The Realinvestors Academy, LLC

I want to start by saying that the goal of this course is to get a real estate deal. The most common deals are a fix and flip or a wholesale deal. We, as a team, did get a deal under our belt, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
The brilliant formation of this course is that you are placed in a group of 5-6 people to form a team. Each team member gets a role and responsibility. If everyone in the team holds up their end of the bargain, the team aspect can help gain knowledge of the real estate industry, and everyone can hold each member accountable. Our team had the perfect structure, and I enjoyed every one of my team members.

It all goes downhill from here...

The program that I signed up for was titled the “partners program.” The partners’ program encompasses the 21 days to real estate riches course, the apprentice program, and the FSBO class.
The apprentice program is broken down into two sections. The first section is the 21-day course.
There is a video module for each day. These video modules are recommended to go through daily. Each video module lasts for about 3 hours. I want to restate that each module lasts for 3 hours. The module is comprised of videos that you are advised to listen to daily. Ideally, you should complete this in 21 days. Hence 21 video modules.
Along with the 21-day course, there is a meeting that lasts from 2 to 4 hours on a Saturday of each month. There are three of these meetings. These meetings help talk out any problems you may have during the month in finding a deal. The hidden incentive of the apprentice program is that the first team to get a deal gets a trip to an Island. **Remember, this is important later.** Please remember this piece of information.

The last part of the partners’ program is titled the FSBO course. I will state right now that I may be getting the verbiage of the course titles confused or even mixed up because the titles of these courses seem to change on a whim. This last aspect of the course is called the partners’ program or the FSBO course; is supposed to:

1. Teach you how to go after FSBO deals
2. Work with three of the most proficient real estate investors within the RealInvestor’s program. The first is Sherman. He is the dean and trainer of all the courses. The second investor is Jesse M***, who is a real estate agent/ investor. He is also one of the lead agents on the real investors’ team. The third is Howard Johnson. You will repeatedly hear about Howard, and with good reason. Howard and his fantastic deal knowledge and success within the real investors’ program will be highlighted and discussed often.

The Dealmakers workshop: The deal makers’ workshop is held by Jesse. This class is akin to psyche-up meeting telemarketers and MLM members have. It is composed of Jesse yelling at the class about why the participants haven’t gotten a deal yet. If you plan to attend this class, I hope you have tough skin because there is a high chance you will feel like your questions are stupid, and you are incompetent for even asking. This is not hyperbole. One of our team members was asked, “Are you incompetent” when in a meeting with Jesse.

Open office hours: The second weekly meeting afforded to you is open office hours with Sherman. This time is set aside for students to ask any questions they may have. This meeting seems like a perfect opportunity for discourse about issues and problems you may be having. I apologize for being too cynical here; you will get one or two answers in these sessions if you ask a question. The first answer is a long-winded reply of Sherman’s expounding on his vast knowledge of real estate. He will take every opportunity to wax poetic and regurgitate the origin of laws and history on whatever subject the question is pioneered towards. You may think I am callous, but I have heard him speak for 45 minutes (of a two-hour session). When a question was posed asking “should investors write an offer on a prefabricated home.”
The second answer you will get is to reread the 21-day course. You will get this answer endlessly. You will get it from everyone (working for RealInvestors) as if people are trained to say it.

These two meetings are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays are held for two hours. Don’t forget you still have to set aside 3 hours a day to listen to the 21-day course. God help you if you haven’t because you will be told to go through the 21-day course again if you do not answer a question anyone happens to ask during these sessions. You will also be led to believe you do not have a deal yet because you haven’t finished the 21-day course. At this point, I’m sure you are thinking “read/watch the 21-day course”. I have gone through the course. I’ve gone through it three times. But wherever my team or I couldn’t remember the “3rd rule of automation” or something similar from the course, we were scolded, made to feel less than, and then told to read the 21-day course.

About the 21 day course:
Now let’s just say you are asked a question to the effect of “where are 90 percent of homes that get sold located?” Let’s say you don’t know the answer. You are told to go through the 21-day course. Let say you wish to be a good student and you want to find the answer. Remember the course is 21 videos. Remember that the videos are each 3 hours long. There are no minute markers or time stamps on these videos. The course does not have a synopsis. So to find an answer to that question, you not only would have to listen to the entire three hours. You need to make sure you picked the right video that has that information within it. BTW no one will ever tell you, “Go check out day 13 of the 21-day course” they will say to you to read the 21-day course and leave it there.

We were the 20 percent (About our deal/400 offers later)
It is currently the year 2021. The housing market is on fire. If you are looking for an SFH (single-family home), you will have difficulty getting a home for the listing price. Any home, mind you. Now getting a house for 75% of ARV is damn near impossible. I think this is what most real estate investors/gurus (any guru) don’t tell you. The goal in real estate investing is to get a home for 75% ARV or less, depending on the shape of the house. When houses are going for over listing when significant repairs are needed, trying to get one under that price is almost impossible. We as a class were never told this could be a factor as to why not one of our offers was accepted. We were made to believe that no one had a deal yet because the entire class was lazy, and we didn’t read the 21-day course. I want to think market conditions are the reason none of the teams in this class got a deal... except our team. As I said, after sending north of 400 offers, someone accepted our offer. We had physically seen about eight houses by this time, but of the 400 plus offers, one person accepted. Before I get into the nuts and bolts of our deal, I want to say. We were coached OUT of our deal. Other teams were coached through or TO a deal. In the process of writing offers and having constant, NO’s told to us. We were encouraged to see some homes. When we went to see these homes, we were told to tell Sherman to walk us through this. He was going to coach us to “closing the deal.” We constantly asked Sherman to do a walkthrough with us on three occasions he didn’t come on our invites. Not one. UNTIL we received a yes on our offer. Now mind you, he went with other teams out on walkthroughs to homes that didn’t have an accepted offer. Guess whose deals came to fruition? Ours did. Now when he did come to the house on the deal, we were about to close. We were told our deal wasn’t a deal and that we were lucky. As soon as we set a closing date, we were the poster children of the course, website, and Facebook groups. These videos and pictures are still on the website. On the Facebook pages, there are pictures of members of my team holding up giant fake checks with headlines saying, “This team made 34K on their first deal.

All the while, we were highly encouraged to back out of the deal.

However, we were stubborn. We did the numbers. We knew the area. We knew that if we didn’t buy this house, someone would. Now within the course, we were given a MAR contract to write offers. Now mind you, this is a real estate class, and the goal is to wholesale or fix and flip a house. The backbone of these transactions are contracts. Contracts that filing an LLC, assignment agreements, removal of members from LLC, etc. We were not given any of these contracts that make a transaction off this type work. We were not given anything. When we asked, “Where are these contacts?” We had to fend for ourselves or find them online. In RealInvestors defense, this is what happened to the contracts: There was an old version of this course on CDs and paper. What is now available are the video modules. The video module had one attachment accompanying it. A large 80+ page .pdf encompassing; a checklist, a blank schedule, a notes page, and the constitution. Yes, the entire U.S. constitution. I am only privy to this information because a team member took the old course and still had access. This team member was an invaluable member of the team, and I thank him. When I brought up the discrepancy between the old course and the new course not having these critical forms. I was placed on mute and not allowed to ask any more questions that day. Let’s get back to the important part. We have a deal, and we’re ready to close. Now due to no fault of our own, it took an additional month to close. That type of thing happens in real estate—no big deal. What is unnatural is the process that happened during closing. The 30 days plus that we had to wait should have been ample time for the title company to ensure we had all our ducks in a row. This title company was recommended by RealInvestors due to the fact that most of us were based in Virginia, and we didn’t know a reliable title company within Maryland. Since this title company was referred by RealInvestors, one would assume they have done dozens if not hundreds of transactions of this type. Milestone Title Company acted like they had no idea what a wholesale real estate deal was or how to carry it out. This was partially due to too many cooks being in the kitchen. There was Jesse, the senior agent. Marlon, our team’s agent. One of our team members and I talked to the title company. I’ll take the blame for that and everything that happens after this but remember we are still novices. We have never done a deal of this type. We paid what most people pay for two months mortgage for this course. We are the students here. During our deal, we had a hiccup. During this and most real estate classes, they always tell you to form an LLC for tax and litigation purposes. Our buyers did not want the property in an LLC. They wanted it in their names. These are things the 21-day course doesn’t go through. Now we are stuck with another LLC that we paid for, and now we have to get the contract transferred from the LLC to the buyer’s name. Seems like an easy task. Right? Wrong! This one change costs us over 24K. Yes, twenty-four thousand dollars. A large portion (about 12k) of it went to RealInvestors (I forgot to mention that RealInvestors, as real estate agents take 4% for their real estate fees, akin to most agents 2.5%). On top of their 4%, we were charged another 2.5% for “saving our deal” and creating the forms to fix a simple name change and the rest went to the title company for a double closing. Oh yeah, a double closing, another thing the 21-day course doesn’t mention.

Before closing, you get a HUD1. I have personally purchased three homes on my own. On each of these purchases, my real estate agent always walked me through the charges, fees, misc. Items, and any questions I may have about the hud1. Since I have purchased several homes, I know how to read a HUD1. It is basically a balance sheet. Everyone is not as fortunate as me. One of my team members had questions about the HUD1. So we had a meeting. This meeting was formed for the pure purpose of going over the sale of this piece of real estate. My teammate was told by Jessie, “I am not going over the HUD-1 with you”.
I will never forget those words. I will never forget an agent saying to a person about to pay him (via agent fees) that they will not go over the HUD1 or entertain questions about the HUD1. In addition to that response, two of the members of our group who were agents were put on mute, so they could not ask questions. Throughout all that, our deal went through, and everyone got paid. We were the first team to close on a deal at the being of this review. I stated that the first team to get a deal would get a trip to an island. I am not sure what island because we never got our trip. It was never even mentioned that we won. Never brought up, and no one acknowledged that we got our deal, however, on the RealInvestors site. Our pictures remain, in the class, we are talked up in case studies. More importantly, on August 2, 2021, EVERYONE got paid, Milestone Title Company, RealInvestors, Jessie, Marlon, and our team. At first, we were scheduled to make 36k. We walked away with about 12K; mind you, this is to be split among six people.

Where we are now:
I was going to wait to post this until after the “partners program/FSBO course is done.” I thought that would only be fair. In the last week of September 2021, I could not access the course zoom sessions. The session runs every Thursday from 8:00 until 10:00 PM. For the previous two weeks, the same zoom meeting link that I have used since late July does not work. I contacted their “needhelpasklisa” helpdesk. My ticket was automatically closed. Usually, Sherman would post the videos on Facebook. When I asked about the videos of the sessions for the last two weeks, I was told, “They would be available within 4-6 weeks.” I am not sure about you, but I do not take kindly not having access to things I have already paid for. The weird part about this class is that it is advertised as a 12-week session. However, at last, we were on week 13. Recently RealInvestors started sending an email. (due to my complaints) The email shows that the classes are still going on; however, none of the links to the zoom sessions work. What we have done through the weeks is write sale letters. I still talk to my team regularly and told them what we were doing in the class. Their reply was, “why are you still writing sales letters?” We started writing sales letters in week three. Here nine weeks later, we are still doing sales letters. We have not talked about FSBOs. The listings, how to contact the owners of FSBO listing. How to obtain an FSBO listing. A contract to use for dealing with an FSBO home or how to even talk to individuals who have a home for sale. We have been writing sales letters for 12 weeks. I understand that there IS a method to the madness, but other things should be covered. The biggest downside about the constant spending time on the writing of the same sales letter is that. We are not writing and re-writing the sales letter. Sherman spends the majority of the time asking the class, “why haven’t you written the sales letter” or “why haven’t you created avatars for the sales letter.” He is not really speaking to anyone in particular. Sherman is just speaking towards the class, scolding members of the class that has not done the homework from weeks two and three of the class.

In conclusion:
I’m not going to tell you to take this course or not. That is not my intention. My intention is to let you know what you are getting into if you take a RealInvestors class. If you live in the D.C. Metro area and you are getting involved with real estate. You will hear Sherman Ragland sooner or later. He will pitch his course to you, and you will think long and hard about paying a few thousand dollars on a course. I am just painting a picture of what to expect. Secondly, I want this course to get better. Oftentimes when self-help individuals make new courses, they create the courses and flesh it out on the fly via videos or zoom sessions, and the first run of the courses is imperfect. The gurus know they are the beta versions. From misspellings in materials, missing emails, websites that host broken links, and files that are not available. These courses are broken, and customers get inferior products. Ramit Sethi does it, and Sherman Raglan does too. The course, while lengthy, is good. The people who help Sherman are not. They need training. They need to be coached as he coaches his students.

In addendum
Sloppy, this course is just sloppy. It is October 15. The last class was supposed to be last night (Thursday, October 14). I have to write this here because my frustrations have hit the fan. I am listening to the session from last night. He asked, “Does anyone need me to go over what we went over last week.” NO ONE SPOKE UP. He then proceeded to say, “Well, let me go over it again.” Sherman then showed us a picture and proceeded to ask us, “What is this picture?” The picture is of a bike wheel. Every session, there seems to be a review of what he talked about last session.
I am not sure if this is indeed supposed to help us or is this filler material. Of this 10-week “master class,” We are currently on Week 16, slated through Sherman and his various emails as the Last Class. It is not, apparently something happened, and he will extend the class to what usually is the “Funnel Friday” session. Two things about this Friday session are #1. It is at noon; therefore, no one shows up, and #2 the zoom links constantly change, so no one shows up. I am not exaggerating. Six people showed up (a few weeks back) because Sherman addressed the link issue after I blasted the inconsistency of this session on Facebook. Therefore, the most people that have joined the session, which was six, showed up. However, at the scheduled time that this “last class” was supposed to take place. We received an email saying it would not happen.
I am guessing this LAST class will be scheduled for the following Thursday. Keep in mind WE PAID for this. We paid to get links that work one week but not another. We paid for him canceling classes on a whim. (for three consecutive weeks) We paid for ten weeks, but it was stretched out until 18 because he does not have a sense of time or respect for other people’s time. I am sick of this course. I am sick of this class. I want it to be over so I can go about my life. Every Thursday, I feel like a prisoner listening to an old black man rant about whatever he feels like, and in the process, there may be 30 minutes of real estate talk. These 30 minutes may be new information, or it could be the same information he said last week. I want this to be over so that I may have my Thursdays back. Since this course started, we have done nothing. Not a deal, not contacting a homeowner; nothing. We have been a prisoner for two hours every Thursday. Our life has not gotten better or worse because of it. Imagine being told the same story every Thursday at 8 PM, and it does end until ten or 10:30. And I cannot wait for it to be officially over. I am sick of sending emails from him and his “staff” whenever his links do not work. I am sick of his emails laden with typos. I am sick of his emails, which are phishing/ funnel emails for the non-paying customer being sent to me (a paying customer). I am sick of the unkempt promises, and I am sick of being taught how to make unkempt promises in order to get ahead in real estate. And lastly, I am sick of being told that I should sell a course in real estate when things get slow when I just sort of know what the hell I am doing. I feel like we are being pushed to make a course on selling real estate when we have no idea what we are doing instead of finding a good deal or how to find a deal.

Signed team 5 “EL LLC

AL, Boyka, and Laurence

[To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the responseIf no reason is received your complaint will be closed as Answered]
Complaint: ***
I am rejecting this response because:
Regards,
*** ***

From: Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 1:52 PMSubject: Re: [redacted] was a client of ours.  He hired one of our (former) agents, [redacted], as his "Buyer's agent."Under Maryland law, he put up an Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) along with a written offer to...

purchase a property.  These funds were placed in an Escrow Account we maintain at [redacted] Bank.The nature of [redacted]'s complaint was a) He was unsatisfied with the services he received from [redacted], and b) He wanted his Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) returned to him.We had already notified [redacted] that he needed to complete certain paperwork (as required by Maryland law) when he submitted his complaint to the Revdex.com.  Further, at the time of his complaint he had also retained legal counsel.We sent [redacted]'s EMD funds to our attorney ([redacted], Esq. of Towson, MD) who was able to get [redacted] to complete the required paperwork.  We have confirmed with [redacted] that he received the return of his EMD funds several months ago.[redacted] is no longer with our firm, therefore, we can not address the part of [redacted]'s complaint that was specifically directed at [redacted], however, we can affirm that all outstanding money's were returned immediately upon [redacted] providing the necessary paperwork, as required by Maryland law.If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me directly at ###-###-####.Regards,Sherman R[redacted] -- Sherman R[redacted], CCIM