Seminar scams can give some truly helpful tips, but it’s always used as a way to gain people’s trust. Once they have the trust, they’ll offer “limited-time” investment properties or expensive classes. When people fall for the trick and buy a property, they often find that it’s got a lot of issues and is quite likely a money pit. However, signing up for classes can be negative, too. Why? Because people often end up spending thousands of dollars for little to no new information when that money (and their time) could’ve gone toward their investments. To make things even worse, people who get taken in by scammers often sign agreements without reading them through. These documents often include a section that keeps the scammed people from taking legal action against the scammers. So how do you find genuinely helpful seminars? (Yes, they do exist.) Do your research! Look up the organization, the presenter, the properties, and the courses. You can also start by looking up certified experts and see if they offer any educational opportunities. Lending scams are another common scam in real estate. It’s a fairly easy type of scam for real estate investors to fall into because often they’re looking for alternative financing (i.e., private lenders) that doesn’t have the same qualifications required by traditional mortgages. This kind of financing often has a requirement to pay back the money more quickly and tends to have higher interest rates than mortgages. Those things alone don’t mean they’re a scam, though. The problem is that lenders don’t have to be licensed to hand out money, so it can be a bit tricky to make sure the lender’s legit.
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