Thinking about getting a Real Estate Mentor? Don’t Until You Do This…

As the real estate market has improved and the job market continues to frustrate people, real estate gurus are popping up everywhere and real estate investing along with finding a real estate mentor is looking more appealing to a lot of people. But what should you know about real estate investing before you make a huge monetary investment and the time that goes with it?

Let’s first clear the air about the naysayers all around you. These are usually well-meaning friends and family members who are less than encouraging. In some cases they are outright rude, almost like they don’t want you to succeed. However, what’s important is that you need to make the decision because you have to live with the result – fabulous, bad or outright ugly.

In this age of internet marketing and late night infomercials, it is easy to get very excited about what seems to be a way out of your current lifestyle. But frankly, don’t get the idea that real estate investing only requires you put up money and money comes back to you in baskets. So how can you tell if the real estate mentor in the TV infomercial, radio ad, at a local seminar or on the internet can really help you be successful as a real estate investor?

You have to do your homework and take your time to investigate what you are seeing and hearing. This investigation should take the form of looking at real estate blogs, internet complaints, Better Business Bureau (BBB) complaints and possibly most importantly, talking to the real estate mentor personally and actual Students who have purchased his program.

You should not have to make a decision as you sit in a seminar especially if the speaker has had you increase your credit card limit the previous day. You are possibly being set up for buying an outrageously expensive course that will not guarantee anything except a big credit card debt. You should not have to rush to the back of the room to pay because the real estate mentor is only allowing a few people to join or buy his program.

Some general guidelines that should be very important are:

1. How much real investing experience does the real estate “Mentor” have? A good amount is typically over 20 years. If he or she stayed successfully in the business that long, they likely know what they are doing. Much less than this and they have only seen good markets for the last 8 years.

2. Does the real estate Mentor teach one particular “niche” in real estate investing or does his or her program include many niches? If they are a one-niche person, the niche may not work in your area and your money will be wasted.

3. Do you have access to the real estate Mentor or are you delegated to a switchboard number to call for help? Some gurus use phone rooms to field questions that ultimately don’t get answered because it is “a legal item or your area is different”.

4. Does the real estate Mentor brag about the thousands of Students they have? If so, ask yourself how are they able to handle the personal attention that beginning investors need? Frankly, they can’t.

5. Can you see testimonials where the students talk about their personal experiences and how they did their deals? Too often I see testimonials from people leaving a seminar with high expectations that are later dashed – but it appears to be a great testimonial for the speaker that weekend. As a full time real estate investor, it’s easy for me to spot a testimonial where the property hasn’t been sold yet and there is really no profit – the deals aren’t done until they are closed!

6. Did the real estate mentor come into town on a fanfare of radio or TV ads offering a free seminar and then a 2 or 3 days seminar for a few hundred dollars? Was the two-day event a constant upsell to a full-blown mentoring program at an outrageous price? If you know the answer to this last question, it may be too late if you already purchased the program.

Ultimately, you’ll have to follow your instinct about the real estate mentor, make sure what you buy is inclusive for various types of investing and make sure you can get all the help you need and when you need it. If you feel you can’t get help when you need it, it’s likely you will not succeed no matter the price of the course – cheap or very expensive.

I am not trying to disparage any guru who is selling his mentoring program. What I am trying to do is make people aware that becoming a real estate investor requires hard work and preferably a real estate mentor who has a personal interest in your success. You can become an investor by listening to Youtube videos, reading blogs and talking to people locally. This is the hard way and one that requires a long time to get it done – if it gets done at all.

To your limitless success,

Dave Dinkel
Real Estate Mentor Program Founder