Multi family education program: a scam/MLM?

[April C.]

I attended a weekend training program offered by a multi family investment club and found that at least 2/3 of their training was about selling their courses and advertising for their sponsors/partner companies. The founder talked about successful student cases and encouraged people to join their program as students for a few thousand bucks and more... their lower level students get to invest in the deals offered by the higher level of students...and most of the syndications done by higher level students raised funds from lower level students..

It really sounds like a multi level marketing for me.

I have several concerns about such education programs:

1) are their teaching materials really worth the money? I mean, real estate investment is not a secret..anyone can learn it by reading books and practicing in real life (sure people need capital but we need capital anyways with or without attending such education programs)...

more importantly,

2) do they just do internal turnovers of the capital and properties? What I mean is that, first, the syndicators raise money from other members; then, in a few years, syndicators only sell to other syndicators in the same group although they claim to sell on the market (they do but their "classmates" buy such properties from them "in the market"....therefore most of the capital and properties only turn around within their system...

Please tell me if I am overreacting...

[Jonathan Greene]

You had me at "I attended a weekend training program offered by a multi-family investment club." I didn't need to read anymore. If you are holding weekend training programs, there is going to be an ask and it's going to be bigger than the free lead-in course designed to hold the true value for the big payments. It's like when someone offers you a free timeshare, you know it's not that. You aren't overreacting, it's all MLM all the time. The best value you will receive is one-on-one and in small personal masterminds where there is no ask on top of an ask. You don't need to pay for coaching or mentoring until you are doing business and want to expand it and take it to the next level. You can learn everything to get started for free here in the forums, on podcasts, and by building one-to-one relationships here and at REI meetups.