Pretty soon forums will be all that is left.
In GA and AL, quite a few have closed doors and a major one here in Atlanta has issues
Since I live in a small town forums is all I have anyway.
San Antonio is the same. We used to get couple of hundred people show up at every meeting. the last meeting I went to had 20 people at most.
SAD!
So many uninformed investors. We never really had to worry about competition when the economy was “good” and now we definitely don’t have to worry. I just had an investor unsubscribe from my list because he wanted to go to Commercial… I also saw this website where these guys are saying Residential Real Estate is Dead… lol
If they only new the truth to creating wealth in this market. Oh well… Seems the more posts that go up in this forum, are people that either have or are looking for the right answer. Which is why I’m glad to be apart of it. You always need to surround yourself with like-minded individuals who are making it happen everyday!
all that being the case, now is the time to really get focused on being prepared for when the market rebounds in a year or two or three. How are you guys adjusting tho the changes?
somewhere within the fall of the reias is a great opportunity for those people left standing.
The more important question is WHY are the REIAs dying? Most are assuming it’s because of the bad market and lack of interest in the group. With some, I’d say that may be the case, but probably not most.
An example of one that died before the crash. A group of five investors, myself and four others met a couple of times, liked the company and decided to start a REIA in the area since there wasn’t one here. We ran it for four years, with the last two, only myself and one of the original 5 left to run the group.
During the last year that we ran it, we informed the group that we were “giving” the REIA over to the group to manage and that they must elect officers/board members, etc. in order to run/manage it the next year. At the last meeting before the end of that year, they finally managed to get 2-3 people to grudgingly agree to manage it. It lasted only one more year before “officially” dying, though during that last year, attendance dropped from 30-40 to 5-10 within a couple of months.
The point is that the group was only effective as long as the management of the group was effective. There were alot of people that wanted a REIA, but very, very few that really wanted to run/manage it.
I suspect that the reason that so many REIAs are closing up is because the management is tired of doing it and no one else is willing to take the reins rather than from a lack of interested people wanting to attend.
Raj
I agree. Sadly, even during the good times the ones here in GA were not managing their affairs as best they could. Maybe we’ll get a bailout :cool
Yeah the REIA’s are going down. I expect you are going to see more EXCHANGE MEETINGS like they were back in the 90’s. There are a few old ones that are still active and kicking BUTT. But then again, they don’t seem to have many people Hawking there books and tapes either. Kinda makes you wonder…huh
The sad thing is that I have been marketing houses at my local reias for years and have never sold anything as a result (I do better thru referrals). Most of the other wholesalers I know say the same thing. I guess misery just loves company so that’s why we keep going back.
The problem has many causes, to name few (some mentioned above)
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Poor management and communication. Running an REI club is a job, and you need to be constantly marketing it and getting new members to offset dropouts. You also need to have excellent communication with the members.
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REI Clubs turned into profit centers and organized. REI Clubs have their own organization that meets every year. 2009 convention will be in San Antonio where they all get together and speakers from all over the country come over to pitch their seminars.
The club gets 50% of all sales by the speakers, and it became the norm to have a national speaker pitch his product. They are no longer a networking arena, but a sales arena. You pay to listen to someone who wants to sell you. People are tired of that.
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Majority of REI Club members are want to be investors working full time job and thought they can make tons of money from the Real Estate boom. When the market turned, they think there is no more boom, and no more opportunities.
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Economy took its toll on many people who had to take jobs. I know some in my area who were rehabbing 4 houses a month who went and got a job to pay the bills due to the lending market.