How many have used Steve Cook before?
Do you recommend purchasing his Wholesale Program? If not then who’s program do you recommend?
Need help soon. 
I recommend no seminar/packages for a beginner.
Instead go to your local public library. Start checking out their beginning real estate books and especially the CD’s that you can listen to in your car.
You listen while you are driving around and educating yourself on local real estate by following up on ads.
Real estate may not be for you. If you love it, you will glom onto those books and your ears will be burning from the tapes. If you don’t love it, then you haven’t wasted any money. Go back to your salaried day job.
Good luck. We were all beginners once. But many, many have tried and found it wasn’t for them. And that’s ok.
Furnishedowner
Great Post! Jump in with both feet and get started…
Everything you need to know about whosaling is available for free on the internet if you are willing to look. I would research like crazy, join my local REI club, become a bird dog or look for a wholesaler to partner with. Or once you get a good grasp of what is required, write out your plan of action, and start doing it.
There is a whole lot you can learn on your own and do on your own without expensive seminars if you are motivated and determined to succeed. Once you have a foundational knowledge of wholesaling, you will be better able to evaluate courses and seminars yourself, and pick what will be most useful to help you grow.
Remember, while education is a crucial component of your success, nobody is going to pay you for being educated. As a wholsaler you get paid for finding motivated sellers and making good deals.
I am also a newbie…trying to figure out what to invest in. Everyone is telling me NOT to buy anyone’s course. I’m confused…HHHMMMM. I am leaning towards wholesaling, looking at Cameron Dunlap or Sean Terry. (One is HUD the other is foreclosures). Cameron Dunlap’s program is $1,000 and Sean’s is 1/2 the price, but Cameron’s program seem’s to be much more complete and high tech with his iflip software. I have posted on another forum to see if anyone has used Cameron’s program, but no one has responded. Hope this helps! Good luck!!!
Who’s “everyone?”
You’ve got about two choices when it comes to learning the ropes. Hard knocks, or a system.
Unfortunately, before I started I bought lots of “conceptually oriented” seminars that assumed you were already in the business. They would say things like, “Get an option and flip the property.” Really? Just get an option? Of course ‘getting an option’ meant understanding what was contained in an option; how much option money was legally binding; how long an option could go before the IRS considered it to be a long term financing scheme; and then the art of setting a price based on a gamble of future value. Pffft!!!
Same with flipping houses. How much detail do you need to get started? If you’re starting from scratch you NEED some basic training, or a hard hide. After that, you need to put what you know to work.
My dad and uncle started investing in their spare time the “hard knocks way” (this was even harder considering how little spare time they each had). They had zero training. I can’t even describe the horror stories they encountered trying to “home depot” their investing career.
However, he and my uncle trolled for rental houses in C-minus grade neighborhoods in Sacramento. They had little more than a Thomas Guide, a purchase agreement, a blank deed, some Scotch tape, a sheet of carbon paper, a yellow note pad, and a Bic pen to start with. No cell phones, GPS, fax machines, computers or even cars with A/C. You know how hot Sacto can get in July?
They kept knocking on doors, calling on ads, and making offers. They started out the conventional way of financing with banks. Well, that only went so far. After a while, you run out of money, and then credit, or both.
At some point they started offering sellers notes, taking over loans, giving seller’s moving money, and trying to give the sellers what they needed while they took everything else.
There are more elegant ways to find property today, but it all comes down to uncovering sellers with a problem that can be solved by selling their house …and making offers. It’s not brain surgery.
Meantime, the prospecting m.o. my dad and uncle relied on was strictly dealing with FSBOs. That is ‘hard work.’ There’s way fewer FSBO’s ready to deal than listed properties. But listed properties had all sorts of overhead to cover when buying. This meant bigger down payments. Well, big down payments are for suckers! :shocked :anon
But when you have a goal of owning enough property to retire on, and big down payments are part of the deal? It’s gonna be a long slog.
I remember hearing stories of giving sellers just enough money to pay for their moving van’s gas. Many times the sellers just took small, unsecured notes from my Dad and uncle.
Meantime, ‘we’ bought and sold buses and sold crap at swap meets to come up with investing money. Before this, my uncle bought his first house for 70% of it’s market value from an out of town, tired, owner from LA that was camping on the floor in a sleeping bag.
My uncle made an “amateur” 70% offer, and the guy said ‘no.’ The next day the guy called up and said, “OK.” Another night on the floor was just the motivation needed to accept my uncle’s ‘low ball’ offer.
Later, we weren’t the only ones relying on creative financing strategies to continue investing. I think that’s why Robert Allen became so famous teaching investor-wanna-bies how to come up with down payments unconventionally. Those ideas are still as fresh today as they were then.
Meanwhile, what’s a thousand bucks for some knowledge? Really. Can you do anything meaningful with that little money otherwise? Can’t buy a car. Can’t go on vacation (anyplace decent). Why not spend that pittance on your chance at wealth?
Anyway, you’ve still got two choices, hard knocks, or taking a shortcut by tapping someone’s brains. I like tapping brains myself.
Good post.
I agree about using a library. Find out if after learning some of the stuff if you are still interested. Then if you are, search out and attend your local REI Clubs. Be sure to network and talk with others. See if you can determine who there are the tire kickers or are the ones that are actually doing deals.
See if you can buy one of them lunch and discuss how they got started, etc.