Here is what I love (inject strong sarcasm here) about real estate investment advice providers: they think you are the stupidest people when it comes to money since the club-carrying Cro-Magnons. Sorry if that insults you.
Of course, I am among those real estate investment information providers but don’t say I never warn you that there is more than the upside of things.
This came to my attention recently when I got yet another ad about how to buy and flip properties “for huge profits.” My fault, perhaps, since I subscribe to various sources of information that are at times timely and useful and even honest.
This bad one allegedly tells you how to “legally bypass the banks and make huge profits.”
This ad is unique perhaps in that it is not a case where most of it is untrue but ALL of it rings false to even a non-investor with even the slightest bit of common sense. Let me refute what they say about their supposedly “free” offer being for you if you want:
—To buy properties without banks or hard money lenders.
—To invest in real estate virtually risk-free.
—To flip houses for huge profits.
—To enjoy streams of cash flow due to low interest funding.
—To be able to find, buy and extract wealth from real estate.
Actually, I said all of their claims are false but perhaps the last one has some basis in fact: You can extract wealth from real estate. But not like this.
And not risk-free (please, this is an insult to the relatives of the Cro-Magnons).
Even if you accept the last premise in the ad that you can make money (“extract wealth” is a somewhat clumsy way of saying it but you get the drift), the rest of it rings a loud false note.
You can flip houses, which is true, but not normally for “huge profits.” You’ll have to be satisfied usually with modest gains.
You can’t invest in real estate without being free of risk, even though they have added “Virtually” to the phrase. Real estate investment is like life itself: you can’t eliminate risk.
The ad crashes even more loudly back to earth with the reminder you can get started with “absolutely no money, credit or experience.”
This later claim is so false that it leaves me breathless, or in this case, wordless.
Is there anything you could do in life to make money that would require no “money, credit or no experience.”
Yes, there is.
Buy a lottery ticket. But while that requires no experience, it does take some money, of course.
And at least in the state where I buy lottery tickets, often-maligned Florida, they tell you the odds of winning. Very unlikely, of course, but at least here you have a chance.
){kind=link}