1st Meetup was a Success

I went to my first REI meeting (it was on Meetup) and I must have gotten lucky.  I was referred to it by another BP member and was able to meet him at the meeting.  The group did a little socializing, "free" food to us, and then the quick introduction about what was going to happen.  They brought in a presenter who showed us how to estimate costs on a rehab.  Talk about interesting.  Not a single person got up or left for the entire presentation.  He talked fast and had a lot to go through, but he gave us a cheat sheet and even offered to give us the presentation and a Google spreadsheet to help find tune it.  As he said, it's only rough, but it'll be close and get you in the ball park.  

The presenter was a Real Estate investor himself ran the General Contracting on the side.  There wasn't hardly any sales pitch.  "If we were to do this, this is what we'd do and why".  He didn't bad mouth anyone and even warned us of the different things specialists might try to get away with (general/unspecific wording in contracts, using "reference inspectors" (friends) to inspect the work to be done and once completed which they can be buddy/buddy and not do a 100% job.  Hold money until inspections are completed for work done to ensure it's done right.  Good tips and such like that.

Afterwards there was a sales pitch by another person invited to the gathering, but it was maybe 5 minutes long, at the end, and 1/2 the people didn't feel like sticking around because it was getting late.  

For 2 hours of my time, I think it was well worth it.  I know it gave me more confidence at what I could do since they also had a few of the people providing the free food and location simply introduced where they said "we do this, if you have questions or are looking for someone, I'll be here after the meeting" and that was it.  It gave me a lot more information and a heck of an head start on getting a proper plan in place.  The no-pressure environment of this meeting was great and I didn't walk out of there feeling like I was being told to buy something.