I’m often asked by people whether property investment seminars are worth attending – they’re not!

There are property investment seminars on offer all around Australia, including in the Central West. They’re always offered for free, claiming they’ll show you how to make a fortune through property based on case studies of people who they say have bought 80 properties and retired by the time they’re 30. If it sounds too good to be true…

There’s a catch though. At their free seminars, these property spruikers tell their wonderful tales, but to be able to do what they’ve done, you’ll then need to fork out thousands of dollars for their “advanced” courses or to engage them to do it for you (some of these are selling for $30,000!!). Guess who makes all the money down the track?

At these seminars, people get to hear about all the people who have accumulated millions of dollars worth of investment properties, they just fail to mention the levels of debt these people have and that it doesn’t take much for it to all go wrong. You only have to read the story of Kate Maloney, ‘Property Investor of the Year 2012’ to see how foolish people can be and how little these spruikers must know if this investment behaviour is award winning.

And they challenge their audience to have the guts to sign up before they leave or miss out on the opportunity they’re offering. Some get the seminar started by jumping to the stage having run through the crowd and will even get the crowd up, dancing and chanting like a cult.

They are looking for the weak and the vulnerable, who are desperate for a way to fix their crumbling financial future, or the plain greedy.

And they can really tell a yarn! Often setting entirely unrealistic expectations and building up people’s hopes beyond what can ever be delivered. All of this having been designed to have the audience members commit to signing up for all of the extras they are happy to sell after the event… they will find the property or land, buy it or build it for you, organise the finance, the contracts and then manage the property for you and then help you find your next one, all for enormous fees that will erode much of any potential money made (which will almost certainly not live up to the hype).

You will be told of the fabulous riches you can look forward to in only a few short years and all the details will be provided if you are happy to pay big money after the free seminar.

Get rich quick schemes

If you happen to find yourself sitting in the audience, don’t take the bait. There are no get rich quick schemes that work for anyone other than those spruiking them. Anyone promoting them is promoting a scheme to make themselves rich.

If you’re after sensible strategies to put you on the path to SLOW wealth, then Wealth Train workshops have been designed to offer everything a property spruiker’s seminar does not. At Wealth Train, we charge a fee for our workshops because we are empowering people at the event, not telling fairy tales to motivate people to pay a fortune after the event.

To reiterate how dodgy property spruiking seminars are, here are two short videos. The first is the findings of News Corp reporter Annabel Hennessey after spending months on the property investment seminar circuit:

And the second is a warning to consumers from Consumer Law Australia:

Here’s to financial freedom!

Daniel