At the real estate classes we are constantly told to stay away from real estate investors and their illegal scams.

A. he is completely scamming you, and there is no advice anyone can give to get your money back.

No one is going to fake it and lose a license, get fined or get nailed in some fraudulent scam, IMO. :)

If I am calling from the other side of the country, I wonder how many sellers will not want to do business with me because I am not local, or because they want a face to face interaction, or think that I might be a scam?

He's a scam artist looking to make more on the project than we had agreed by over-improving and over-charging.Either way, I would have had him off my project in about 10 seconds.Did you have a written contract?

After doing some research, I found that the return address was actually the Post Office and that this was a common housing scam.

I've spent a lot of money on real estate courses from real estate "guru's" and some of those courses seemed like scams that haven't helped me at all no matter how hard I worked at it so hopefully with the information on this website and the real world advice from all of you I can finally take those first steps into real estate investing!

The quake insurance is a bit of a scam.

Or suggest a method to help me find one - and please don't say to look on a review site, which all seem to be scams, or to ask people I know who they use - because most of the people I know either do their own taxes or go to a place like H&R Block.And, as a final note, I am curious - how much does it typically cost to have a CPA do your taxes (either annually or quarterly if you are in the situation of having to file quarterly?)

But a website that's obviously a do-it-yourself job can undermine credibility since it makes you look either cheap or broke, neither of which makes a good impression.A professional-looking site gives the impression that you're actually in business and are not some sort of fly-by-night scam.