Ange's Antics

Summing up the tax liens and deeds seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Ange Holt) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:43:00 +0000

Dont waste your money on this seminar. It just did not deliver.
If you only have a very small amount of time available to learn this business then it is not for you. It does have opportunity but it does have lots of pitfalls if you do not do it right!
You will not learn all you need to know at the 2 day seminar. Remember Tommy Senatore recommends you spend at least 10 hours a week and he's an expert!
You need more than the $12 Dan Eckleman tells you you need to get started if you want any sort of decent return.
If you are keen to learn about tax liens and deeds then do plenty of research on the internet as there are lots of competitvely priced training packages you can buy. From my research they look to deliver at least as much as the Dane academy seminar and many are around half the cost.
If you still really want to do this seminar then do the one these guys offer on line - it has money back guarantees unlike the 24 hr deal you get if you do the live seminar. You can find the details at this website. Please note that you are buying from a US company.
Get the report from Gilligan Rowe.
Do lots of research first and see what other people who have been to the seminars have said on the various forums.
Have some morals and don't rip people off by getting into the overbids scheme.

I hope these posts have given you an idea of my experience and hopefully after reading them you will not make the same mistakes I had.

Tax Liens and deeds Seminar - Auckland June 09

noreply@blogger.com (Ange Holt) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:20:00 +0000

Part 2 to follow on from my previous blog post:

So off to Auckland I went trying to be as positive as I could in light of the findings I had made.

The first morning was pretty random and when I questioned Phil about this he told me it was just an overview and we'd get to the real how to stuff later on - ok, so far I v'e paid approx $750 to hear what they told us at the presentation over again!

The workbooks we were given to use with examples and screen shots of the powerpoint presentation were very ordinary and some you could not even read so were pretty pointless. The manual that we got to take home however does have some good info in it and steps you through the process. Gives you lots of details about the various states laws pertaining to tax liens and deeds.

In the afternnon they started plugging the support you would get.....that you needed to pay extra for..... The Magic Jack to enable you to call the States for free, buy one here for $69.95 US of course because this is an American business and we bought a whole lot so got them at a good price...I looked up and found them available on line for US$39.95 plus $10 postage so still cheaper!

Then the LLC - which was hastily gone over, this included the fact that Nevada was the best place to set up as you did not pay State tax in Nevada, well a little research on the internet overnight enlightened me that you do still pay state tax if you buy out of the state and when I questioned this the next day I got told that oh yes but as overseas investors we had a different set of rules apply....I seriously doubt it... you buy a Nevada Company you play by Nevada rules!! It gets better if you buy one of these companies through Phil you only have 48 hours to change your mind..hardly enough time to get home talk to your own accountant and get a second opinion,... this is pretty rich coming from people who constantly tell you to do your due dilligence. I'd say they were trying real hard for you not toso you would sign up there and then! This also is where the Gilligan Rowe accountants and 4 other big accounting firms in NZ concurred that Phil Jone's company set up was not the best way to do your business and you could be in for some expensive compliance costs.

After the completion of the first day I still did not have a clue how to go off and actually buy a lien, I had no idea how to pick a good one from a bad one. So was pretty despondant but resided to hanging in there as they were offering the opportunity for all participants to win one of 3 liens/deeds that they were going to give away and maybe tomorrow we would actually learn about the nuts and bolts.

So day 2 starts off with a big spiel about why you should spend US$15,000 to do a stint with Tommy in the States to really learn how to do this business. At every opportunity throughout the rest of the day they went back to promoting this. Now another chunk of my investment in this seminar is used up on an infomercial of sorts! We did then get onto an actual example of how to buy a lien which was whizzed through very quickly and when one gentleman in the audience asked if we could go over another we were told we did not have time....but they promised we would know how to buy a tax lien by the end of the seminar. Plus there was plenty of time to blow on about why we should fork out another US$15k, buy an LLC from them and the support packages !

Now guess what if you wanted a chance to win one of the prizes you had to buy one of the packages they were selling. Now this was where it was actually funny, one of the liens/deeds (sorry I cant remember which) was for 10 acres in Utah - sounds good eh......well it was 10 acres of desert, with the closest power pole about 1 mile away, and the nearest store was one of those shanty sheds you see on the movies with a petrol bowser and so unkept looking that it looks shut already. The closest city was Salt Lake City, just over 2 hours away! Unless there's an oil field under that there sand or cactus milk develops some life enhancing elixar then I'd say, the poor person that won that for spending $15k just got a lemon or should I say a cactus! One of the other people that won a deed/lien ( I wish I had written them all down) when I asked what she had won did not have the certificate and did not have a clue just what she got either!

We did do some exercises where we pretended to buy houses via tax deeds, which were all very similar. This was actually quite good and we started to actually learn something but we did not do enough or get any hands on experience to really get a good feel for what we were doing.

There was also lots of info on getting agents, getting rid of bad tenants, getting legal and accounting assistance and it all was made to sound very easy. Again I have done some further research on the net and found a few articles by people who have actually gone to the States and found this not to be the case.

The other topic that came up were overbids and Tommy proudly stated that of all the other people that were tax lien/deed educators he knew of no one who taught how to do these, well maybe they have some moral conscious and that's why they don't. In some states they have an Overbid system. This is when there is an opening bid (being the amount of the debt owed to cover the outstanding taxes) and then people at the auction bid for that property and often pay well in excess of the opening bid. Often this can be 10's of thousands more. This is still worth their while as if the delinquent tax payer does not pay their taxes within the redemption period they still will get a property well below its market value. Assuming the owner of the property does not pay thier taxes then the difference between the opening bid and the closing bid (known as the overbid) is available for the owner or anyone who has the collection rights to claim this amount from the county within a certain period of time. Now what Tommy does is after the auction he looks up and finds these big overbids, goes to the owners house and says how sorry he is and how awful the county are, and he may be able to help them get some of the money back and all he wants is a 20% cut for his services. He then gets them to sign a form from the county that says he can collect their money on their behalf. He then trots off and within a matter of hours has the money. They actually think he is wonderful when he has just ripped them off because they did not know they could have gone and done this themselves! He told us about a story where he made $70k by doing this and I quote he "was laughing all the way to the bank". Preying on peoples lack of knowledge is a wrought, fair enough charge a small commission say 5 - 10% max but 20% or more is just a rip off. Apparently there are people in the States charging 40 - 50% so that makes Tommy look like an angel! Anyway if any kiwi investors prey on innocent Americans who have already lost their homes I will be embarrassed to say I am a kiwi too and I am going to do my best to stop this from happening by setting up a website www.overbids.org to educate and warn people of this practise. I just could not believe they were teaching us to be out and out scammers.

I mentioned in my previous blog that I would outline what was said in the first presentation(the online video, Smash the Recession, hosted at richmastery's website) that was not the same as the one I attended in Hamilton. Here are the main points:

At the presentation I attended we were given no time for questions before the sell for the 2 day seminar was made
We had 24 hours to change our mind - the first time they had 3 days (far more fair)
No online support - compared to 100% online support(Platinum level) - just email us
No forum support - Phil said there would be forum support for all those who did the training

The list goes on and the point I wish to make here is that they obviously needed to refine their leekages before the second course. Plus again with no information available for those who had registered if you watched this video again for reassurance of what you were getting because you could not quite remember you were being mislead.

I will post another blog shortly outlining what I think they could have done better and what I think you should do if you are interested in learning about tax liens and deeds.

Tax Liens and Tax Deeds Seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Ange Holt) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:01:00 +0000

I recently attended the Tax Lien and Tax Deeds Seminar promoted by Phil Jones and his Dane Academy partner Dan Eckelman and I am dissapointed.

In this post I will outline the lead up events to this seminar and tomorrow will provide details about the event itself. So here we go:
This is not a reflection of the opportunity as there certainly is money to be made through buying tax liens and tax deeds in the US. I am however not happy with the process and what they delivered at the course compared to what they promised or at least implied.
I also wish to add that I had previously attended the Richmastery's Property Academy and felt that I got good value for money and so my expectations were the same. So I believed that I would be getting as good an educational experience.

A number of my experiences were also expressed by other people I spoke to at the course who were equally disappointed.

I do admit that I made some critical errors as well which I will point out along the way.

Firstly I will make some comments about things we were told at the presentation as compared to what was actually delivered at the 2 day seminar.

At the "Beat the Recession Presentation" we were told that we could spend 15 to 20 minutes to do these deals after we had learnt what to do at the 2 day seminar. At the seminar the presenter Tommy Senatore told us we needed to spend 2 hours per day or 10 hours per week.

We were told they would help us buy a tax lien at the course and from other people I spoke to at the event their interpretation was like mine that we would actually do this ourselves at the course. We did get quickly shown how to buy one and when a guy asked if we could get shown another example he was told there wasn't time.

It was strongly implied that they would "hold our hand" and show us how to do this business and there was free support.....haha nothing of the sort and all the support costs you even more money.

We were told that you could invest as little as you wanted eg $12 (was the figure they used) and you simply went online, bought the lien and waited for your cheque to come in the mail....well actually you need at least a tax number in the States which either costs you money or a lot of forms and time. Plus it's also advantageous to have a US bank account which again is doable but complicated. After the presentation I learnt that for the small time investor the compliance costs and exchange rate risk out way the return.

We were told banks buy these in the billions of dollars and there is 0 risk...yeah as long as you go to their course to ensure you buy the right ones.

We were given a Guarantee that "We will assit in the purchase of your first lien" I do not know how you have just interpretated this statement but I along with a number of other participants at the course I spoke to believed that we would come away from the course having purchased a tax lien. This for me was perfectly feasible as at the property academy they provide a large number of laptops that participants can use so I just assumed this must be what would happen at the 2 day tax course....NO :( As I mentioned above we were hastily given one step through example.

At the end of the presentation we were given a form to complete and told we would get a discounted rate if you signed up today and something extra if we were one of the first 11 to sign up for the seminar, so heavy pressure to just sign and not read the fine print (which they did say to read but gave no time to do so). I did not rush up straight away but did read some of the fine print and of course the most important part was stuck in the middle where it was easy to gloss over it - if you want to pull out you must do so within 24 hours! I was also preoccupied with wanting to ask some more questions which they had conveniently told us we could ask at the end but interestingly this was not done before the forms were handed out and we were strongly encouraged to enroll. Anyway partly due to this distraction and to be fair my own lack of attention to the fine print I missed this crucial part. I signed up after loads of questions (and I got the feeling they were getting sick of me) handed in my form and money and went away thinking it was odd I never got a copy or a receipt of any sort. No worries, well maybe a little, the presentation implied that we would know exactly what to do to make buying tax liens and deeds a relatively easy thing once we went to the course, and I had looked on the richmastery website and found some guarantees that I thought applied to the live seminar as well seeing as there was no other information for course participants. Plus Richmastery generally offer good guarantees and I thought were fair business people - not so. At the seminar I met a lady who changed her mind 48 hours after and was told it was too late she would not get her money back as the refund period was only 24 hours.

When I got home I excitedly relayed this great opportunity to my partner who was very cautious about my proceeding, but after my sell and confidence that there were still some outs he agreed that it sounded like an ok event to attend. I did however still have some reservations so did a bit of "Googling" to see what I could find.

An article at Stuff.co.nz headed "Beware of Tax Lien return" which in summary warns of how much real financial merit there was in buying tax liens. Still full of hype and unable to find anything else that discredited the course, I felt this was just a "party pooper" type article poohooing something good.

The video of the first presentation Phil and Dan did prior to the first 2 day seminar they conducted here in NZ, which of course just reinforced all the things I had heard from them earlier that day. Note: I have since been back over the presentation and realised that they were a lot fairer and far less pushy the first time than they were recently as I will point out later.

So unfortunately not enough to put me off in time!

A few weeks passed and I was becoming a little uneasy about the course and so decided to do some more research. So I went back on line and looked up the guarantees on the richmastery course but decided they probably would not apply as the course was through the new company North Island Holdings Ltd.

I then found the online information about the tax liens course that had a 3 month money back guarantee so thought well that must apply to our course too...not so as I found out when I questioned Phil at the course.

A google search found a forum post by someone who had been to the first seminar along with a number of other responses that were not at all complimentary and to top it off a report by Gilligan Rowe who in a nutshell do not believe the company set up that is promoted at the seminar is the best way and that for the small investor the compliance costs and exchange rate risk outway any decent returns! As I knew Gilligan Rowe had been big supporters of Richmastery I gave this article serious attention. Here's a link to the article and you can get a copy of the report by emailing them.

As I was only going to be a small time investor with a small amount of time available to dedicate to learning and doing this business, I now was pretty nervous that I had indeed been scammed into buying an education opportunity that was not actually for me and there was no way to get out of it.

I must also add here that I also believed (as every other course I have attended at least provides morning and afternoon tea) that as it was over two days we would be provided meals included the cost....not so. A week before the seminar we received an email stating that no food was to be provided, not even a cup of coffee!

See you tomorrow for further details on how the seminar actually unfolded.

My First Blog - Wow

noreply@blogger.com (Ange Holt) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

At last I have managed to create a blog for myself. My partner Dave has done this for ages and I have sat back but finally felt I had something worthwhile to post!

I recently attended a Tax Lien and Tax Deed course in Auckland, NZ run by Phil Jones and his new associates. I have to say I was pretty disappointed overall in the event, especially after having attended the Richmastery Property course previously and having had a favourable experience. This event was over priced, did not even give you a complimentary cup of coffee and as far as I was concerned along with a number of other people I spoke to did not deliver what we were told it would.

I am going to do a full report on my experience so once I have my notes typed up I will post them here. I feel strongly that I do not want other people to make the same mistake I had.

I also was shocked to learn that one of the things they endorsed was "scamming" innocent people that just did not know what they were intitled to out of tens of thousands of dollars by simply not telling them the whole truth .....again more details of this in my report.

Hopefully I'll be back soon