East Bay Blog

Today on my East Bay Real Estate blog, I decided to write about Real Estate Seminars.  Last year (2006) I attended the Learning Annex Real Estate Seminar in San Francisco.  The main speaker was Donald Trump.  Along with the Don, some other speakers were featured including Suzie Orman and Tony Robbins. 

I went out of curiosity to see what the hype was all about.  You see last year the market was more active and a lot of people thought that Real Estate was a way to "get rich quick".  There was a lot of hype about this event so I attended.  The main speakers on the main stage were pretty good.  Overall they had some decent advise and seemed to be there to teach.  The rest of the "classes" however, which were what the majority of the event, consisted of Real Estate "gurus" who wanted to sell you a system where you too could become rich.  Beware of these types of pitches.  You can spend a lot of money very quickly, but it will take you a long time to make it back.  There is no such thing as a proven get rich quick system.  

These so called gurus who tell you that they can guarantee you become rich with no risk usually work in a common format:

1. The first part of their seminar usually consists of a goal-setting exercise.

2. The middle part gives some information about what could be done, but not how to do it.

3. At the end, it all leads to having to take more expensive--$3,000 to $7,000--seminars and boot camps to receive the actual hands-on experience you need, suggesting that if you didn't take it, you would fail.

Be Careful, some of these pitches sound really tempting.  These people promise to invest with you, and make it sound like you will be rich with no risk.  I am positive there are a lot of people out there that have paid thousands with no results.

I'm not saying that all seminars are bad, but a couple of golden rules; If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and there is no get rich quick method that does not involve a lot of risk.  Savvy would-be investors should take their time developing their knowledge of the real estate industry and shouldn't look to get rich overnight.  The skills it takes to be successful in real estate take years to accumulate, such as the skills of a Professional Realtor.

A couple of final hints for those of you who are thinking of attending a real estate seminar.  First of all TAKE YOUR TIME, don't be rushed into buying anything at one of these seminars, and AVOID HIGH-PRESSURE SALES PITCHES that require you to buy now or risk losing the opportunity.