All Forum Posts by: Daniel Ryu

Great job presenting on Kansas City at the last meetup!

I wrote a little recap of it: http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/166167-how-one-of-brandon-turners-worst-real-estate-experiences-turned-into-one-of-our-best

I know you're going to find BiggerPockets to be an excellent resource!

Hahaha.. I wish I could stalk you @Ben Leybovich  and find out everything you know about real estate and creative financing!

I did have my title picked out before I saw yours though.. I swear!!

I was writing this up when I received an email saying that @Ben Leybovich just put up a post. If Ben thinks it's a good time to post, then so do I ^^ Especially if this post is also gonna have @Brandon Turner 's name in the title! 

So here's the latest success story that I wanted to share with the BiggerPockets community.. a community that continues to help me and the others out here in Korea..

On Saturday, January 3rd, the Seoul Real Estate Investing Meet Up had our third meeting.

In a few short months, we are proud to say our membership has grown to over 70 members (online) and over 100 FB likes. I'm sure other MeetUps have more impressive numbers but considering we originally thought it would just 4 or 5 of us meeting at Holly's Coffee in Itaewon, we've been very pleased to see it take off. 

Of course, this MeetUp was a little different, a little more special, because in addition to featuring great fellow BP members as speakers, we had one of BP's Grand PooBahs (I wonder if Brandon's ever been describe that way before??)

None other than the man from the title himself - Brandon Eff'in Turner! 

Needless to say we were fairly stoked that he agreed to speak with our little group.

Through the power of the internets, Skype and an overhead projector, we were able to beam his smiling countenance onto the screen for all to see, like Big(gerPockets) Brother watching over us from some Sci Fi flick... only a kind, gentle Big Brother with a beard, a mustache and cool microphone.

He then generously answered questions from our members for the next 30 mins.

It was incredible that even though Brandon was halfway around the world, it felt like he was in the room with us. 

Of course, given this unique opportunity, we had to ask him: 

What's one of HIS worst REI experiences? 

(To view his answer, check out the link below. Warning: Do not view while eating..)

At our meetup we also had two other awesome speakers.

Fellow BP member @Jacob Michaels and his wife Victoria shared with us their strategies for getting great deals in the beautiful, scenic Sokcho area (located near Mt Sarak) by taking advantage of “Quick Sales” as they are called in Korea. They also explained how they are able to purchase apartments using everyone’s favorite - OPM (Other People’s Money)... but without "traditional" private equity loans and ... without any interest! Pretty interesting strategy that's Korea-specific and that has led to 15 transactions. Definitely would qualify for as "creative."

We also had newly minted BP member, @Josh McNicoll, (Yes, we encourage all our MeetUp members to join the BP Community) talking about his experiences in Kansas City, Missouri, and his strategy for vetting properties, getting them inspected, getting pictures taken of them, and working on deals, all from the comforts of his home, 6,500 miles away in Seoul.

Overall, we felt it was a great success. I want to thank the BP community for helping to connect all of us out here in Korea and make all of this possible. @Joshua Dorkin 

& @Brandon Turner - thanks for all the hardwork on the site and podcast. 

(And of course, thanks to the other members of the BP team! We know it takes a team to make BP successful..)

The world has truly gotten smaller thanks to BP. Even though BP HQ might be thousands of miles away in Colorado, it’s helped connect us expat out here in Korea and allowed us to create this space to help each other learn and also continue spreading the BP ethos to all reaches of the globe. (We’ve had visitors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Bali at different MeetUps, making us a truly international group.)

Our MeetUp features different ethnicities, different native languages, different countries we’re all living in, but we all share a common love of real estate.

(BP also helped Ben and me complete our first real estate transaction in Florida - from finding partners, to finding contracts... All done online from Korea without ever having visited Florida, let alone the house we bought. More on that in a future post!)

Thanks again BP community!

And now here’s that link of Brandon’s Worst Investing Experience. It's DEFINITELY the funniest story you'll hear today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqgZTwwu_2Q&feature...

And a shout out to @Sandra Roddy 

(Fellow BP member and now part of our MeetUp)

The Seoul Real Estate MeetUp Organizers:

@John Van Uytven @Benjamin Hauser Dan Ryu

And now some Pics:

Group Shot!

That's me.. we did a combo of interviews and presentations.

Action shot!

 @Jacob Michaels discussing he and his wife Victoria's investment strategies.

John getting ready to interview Brandon!

Josh McNicoll talking about Kansas City

We may not have the biggest membership, but we might have the youngest member! Victoria with her and Jacob's adorable, youngest daughter Claire. (I hope I spelled that right..)

Enjoying a drink after it's all over....

To be a true real estate investor, you need to drink Single Malt Scotch Whiskey, right?

You guys are awesome!

We'll keep you posted ^^

@Brandon Turner 

I think the people out here would be really thrilled if you could do that!

We appreciate your support!

Maybe we can get @Joshua Dorkin to join as well?? ^^

Either way, we'll keep you guys in the loop for the next one! Thanks again. 

@John Van Uytven 

 Thanks for the kind words! It's been a great team effort ^^

@Brandon Turner @Joshua Dorkin 

Joshua & Brandon, I know you've heard it many times before, but you've done so much for real estate investors worldwide! If there's any little thing I can do to help expand the Bigger Pockets brand and raise awareness, I'm happy to oblige! 

We have a system down for our meetups - greeting new members (sometimes with a video intro), post meeting, etc, and we'll be working on creating a set format for our meetups (we may model the BP podcast ^^). So if anyone's interested in sharing ideas on building strong meetups, drop me a line.

@Joshua Springer 

Sounds great! You'd be welcome out here - I have a few buddies from Ohio actually. Love that we have so many people wanting to support our group. 

---

There is a lot of interest in Real Estate among Koreans and Asians. Asians tend to have more savings (to rent an apartment, for example, most people have to put down a deposit of $10,000 or more in Seoul. That's just a small studio. To rent a 3 bedroom house? Over $200,000.. Not to own.. just to rent!) so they have assets to invest, but property prices out here are just so incredibly high. It's amazing the reactions I get when I tell people about property prices in the US.

BiggerPockets Asia anyone?? Not sure how that would work ^^ but I do know this - Since everyone out here learns English, Asia technically has more English speakers than the rest of the world.

Thanks again for all the support. We hope to continue our progress.

Greetings to the Bigger Pockets readers..

Just an update from our latest, Dec 6 Meetup

Looking at the headline, you might be thinking, "Meh!"

But @John Van Uytven  , @Benjamin Hauser , and I are really proud of how our small meetup ("let's grab some coffee since we all in happen to be in Seoul and are BP members) has continued to grow!

Thanks to John's decision to create a MeetUp page ("..maybe we'll get 2 other people to join us.."), we've now had 2 Official MeetUps and 1 informal Happy Hour.

In each of our events, adding to the 'international flavor' of our group, we've had at least one visitor from out of Korea in attendance.

At the first one, we had Andrew Kim, Investor from Hong Kong, who had just closed on his first purchase of a one room officetel in Seoul.

At our happy hour, fellow BP members @Maxwell Lee and his now wife @Kelly L. , visiting Korea from Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a month-long, world-travel vacation / honeymoon showed up.

And at our most recent one, held on Dec 6, we had international investor Rose, president of the United Group based in Taiwan, who helps bring Asian money into the US, UK, and other places. She started out investing in Taiwan, branched out to the US, and now's looking to invest in construction in Myanmar, which I was surprised to learn, has a population of 60 million.

To accommodate our growing membership, this time we held the meeting at a TOZ - a place that rents out room space for about $3 / hour / per person. (You can see fellow BP Member @Jacob Michaels with the baby on his lap ^^)

John gave a presentation on investment strategies: "Hedgehog vs Fox" as well as a workshop on Goal Setting.

As part of our strategy to provide value to our members, we send out detailed notes from each meeting, including member profiles to help everyone keep track of who's doing what and who's interested in what: (example below)

And we're hoping to build our Facebook page (which has grown to almost 100 LIKES) in order to build more credibility for the group and attract more people we can network with and share resources with. 

In keeping with the BP ethos, we don't want our meetups to turn into a pitch forum:

(from our Meetup About Us page)

So far we've been pleasantly surprised with the results. As @Joshua Dorkin mentioned on the podcast (or it might have been Brandon), our group is pretty active and we get almost half the membership to attend our meetings.

We're even thinking about branching out into subgroups for people who want to play Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Game (unsurprisingly at least 4 people have the $250 board game!!), planning a field trip to look at real estate in Korea, and we created a lending library for people to share real estate books with each other through a Google Doc we set up.

Anyways, if you're going to be in Korea anytime soon and want to join our next meetup, let us know! We might even set up a special meetup just for your visit!

And for anyone living in Korea... Hope to see you at the next one!

Of course, all thanks goes to Bigger Pockets for setting up this website that allows real estate investors from all over the world connect! 

To learn more about us (Press here) - link to our MeetUp Page.

@Dustin Karns 

Yeah.. RSVP on the Meet Up page and let us know if you can make it.

Hope to see you out there!

@Bryan C.  who I've met with regularly out here. 

In Florida, my JV partners and I are looking at SFR buy and holds in Florida.

I hope it works out for you. Feel free to PM me anytime or ask questions here. I'm a newbie so not sure how much help I can be. But I love talking real estate and creative problem solving. Take it easy. 

@Debra Leeson Hope you do make it out! It would be great to see more BP members out here in Korea!