Going to Property Seminar – Being Prepared and Beware

It is so often would you see advertisements, especially on social media, of property seminars. Most of them are free because they want to lure you in. Does it mean they’re bad people? No. They, same like all of us, want to make money through their services. Some of them are offering education, some of them are offering investment opportunities with great return on your money.

What we need to do as a prospective attendee however, is to prepare ourselves with knowledge so that we’re not easily buying into all the “success stories” that they may tell within the seminar. Remember, if you’re not careful, phrase like, “If you sign up with us today, we’ll give you 50% discount on all of our training courses”, or, “If you partner with us today, we’ll guarantee your rental income” will cause making a blind purchase which you will end up regretting afterwards.

Again, this is not a knock on the speakers. We, Easy Buyer’s Agent, from time-to-time also do free seminars in the hope that we can market our service to a wider audience. At the end of the day, people (you and me and them), are trying to make money. We as the speakers are trying to sign you up as our clients, and you as the clients are coming into our seminar with the hope that you can also get wealthier.

So, why don’t we start this article with first understanding how the seminars work.

There are two types of seminars:

– One that offers you training courses

– One that offers you investment opportunities

All of them are mostly free of charge to the attendance. But you have to understand, just because it’s free for you, doesn’t mean it’s not at a great cost for them (the organiser/speaker). Some of these seminars go for the whole day, and they have the whole crew with them. Imagine how much it would cost them in terms of flight tickets, room hire, etc. Therefore, the organiser would have calculated all these costs and run them against the potential returns and gains they would get out of it.

These people are business men and women, meaning, it all down comes to the bottom line: the returns and profit. They wouldn’t have run these seminars had they not projected a potential profit they would get out of it. Plus, they would have done these kind of seminars many and many times before, thus, they would know what to expect.

Point to remember: free seminar is simply a business-as-usual for them which they will make a profit from.

This is why we, as an attendee, need to be thinking as a business person ourselves. And as a business person, you don’t just go blindly “opening a business” ie. buying their service or products, without first do your due diligence on.

Let’s uncover what will be going down in each of the seminar types.

Training Course Seminar

For a training course seminar, the advertisement would often lure you with the “Let me show you how” phrases. Then at the seminar day itself, they would often entertain you with how property investment works. And the speaker will often talk to you about the number of properties he/she has and how he/she can now live on the passive income alone.

Should we believe them? Maybe, maybe not. The theory all sounds interesting but I would always take it with a grain of salt. In reality, they never uncover how much debt they still have remaining. And if anything, with the current tight lending from the banks, I doubt they can exercise their equity growth to buy more properties easily. And I doubt they can already live on their passive income alone unless they have paid off some of their properties or at least reduce the debt down.

They would then go on and invite some of their students with their success stories. Should we believe the students’ stories? Maybe, maybe not. Remember, as with anything, not everyone will be successful. Those ones who are successful have gone further, done more work, taken more risks. It’s like looking at Roger Federer and wishing how nice it would be becoming a tennis player earning millions of dollars.

The thing is, there are tens of millions other tennis players who never make it to the level of Roger Federer. Same here. With the success stories, take them with a grain of salt. Always remember that success takes hard work.

Once they make everyone excited with the potential substantial amount of money the attendees can make, here comes the sales pitch. “I would show you how, etc etc etc. We’re running a training course at such-and-such date, and for you all tonight, the price has been slashed by such-and-such amount”.

Now, education is important. We should never stop learning. So, it all comes down to how much you think the education will work. But always remember, that education means nothing if you’re not taking any actions. We’ve known people who have spent dollars to get into the high-end training courses (and we’re talking about $30-50k spend), and not yet taking a single step to execute the strategy.

Don’t let this be you. Have I ever signed up for any of these training courses? Yes, the one that cost me $40 and not the $5000.

My suggestion is, before you coming into these kind of seminars, do your research first on both the speaker and the material they’re presenting. Or maybe the run-down of the event experienced by other people. There are tons of information on the net for this. Remember, these seminars don’t just happen once. The organiser has done this many many times, therefore, the chance is, there are people out there who have done it and share their story online.

Investment Opportunities Seminar

This one is often bigger and more “flashy” in nature. The reason is, they’re trying to sell you their property products. Therefore, they have to make you believe that there is a ton of money to be made if you partner with the organisation. This is the seminar where you have to be really careful, otherwise, you’ll make blind decision and will regret later. Remember, buying a property is not like buying a laptop. You can end up with hundreds-of-thousands of debt which you may never be able to repay and may send you bankrupt.

In this seminar the speaker will often start with how property investment works, and how you can grow your portfolio so you can eventually achieve financial freedom. “Property prices go up by 8-10% on average, so a $500,000 house today would be $550,000 in value next year. You can then access the $50,000 to buy more houses, etc etc”. “Then in 10 year guys, your $500,000 now become $1,000,000 so imagine if you have 5 of these because you’ve bought 1 every year, how much money you have, etc etc”.

All sounds great in theory. Problem is, do you really think banks would easily lend you money to buy property after property every year without first assessing whether you can serve the debt or not? Do you really think that bank would just go blindly believing that your property has increased 8-10% every year? Absolutely not!

And not just that, they even go further with, “We have a really great investment opportunity for you guys to add more into your portfolio. This is the estate we’re currently building which 3/4 have sold. It’s close to this and that amenities, few minutes away from train station, etc, and we can even guarantee you with a rental income for the first 12 months. So it’s really low risk. Imagine the capital growth due to the location, etc etc etc”.

Does it mean they’re wrong? Maybe not, it all depends on the numbers. They also never uncover if the sold ones were really sold. 

What they’re trying to get you to do is to make a rush decision, thinking that it’s a good idea to purchase that investment property. Think about it, how much advertisements cost you think they’ve spent to market that estate in the first place? Who will be paying for these? YOU as the potential investor. How? By adding it into the sale price and influencing you to buy.

Even with the rent price guarantee, you really have to check the terms and conditions. These people are running a business, so if it’s not going to give them profit, they wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

At one seminar the speaker said the property he was selling was appraised for $420/week rent. I went on the net and checked the property that actually get rented in that very same suburb was actually renting for $390/week only. So that’s already an inflated statement right there.

You see, but no one did what I did in the seminar. They just blindly agreed with the speaker just because they’ve been lured into all these get-rich-quick scheme by showing them the potential life they can have by buying the properties from them, etc.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, I always attend these seminars with grain-of-salt mentality. I never sign up for anything they offer until I’ve done my due diligence. Especially if you’re on the property investment seminar, do your calculation during the seminar. Check the suburb of the property they’re trying to sell. Check the surrounding areas for prices and make sure it’s not elevated.

Then, check the kind of inclusions you get when you sign up with them. Remember, these are all off-the-plans scheme so you actually never know what you’re getting. You don’t get to deal with the builder, they can promise you the world but in the end they may strip some things away without you knowing.

Remember guys, NEVER EVER go blindly with anything. After all, everybody needs to invest, but property investment is not the only way, and it may not be the right vehicle for you anyway.

Beware and be prepared!