Five years ago I would have started talking about the late night TV Real Estate Gurus, but today anyone with cable TV, a satellite dish, or in a large city can learn the virtues of having money 24 hours a day. The infomercials or rather the programs they promote are all most people think of if you mention real estate education. But, there are really three distinct types of real estate education and hundreds of sub-categories. The three types are: real estate investment (as popularized by Carlton Sheets,) pre-licensing (mandated by most states,) and real-real estate education (traditional education at the college/professional level, it should be mandatory in High Schools.)



Everyone should have some real estate investment education, especially the poor among us. We all live and work in or on real estate, even pilots land. Almost all fortunes great and small included real estate, yet we don’t teach it to our kids.

Pre-licensing education is only needed for those who want a real estate license.

The most difficult is real-real estate education. No matter what any guru says you’ll need real-real estate education, the good news is you can hire it. One note of caution, don’t assume your local real estate agent has anything but pre-licensing education! In real estate the three most important words are location, location, location. If you’re hiring or taking any form of real estate education the two most important words are caveat emptor!

Lets start with Pre-licensing, it’s the simplest form of education memorization!. In the preface to my book “One House At A Time / Finding And Buying Single Family Rentals" I write:

Don’t confuse understanding real estate with being able to pass the real estate licensing exams!

To pass the real estate exam, take the required pre-licensing class and memorize the answers!

Do not debate with your pre-licensing instructors, accept the answers they provide, whether or not the answers makes sense! Do not let anyone knowledgeable, or not, confuse you! Pass the exam!

What the pre licensing instructors know is that the real estate exams are not written by real estate people! Licensing exams are written by professional educators who are assigned a chapter of the law or even just a paragraph and told to write questions about it without reference to how the question might be affected by the entire law, case law, other laws, or common and local practice.

There are only two ways to pass a state real estate exam either know the law so well that you can tell from what paragraph each question comes from (answering as if you knew only that paragraph) or memorize the answers.

I stand by that advice, I can think of no better way to put it! If you want to get your real estate license, get it first before taking any real estate investment classes or any real-real estate education.

I’ve been in lending and real estate since 1969, teaching real estate, real estate investment, real estate sales, mortgage lending, mortgage sales, 1031 exchanging, and real estate development. In every class I judged my results by the students understanding. I’ve never taught pre-licensing because understanding real estate is irreverent to passing the exam.

Real-real estate education comes from two sources, colleges/ universities and the various divisions of the National Association of REALTORS®. Real estate schools teach pre-licensing, gurus teach real estate investment. Real-real estate education covers every area of real estate, advanced classes have required prerequisites, and their instructors have either advanced degrees or demonstrate experience.

Real estate investment education is mostly “motivational!" Instructors known as “GURUS" (mostly quacks) preach you don’t need real estate education, only their expensive “advanced" classes. They promise to teach “secrets." They promote themselves by telling you the value of having money! They tell you how easy and quick it to make money is using their “system." They give you canned speeches rather than educate you so that you can use your own words. They present lots of anonymous testimony to their teachings none of which you can verify. They provided huge amounts of paper and recordings to justify their outrageous prices.

There are good Gurus! Read “One House At A Time / Finding And Buying Single Family Rentals." I"m a Guru, I use to teach real-real estate but now teach real estate investment. There are others, I would trust anything written by John T Reed. The very best free class I ever saw was by Barney Zick (his is best stage present I’ve seen in real estate investment education) his prices are outrageous, but I liked everything he said.

The question was “Real Estate Education Should You Spend Your Money?" To answer that first we ask how much are we talking about? My book sells for $44.95, Reed’s books start near $30.00, the TV Gurus start at several hundred dollars and to get their whole program can cost as much as $35,000.00! Don’t be fooled by $9.95 trials! “Should You Spend Your Money?" Yes! You get very little extra with the higher prices unless you judge education by the weight of the books, but one reasonable deal can recover the cost of even the most expensive program! So do something!

The only advantage to the high priced programs is the motivation you’ll get from your spouse, when she finds out what you spent!