The Internet Real Estate Center

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Over the past few years I have sometimes struggled as a real estate investor.  I knew how to structure deals but I have often lacked one critical item…. LEADS …motivated sellers that I could talk to about buying their property. I knew that if I spoke with enough sellers I would finally have a chance to succeed.

During my real estate investing career (going on three years full time, plus two part time), I have bought dozens of real estate books and programs and studied every page looking for answers.

It was tough to buy the courses since I really didn’t have the money …but I figured that “next course” would have that final magical formula that would bring me the success that had eluded me for so long as a real estate investor. Actually, I am embarrased to tell you how much money I have wasted on real estate investing courses.

Many of the courses that I bought were just simply garbage! They had a bunch of letters or postcards that they swore would work and get the phone ringing off the hook with motivated sellers. They contained sample contracts that were unusable, strategies that worked three years ago but not today, and they were loaded with rehashed garbage.

Over the years I have found some problems with many of the courses you buy from real estate gurus.
Problem #1 - Most real estate courses are too general

Most of the real estate courses just don’t give real estate investors enough details. If you are a newbie and getting started in the business you get some general information that you need about how the business works and what you need to get started.

The problem that you have is that when it’s time to hit the road and try and make something happen you are left wondering what to do next.

One example is that many of the courses will tell you that you need to mail letters and postcards to landlords. They recommend you get a list of absentee owners and give you a few postcards to send out to them.

But there is a ton of information that is left out!

Who do you get your mailing list from? What do you need to request when getting the list? How do you prepare the list? What are the best records to market to? What should your marketing say? What is the response rate that you should get from your efforts?

Do you see what I’m getting at? So what ends up happening is one of two things. You either have to take action and you screw up, or you just don’t do anything at all since you are paralyzed because you lack the right information.

If you screw up and you are lucky to have some money set aside then you will try again and hopefully start making some money through trial and error.

But what if you don’t have a lot of room for error? If you don’t have a huge budget for marketing and your first efforts fail then you have one less shot at success.

And if you keep on getting crappy results eventually your marketing budget runs dry and you are SCREWED!!!
Problem #2 - Most real estate courses will bury you in dozens of techniques to find properties.

During the times that I have struggled the biggest problem I had was that I was going after every single known way to find deals. Confucius says “the fox that chases two rabbits catches neither”.

You see when you go after too many things then you end up doing nothing at all … or just simply not doing any one thing very well..

When I made the decision that I was going to focus on only one part of the business and take everything off my plate, that is when things finally took a turn for me. I eliminated everything else from my radar and that is when success started to flow my way.

Think about it. How can you effectively go after probate, foreclosures, code violations, direct mail, calling fsbo’s if you are chasing them all at the same time. You will go jumping from one thing to another and never really get good at anything.

This is one of the biggest causes of failure for real estate investors.
Problem # 3 - The minute you purchase a Real Estate course you are usually getting old information

Most of the time when you purchase a real estate course you will get a binder with some CD’s and DVD’s.  Most likely the course was put together by some self-professed guru that doesn’t even invest in real estate or is a hodgepodge of material that he has “borrowed” from other real estate gurus.  And, quite often, the material is 1-2 years old and the strategies won’t work in this tough market.

You see there is no incentive for these real estate gurus to continually update their course materials.  And when there is something new that has changed or information perhaps that may help you in your business there is no way for them to update you unless they re-ship you the course materials… and nobody is going to do that.  Of course, many of them will sell you a new course (upselling is rampant).

Think about it. How different is the real estate market today versus back in the 1990’s or even the early 2000’s. VERY DIFFERENT. Yet most of the courses that are being sold were created 3-5 years ago.

How are you going to succeed with information and material that is outdated?

Most of the marketing you get with real estate training courses out there is simply junk! It’s the same stuff passed around from guru to guru. You’ve seen the stuff… “We buy houses Cash” … We will buy your home in “9 days or less”.  I even have one of these web sites myself at www.msbuyshouses.com.
So What’s an Investor to do?

Well, there are quite a few things you can do.  Number one is don’t waste thousands of dollars on real estate investing courses and seminars.  There are plenty of free or very low cost seminars available, usually right in your home town so you don’t have to spend $$$ on travelling.

There are hundreds of inexpensive real estate investing books you can buy used on Amazon for only a few bucks.

There are also hundreds of real estate investing blogs, websites, article sites, forums, etc online where you can find out just about anything for free.

And finally, you need to focus on ONE strategy at a time.  And the strategy you should be focusing on now (in my opinion), because there’s little if no risk involved is being a real estate bird dog (property locator) or flipping (wholesaling) houses.

To Your Success

Mark Schwartz

Real Estate Technology Blog
The Internet Real Estate Center
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