People, at the bottom, before you can post on this, you disclose if you have any relationship with the material, endorsing anything should be at least stating in your post if you are a student or to what degree of knowledge/experience you might be. I know a student relationship isn't asked below, but it probably should be.
Now, I've been on bus tours but with national organizations of government housing officials, pretty dry, but it is good to see and even interact with a neighbor if there is time and you can get away from the tour guide.
I think that any valid site should be giving a detailed curriculum of the subject taught. Go look at a list of university classes offered, there will be a no hype, no spin description of the class to be taught, any education site should be doing the same.
If you see nothing but sizzle, no meat, hype as to your success, claims of successful deals done by anyone (the guru or students) you're at a marketing site, not an educational site.
Mentors or coaches should be anchored in 3 areas; Experience at doing, Education and being Certified or Accredited by some government agency or professional association.
In my book, meaning in my opinion, an instructor should have a college degree to mentor effectively in any business subject. College (degreed in anything) means they know how learning is structured, prerequisites to learning to build on, communication skills, testing (yes, testing as you can't advance until what is been taught has been determined to have been learned). This is somewhat flexible depending on what is to be taught, teaching carpentry is one thing, teaching what law is applicable or teaching conceptual materials is another.
Experience, some guy who is 26 obviously doesn't have experience, just a fact, they haven't been exposed to very much in RE regardless of the deals done. Deals done isn't a good yardstick of experience in some niche. Those in some niche are only exposed to a sliver of the big picture and no niche operation exposes an operator to the different variables, circumstances and types of exposures to occurrences in the real world. Even with a degree or education, there is little application without wisdom. It takes time to develop experience and age is not the determining factor either.
Certification, is your mentor coach really qualified or did they qualify themselves? An attorney holds a certification, so does a Realtor, so does a CPA, so does a government official or teacher, so does a general contractor. Has the material been certified to be taught by any professional association, like your RE Commission, any university or college? This may be difficult for investing, but core materials should have some authority behind them.
Saying someone made 5M bucks in RE is not a qualification nor is it applicable to teaching. Claiming they made $200,000 on some deal isn't applicable to what they present.....here's why;
What I did or do can not be reproduced by anyone else on the planet, each deal in RE is different, buyer and seller circumstances, personalities, financing, capital structures, the market, the location as well as other current aspects will never be duplicated. What I did can not be duplicated by others, my techniques and approach may be duplicated, but techniques and an approach can never yield the same results. To imply that some method will or is even likely to yield the same or similar results is just hype, marketing and deceiving to instill hope of making a fortune. When these claims are made or boasting of success, you'll usually find that disclaimer of "your mileage may vary" as this can be grounds for fraud, so if that's the case, perhaps you should simply ignore the dollar signs when looking for an education.
My advice, get to know a mentor or coach, their business ethics should be beyond reproach and they should be teaching what is ethical and certainly legal. :)
