My Story – Trent Rogers

I have had an interest in real estate investing for several years. I’m a builder so I have worked with and around other investors for most of my career. I’ve watched as many of the investors I’ve worked with have created a great deal of wealth and I’ve wanted to find a way for me to get into the game as well. One of my struggles has been not knowing the best way to invest and how to find the right opportunities.

After watching others develop land, condos, commercial buildings, and build spec homes, I finally decided to build my first spec home. Although I didn’t really know it, my timing was perfect and I was able to make a significant profit which gave me enough money to put down as a down payment to build my own home. As soon as I completed my own home, I decided that I should build another spec home with the intention of helping to reduce my mortgage. This time my timing wasn’t so good. I finished this home just as the market was starting to slow down.

I tried to sell the home for several months with very little interest. My realtor kept advising me to reduce my price because the market was only going to get worse. Finally I had a family come along who wanted to purchase my home but they couldn’t afford my asking price and they had to sell their home first. We spent about a month negotiating prices and trying to find a way to make things work. Finally, I decided that I couldn’t afford to let the buyer wait or lose interest so I decided that I’d have to offer to purchase their home from them because their home was half as expensive as mine and I believed it would be much easier to afford and sell than mine. We agreed that we’d buy each other’s homes, each paying the appraised value of the other persons home. I ended up selling my home to them at just barely above my cost but I felt fortunate to at least have my initial down payment back that I could apply to the purchase of their home.

By this time the market had slowed down significantly and I tried for about 10 months to sell the home that I had purchased from my buyers. In the mean time, I bumped in to my friend Steve Earl and asked him how things were going for him. He told me that things were going very well and that he was now working as a real estate broker in a different kind of brokerage. They worked primarily with investors and were buying inexpensive homes with significant equity in them and then marketing them as a rent-2-own opportunity. This had proven to be a very conservative yet profitable strategy and if a person would apply it repeatedly, they could own a minimum of 4 homes, paid for free and clear, in a matter of 8 to 12 years. This peaked my interest and when Steve invited me a few weeks later to a presentation that would explain it in more detail, I felt that it would be worth learning more about.

Although, the home that I had purchased was more expensive than the homes that REIC recommends purchasing for their rent-2-own program, I thought I would see if it might help me to get out of my situation with my home. I tried for a few months to market it on my own with the little bit of information that I had learned from the REIC seminar but didn’t have much success. Finally I realized that I had to do something more so I decided to pay the membership fee for REIC and see if by learning about the details of their rent-2-own program, I could achieve better results. After attending the Lease Option Live course, I was able to get a lease option tenant into my home within 4 or 5 weeks.

The REIC rent-2-own program is simple and straight forward. It works! I was able to apply it with a home that doesn’t fit within their recommended guidelines (I paid $80,000 more than the recommended maximum purchase price and paid full appraised value) and still cash flow about $125/month. The thing that is even more exciting to me is that I have been able to help a family who recently moved from Colorado and couldn’t sell their home to get into a home here that they love and want to stay in. Now they have time to work on selling their home in Colorado and when they do, they can purchase this home from me and won’t have to move again when they transition from renting to owning. They are very thankful for the opportunity to be in a long term home instead of a short term rental while they are working on selling their other home.

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My Story – Rob Walgamott

Why I am here:

I have been investing, and helping others invest in real estate since 2003. Since 2006, for better or for worse, it has been my full time profession. Through much success AND much failure I believe I now have enough experience in this game to speak as, although not the fountain of all real estate knowledge and wisdom, someone who at least deserves to be listened to. In a relatively short period of time I have experienced, in one degree or another, most of the investing spectrum and as a result I have formed beliefs about how someone should (and should not) invest their hard earned dollars.

I have learned that just about any person can go to Barns and Noble, pick up just about any book in the investing section and learn about great ways to make a lot of money investing in real estate. And there are a lot more than 31 flavors to choose from. I’ve also learned that if that person were to actually follow most of the programs in these books to the tee, handsome returns will most likely follow. There is also no shortage of seminars, videos and audio books that a person can pay shocking amounts of money for which will work. I believe I have heard of, and probably tried just about all of the flavors. So what advice would I give someone starting with little or no experience? I would say simply this: The fact is that there are good deals in real estate and there are fantastic deals in real estate. The trick is to be able to distinguish between the two, ignore the good and focus your efforts on the fantastic. Donald trump, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates didn’t get where they are today by pursuing simply good deals. Neither did almost any of the truly wealthy people in the world. Good deals are plentiful, they are everywhere, and for some reason they seem to make the most noise and advertise themselves with the brightest lights. It is easy to see why most people become distracted by them when they’re first starting out. Many times a day I hear people talk about good opportunities. They say they are excited because they can see the “whole picture” and “after much thought, it just tastes right.” And, more often than not they are right. If they follow said program, they probably will make good money. Most new comers to the game of real estate experience a bit of a paradigm shift in the way they see investing and become a convert to the first ‘school of thought’ that pulls them into this new world. Now don’t get me wrong here, there are defiantly worse things in life than committing to a good investing program and making good money. And the honest truth is that many of these good programs probably are all they are cracked up to be. But for some reason, and it is truly a mystery to me as to why, the fantastic forms of investing seem to come to people’s attention only long after they have become stubbornly committed to simply good ones. I want to change this.

Obviously I believe that I have found fantastic opportunities. Actually I would say that I know I have found them. One year ago I wanted nothing more than to associate with people, day in and day out that thought the way I thought and knew what I knew and could help me find more of the fantastic opportunities and not waste my time with just the good ones. I saw that bringing people together under these pretenses and working together could potentially create synergy on an unprecedented scale. I tried to make it happen on my own and ran into road black after road block. It was a very frustrating time in my life. I knew I had something much better than the ‘norm’ but I couldn’t get the program off the ground. In October 2008 I was told about a company called REIC or The Real Estate Investors Club, which sounded an awful lot like what I was trying to start on my own. So, with a little skepticism and a whole lot of arrogance, I decided to go to one of their introduction seminars in Orem and see if they were up to speed with my thinking. That night a tall skinny guy, not much older than me, stood up in front of a small room full of people and handed me a big slice of humble pie. I knew that what I had in mind was better than the industry standard but this, what REIC had to offer, was truly fantastic. To be honest I hid my enthusiasm for a time. I believe that when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. To make a long story short however, I have come to the solid conclusion that this is not too good to be true; it is simply very, very good. In fact, it is fantastic. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in my opinion it is on the level with all the other great ideas and inventions throughout history. It begs the question “why didn’t someone come up with this a long time ago?” But if I can give you one word of advice while you are considering if this is the real deal or not, it would be this … get over it and get to work. You WILL lose sleep as the reality of how fantastic this opportunity is sinks in. You WILL direct conversations with your friends and family to talking about this. You WILL make money. A lot of money. You WILL, perhaps for the first time in your life, truly start to contemplate what it will be like to be a millionaire…

So this is why I am here. In no uncertain terms, I believe this is the opportunity of my life time and I am overjoyed to share it with you. You couldn’t hope to be a part of an organization that is lead by such brilliant and deserving people. This is fantastic. The sky is the limit. Go big…

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