The Investor Sell

As a Realtor you are always taking continuing education classes, not only to find out what's new but to keep you updated on all forms and contracts, so you can use them the best way for your clients.
Seminars are also part of the education process.

You can also spend a lot of time and money on these seminars and get lots of books, tapes, CD's etc. that will just go in the trash.  If you are lucky, you might snag a free lunch, half a sandwich in our case.  You can usually pick up some great tips if you are experienced and know how to use it.

The past few years all over the country there have been investment seminars for the general public.  Well, now with the the changing market, these new companies out of Utah, (must be a tax advantage)  are selling to Realtors the chance to learn investing from an already successful group, for a buy in price of $5,000 to $999.00.

These two products offered the same thing, but the buy in was much higher on one, and I really can't tell you why except: The $5000 dollar pitch gave a few more investing tips.

Walking away from these two new opportunities was good for us, because they were not right for our business.  They made investing sound so easy and they were recommending to agents to get out of residential real estate and do investment instead.

The truth of the matter is investing is not easy and it is not for everyone.  If it was easy everyone would be doing it.  The hardest part of investing is to find the money, especially in this market with the tightening of the lending community.

There are creative ways to find properties, using the MLS or not, you need to have the expertise and knowledge to make the whole package work or know when to walk.

My take on this is that Texas is a hot bed for investment activity and these companies know this and they are giving these seminars in all major cities in Texas to collect some seed money from Realtors and try to teach them how to invest, but the real reason -

...is to have these Realtors bring them properties so they can buy them - themselves -

The pitch for both these seminars was to buy in, then come to another two day seminar and bring as many properties you can find and they will tell you whether to buy or not.  Sounds like a one way street.

Anyway, you get the picture, most residential Realtors can only do just that, residential real estate. Investing is a different ballgame, but being a Realtor does give you an advantage.

You learn investing by doing it, one deal at a time and having the right network in place to make it profitable and that takes time.

As always, buyer beware -