All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Lee

Ultimately, I was able to get a refund.

On the subject of gurus...

I am willing to pay for education or to learn from other in the industry, e.g. through a local real estate investment association, but so far, the impression I have from those selling real estate training as "gurus" is that unless their training has transparency, such as a forum for reviewing the quality of the training, it is "buyer beware".

Any "training" without live interaction probably shouldn't sell for much more than a well written book.

Dean's bread and butter is now sales and marketing. He will tell you about how great of a profit opportunity the internet has provided in the ability to convince people to pay for information. Unfortunately, I have found that any time you need more than a few minutes to pitch a product (or more than 3 pages of marketing material), it is most likely a scenario in which more effort is going into convincing you of the product's value than has gone into generating value in the product. I believe marketing has its place, but once you start to see the pattern of internet marketing for products that aren't sold on marketplaces with real customer reviews, you will be able to identify the products to avoid.

For example, one of Dean's products was pitched via a faux webcast. I say "faux" because although it is clearly pre-recorded, visitors are directed to an interface that gives the impression of being able to ask questions that will be answered by those seen on-screen. Then the chat window is saturated by canned "this is great! where do I sign up?!" comments to give the illusion of a sea of eager consumers.

Millionaire Success Habits, on the other hand, is sold in book stores and is a great read. You'll find that Dean does very little marketing for this book. Instead, he leverages the book to market other products that may not pass the same 

Just my two cents.

Hello BPers!

I had a poor experience with a real estate guru's sales tactics recently. As I prefer to steer clear of defamation (I have seen a few cases of borderline slander here on BP) whenever possible, I'm omitting the name of the guru for now. I am more interested in discussing the particular sales tactic that concerns me to see if anybody else has run into this and if it is even legal.

I recently bought a real estate education package that was said to include tickets to an event thrown by the guru who sold the package. After gaining access to the educational material, I received an email congratulating (ugh sales, am I right?) me on the purchase of the tickets. The email stated that the tickets were "100% paid for" and that I only needed to go online to RSVP to confirm that I would attend the event. Clicking through to the RSVP form, I see that additional payment was required to RSVP.

I inquired about the fee and was told that it was in response to previous events in which ticket-holders didn't show up, so they felt the materials that had been printed for the attendees amounted to waste. I somehow doubt environmental concerns are driving this seat reservation fee.

Now I understand that because the ticket was offered as part of a package, there will be a higher rate of no-shows due to interest in only a piece of the package. However, I can think of no other "ticket" that can't be used until additional fees (that were not disclosed up front) are paid. The closest example I can think of would be a tax levied by certain international airports and not collected with the ticket sale itself, but even in that case, the airline generally discloses that a fee will be owed at the airport.

So far, I'm having trouble getting my money back. Is this even legal?

Jonathan

@Jerry W., as far as I know, the firm discussed here would simply recommend an LLC for holding a rental property. When there are multiple rental properties in question, more than one property can reside in the same LLC, or properties can be divided across multiple LLCs as many other sources on biggerpockets have advocated. Anderson Business Advisors seems to prefer more separation of property across business entities than I think is warranted for many investors given the availability of affordable insurance policies, but that topic has been covered in other threads already.

With respect to trusts, I have seen this advocated to facilitate transfer of rental business into the LLC. For example, if the property has a conventional mortgage, and title is transferred to the LLC, it could prompt the bank to consider executing the mortgage's due-on-sale clause, but transferring title to a trust would not raise the same red flag. I have not seen any claim that the trust provides liability protection on its own.

Any additional "secret sauce" structure being referenced by this thread is openly disclosed on YouTube by the founders of the firm and can be adopted without the need to pay for their services. For example, the notion of a "holding" LLC (in a state with charging order protection) that owns other LLCs (in the states where the rental properties are located) is not unique to this firm, but it is certainly promoted more dominantly by this firm than other sources I've come across. The main pieces missing for the DIY-er would be (a) the lack of insight into whether these templates are suitable for a specific business case, e.g. state-specific legal ramifications, and (b) the lack of legal forms such as appropriate articles of organization or trust documents. If you're interested in the overall "holding LLC" structure but have another source of business and legal advice to help fill in the gaps, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to move forward. One notable exception might be with respect to starting a C corp for the sole purpose of flipping homes, as most CPAs I know would push back on that route.

I would hope that people considering using their services would be doing so with the understanding that their advisor would custom-tailor a solution for their specific circumstances, but I have the impression that the founders feel the sample structures described online are flexible enough to serve as starting points for the majority of their clients.