
@George Kozlov did you buy the 995 program or the mentoring program? What have you learned so far?
@K. Marie Poe ..... I got my start with the gurus, spent a lot of money to learn all the "secrets" .
The truth is about the only credit I can give to any of them is that they got me interested in realestate and got me motivated to get involved in the game, the rest I learned by trial and error, people in the business and the biggerpockets of the 90s; creonline, who had people like you giving good advise to newbies for free.
I didn't have TV in the 90s so I didn't know about Carleton Sheets and John Beck et al until later. I have friends who also say that the early gurus didn't teach them as much as motivate them, for which they are eternally grateful.
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the folks at CREonline taught me pretty much everything I know about deal making, I taught myself direct marketing using trial and error. And of course there is no replacement for experience. I became what I called a heavily seasoned novice. I took on some pretty tough title issues mostly because I didn't know any better. For me those were the good old days of RE message boards. Before blogs and online social networking. Experienced old timers just hanging out for the fun of talking deals and teaching the newbies. I won't be able to give away and contribute as much as they did until I know as much. Gotta long way to go.
I think to much time is spent on teaching how to acquire the low cost properties and very little time on how to get them financed. Many lenders hare restrictions or guide lines on how long you have to keep the house in order to flip the house, while others have guidelines on how small a mortgage they will consider. The exit strategy is where the training is required as not everyone is "buy and hold". It appears there may be a built in bias in the spread between acquisition and sales price by appraisers and underwriters. Food for thought.
@john moore
I am a buy fix and sell guy as well. I am not quite clear on the comment about the need for exit strategy training.
On the buy side fannie mae is the only one I am aware that has a restriction on selling. Basically 90 days if you want to make a profit. We have had to delay putting these on the market for a bit but the delay is relatively short.
If you are talking about restrictions on financing from banks that fund your deals. I have not run into this, while BenchMark works mostly with private lenders who have no such restrictions. My "rehab affiliates" work with four different banks in the area lowest amount borrowed for a rehab we did was 18,000 purchase + 25 rehab, highest amount just approved by same bank last week was 450,000 purchase and 200,000 rehab money. The notes from the banks are typically written as one year interest only notes with no prepayment restrictions or penalties.
All the banks rehabbers around here use, are smaller local or regionial portfolio lenders. Talk to the branch manager of a couple local portfolio lenders. If you have a track record, some verifiable income and are good credit risk, you will find someone eager for your business. I know locally some of the banks are flush with "utica shale" money they need to loan out.
I haven't purchased anything over a couple hundred dollars from the gurus in many years and I haven't purchased Josh's program either, but it also caught my eye (or ear?). I have listened to a couple of his podcasts. Mostly, they are very informative. He does share his "proprietary" sale formula on one of his podcasts. It is worth a listen. I used a couple of his ideas on our last flip and got 5 offers....sold in about 2 weeks.
There is a lot in the podcast but in a nutshell he recommends pricing right at the top of the market for a buyers mkt so they feel like they have gotten a deal when they get it for under asking price. In a sellers mkt, price lower than competition. In both, market the heck out of the first open house to create a frenzy and get those one or two real buyers feeling like they may lose out if they don't make a high offer now. None of the above is new or earth shattering, but his marketing blitz approach and auction style open house along with gift cards for signing in, free stuff if offer is made within 48 hours etc. May not be for everyone but it can work. I don't like being too gimmicky which is why I only used a couple of his ideas that fit my style.
One of his exit strategies is lease options (rent to own). Is it possible that in these transactions DOM would show as 200-300 days?
I agree that in general, expensive guru junk is mostly that...junk. I know this from experience. However I also know that every rule has exceptions. Can't say for certain that Josh is the exception but he and a few others like Sean Terry do seem to legitimately want to share quality info.
Nothing beats Biggerpockets though!
Happy Investing
Peter
I signed up for the 40k flips class in early 2014. It was $1k which is a lot of money to me.. but it came with a money back guarantee after 10 weeks of courses. As someone new to flipping I found it pretty informative. His lessons on finding private lenders were good, but did not help me find them since I have a limited social circle. The information was impressive enough that I did not cancel. I continue to have lifetime access to his internal forum, along with recordings of all of the classes, including when new 40k flip courses begin. So i can always go back and listen to specific items. I was unaware of bigger pockets at the time.. but it suited my purpose by giving me a foundation. It doesn't completely surprise me that some of houses haven't sold as fast as they could, but it is what it is. He's now continuing to branch out to sales, coachings, etc. If you think about it, flipping is a challenge month after month and year after year.
I know I'm late to this forum. Just signed up to BiggerPockets. Must give my opinion.
I've taken numerous training classes/ workshops over the last decade. Some were excellent, others a total waste of time and money and bad advice.
I would rate Josh Cantwell's 40K flip program as one of the best. What did I like about it? Well, I list a few reasons: great teaching style, comprehensive beginning to end explanation, excellent customer service, live-time reviewing of training, a 40K forum. After training, I met Josh in person and I still like him.
I highly recommend his program. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
I have the 40k flips program, it is concise and complete. There are plenty of great ideas in the program. Josh is very well organized and presents a lot of information well. I appreciated that when they approached me to discuss becoming one of their high end coaching students they listened to me and my ideas and are trying to figure out a way to implement them. I told them that I have not heard of one coaching program that actually uses a mentoring/apprenticeship model. The instruction offered may be excellent but being that it is only offered weekly in most mentoring programs with the ability to ask additional questions at a resource center will not be able to compete with in depth hands on mentoring that could truly train someone to be successful. I learned a ton of information in my four years at the Colorado State University school of Veterinary Medicine, but it pales to the practical and applicable information I gained with boots on the ground working with older and more experienced veterinarians on a daily basis. I really wish this type of mentoring would be embraced in our profession of real estate investing. Josh and his team at least are taking it into consideration and I applaud them for taking that step! I do think that new investors should spend a lot more time doing research on their own with books, internet education, and Bigger Pockets before ever considering any high level coaching programs. I just want them to be completely informed before pulling that "Big Ticket" trigger.
I am currently in a mentoring program that matches a true apprentice program you describe. I have a business mentor, a technical mentor (for using software programs most effectively), and one on one support for SEO. I can message at any time, call for a one on one phone meeting, and get educational materials that key me into things that I can't find any where else.
To be in this program, I first had to demonstrate my competence and be invited, go through a rigorous in-take interview process, and then pay the entry fee. I highly recommend this type of mentoring. It has put me way ahead of my goals.
Contact me directly if you would like to learn more.
Gurus get their leads for deals in bulk by partnering up with lots of students all over the country. A smart move for the guru really.
I took the 40k Flip with Josh Cantwell. All I can say about his program is that it works very well for me. His teachings are very practical and he gives you a blueprint to follow. I can only speak form my personal experience with his program. One month after my 40k Flip class ended I purchase a property using his blueprint. I sold it a month later for over 40k+ profit. Since then I continue closing more and more deals using his program and making substantial amount of profit. It has been almost a year and still going strong. His system is not a get rich quick thing. If anyone plans on trying the 40k Flip program the advice I can give you, is to make sure you are dedicated, take massive actions never give up even when things seems hard, they will get better. However, one have to put in the work and the effort necessary to succeed. that goes for everything in life. I tried many other programs in the pass but they never really worked for me there was always something missing. Again these are strictly my experience with his 40k Flip program. I am only one of his pass student and thought that I should share my experience with his 40K flip program and shed some light on the issue at hand as someone who actually took his class. I pray this would help someone thinking of entering or who wants to enhance there real estate business. I Thank God Jehovah almighty first and for most. then I thank Mr. Josh Cantwell for his willingness to be so transparent and actually teaching me and others how to succeed in this business.
I took the 40k Flip with Josh Cantwell. All I can say about his program is that it works very well for me. His teachings are very practical and he gives you a blueprint to follow. I can only speak form my personal experience with his program. One month after my 40k Flip class ended I purchase a property using his blueprint. I sold it a month later for over 40k+ profit. Since then I continue closing more and more deals using his program and making substantial amount of profit. It has been almost a year and still going strong. His system is not a get rich quick thing. If anyone plans on trying the 40k Flip program the advice I can give you, is to make sure you are dedicated, take massive actions never give up even when things seems hard, they will get better. However, one have to put in the work and the effort necessary to succeed. that goes for everything in life. I tried many other programs in the pass but they never really worked for me there was always something missing. Again these are strictly my experience with his 40k Flip program. I am only one of his pass student and thought that I should share my experience with his 40K flip program and shed some light on the issue at hand as someone who actually took his class. I pray this would help someone thinking of entering or who wants to enhance there real estate business. I Thank God Jehovah almighty first and for most. then I thank Mr. Josh Cantwell for his willingness to be so transparent and actually teaching me and others how to succeed in this business.
Congratulations @Hilten Brice on your success.
Would you mind sharing some of the details of your deal, to help show newbies;this is possible.
Purchase price, rehab costs, selling price. A few before and after pictures would be great, those are always inspiring.
Did you use SDIRA money to fund your deal as the blueprint reccomends.
You followed his blueprint, bought a home from the mls, in Florida, rehabbed your first property within 30 days, and made 40k+ profit?
Since then you closed more and more deals...
Inspiring!
Would you say it is necessary to get the help of a Deity to accomplish such a feat or could people do it just following Joshs "blueprint"?