Anyone thinking about taking a free real estate seminar program by Armando Montelongo, host of Flip This House, you need to understand how these work. The sole purpose of the initial free three day event is to get you to purchase a $3000 seminar where they are going to teach you how to be successful in real estate. Most people believe that this is the event where they are going to learn the skills they need to get started. The sole purpose of the 3 day event for $3000.00 is to get you to purchase the bus tour and additional training in the $25,000-$35,000 range.
The speakers of these events are professional speakers... NOT professional real estate investors. They get paid 10% of all the sales for the weekend. So if they get 10 people to pay $25,000 ($250,000 total) they walk away with making $25,000 for one weekend of work. That is why they are so good at what they do. Seminar speakers make a killing. Unfortunately they get up there and lie about deals they have done.
Most of these deals are not in fact real deals at all. These speakers bounce from seminar company to seminar company. Adam Sachs and Chris Sanders (who teach at armandos courses... I sat in for one...) just a few years ago were working for James Smith at National Real Estate Investors Seminars (i also met them here!!!). They say the same thing at all of these events. They teach creative financing using credit cards on day one... And give out prizes to the students that can raise their credit card limits the most. The sole purpose of this is so that students can put themselves in debt on day two when they buy the package.
The same people who are selling "personal mentoring" for Armando Montelongo out of Utah were selling for Robert Allen's Enlightened Wealth Institute just last year. Look up Ron McMilllan and you will find that he was pitching Robert Allens Nothing Down techniques and all of a sudden is an expert in flipping real estate using Armandos techniques. The phone guys get an even bigger percentage of what you spend! Ask them what their cut is.
The sales people at these events are paraded up in front of the class as success stories and students are told how they went from "where you are in your seats" to being financially free using these techniques. What they don't tell you is that 99% of them would be broke if they weren't being paid the $1500.00 per weekend to sell you in the back of the room. 99% of them are not doing real estate deals. They are making a modest living running your credit cards.
The reality of these seminar companies is that the people teaching them are professional speakers and salesmen. Their 3 day pitches are mostly lies. The easiest way to do this is to ask them to show you the HUD-1's of all the deals they told you they did. Guarantee that can not produce them.
If you purchase all of Armando's packages you are out of pocket approximately $60,000 On top of that any deal that you buy at one of his seminars, I would bet my bottom dollar that he is receiving a kick back from the vendor. He has asset protection deals, foreclosure buy and hold deals and even partners people up in the class to do deals together.
Have him guarantee in writing that he is not profiting from these deals.
Everything in this post is fact. Ask Chris and Adam if they worked for James Smith. Ask Armando if he gets kickbacks on deals pitched at his events. Ask the speakers after they show you what deals they have done to produce a HUD-1. Ask them flat out if they get paid 10% of the sales in the room.
Unfortunately seminar companies prey on people who truly want to change their financial future and do not bank on the speakers lying to them about deals they have done. No one even suspects that it is all bogus because they are new and naive and don't understand how truly deceptive seminar companies are in general.
Armando's company will come and go and these same speakers will be working for the next Armando/Robert Allen/Trump/James Smith.
I will continue to attend their events to provide more evidence of their deceptive strategies.
I make a living full time investing in real estate. I attend these events because they are great ways to meet students who want good deals.
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