what about NAREI.com?
About a year and a half ago, i was sitting pretty on a pile of cash wondering where to invest it. I had read a book by someone called Mark Stephen Garrisson called Unlimited Real Estate Profit. It was slightly better than a fluff piece and it went into some minor detail about market cycles and said people should buy in undervalued areas that were starting to see increase in prices. [well it didnt exactly says that but it mentioned fancy terms like absorption and expansion]. However it didnt say where to invest. The author did suggest I check out the website narei.com.
At NAREI, they offered buying tours in undervalued markets for $8k. Basically they put you on a bus and show you around the city they think you should be buying in and hook you up with agents to buy properties and also property management. I thought it was a good idea although a little steep. $8k per person, 12 people per tour, 12 tours per year is almost a million dollars for the promoters. Plus they get a cut from the commissions and property management. Hmm…sounds even better than investing itself! I did some more research online, trying to find people who had been on the buying tour. I did find a handful of people, all of which said it was bogus and that it wasn’t worth it. Also to get on the buying tour, you had to buy a set of educational materials for $500 so everyones “on the same page”. The disgruntled tourists[thats what you call people on tours right 
] said the materials were “godawful”.
So I decided to pass and decided to do my own research on where and how to invest.
But thats a topic for another day.
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June 20th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Gee, you sound like one of the hundreds of lazy people that think there is no work involved in real estate investing, and that want everything handed to them on a platter, FOR FREE! Including hotels and meals. You say you found several people that said the tour was bogus and not worth it. Did you bother looking for the thousands that have been on tour and have been successfully investors ever since?
And where has your personal research led you? If you have been one tenth as successful as those who went on tour I would be very surprised. I’m truly sorry you never botherd to look for the true story.
June 20th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
pity you’re too cowardly to put your email address in. I would’ve told you I’ve replied and I welcome you’re comments.
Its obvious you’ve never read a single one of my real estate posts, otherwise wouldn’t said what you did.
I tried very hard to find someone who could say nice things about NAREI and I didn’t. But I did find several people who went on the tour and said that it was was a rippoff.
I called Mark Garrisson and asked him what exactly I was paying for. I did not get a satisfactory answer.
I did my own research, and I ended up investing very very successfully without spending 10-15k on some trip. My wife and I flew to south east asia and spent 2 weeks in several countries and still spent less than the cost of the buying tour, so justifying the cost with hotels and food is bogus.
While buying tours may work for people with excess money and maybe not enough time to do research, I find that people who sell tours are usually doing it to get rich quickly. $10k per person with 10 people in a trip is $100k per month. Do 10 a year and you’ve made $1 million.
Most of the people who sell these sort of tours make their money from the tours and not from doing any deals. All the deals they do are purely cosmetic and act as a promotional tool for their real money maker – the buying tour.
I’m sorry you’re such a brash idiot who didn’t bother to read any posts or even nicely say that you disagree.