REIs what to expect

[Tiffany Smith]

I live in St. Joseph MO, an hour north of Kansas City.  St. Joseph is a relatively small town with no real estate investor groups that I am aware of.  I am considering attending the next MAREI meeting.  MAREI is an investors group in Kansas City.  I am looking forward to speaking with people involved in real estate investing and networking, but I am not sure what to expect.  Is this going to be some sort of sales pitch or are REIs truly beneficial to someone like myself who has a couple of rentals but is looking  to do more and possibly other types of real estate investing?  Any feedback will be greatly appreciated!

[Kim Tucker]

Tiffany - I own and run MAREI and wanted to give you a heads up about the July meeting and our regular meetings.

We have 4 different types of meetings:

Local Speakers - with no sales pitch other than their services.  These can be awesome presentations.  But they are not regular speakers and don't have any further training to share.  So if you want to learn how to be a better landlord or wholesaler or whatever they are teaching, then you just have to keep taking them for coffee if they will go so you can learn what they know.  First meeting is FREE if you RSVP 

National Speakers - they do have a home study course / and or a boot camp and often they will come into MAREI for a full day at a really cheap price to teach. These folks are here to teach and you will leave with some real gems. However, you can't learn everything in 90 minutes so they do have a home study course or a boot camp. They are way cheaper and usually focused on a single topic rather than the traveling circuses that come to KC about once a quarter and get folks to pay tens of thousands for training, only to tell them to go to the local REIA meeting. First meeting is FREE if you RSVP

#AllStarNetworking - born out of our July meeting falling on the All Star Baseball Game.  There is no speaker, there are over 40 sponsors and local experts who are assembled to answer your questions on just about any topic.  Cost to attend is a $5 donation at the door to Harvesters.

#SpeedNetworking for Toys for Tots - this is our December meeting - it is a speed networking event and the cost to attend this is one, new, unwrapped toy or a $10 Donation to Toys for Tots.

We have been holding MAREI meetings since January of 2004.

Our regular speaker meeting will include vendors and networking from 6 o 7.  A guest speaker from 7 to 9ish and then for those that stick around, a meeting after the meeting in the bar.  Pizza's and Flatbreads are amazing - just order before the grill closes at 10pm