A Cautionary Tail of Tomorrow ... 

There are going to be a TON of short sales gurus over the next few months. Some are going to mislead you. This cautionary tale is to encourage you to be diligent, respectful, of high moral character, and aware of the laws in the state in which you intend to operate. 

Perhaps that title is a bit inflammatory. Not everyone who is a teacher is a "can't do". I myself have been teaching for many years and I don't teach much because I do not have much time. Let this serve as a prediction for the coming weeks and months with more and more mortgage folks, real estate folks and the like losing a portion of their business I believe we will see a temporary upswing in the number of gurus on the market.

Certainly there are those of you here who have closed hundreds or thousands of deals and occasionally see a new name pop up on the guru circuit who is a client. I have, boy have I ever! I once saw a client's name come up on the guru circuit for a $40 per seat seminar where he was selling $199 CD sets of his program. I know this man. When I say I know this man I mean I know how many checks he has written and how many have bounced. I know how many properties he has purchased and how many late payments he has had. In fact, I know this man's finances better than he himself.

What I saw him advertising for blew me away. So I called him and asked if it would be okay if one of my staff members (one who had worked on one of his two investment loans) sat in on the class just to see how it went. She reported back that there were approximately 50 people in attendance and they lined up to buy his CDs and books.

The man was teaching on "Building A Multi-Million Dollar Portfolio". Well, maybe he could teach others how to do it. But he wasn't even close. Somehow learning from someone who hasn't even come close to what I am wanting to learn from them charging me that kind of money and them not even knowing what hurdles and speed bumps I may encounter kind of ruffles my feathers.

So what is this blog posting supposed to do? It is supposed to tell you to check out the credentials of the "mentor", "guru" or "trainer" before you start laying out hundreds or thousands of dollars for information that likely is incorrect to the point it could endanger your physical freedom. Some gurus have methods they teach which are absolutely illegal. 

To me the number of books sold, the number of times appearing on CNN or the number of people who have attended your seminar is worthless. Seriously. Just because you have an advertisement on late night cable and offer to send me your free book means nothing to me. I once ordered a free book from a "Short Sale Guru". Once I received the book I participated in a "free conference call". Both were a horrendous waste of my time. Since I have been involved in several dozen short sales or more I, hoping to be further educated and not looking to be critical, was completely blown away by the outright misleading information this man was providing. The cost to enter his program? As much as $30,000 (that's THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS)! And I know people have done it. I also did a little research. He did only a handful of real estate transactions that I could discover prior to his becoming a guru. Granted, after he became a guru his name came up much more often (probably because he makes himself a "partner" with the investors who put up the cash and credit).

ANYWAY ... just BE CAREFUL about what the guru really knows and doesn't know. If you learn something from a book or a seminar and then people actually IN the business tell you that's crazy or worse you need to listen to the people in the industry.