Armando's back!

[Shane Woods]

Ok maybe not really. I set my dvr to record all the Flip This House episodes, and I was quite surprised to see 2 old reruns of Armando's show. I forgot how entertaining he is, love him or hate him. One of the shows was while he was finishing his "book" and doing his first speaking seminar. Having read his book, it made me chuckle and roll my eyes.

Guess his 4-6 year old shows still bring ratings.

[Don Konipol]

Actually, Armando went broke a couple of years back when a relatively small market price decline exposed his poor operating methods and highly leveraged nature of his business. Hence, he joins a long list of real estate investing failures who go on to teaching newbies how to get rich using the methods that didn't work for them.

The thing about the real estate business is that one can have some success because of a bull market having little to do with ability or methodology. Additionally, losses can be hidden for a length of time by holding on to properties in which one has a loss while selling those in which a profit can be booked. So while the income statement and balance sheet look healthy, the story would be completely different if those properties were marked to market rather than booked at historic cost.

One of my favorite shows is Flipping Out. However, Jeff Lewis admits to losing most of his net worth and his real estate business when the LA market downturned. With no cash and nobody willing to lend him money, he has had to do design and contracting work the last three years while bemoaning the fact that he can't get bs in the flipping game. My experience of 30 plus years in real estate investing is that many, if not most of the infomercial gurus have had limited success or outright failure in their real estate investing