Lifestlyes Unlimited Good Or Con?

Question

Hello All. I was basically, looking for a trustworthy/reputable School and or online classes to learn from. I have been listening too "LifeStyles Unlimited" 1490-New York and the radio personality makes good business sense, in most cases with real estate. Has anyone attended the $700 class(s) or online and did the program actually help buying a home/multifamily succeeded thru their program? Or is the info all smoke and mirrors to get you money? Or can I get started on my own, from knowing what already know, but need a helping start...

thanks Jerry

Geode Pratt · Answer

Hopefully I can provide a little better answer than the one above.

As a Lifestyles FFP member, which was $500 for 3 years when I joined, (and for single family only) I have been to several meetings, the 2-day seminar, spoken to the "mentors", etc.

First of all, Lifestyles is a TEXAS company. They started in Houston and have offices in Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. They may have opened offices in other cities as well. In my opinion, if you are looking to buy and hold (rentals), either single family or multifamily, and are a new investor, and in Texas, their minimum membership is well worth the money. The general lessons they teach, documentation available, and overall approach are, I believe, solid fundamentals for long term cash flow. No preaching of get rich quick here. With that said, I have no clue about their knowledge of markets outside of Texas. They seem to have quieted down a lot here in Dallas lately. I really thought they retracted to focus on Houston again, but maybe they are making a national push now.

They do have a few membership options, some of which supposedly include bus tours, spoon feeding of deals, and multifamily mentoring. I have no experience with these programs, as they were out of my price range.

For someone who has never done any investing, and wants to buy and hold, I think their cheap program is probably worth the $500 or $700. Once you've taken that step out and own 2 or 3 properties, downloaded the forms you need, watched the videos, etc., you have probably outgrown them or at least that membership. At that point, maybe upgrading is worth considering.

If it wasn't for Lifestyles Unlimited, I don't know if I would have ever bought my first rental property, much less the 2 that followed it, so for me it was well worth it.

As far as the single family mentors go, I was less than impressed. Yes,   they will answer a few questions here and there (sometimes taking up to  a  week to respond), but in my experience the answers were very  generic.  When I decided I wanted to start flipping, they refused to  discuss it unless I  upgraded to a $6000 membership. Since then, I have  pretty much written  them off. They have revamped their membership  levels recently and seems  they are offering MUCH less for the FFP  program than they did before. I  noticed a lot of the training videos I  had access to a year ago are no  longer on the website. I'm guessing  that's now in the $6000 package.

Again, this is all simply my experience from the single family side of things. I had no interest in going into multifamily, so if that's your thing, your experience may be different.

I noticed you are in New York, so if that's where you want to invest, I would suggest you talk to them and make sure they actually have members/mentors in your area who know that market and interview those people. Because, when Del and Steve start talking about a bread and butter deal of buying a $100k house for $60k, that may not be the least bit relevant in your market.

Hope this helps. As with anything, they key is going out and doing it. No amount of education is worthwhile if you don't get off the couch.

Good luck!

Ben Hughes · Answer

Geode pretty much said it all.  I am a member as well.  I did go in at the upgraded price.  While I learned a bunch I do feel they oversold the program.  If you have a good cash reserve you can really do it without any hand holding.  They don't teach wholesaling or anything to raise funds for investing so you must have it up front to do what they teach.  I joined 2 years ago with $30k and they said that was plenty if I followed their plan.  I never got a deal through them like promised.  Several deals fell through as their people made the deals look great but all turned out to need more than $30k down.  I would just find yourself a team and get the basic membership if I had to do it again.  Hope that helps.  Message me or post here if you have any other questions about them.

Ben Hughes · Answer

Just curious, how did he get run out of town Joe?  They still have a location there.  Del is still the person who heads it up.

Bryan N. · Answer

BP = Free.  You already made money without an expensive program!!!

Account Closed · Answer

If Del Walmsley is still involved in Life Styles Unlimited, you need to hold your money and run. He tried his scam  here Dallas and got run out of town.

Joe Gore

Andy Collins · Answer

I'm a former member, I believe in the Lifestyles system, if you follow  it (at least in my area) you will be successful,,the overall concept can be used anywhere with some local knowledge used to adjust the home price your targeting

andy

Jerry Jaco · Answer

Thank you All, gentleman for your input. I did try the search for this exact topic, but seemed to be out of luck.

As for the other two inputs, thank you, again. I am looking for properties outside of NY, since NY real estateTaxes & business Taxes- are the second highest and rental income is limited. Plus, I believe in buying low and making a common sensed monthly profit. In my area, One of the ways is to buy at minimum $300K as flip for 50 to 75% flip profits. As for renting, again the home has to be cheap! The second is to buy HighEnd homes and flip or rent, you need a balloon loan for that and a hefty down pymt.

With respect to LifeStyles, I'll need to investigate further... I will not buy the $6000 package, since there is No promises/guarantees for ROI. If they held your hands regardless of where someone resides, then I can see a possible added investment in ones education and not having to recreate the costly mistakes...

I can be reached at demjernikki@gmail.com for further help, if any has the time. You never know.

Jerry