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John T. Reed’s views of various real-estate-investment gurus 1

Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
Here is an alphabetical list of famous real estate investment gurus and seminar organizations along with information about them which investors may find of interest. Where I have a relevant product, it is mentioned and linked to the appropriate page.

John T. Reed on real-estate-investment information
Real estate investment page
Who this page is for
A few observations to make after three years of reader feedback
Why I created and maintain this page

By clicking on the guru in question, you can move quickly to the entry in question. When I got into real estate in 1967, there would only have been about ten gurus, all book authors, and all recommended. The all-recommended status continued until Nothing Down author Robert Allen came on the scene in 1979. Ever since, there has been an endless parade of B.S. artists coming into the real-estate-investment-advice field. It is an embarrassment to the good people in the business.
Please tell me of your experiences with real estate gurus so I can share them with my Web site visitors. Thanks.
John Adams
John Alexander
Robert G. Allen
Jim Banks
Len Barry
John Beck
Ed Beckley
John Behle
Robert A. Blair
Sonny Bloch
Bill Bowen
Scott Britton
Bill Bronchick
Albert Brown, Jr.
Bob Bruss
Larry Burkett
John Burley
Joel Cassway
CCIM Courses
George F. Coats
Wade Cook
Creative Real Estate Online (See JP Vaughn)
Russ Dalbey
Jay P. DeCima
Dave Del Dotto
Dolf De Roos
Claude Diamond
Elmer Diaz
Gary DiGrazia
Joe Dominquez
Gayle B. Ellison
Cliff Enz
David Finkel
Foreclosurebargains.com
ForeclosureListings.com
Foreclosureworld
Fortune 21
Dan Franklin
Marc Stephen Garrison
Jane Garvey
Bill Gatten
Genesis Media
Charles Givens
Global Resource Network
Steve Goff
Bill "Tycoon" Greene
Kevin D. Haag
Mark Haroldsen
Greg Hickman
Tyler G. Hicks
Tony Hoffman
Larry Holder
interlinkwealth
IREM courses
Robert Irwin
Vena Jones-Cox
Joe Kaiser
A.D. Kessler
Ernie Kessler
Robert Kiyosaki
Nick Koon
Joe Land
Ron LeGrand
Al Lowry
Thomas J. Lucier
MAI courses
Michael Martin
Tony Martinez
William McCorkle
Bill Mencarow
Kevin Meyers
Mike and Irene Milin
Jack Miller
Jimmy Napier
Nation Wide Real Estate Discounters
Nationwide Real Estate Discounters
Bill Nickerson
Bruce Norris
George Paukert
Dante Perano
Wayne Phillips
Tony Pico
Larry Pino
John Polk
Richard Powelson
David Ramsey
Real Estate Link
Marshall E. Reddick
Jon Richards
Leigh Robinson
George Ropchan
Al Seastrand
John Schaub
Lonnie Scruggs
Carleton H. Sheets
Robert Shemin
Simple Man’s Guide to Real Estate
Howard Small
John Stefanchik
Bill Steiger
Success Magazine
Milt Tanzer
Bill Tappan
Jeffrey Taylor
Ted Thomas
Wright Thurston
John Ulmer
US Mortgage Reduction
Bill Vaughn
J.P. Vaughan
Eugene Vollucci
Tom Vu
Michael T. Warren
Wealth Investment Network
Stephen Weeks
Fred Weinkauf
Russ Whitney
I.G. Williams
Lance Young

Here is a link to three emails I received. The first guy refused to give me his name, so I changed the names of the gurus he mentioned. But some of the things he says I heard from other sources. Guru John Beck then saw it and confirmed it so I added his version of the story, which has the actual names of the gurus.
Robert J. Abalos—I recommend
I read his book on Investing in Land and generally liked it a lot. Here is the review I wrote.
John Adams—Unknown
Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru. Web site offers lame, trite advice about “don’t wanters” and “creative finance.” Says it was last updated in March, 2000, but gives the kind of advice that was all the rage in 1978.
John Alexander---I do not recommend
Ridiculous prices ($5,000) and numerous too-good-to-be-true promises. F'get about it.
Robert G. Allen (San Diego, CA)—I do not recommend
Author of best-selling books Nothing Down, Creating Wealth, and The Challenge. One-time seminar guru and founder of many Robert Allen Nothing Down clubs around the U.S. Allen’s advice is generally terrible. Although I did like a chapter he wrote on property-wanted ads. Otherwise, he is little more than a financial publicity stunt man.
My book How to Buy Real Estate for Little or No Money Down photographically reproduces documents from his famous “Send me to any city” nothing-down deals. The L.A. Times accepted his “challenge” and made him do them in San Francisco which is near where I live. I went there and got all the documents on each of the seven deals. Some were also done in the county where I live.
On one, which was apparently typical, the documents seem to show that Allen lied to the first-mortgage lender—Bank of America—about whether there was any secondary financing (there was—a seller mortgage) and about his intention to occupy the San Francisco condo as his principal residence (He lived in Provo, UT at the time and never occupied the SF unit). At that time, June, 1981, when home mortgage interest rates were at 18%, Bank of America would only make loans to owner occupants and prohibited all secondary financing. I have their loan policy for the date in question in the book, too. My wife was a loan officer for Bank of America at the time. [Note to bogus gurus: do not brag about deals that you do not want me to look into—especially in the San Francisco area. John T. Reed].
At best, you would have negative cash flow following his books. At worst, you would go bankrupt and wind up in jail. He doesn’t put it this way, but his nothing-down techniques almost all require you to mislead an institutional lender or take advantage of an unsophisticated seller or both. The president of his Atlanta Robert Allen Nothing Down Club literally went to federal prison (at Eglin AFB, FL) for doing illegal nothing-down deals. There is virtually nothing in his material about how to make a profit. Rather he simply assumes that real estate goes up so much every year that you need only buy it to cash in. Click here for a little story about his association with probate guru Jim Banks.
Allen himself got into financial difficulty with the IRS as early as 1984. In 1986, IRS filed a $346,395.79 lien against Allen. In September of 1987, when I wrote an article exposing his financial difficulties, he also had:
another $65,649.90 IRS lien
more than $76,000 of delinquent tax warrants filed by the State of Utah
lawsuits and judgments regarding over $100,000 in unpaid fees to fellow gurus who spoke at his meetings
Allen declared Chapter 7 (total liquidation used when the bankrupt has a negative net worth) bankruptcy in San Diego on July 10, 1996 (Bankruptcy Petition #96-09323-LA). Bankruptcy creditors sometimes get pennies or nickels on the dollar. According toAllen’s bankruptcy papers, his creditors got nothing. The Initial Meeting of Creditors was held on August 9, 1996. A lawyer tells me that Allen would have been asked quesitons under oath about his assets during that meeting. A copy of the transcript of that meeting would be interesting. It would typically be in the case folder. See my 8/96 article.
The Allen’s attorney, Richard V. Vermazen, got $2,000 to handle their bankruptcy according to court papers. The Allen’s were discharged from their debts on 10/17/96. The case was closed with no distribution to the creditors on 10/31/96.
The creditors who were stiffed in the bankruptcy file were:
• American Express Optima Card
• Bank of New York
• Citibank Visa
• Farmers InsuranceGroup (San Diego)
• Ferrette & Slater ALLC (San Diego)
• Franchise Tax Board (California income tax)
• Internal Revenue Service
• John Graff (Highland, UT)
• Mark IV Properties (San Diego)
• McKay, Burton, Thurman (Salt Lake City)
• Neiman Marcus
• Nordstrom
• Robinson-May
• Saks
• Scalley & Reading APC (Salt Lake City)
• Scott Meredith Agency (New York city)
• Shirl and Gail Loveless (Provo, UT)
• Simon & Schuster (New York City)
• The Broadway (Phoenix)
The Allens may have had other creditors. These were the only ones listed in the bankruptcy court files. Now that Allen is running full-page ads touting his financial skills in 2003 and 2004, one wonders if he has gone back and paid these creditors like his fellow Provo guru Howard Ruff did after his post-bankruptcy financial rebirth.
In what must have been a weak moment when I was interviewing him for the ’87 article, Allen told me I “do a great job and that I keep guys like him honest.” I have it on tape (with his knowledge and permission). I won’t take credit for keeping him honest—or give anyone else credit for doing that.
I think Allen has an interesting story to tell. But it’s not the one he sells. He should speak about real estate investment the way a reformed alcoholic speaks about drinking. For cheaper , accurate information on real estate finance, see my book How to Use Leverage to Maximize Your Real Estate Investment Return, my High Leverage Real Estate Financing cassettes, and my newsletter articles on finance.
Later, he was sending out an e-mail soliciting customers for a business opportunity that has “nothing to do with real estate.” As far as I’m concerned, nothing he has ever done had anything to do with real estate. It was merely about making Bob Allen rich and famous. I am told that his former associate Marc Stephen Garrison once had a private conversation with Allen that went something like this.
Garrison: “I m concerned that our students are not using the real estate investment information we’re teaching them after the course is over.”
Allen: (wearily) “We’re not in the real estate investmet information business, Marc. This is show business.”
If you paid thousands of dollars for one or more of Allen’s courses, I hope you enjoyed the “show.” Although I suspect you could have gotten more entertainment at the hottest play or musical on Broadway for a lot less.
Click here to read an email from one of his seminar graduates.
On 9/4/02, a reader told me Allen was back to 65% real estate in his current seminar.
I also heard that Allen was telling people his bankruptcy was caused by an avalanche that destroyed an expensive home he and his wife were building. He tried to pawn that story off on me, too. Here are the details as I recall them. The avalanche occurred around February. But the IRS and the State of Utah had filed liens against him for non-payment of taxes months before the avalanche. Furthermore, I interviewed him by phone about all this and recorded the conversation with his approval.
I asked him what kind of real estate genius, as he was claiming to be at the time, would fail to insure his home. He said he did have insurance against the avalanche. “Did you file a claim?” “Yes.” “Did the insurance company pay it?” “Yes.” “So how did the avalanche cause your financial difficulties if it was fully insured?” He then mumbled something about a deductible. Gimme a break. At the time, he was claiming to be a multi-millionaire. Millionaires are not bankrupted by the deductible on their homeowners insurance. Plus there is still the pesky fact that he was in financial difficulty before the avalanche ever happened. And then there is the question of why he was building a mansion in the mountains when he was not paying his state and federal taxes like the rest of us.