Recently I attended a "Real Estate Investors Seminar"

It was quite hokey, and was really just sales pitch with a lot of pump up, and very little information to try and grab your attention to get you to pay for their ridiculously priced advanced training and "Mentor program". From the beginning I could tell it was just a sales pitch, but thought that it might actually have some substance to it. Being an experienced real estate agent and investor this was not for me, but it might be good for some people who want to get into real estate investing.

A few days later, as a Realtor, I got a call from a guy claiming to be getting into real estate investing. He was going to be having his "Mentor" from out of town meet him to help him do some real estate investing. Naturally, I was curious of what he had to say, especially being that I'd just attended that seminar.

He had me send him a list of properties that I thought had some investment potential. So I did. A few days later he calls me back and says he'd like to meet me at my office to write up a few offers on some of these places.... At this point I had not shown them any houses.

So the investor and his "mentor" from out of town meet me at my office. I thought they wanted to perhaps talk to me about a few of the properties as a local real estate expert, and find out the real skinny on what they may be able to realistically get the properties for, and then set up a time to  see the properties. I do this with investors all the time. Instead they had 20 pre-written "letters of intent to purchase" for me to present to listing agents. This would be exciting for any real estate agent, but these offers were atleast half the value of the asking price. Most of these properties were owner occupied properties where the owner still lived in the property!

This strategy might work in Cleveland Ohio, but our market is still appreciating here. The average home sells for 99% of the listed price.

I feel bad for my new "real estate investors" who might actually be led to believe they can successfully invest in this manner. What kind of business is this real estate investor mentor trying to pull off, and can this method actually be successful? Why would somebody trust someone who has never been to, and has very limited knowledge of an individual market as a real estate mentor? I'd love to hear some comments on this one... Any one else ever dealt with so called "real estate investor" programs like this.....