If you are fortunate enough to live in a city with a real estate club, you should seriously consider joining. I don’t know of any that are free but for the $100-$200 typical annual fee, it is a worthwhile investment as part of your real estate investing education.
The most powerful aspect of real estate clubs is the networking. But like all networking opportunities, caution and understanding is advised. Many experienced real estate investors will not be interested in networking with a beginner because they are busy with their already successful network group. They may be interested if you can show them a reason they should network with you. But just going up and saying “Hey I’m new. Can I bend your ear for a while?” is probably not a good approach to take with them. Getting the experienced folks to be part of your network is a challenge but really your best investment of time as it is they who can offer the most in terms of your education.
You can also network with people who are at a similar experience level as you. This type of networking is easy as you are all at the same level and there is the camaraderie of working together to solve equally challenging situations and issues.
For instance, if you are a beginner you may run into someone who wants to dump a fixer upper house he just acquired - you know someone just wanting to do a flip. His goal is to unload the house. He sees you as someone who might buy it so he will make the pitch to you. He may not care if the deal is a good deal for you as he may think it is 100% your responsibility to figure that out yourself.
The deal may indeed be a good deal but only for someone who knows how to maneuver with that particular set of circumstances. For someone not adept at the particular situation, it could become a losing proposition. And that will of course create feelings if disgust and betrayal by the newbie buyer.
The best of this group of people will point out the challenges and be sure the potential buyer fully understands the situation and the risk. But some folks are just out to make deals just want to move the property and go on to the next deal. And they don’t care how many bodies get left behind.
This is a stupid short sighted view as burning people reduces your available pool of buyers over time. But there are people like this at the real estate club meetings. And they are happy to network with you and try to give you their latest great deal.
So by all means network with everyone you can but do it with eyes open. If a deal is so hot that you as a beginner don’t have time to do your due diligence, it is better to skip the deal and wait for one that you can feel pretty comfortable with.
The other main aspect of the real estate investor meetings is the talks that are given. These talks are portrayed as education and in many cases they do offer good information. But many of them are also conducted with the purpose of selling something. It could be an investing course, software, financial packages or anything else related to real estate.
So if you hear a talk moving from fact to something that gets your juices flowing be prepared for some sort of sales pitch at the end of the talk.
And there is nothing wrong with a sales pitch. It is how you learn about products and services that are out there. Just be aware that anyone who gives a talk and pitches a back of the room sale is presenting details in a way designed to get you to the back of the room and buy their real estate course or finance service, etc.
When you know it is a sales pitch, you can listen with a more critical ear, look at the examples with a more critical eye and ask yourself what details were glossed over to make a situation look easier than it really was.
That way if you do decide to make in investment in the sales offering, you are doing it from a rational analysis rather than from an emotional knee jerk decision to grab it at the special price being offered for that night only.
As you can see, there are pros and cons of attending and networking at real estate investment clubs but but good far outweighs the bad. Just go into the meetings with your eyes and ears open and tread with caution until you get to know the folks.
Listings of local clubs:
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