What Real Estate Gurus Don’t Want You to Know

(Newswire.net — January 20, 2015) Layton, Utah — Have you noticed in your neighborhood or community little white or yellow signs that read, “We Buy Houses – Cash” or “Real Estate Investor Seeks Trainee – 100k/yr”, or “Learn to Flip Houses for Fast Cash”? Chances are you have.

But did you know that those little signs are a hint at a sinister type of circus coming to town? It’s like the 1962 classic fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. 

A book about Jim Nightshade and William Halloway best friends at age 13 and their nightmarish experience with a traveling carnival that comes to their town one October.

You’ve heard the story before.

Real estate seminars promising attendees they will learn how to make millions with real estate.

Oftentimes these seminars are free with an upsell at the end while others require tickets to be bought in order to “reserve” a spot for their audience with some tickets reaching $100 per person.

At a typical seminar you will hear the instructor, aka self-proclaimed real-estate guru, teaching about how he has made so much money in real estate that it is finally time for him to pay it forward to you, the little guy, because he knows what it’s like to be barely making ends meet.

Here comes the fireworks and magic money-making formulas.

These gurus know how to play emotions and push the right buttons to get the crowd pumped up. Hoping their participation and enthusiasm will somehow entice the guru to divulge more tips on how to get rich in real estate these attendees are now totally enthralled.

Maybe you have been to one or two and have actually gleaned some useful ideas or genuine knowledge to add to your own investment game plan. I’ll admit, I have.

But that’s not the end game of these programs.

Out of the hundreds of people who attend these seminars about one-third want to be accepted into, let’s call it the Super Duper Real Estate Coaching Mastery Program, or simply a coaching program that claims to take novice Joes and Janes with zero real-estate expertise and teach them to make millions with one small caveat …….this “program” often comes with a price tag of $20,000 or more.

Ok, you read this far and you’re still wondering what is it that real estate gurus don’t want you to know.

Apart from the false promises, often tip-toeing the legal-line tactics, and the HUGE price tag, the one thing all of these seminars never tell you is, drum roll please, …..you need a whole team of professionals from real estate brokers, insurance brokers, property management, general contractors, suppliers, attorneys, market analyses, money – be it private or public lending, and the list goes on and on.

They never tell you nor will they ever tell you that real estate investing is team sport and the hardest part about it is actually building a competent trustworthy team to facilitate the business.

For arguments sake let’s talk about how much money these seminar gurus are making for NOT doing real estate but selling their “programs”.

It is not uncommon for 10 or so attendees to whip out their credit cards and sign up for the coaching program at the end of the show. So if you quickly run the numbers, that means around $60,000 just from the seminar including merchandise and ticket sales and another $200,000 on top of that in coaching program enrollees. Not bad for a weekend’s worth of performing.

Costs of programs like I have just described have skyrocketed in recent years in large part due to the “high achievement” established by Trump University. By “high achievement” I really mean record profits for the companies putting on the programs and selling their brand of coaching.

Trump’s program as well as Armando Montelongo Seminars, and Robert Kiyosaki’s program Rich Dad Coaching offer similarly structured and implemented weekend seminars, which result in people paying as much as $35,000 to learn real-estate secrets from people supposedly hand-selected by the gurus themselves.

I for one, most regretfully, admit that I bought into the hype of one of these programs and have been kicking myself ever since!

It is my not so humble opinion that these types of seminars and coaching programs are predatory and fraudulent. Countless honest and hardworking people across the country who are looking for a legitimate way to get a leg up in life are enticed by slick salespeople promising the world but instead get totally taken. Many times these good people end up in a much worse financial situation than when they started.

In a later article I will detail my personal less than satisfied experience with Rich Dad Coaching and what criteria I now have in regards to any “coaching program” be it stocks, real estate, sports, etc..

You may believe seminars such as these, being as high-priced as they are, are worth the investment for “education” or share my belief that they are a complete scam, I’ll leave that for you to decide.

One thing is for certain, these events are big moneymakers for company owners. Forbes reported that Armando Montelongo was on track to make a whopping 50 million back in 2013 from his seminars.

So, I offer a word of caution for what its worth.