Hello, my name is Matthew Chan.  I am the publisher and author of “The TurnKey Investor” series of books and audio programs.  I am also a real estate investor and entrepreneur based in Columbus, GA.  In my local area, I am best known along with my real estate business partner, Wes Weaver, as the principals of OwnerFinanceHomes.com, “The #1 Providers of Owner-Financed Homes in Columbus, GA & Phenix City, AL”. I am the Host and Lead Instructor of the 2008 TurnKey Investor's Real Estate Portfolio-Building Workshop. In this section, I am going to provide an exhaustive list of "Great Reasons to Attend Our Workshop". I am not going to insult your intelligence by providing every reason in two sentences or less. Whether you attend our workshop or not, I intend to open your mind of things to think and consider when you start building your own real estate portfolio.

Expensive Mistakes We Learned From

The cost of ignorance, inexperience, and making unnecessary mistakes can be very high.  In any investment transaction, simply avoiding making one mistake can justify the cost of tuition to this workshop!  It will either cost you by the loss of profits and opportunity or by expenses incurred through damages and vacancy.

The following lists mistakes we have made at some point in our history which cost us at $2,000 or more either in one transaction or over the course of several transactions.  The cost of tuition for this seminar workshop is $2,000.  If you need reasons to justify your investment in our workshop, read these real-life lessons we have learned and see how this might apply to you and your situation.

Real-Life Lease-Options Lessons Learned

In a lease-option transaction, you could set the upfront money or rent rates too high resulting in an extended vacancy.  Vacancy costs are mortgage payments plus advertising costs.  Although, we have a good record of moving homes quicker, I had one of our nicer investment properties sit vacant for 8 months!  That mortgage payment was $850 plus $150/month in advertising costs.  I paid $8,000 in vacancy cost until it was finally lease-optioned out.  Had I made some adjustments earlier, I could have reduced that by at least 25%.  Learn how to read market signs and when and how to make those adjustments quickly.

Or you could set them too low, resulting in short-changing yourself of upfront cash.  In our market, making this mistake 3 or more times will match the cost of seminar tuition.  There is one lease-option technique we regularly use (and have not written about) which allows us to collect an extra $200 to $700 upfront money per tenant when they move in.  This does not include the intangible benefits gained in using this technique.  I have not seen this technique written about by anyone engaged in lease-option transactions.  Come learn about this one lease-options technique which I will explain in detail.  It is simple, you will love it, and you will make more money per lease-option transaction.

You could set the purchase option price too low resulting in a potential loss of profits of $5,000 to $25,000 well exceeding the cost of tuition by not understanding or correctly interpreting market conditions and anticipating future appreciation.  Learn how we calculate the option price and not short-change yourself.

You could select the wrong tenant to occupy your investment property that could result in damages exceeding the cost of your tuition.  I recently had to replace carpeting costing me over $3,000.  If I had known the right questions to ask 3 years earlier, I could have saved myself that $3,000 carpet expense.

By selecting the right tenant, you are able to get incredible improvements made to your property.  In one property, we had new carpet, paint, and fencing put up.  The improvements came to $2,500 if I had to pay for it.  A couple of tenants later, that property had a central-air/heat system and new kitchen flooring put in.  Those improvements came to $3,000 if I had to pay for them.  Not only did I not have to pay for those improvements, I reaped the benefits of increased overall value for that property.  Essentially, I had a double-payoff.  I got the increase in value without having to pay once cent for them. This is only one story out of many improvements we have experienced with our properties.  Learn to find what kind of tenants will do this for you and your property.

Real-life Legal Issues

We are in the midst of a court case that will likely result in legal and attorney fees of near $5,000.  Even if we win, it will have cost us.  This situation could have been prevented saving us from this legal and attorney fee.  Come learn the details of this real-life case and find out what we would have done differently to avoid this lawsuit. There were simple things we could have done to avoid this case.

There are other pitfalls that could land you in court.  Whether you are buying with a “subject to” mortgage or selling with lease-options, you can be sued.  Once you hire an attorney to defend yourself, even if you win, it costs you.  In all the years we have been in business, we have only been sued once (it is still pending).  Learn how you should conduct your transactions to avoid lawsuits.  I promise you, you will value this information we will share.

You could potentially lose the opportunity to collect thousands of dollars on “deadbeat” revenues if you are ignorant of the garnishment process and the bad debt collection process.  Most investors never learn the inside tricks of how the collections business works and they lose thousands of dollars per year because they are too lazy to learn and understand it.  I have personally overseen the collections of several thousands of dollars in “deadbeat” revenues, from tenants who chose to not pay their debts to us.  I promise you because I learned this process I have more than made up the cost of seminar tuition many times over.  (Hint:  Learn what to keep in-house and what to outsource to maximize your dollars)

Marketing Costs

In the course of a year, you could unnecessarily over-spend in advertising and marketing costs.  There is a such thing as spending too much money on advertising.  Learn how we are able to continue marketing for “free” even if we stopped all our newspaper advertisements.  What would be the value of learning a marketing system that allows you to occasionally stop newspaper advertising?

Conversely, you could under-advertise or mis-advertise, resulting in an extended vacancy cost that could exceed the cost of tuition.  Remember, vacancy costs are monthly mortgage payments plus monthly marketing costs.  In our market, we can rack up $2,000 of vacancy costs easily within 2 to 3 months.   What would it cost you to learn through trial and error how to write ads that deliver results?  Come and view our actual newspaper ads that actually work!

Special Tips and Tricks with Seller-Financed Transactions

In a seller-financed or “subject to” mortgage transaction, you could easily overpay to reinstate and take over a loan.  Did you know that in many loans, you do not have to pay the entire amount they tell you to pay to reinstate the loan?  Do you know they will frequently take $200 to $1,000 less per transaction if you know what to ask for?

For every seller-financed deal you do, you save yourself thousands in dollars of loan origination costs.  Not only that, they do not show up on your credit report.  I promise you, learning how to construct only one good seller-financed deal will more than justify your cost of tuition.  Seller-financed deals are simply amazing.  We will show you our files of actual transactions.  How many seminars will have the instructors reveal confidential financial transaction information?  We will.  But only in a strictly controlled, private environment.

Good Deals, Bad Deals. Know the Difference.

You could miss the opportunity to make an additional $10,000 to $20,000 per deal by letting potential deals slip from your fingers by not recognizing the right opportunity in front of you.   When I first started out, I made this mistake and lost a deal that had $15,000 to $20,000 in equity.  No one told me about this one thing when I started out.  I made the wrong judgment call and lost the opportunity.

You could easily lose more than the cost of tuition by buying taking over an investment property you should never have touched to begin with.  Ask us how we know.  Learn the things we now look for before taking on a borderline deal.

Doing a Live Marketing Demonstration

We have built up an email database of nearly 800 potential applicants for our lease-options marketing program.  Learn how we built up this email database.  Learn what we write in our newsletters.  Learn how we send out these email broadcasts.  We will be demonstrating this LIVE during the weekend.  We will do an actual email broadcast informing our database of the vacancies we have during the time of the seminar.  This can never be shown in any book or audio program but we will do this LIVE.  We will choose one lucky student to send out a live message for us.  Will you be the lucky student to do this for us?  Even if you aren’t, you will have the opportunity to at least navigate our system through our laptop.

We will be taking an investors field trip and have live case studies.  How many seminar instructors will take you into the field and show you their real-life investment properties and show you the actual numbers?  We will show you the actual documents that went into buying the property and selling the property.  What is this worth to you?  In itself, it may not be worth the cost of tuition but for many newer investors, it will be an invaluable and a priceless experience.

The Investor Field Trip and Investor Files "Show and Tell"

Last thing as a reminder, don't forget about our Investor Field Trip and our Investor Files "Show and Tell". The details are in our main page. Those are some pretty good reasons to come to our workshop and justify your investment in the tuition.

Inviting My Multi-Million-Dollar Real Estate Portfolio Investor Friends

When I started to put this workshop together, I thought Wes and I had a lot of material to teach and share for 3-days.  But having organized and worked a few seminars and workshops in the past, it is a lot of work. With that in mind, I also wanted to get something out of this besides working hard.  I wanted to have some fun and I also wanted to learn during the 3-days.

I thought it might be nice for ourselves as well as our students to have some guest speakers to give an alternative perspective and additional insights and distinctions to what Wes and I have done.  After all, it would be extremely egotistical of us to think that only we could teach and shared on the philosophy of real estate portfolio-building.

And so, I thought of the people who I knew, respected, and shared a similar philosophy as we do in building and maintaining a portfolio.  I wanted people who were NOT part of the seminar circuit and all the hype.  I wanted true real estate investors who would be willing to share both the ups and downs of true real estate investing.  I wanted people who would be will be willing to open up and share some of their personal financial situation and transactions.  I wanted people that we could trust and learn from.

And so, out of the three people that came to mind, I thought maybe one or at most two of my investor friends might agree to be a guest speaker for me.  As it turns out, all three agreed albeit with some arm-twisting on my part.

Part of my challenge is that this workshop is not large enough for me to pay them speaker fees.  They are quite literally teaching and speaking for free.  I am paying their travel and hotel expenses but they are not getting any speaking fees.  On top of that, they have very few products to sell.  In one case, one speaker has nothing to sell!

Then why are they doing this for you and me?  One, they love to teach from time to time.  Two, they are my friends.  Three, I asked (and pleaded) very hard.   And four, they wanted to have fun and reunite with their fellow investor friends.  It has literally been 2 years or more since we have seen each other personally.  Essentially, I told them it would be a fun and fulfilling weekend for them.

Having said all of that, let me go beyond the bios and share with you why I think you should be excited about my investor friends and to join us at the workshop in October.

Jerry Hoganson of MobileWealth.com owns 10 mobile home parks and 20+ single family homes.  He has been through a lot in the 9 years he has been an investor.  He started out in single-family homes but branched out into mobile homes.  From there, he went into mobile home parks.  He has had his shares of ups and downs in the real estate and mobile home business but his wife Lisa and his 3 children continue to prosper.  Jerry recently told me of his “master plan” that he keeps private.  However, he has agreed to share his long-term plans with the attendees.  Come meet him personally as he discusses what it is like to build a multi-million dollar portfolio with his family.  I have been to Jerry’s mobile home park seminar in Wisconsin three times in past years.  I have been to Jerry’s home and office several times over the years.  He is the real deal who has had his shares of ups and downs.  I am greatly honored and appreciative that he would come to my seminar and be a guest instructor.  He will share his perspective on what it is like to build and maintain his investment portfolio.

Marleen Geyen of UniversityWealth.com and student housing fame recently told me that she continues to build and maintain her multi-million dollar real estate portfolio not for herself, she does it for her children!  Over the years, I have invited Marleen to work with me in additional projects but she has repeatedly declined because she was focused on building her new business.  This time around, I was pleasantly surprised she actually said yes to come teach at this workshop.  Please understand that this is no exaggeration that Marleen rarely speaks or teaches publicly.  She enjoys it but only if it “feels right” to her or if she is “in the right mood”.  After 3 years of my asking, she has agreed to come to Columbus, GA and open up once again.  She will let you know what investing in student housing and student rentals is like.  Forget the myth and preconceived notions of student housing.  Marleen knows the business and will tell it like it is.  As a woman investor, she offers the female perspective of real estate investing.  It is very insightful.  Come meet Marleen and learn how she works with her husband, Fred, in maintaining this portfolio.  Marleen is very dedicated and devoted to her family.  She is inspiring because she is setting up her amazing portfolio of wealth for the next generation.  Although I have known Marleen for years, I never knew that was her purpose and I am looking forward to the Q&A session I have planned for her.

Joe Arlt of Virginia Beach has no website.  His claim to fame is his Wharton MBA and having bought nearly 600 properties for himself.  As much as I have encouraged him over the years to teach more, Joe keeps himself to his family and his business.  I have often encouraged Joe to hold his own seminar so I could go sit and be a student.  He has never considered doing this.  The best I have ever done is to invite Joe to a business cruise I held in March 2005 and visit Joe in his hometown in 2006 for a few days.  The rest of the time, I get nuggets on our occasional catch-up phone calls.  This time around I asked Joe to come speak and teach at my workshop.  He was quite reluctant.  It is no exaggeration that I practically begged him to come.  I promised he would have a good time.  I promised my staff would give him VIP service and treatment.  I promised I would cover all his travel, hotel, and food costs plus more.  I promised Joe that we would NOT give out hyped information and only tell the wonderful things about investing.  I told him we would also share our mistakes and the pitfalls that can and do happen.  I told him that this was likely a one-time workshop of which I wanted him to be part of.   I told him I felt it was absolutely necessary for him to share his information and experiences.  I even told Joe, him coming would be a personal favor to me.  He eventually relented and agreed.  I still get nervous that Joe might back out so I check in with him once every other week in case he changes his mind.

I know everything I wrote above sounds like a bunch of hype but I promise you on my personal reputation, it is not.  I am passionate about going after people who are very smart, very open and matter of fact in what they do.  I would not be honest if the fact that he has bought nearly 600 properties for himself and his partners did not have a big part in my respect for him.  I don’t know anyone on a personal level who has done as much as Joe has in the single-family homes business.  I asked Joe to make sure he gave a lot of time to you, the students.  I told him, I preferred he did not just come in to do one speaking session and disappear.  I told him I would be scheduling extra time for him to speak and for him to make himself available to the rest of us, including me!

You wanted Great Reasons to Attend Our Workshop and justify your investment in the $2,000 tuition? Well, there you have it. I might come up with a few more reasons between now and October, so you can check back if you need more reasons. For now, this is the best list I can come up with.

Come join us on October 10-12, 2008.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Sincerely,

Matthew Chan

P.S. Take a peek at our Workshop Registration Form. It might be good use of your time to take a quick look at it.

P.P.S. You might also want to read the article "My Personal Story" in case you want to know more about my background.