Which Boot Camp?
I am confused. I would like to attend a boot camp. The three I have in mind are: Jeff Kaller-Mr. Preforeclosure's 4-day, Dwan Bent-Twyford's Foreclosure Fortunes 5-day, or her 2-day Short Sales. Anyone attend any of these, and what did you think of them?
I've seen Jeff Kaller as a guest speaker for Robyn Thompson and I would highly recommend him. Check out his website.
I am planning to attend his materials and/or seminar as soon as I can afford it.
jem,
Anyway, I was the skeptic, but my partner was inflamed with the idea of SSs. (Indiana has huge numbers of people going into foreclosure.) We purchased the workbooks (Foreclosure Fortunes in Your Own Backyard & Short Sale Secrets) and the CDs for some $800, and that also included registration for the two of us to a 2-day long Short Sale Boot Camp of our choosing. (Different locations and times are available for convenience)
Feel free to ask questions if any of my ramblings appear incoherent.
here's a review I wrote of Dwan's materials and 2-day bootcamp - I'm pasting it here from another thread on the forum:
"The very first time I ever heard about Short Sales was from Dwan and Sharon at an REI conference my partner and I attended. It was a fairly quick presentation, one that's basically designed to get people excited about how "easy" it is to make money doing REI. Of course as most of you know, it takes a heck of a lot more than 120 minutes of story telling and triumphant displays of copies of $30,000 checks that past students had made on their first deal, to master the art of Short Selling. Knowing this, the ladies had workbooks and teaching Cds available for purchase. And because we were there at the event and as such “very special people”, we could get these materials for $800 off the original price.
Both workbooks are not what I would call masterpieces of design and readability. The idea of turning every other page in the workbook into lined notepaper so that one can presumably take notes, may have had merit if the workbook content actually corresponded with the content of the CDS in any recognizable manner (it did not) or with the content of the Boot Camp (it did not); perhaps this design was for the purpose of making the workbooks appear weightier…
The content was decent. Not great, but decent. The Foreclosure Fortunes workbook was filled with information; everything ranging from which legal structure to use for your business, finding the right people to be on your team, how to dress when you go door to door, where to find distressed sellers, some information on legal forms and lingo and other basics of getting your REI business off the ground. Great information for a complete beginner. Not so great for someone who already has an idea or two.
Same with Short Sale Secrets. Good information, but there simply wasn’t enough of it and what there was didn’t go very deeply. Again, great for a beginner as an overview of what SSs are about, but incomplete if you want to go forward with your first deal with confidence.
Also, at the initial conference, Dwan and Sharon spoke at length about wholesaling the properties as a way to make their money. You would think that there would be information or step-by-step explanations about topics like Assignment of Contract, double closings, simultaneous closings, seasoning issues, etc. Nope. Nada. When we finally attended the Boot Camp, we discovered that they had conveniently created a completely separate course on Wholesaling. And for another $400 it could be all ours. Sigh. We passed.
I know that from the tone of my post, most of you may see this as a negative review. It is not.
We learned a lot from Dwan and Sharon, but not as much as I had hoped considering the investment. We learned enough to try and put a deal together, but not enough to prevent us from making all kinds of mistakes and over-looking all kinds of important details.
The materials are great as a starter. They would give someone with absolutely no knowledge or understanding of what it takes to create and run a successful REI business focusing on preforeclosures a really great foundation. If before completing this course, you had questions, but didn’t know what they were, after reading the materials and listening to the Cds you will have twice as many questions and most of them, if you paid attention, will be intelligent. So that’s a positive!
Sadly, as with many REI courses, more questions are created than answered. Realistically, no course out there can answer every question that comes up. That’s why websites like this one are so invaluable. The money I spent to register here and peruse the various forums is the best money spent once you have the basics down.
Couple of other notes about the course:
- The legal paperwork is not state specific, so if you want to protect yourself and do things right, you really should run any of the paperwork you plan on using by your lawyer BEFORE you use it.
- The Cds were better than the workbooks because they contained all kinds of little useful nuggets that went past the basics. Listening to the Cds over and over is helpful as every time something new can be gleaned.
- Both Dwan and Sharon know their stuff. As far as I know, they (and their husbands) are all active RE investors and practice what they preach.
Couple of notes on the 2-day Boot Camp:
- If it wasn’t included in the price of the course materials – I would have thought it a waste of time. Dwan’s a talker and looooooooves to tell stories. That’s great if you’re there to get motivated or excited; when you’re just hungry for information, it’s downright annoying.
- Dwan studiously avoided getting into any details about Wholesaling. This was frustrating because we came to the Boot Camp with most of our questions specifically about this area. The Wholesaling course was a new product and we were not aware that it would be offered separately – so maybe false expectations on our part.
- Dwan’s husband was the other speaker at this Boot Camp. Lovely guy, very intelligent, great salesman, has his own course about using NLP to increase your sales and get the results you want. This is great material and I think there’s something to be said for NLP, but I felt like he was taking time away from what I thought I was really there for – the nuts & bolts of SSs. Naturally, at the end, he pitched his coursework and his own Boot Camp. I had hoped that spending $800 would have absolved us from the sales pitches at least in part. There was just too much of that going on compared to the information that I actually found useful.
- There was a session on working with people in Bankruptcy and an overall exploration of how a BK works and how one can use the knowledge of the BK process to one’s advantage when working with a Loss Mit. rep. Great information there.
- Overall, I took about 4 pages of notes over a period of around 14 hours. Not impressive. I had expected a lot more “meat”. I was really hungry for information and the Boot Camp did very little to satisfy.
In the final analysis, I have to wonder if a less expensive course could give a newbie the same information. Certainly the stuff on setting up legal structures, putting a team together, marketing and looking for motivated sellers is available elsewhere and sometimes free of charge. That was not worth $800.
What I was looking for and hoping to find is real-life scenarios with several possible and well-detailed solutions/exit strategies. Also I wanted a lot more information about the legal side of things. My responsibilities, the seller’s rights, the bank’s rights. Also, more information about different types of loans and how PMI affects the ability to short sell. Also, maybe a run down of the most popular “controversies” that investors are constantly debating on forums such as this: Should I take the deed before I close with the bank? Should I record it? Should I tell the bank I have it? Should I keep it to myself? Should I bring a notary to the seller’s house to sign paperwork because it’s more expedient or should I allow them to handle it as a means of checking their motivation and because if they take me to court, they won’t be able to argue that I coerced them into signing? What if the seller changes his mind? What to do if they suddenly want more money? Do I walk or do I cave? So, so many questions!! And 90% of them were not addressed in the workbooks, or the Cds or the Boot Camp. At least not in a way to create a complete picture.
I’m in the middle of three short sales right now. It’s exciting and terrifying because the more I have learned about doing SSs, the more I realize how little I really know and understand. Would I be doing this right now if I had not utilized Dwan’s materials? Probably not. But in retrospect, had I known about TCI when I first got into REI, and had I taken the time to read all the articles and all the posts, I probably could have saved myself $800. Hindsight is a beautiful thing!
Well, that’s my piece. Sorry it’s so long winded. For myself, I prefer a lengthy explanation because it feels more complete.
posherov"