Rick Brown “The Foreclosure Coach” and Steve Clements, tax lien trainer, gave presentations at 8 free workshops in Southern California this week: two seminars each day in Anaheim (April 18th 2009), Ontario (April 19th), Irvine (April 20th), and Riverside (April 21st). The workshops were put on by Pacific Seminars LLC, and Rick Brown stated that his other partner in this venture is Jeff Friedman. The business address for Pacific Seminars was given as One World Trade Center, Ste 800, Long Beach, CA 90831.

Pacific Seminars has no website that I can find and is not listed in Whitepages.com at the address they gave out. The only businesses I can find listed at Ste 800 of the Long Beach World Trade Center are the Law Offices of William W Green, Adept International, Benchmark Information Technology, and an individual named Carol Adams.

Rick Brown was promoting a one-year tuition and mentoring program on buying foreclosures wholesale from lenders before they get to title companies and realtors, and then selling them wholesale to real estate investors, splitting the profit 50:50 with the real estate investor. The normal price for this program is $2995, but the ‘today only’ price was $1495. This covers a 3-day intensive training somewhere in Southern California from May 2nd-4th from 9.00am-5.00pm, and the final day of this training will include a field trip to a trustee auction at a County Courthouse; one year of help, support and mentoring; one year of full access to complete So Cal foreclosure records and data, which the Foreclosure Coach claims to get five days before the title companies get it; and a foreclosure buying manual and resource materials. Rick Brown offered a one-year 100% money back guarantee.

Steve Clements was promoting a tax lien workshop at the Disneyland Sheraton in Anaheim on May 8th-9th. The regular price for this is $1695. If you signed up for the Foreclosure Coach training at the same time, the price was reduced to $795.

Both speakers were very well-polished presenters. I agree with some of the comments in earlier postings that Rick Brown looked a little suspect.

Steve Clements was more informative and less of a salesman. Moreover, he does not try to hide his identity on the Internet, which gives me more confidence in him. You can find him on Twitter, where he goes by the name Speakerman2000. On his Twitter postings, you can find links to websites that he is associated with, namely http://www.gettaxliens.com and http://www.dogreat.com. He is also associated with http://www.ocean2oceanproperties.com which offers tours to Panama for real estate investors.

The http://www.gettaxliens.com website is run by the Association for Optimum Achievement (AOA). I have found one negative comment about AOA and its tax lien training at http://www.reiclub.com/forums/index.php?board=30;action=display;threadid=1748

Some of the sales reps at the back of the free Foreclosure Coach workshop looked shady, but one of them, Bryan Locke, came across as genuine.

At the end of Rick Brown’s 2-hour presentation, only 5 people stood up and said they wanted to enroll in his program. Most of the five looked like English was not their first language. The two people in the audience who were already making money from real estate investing did not enroll and left before the end.

There were a number of sceptics in the audience, including myself. One repeatedly asked a sales rep why Rick Brown would bother to put so much time and effort into these workshops when he is making so much money from buying and selling foreclosed properties and when so few people at each free seminar then enroll for the program. Rick Brown implied that he was making around $4 million per year from buying and selling foreclosures, but the sales rep said that the $4 million was shared among a number of partners in the operation. The sales rep said they were happy if 10 people signed up at each free seminar.

It seems unlikely that Rick Brown is running these workshops out of the goodness of his heart. He must be making money out of them. According to one of the sales reps, the company spent $50,000 advertising these workshops. Given the small number of workshop participants who actually signed up for the program at the workshop I attended, the up-front enrolment fee of $1495 would not appear sufficient to cover all the costs of putting on these workshops, providing the training and materials, and paying for staff and business overheads. So I am assuming that there are other fees and charges that were not mentioned at the free seminar. I assume that after the first year, the fee for continuing with the program is considerably higher than the initial ‘teaser’ fee.

I have not completely ruled out enrolling in these two programs. I try to keep an open mind while doing my due diligence background research. One of the sales reps said they are planning to repeat these seminars in Orange County after doing some seminars in the San Diego and North Los Angeles areas. I would love to hear from people who have enrolled in thess programs and who may know what the additional fees and charges are.

Here are a few questions I have:

Are Rick Brown and Steve Clements trying to distance themselves from the Trump Institute Seminars that they have been associated with in the past? If so, is this because they disliked some of the practices of the Trump Institute, or is it because the Trump Institute has been getting so many scam accusations on Epinions.com and elsewhere? Is Pacific Seminars affiliated with the Trump Institute in any way?

White Male, approximately 50 – 55 years old
Blond Hair / receding hair line, slightly thinning hair on the crown of his head
170 – 180 lbs, slight belly – out of shape
5’8″, /-
dark suit, white french cuff shirt (looked like it had been stuffed in his coat pocket for some time, along with his red tie), average shoes & watch………nothing to cause me to suppose great wealth.

Does anyone have photographs of this guy? My wife and I saw this guy last night in Arlington, VA (December 6, 2008). Rick Brown pitched Trumps Real Estate System, and some guy named Steve pitched a tax lien investment program.

My wife was really excited about the whole thing. I asked her to really hold off until I could do a little research, and Rick backed off from our side because I believe he sensed that I would ask questions that would cause EVERYONE to start thinking. Then, when Steve was pitching I suddenly realized that my Blackberry could tell me a few things about all of this with a simple/quick internet search. I don’t think Steve liked that very much……..and he stayed away from me the entire time.

My email address is dalinkou@hotmail.com and I would love to receive any photos of Brown or Wiseman so that I could be sure that everyone is talking about the same guy I saw. And, if anyone has solid experience that they could share I’d love to have that too. PS: Not complaints or sob stories……..just facts and events as they happened, good or bad.

Kind Regards,

D

His 2 hour presentation was followed up with a 2 hour presentation from Steve Johnson (young 28 or 29 year old, he mentions his age to help his credibility as he says he started when he was 22!). Steve talks about tax liens and purchasing them in the US. There is plenty of fact in this presentation as well, but keep an eye out for the BS…there is some non factual stuff he has to say. Although Steve’s presentation is a little more on the “up and up” as he adds credability by saying that he has gone down to mexico for 2 years to help build houses and churches for the needy, and he was able to do that and could afford to because of the Trump Way to Wealth program.

If you are wondering what is covered by the two presenters, here is what I was able to write down (again, if you want to learn about real estate investing, flipping, etc., bring a voice recorder, this guy says a lot in a short period of time):

Rick Brown:
(PS, would someone kindly do a background check on this guy, as his parents definately sound like nomads as he makes himself sound like a local);
After a bit of a choppy video presentation by The Donald (Rick, you need a better laptop, or better encoded quality video…call the nerds), he begins by talking about government programs, businesses that run themselves, then talks about Donald Trumps philosophies:
Use:
OPM, OPC, OPE, OPT, OPA:
1. Other Peoples Money
2. Other Peoples Credit
3. Other Peoples Experience
4. Other Peoples Technical expertise
5. Other Peoples Assets

then he talks about how important it is to write a really good business plan, and stresses how good the trump is at writing the worlds best business plan, and how he does all the pre research so that the lender looking at the business plan, just agrees and signs, that simple.

He also mentioned that the legal agreements that the trump makes are rock solid and air tight, they always work in his benefit, and are always in legal jargon, Rick mentions that the trump was very very good and that we need to be at realizing that legal agreements are key to a real estate transaction where we can use OPM, OPC, and OPA.

He mentioned that wealthy people know how to make sure that there are no inheritance taxes when the wealthy pass away and pass on our inheritance (this part was a little beyond me, but was very interesting, and with my past financial experience it sounded factual).

He also mentioned that if you want to increase the “perceived value” of a home (if you’re buying and selling residential to get you started) that the best places to spend money are the outside of the house, the kitchen (he mentioned that this is best as the woman usually makes the buying decision, and the kitchen is where she finds most importance), then the entryway.

He next talked about how it’s a buyers market right now, and a lot of people don’t realize this (this is seen because the houses are overvalued, and the market is flooded with houses for sale). He mentioned that the people that don’t realize this are experiencing something like “buyers market denial” (that may not be exactly what he said, but that’s the idea). He said that usually what happens is a cycle that is x amount of years a sellers market, and 1/2x that for the buyers market, then rinse and repeat (my term there).

He says that trump only like no risk & high reward.

and that there are 7 different types of ways you can buy and sell a property:

1. Buy & Sell
2. Buy Hold & Rent
3. Buy Renovate Hold & Rent
4. Buy Renovate & Sell
5. Buy Rezone & Sell
6. Buy Subdivide & Sell
7. Options Assignments… (I missed the last part of this one, the slide went too fast for my hands to write)

Pick an area or neighborhood in your area that you’re familiar with, check property values (get comps (comparible homes that have sold recently) from your realtor), make sure you get a good relationship with a realtor as they will be the key to your success in volume transactions. Get a CMA on the neighborhood, let the realtor know that you want the last 90 days, if that’s too much back it down to 30 or 60 days, if 90 is too little bump it to 120 or more days. Make sure the realtor gets you a “full printout” with the “LP” (List Price), “SP” (Sold Price), “DOM” (Days on Market).

Look at the sold properties from the exterior, check the sold price/living sq. ft. which equals the avg. cost/sq.ft.

Then he gave some tips on sending a post card in the neighborhood to people that you think might be interested in selling but aren’t currently advertising for sale, and say something like:
“Hi, I need to buy a property in your neighborhood, if you know anyone, I’ll pay cash, quick sale, no realtors. First come first serve”

Make sure to check your comps first so you know what to offer in order to make the 20% profit that Rick Brown said was necessary to make it worth your while (as you have to give 6% to your realtor), but because of the way the contract is written, you aren’t buying the house, or really selling it!? (this part was a little confusing to me, but with more research, I think it’s on the “up and up”).

Make sure the realtor gets you a board approved purchase agreement, and add a few caveats:

“1. See attached addendum A”
Subject to inspection approved by purchaser
Subject to some other junk about nominee and separate agreement for disclosure over to the nominee

he also mentions that the 20% fee that we charge for a sale must show on the purchase agreement that it’s a fee for service performed on the property (an intellectual fee, but none the less, if this isn’t there the underwriters will give us a shot to the nuts apparently).

that’s most of the 2 hours right there, then they get into a conversation about how it’s important to have an incorporated company that you’re doing all of these transactions under otherwise you’d get hit with capital gains taxes as an individual because they’re investment properties.

Then Steve Johnson gets into his thing about tax lien certificates (only buy these in the US as our tax laws here in Canada apparently such the unholy bung!?).

That’s what I got out of the free seminar, after I make $15 k on my first deal, I’m going to pay the $2999 on the 2 day, then do a few more deals to pay for the next 5 day $8000 seminar, then do a crap load more deals, then pay for the next seminar (the one in Vegas…$20k? for 2 weeks? a month?). Then once I’m a millionare, I’ll pay to meet the trump and shake his hand, maybe shine his shoes with a thousand dollar bill, smoke a cigar with the man…we’ll see.