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John T. Reed’s views of various real-estate-investment gurus 5

Greg Hickman—I do not recommend
Plagiarized Bill Mencarow until persuaded to stop by Mencarow's attorney.
Tyler G. Hicks—I do not recommend
A reader was kind enough to give me Hicks’ 1989 book How to Make $1,000,000 in Real Estate in Three Years Starting With No Cash. First, the title is ridiculous. The third page of the book lists Hicks’ other book titles. Almost all of them trigger item #20 of my BS artist detection checklist. If I were forced to write a book by the title Hicks chose for this book, it would be very narrowly focused. I figured that’s what Hicks would do. I mean how many ways can there be to make $1,000,000 in three years starting with no cash? The way Hicks tells it, it almost doesn’t matter which approach you use: conventional financing, credit-card loans, raw land, residential property, commercial and industrial property, islands, fixers, motels, limited partnerships, condos, stock market, theaters. This is absurd.
Not wanting to waste much more of my time on Hicks, I just checked out the raw land chapter. It defines raw land, lists obvious advantages and disadvantages (e.g., cheap, pays no income), says its valuable because it’s a limited commodity, says to buy in the suburbs of a major city in the direction of growth, etc. This is conventional wisdom. It’s not worth a nickel, let alone the price of the book.
On page 100, he tells of a guy who made his quick million by electing himself mayor of a ghost mining town then issuing municipal bonds, part of the proceeds of which were used to pay himself a “good salary.” Hicks says the guy “restored the city as a tourist attraction.” That is, at least, a mildly interesting idea which is not conventional wisdom. But I do not believe it. This is what I call “seminar real estate”—stuff that delights ignorant seminar audiences, but which has no relationship to the real world.
Since majority rules in elections, I suspect there is a rule that you must have at least three voters to hold an election and that there is some government agency which oversees elections to make sure they are honest. To vote in a town election, you have to live in the town. Ghost mining towns may be uninhabited, but they are not unowned and they have posted "No trespassing" signs. In order to live in the town, you must buy or rent from the owners, neither of which is likely when you have no cash. I am a Harvard MBA. Many of my fellow Harvard MBAs are in the municipal-finance business. The notion that they would underwrite and successfully sell out a multi-million-dollar bond issue on a ghost town and deliver the proceeds to the sole inhabitant and “mayor” who owns no property there is silly. All bonds and prospective bonds must be rated according to their risk. The rating agencies, like Moodys and Standard & Poors, would visit the town and ask to see its financial books. It wouldn’t even get that far. The prospective underwriters would ask about the town’s population, annual tax revenues, operating expenses---then they would hang up. If Hicks calls, you should do the same.
Tony Hoffman-I do not recommend
Former Lowry employee. Nothing-down seminar guru and author of the book, How to Negotiate Successfully in Real Estate. I detest him and his book. It gives unethical advice, like threatening to renege at the eleventh hour in a deal in order to get better terms. I debated him, or tried to, on a Financial News Network TV show in the '80s. I say "tried" to because it was a call-in show and the callers attacked Hoffman so viciously that any additional comments I made would have seemed like piling on. So I just sat back and listened.
Hoffman's company declared bankruptcy. Although he expressed a plan to become governor of California, he was more recently seen selling drape-cleaning devices in TV infomercials and he was the producer of the video O.J. Simpson did to prove his "innocence."
Larry Holder, Wealth Builders---I do not recommend
The name of this company triggers item #20 on my BS artist detection checklist. Here’s an email I got about him:
John, I just went to a Larry Holder seminar. He had the gaudy rings, showed us pictures of his "million dollar cabin", referred to flying his plane in that day (his assistant inadvertently admitted they drove in), and asked for $6,000 for his seminar and mentoring. This could be conveniently paid for by credit card. Thought you might like to add this to your BS list!
interlinkwealth (Carlsbad, CA)---I do not recommend
Use my Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist to evaluate this guru.
IREM courses-I recommend
I took Institute of Real Estate Management courses in the mid-1970s. They were good, not great. IREM puts out a lot of lame books. Their courses are better, probably because the committee that destroys their books can’t edit the instructors during their presentations.
Robert Irwin (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA)
By far the most prolific real-estate-investment author, but that title seems to be his goal rather than communicating new information that the world needs. Books range from ho-hum to OK. I wish he would knock off the quantity and switch to quality. His books won’t hurt. Neither will they help much if you already read the good books available. He has little or nothing new to add. I am annoyed that he did not acknowledge the contribution of any ather person in the books of his that I have. I do not recall him ever mentioning any other human being in his books except for Napoleon Hill, a long dead motivational writer. He is also extremely coy about the titles of his other books and where he is for some unknown reason.
Vena Jones-Cox
Lease-option guru. I am not familiar with her material, but I have yet to find a lease-option guru whose approach is satisfactory to me. See my article on lease options and my Special Report on the subject.
Joe Kaiser (Tacoma, WA)-I do not recommend
Author of the Ultimate Lease Option Strategy. Kaiser's main point is to contact owners of vacant homes and rental house owners who have filed eviction lawsuits. That's a good idea. But he says his strategy is "one size fits all." There is no such strategy. He says lease-option investors can avoid triggering the due-on-sale clause in the property's mortgage if they do it "correctly." That is not true and, indeed, Kaiser never tells you how to do it "correctly." In a couple of aspects of his approach, Kaiser misleads the seller. He barely mentions all the legal complications of lease options, complications which are comprehensively explained in my special report Single-Family Lease Options. I also do not like the fact that his book has so much blank white space that I figure 82 of its 232 pages would be blank if he used normal margins and typesetting. Kaiser is also one of the many gurus who offers an expensive mentoring service. See my discussion of expensive seminars and mentoring services.
I did an article on Kaiser's lease-option book at his behest in the 11/97 issue of my newsletter, Real Estate Investor's Monthly. I did not like his book and he did not like my review. Kaiser then published a critique of my article which I did not believe described what I said accurately. Accordingly, I am putting the whole article here.
A.D. Kessler-I do not recommend
Some of his Creative Real Estate Magazine's article authors are good, others are by guys I do not recommend. Gurus I recommend rarely write for Kessler.
Kessler was somewhat broker or guru oriented last time I saw any of his stuff. In other words, he was more about helping brokers get commissions or gurus sell their stuff than he was into helping investors make money in their investments. An experienced investor once told me much of Kessler’s material depicted an agent’s fantasy world—“real estate the way brokers wish it was” was the phrase he used. For example, one of Kessler’s authors was famous for bragging that he insisted that every single client come to his office. He never went to a client’s office. When a bedridden heiress begged him to come to her home, he told her to call an ambulance to take her to his office, and bragged about it at his seminars. Very creative.
Kessler’s company name triggers item # 20 on my B.S. checklest.
A number of years ago, his assistant called me to say they really liked my newsletter, Real Estate Investor’s Monthly, and wanted to sell it to their customers if I let Kessler pay a wholesale price for it and keep the difference. She predicted many sales. I agreed to this wholesale arrangement.
Months later, they sent me one subscription sale. After that, I forgot about them. About six months later, when I had a new employee doing orders, another Kessler order arrived. I had not trained the new employee regarding Kessler orders. She sent the subscriber an invoice for the difference between the wholesale check Kessler sent and the regular subscription price. A few days later, Kessler’s assistant called and gave me a tounge-lashing for embarrassing A.D. to the subscriber. I never figured out why he should be embarrassed about my not teaching my employee about the deal he arranged on subscriptions.
I recommend some stuff by people whom I do not like or who do not like me, because it would hurt my credibility and deprive my readers of good stuff if I did not do so. I do not believe Kessler has a similar policy. It appears that he regards everyone in the real estate infromation business as either in business with him, or against him and the quality of your material is secondary to that. To put it another way, if Kessler believed that my newsletter was good as his assistant told me, they should have beeen recommending it all along, including after our two-subscriber relationship. To only recommend writers who are currently in business with you strikes me as disingenuous. There are a number of people in the guru business who won’t recommend you unless they make money every time they do so, and will recommend you if they can make make a buck out of it, even if they are not that impressed with your material.
Ernie Kessler---I do not recommend—passed away 4/30/03
Kessler seemed like a great guy when I met him at a convention and when I interviewed him for an article. But he once asked me to speak at a conference in Niagara Falls. I agreed and asked for a letter confirming the terms. He said he would send it. It never arrived. When the date drew near, I called to remind him I needed the letter and to make travel arrangements. He did not return my phone calls. I finally got an assistant and told her if I didn't hear in the next day or two, the agreement was off. She called back to say the conference had been canceled. I have no objection to his canceling a conference. But not sending the confirmation letter and not returning my phone calls indicate a lack of responsibility and common courtesy.
On 3/14/99, about five years after the incident in question, Kessler called to apologize. He said he thought he sent me a letter telling me the conference had been called off. He said he is not computer literate and only found out about this Web page on 3/14/99 when a customer called and told him about it.
In May of 1999, a member of a real estate club told me Kessler had treated them the same way he treated me.
On 8/14/99, Frank Verchereau told me Kessler reneged on a deal involving purchase of a six-story apartment house in Schenectady, NY after committing in writing to do the deal. Verchereau had enormous difficulty getting Kessler to return phone calls as the closing date approached.
Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad)---I do not recommend
I was told I would like this guy. His book was #1 on the Business Week best seller list. Eager to find another guy to recommend, I bought his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad in a bookstore and read it.
This is one of the all-time worst financial books ever written! I was so disturbed by it that I wrote an extensive review of it.
Nick Koon
Deceased. Some of his stuff is still around. I do not recall being impressed by it one way or the other.
Joe Land---I do not recommend
Joe was a nothing-down guru in the mid-'80s. I "debated" him on a 60 Minutes segment titled "Nothing Down" on March 16, 1986. Morely Safer was the correspondent.
Land said you only needed one technique. His was buying, at a discount, a mortgage someone had taken back on the sale of a house. Then you got a new institutional mortgage for 80% of value and used the mortgage you bought at a discount as down payment. The face value of the mortgage you bought at a discount was bigger than 20% of the value of the property you were buying, so you actually pocketed several thousand dollars proceeds of the new first mortgage at closing.
Morley Safer explained it well. He said the crux of Land's technique was persuading the owner of the mortgage that it was not worth what it said, then turning around and immediately persuading the owner of the house you were buying that the mortgage was worth what it said. There is no doubt some sellers are that dumb, especially those who are trying to sell overpriced property. But there are no institutional lenders who will knowingly do that deal.
I debated Land subsequently on a conference call that included Joe, me, and Time magazine reporter Jon Hull. Land insisted that he had done this deal many times and that many lenders would do it. I asked for the address of a property where Land had done such a deal. He refused to give one, citing confidentiality. Time promised anonymity to the lender. Land still refused. I urged Morley Safer to ask the same question of Land. He did and Land refused to provide him with an address, also.
Land stopped doing real estate seminars not long after the 60 Minutes piece ran. He later did TV infomercials in which he sold audio tapes purportedly containing subliminal self-improvement messages. All you could hear was sea gulls and ocean waves. I am told that at one of his real estate seminars, Land once told an associate, "These people would buy blank tapes if I told them to." Later when he was selling the seagulls-and-wave tapes, he said, "They aren't blank, but they're pretty close."
I always thought that blank-tapes story epitomized the real estate B.S. artist segment of the guru business.
Ron LeGrand-I do not recommend
$9,000 seminars. Gets people to attend live infomercials. I would love to charge $9,000 for a seminar, but I can't quote such a price and keep a straight face.
I listened to one of his tapes. It was the same old stuff all the other gurus preach. As is typical of other gurus, LeGrand left out much of the disadvantages of the various techniques. He also struck me as overbearing—which is irrelevant unless you are susceptible to being overly influenced by such people. When I get some time I will list some specifics here.
One of my readers told me “our distributor (Access) went bankrupt taking our money with them. It turned out that they were purchased by a company that also owned Ron Legrand’s BS factory six months before we took them on as a distributor.”
Another reader tells me LeGrand says he was once a carnival skeeball concession operator. Why am I not surprised? In general the gurus I do not recommend are salesmen, not real estate guys. Both carnival barkers and the majority of real-estate gurus are salesmen. Real estate investment requires far more than just sales skills. Telling people that you are a real-estate-investment expert, on the other hand, only requires sales skills.
Al Lowry-I do not recommend
Author of the best-selling book How to Become Financially Independent by Investing in Real Estate. Excellent book. But his subsequent books were lousy. His seminar on the Nickerson method was great. But his other seminars were terrible. Formed many Al Lowry Investor Clubs around the U.S. Declared bankruptcy in 1987. Doing foreclosure seminars last I heard.
Thomas J. Lucier-I do not recommend
Big on regurgitating other people's ideas, including some of mine.
MAI courses-I recommend
I took Member of the Appraisal Institute courses in the mid-1970s. They were thought-provoking and interesting, but too ivory tower. I thought it was telling that CCIM courses were given at hotels while MAI course were given at college campuses. They now give some in hotels, but they are still pretty ivory tower. Take these only if you are trying to leave no stone unturned in your quest to become a real estate investment expert.
Michael Martin (Seattle, WA)---I do not recommend
Seattle-based property manager and nationally syndicated real estate guru. Disappeared leaving a note in which he referred to himself as a "total failure, thief, and embezzler." Returned and pled guilty to "fraud by radio." On 8/21/98, Martin was sentenced to 46 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.68 million restitution. He almost got a much stiffer punishment. After he agreed to a plea bargain setting the prison term at 31 to 46 months, he wrongly deposited an additional $750 in rent checks from an old client's apartment building into his personal account. Dishonest and dumb.
Tony Martinez and his company the National Association of Secured Investors---I do not recommend
One of his customers told John Beck that he paid $3,995 for a lot in the Fox Hills Estates in Oconee County, South Carolina. He never got a deed and his last return-receipt letter was returned marked "unclaimed" and "not deliverable."
William McCorkle (Orlando, FL)- I do not recommend
His Cash Flow, Inc. was raided and shut down by the FBI, IRS, and USPS on 5/9/97 according to the Orlando Sentinel. The paper said the company had been charged with racketeering and that it was being investigated by the Florida Attorney General for deceptive advertising and unfair business practices based on more than 50 complaints about inability to get refunds. The Wisconsin State Bureau of Consumer Protection published a Guide for Wisconsin TV stations which lists several "Questionable infomercials," among them those of William Mc Corkle, a/k/a Cash Flow, Inc. and Fortunes in Foreclosures. Tom Brokaw did a "Fleecing of America" piece on McCorkle on 9/8/98. NBC TV Dateline did another longer piece on 5/19/99. It revealed that McCorkle lied about his background, used actors and friends to make false testimonials in his infomercials, rejected all deals brought to him by at least one of his customers, and rented for only a few hours the executive jet and yacht which appeared in his infomercial with his name painted on them. See my guru testimonials page for details.
A federal grand jury in Orlando indicted McCorkle and his wife on 90 counts of fraud, telemarketing conspiracy, and money laundering on 6/21/98. The indictment accused him and his associates of defrauding people out of $28 million including refusing to give refunds, failing to provide money for deals found by customers, and misleading customers about his true net worth. McCorkle's lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, argued that the refund pledge was mere "puffing" that was never intended to be taken at face value.
McCorkle and his wife Chantal were convicted of fraud and money laundering and are in jail awaiting sentencing. They got 24 years. They already forfeited their home, four cars, and $7 million in cash seized in a raid in May of 1997. The FL attorney general's office says they have several similar investigations in progress at their Orlando office.
My $23.95 book How to Buy Real Estate for at Least 20% Below Market Value has a chapter on buying pre-foreclosures (before the auction) and a chapter on buying foreclosures (at the auction). You should also read books by John Beck and Val Cabot.
Florida Real Estate Commission Report dated Volume 3 Number 1 FY 2000-2001, page10. Disciplinary Actions

Orlando: Willaim J. McCorkle; Broker revoked effective 12/30/1999; found guilty of a crime which directly relates to the activities of a licensed real estate broker or involving moral turpitude or fraudulent or dishonest dealing; guilty of being confined in a state or federal prison. Also wife named Chantal (sales person) had the same revocation and reasons.
Bill Mencarow (Kerrville, TX)-I recommend
Publisher of Paper Source newsletter and producer of an annual conference on note brokering. It's not my area of expertise, but Bill seems to be a squared-away guy. I have never heard a bad thing about him. I recommend him to anyone interested in note brokering.
Kevin Meyers---I recommend his book only
Myers wrote Buy It, Fix It, Sell It, Profit, a book which has a title awfully similar to Robert Irwin's Find It, Buy It, Fix It. The book was cheap and OK for the most part. The best book on renovation is William Nickerson's How I Turned $1,000 into $5,000,000 in Real Estate in My Spare Time. It's out of print so you need to find it through an interlibrary search. I also suggest the cosmetic renovation chapter in my $39.95 book How to Increase the Value of Real Estate. It's always wise to buy the cheap information on the subject before you buy expensive courses or seminars.
Myers has a few original ideas, but for the most part his book states age-old, often-written-about truisms. He also says some things which I think are nuts. He's big on pretty packaging of deals to attract investors. He tells you to seek out a type of real estate agent which I do not believe exists. I was a real estate agent for two years. Like many beginners, he is enamored of nothing-down deals. He likes partnerships. I say stay away from them. He also sells some more expensive stuff. I got the following from a reader: "Although his book is great, his course guide needs improvement. The cassettes are poorly recorded and seem to be edited severely. Buy the book. But save your money on the course."