John T. Reed’s real estate investment blog

The contribution of multi-level marketing organizations to the success of Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad Mr. Reed, I found your site interesting, especially your analysis of RDPD. I must admit that I enjoyed the book because of its "easy read," but your analysis is right on target. I attended a Quixtar (aka, QuixScam, Amway, AmQuix, Scamway, etc.) conference in the Fall of 2000 at which he was a keynote speaker. He espoused network marketing and recommended complete dedication to building the Quixtar pyramid business even though he hadn’t found pyramid businesses worth his time. Ultimately, RK has found...

As a real estate investment writer for 39 years, I have generally ignored real estate investment trusts (REITs). They are stock market corporations that own and operate rental properties. Rollover IRA into REIT stocks Recently however, I write about them more because many have IRAs and those can hold REITs. If you refuse to withdraw your IRA money, then at least put an appropriate amount into REITs which are good hedges against possible high inflation. The other issue is many investors whose names are on the deed of a building are just buy-and-hold guys. Active real estate strategies I advocate three...

Since I first posted my analysis of Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, I have received many emails in which Kiyosaki's dupes explain why it does not matter that he lied to them in the book. I find this mindset fascinating and suspect some of you will, too. It is especially scary that some of these guys seem to have trouble distinguishing between God and Robert Kiyosaki. Here are their emails. I cannot give you their names the way I normally do because they did not give me permission to do so. Certain “spin” themes recur: So what, it's just...

Why John T. Reed created and maintains his real-estate-investment guru-rating page I am sometimes asked why I created and maintain my real-estate-guru-rating page. Here’s why: For many years, people have asked my opinion of various other real-estate-investment gurus. I tried to answer them once-and-for-all by writing an article called "The real estate B.S. artist detection check list" in the 1/90 issue of my newsletter, Real Estate Investor's Monthly. That article was supposed to teach people how to recognize, without any further help from me, which gurus were good and which were bad. However, I found readers still wanted my specific...

I created my guru-rating Web Page in April of 1997. It has been an interesting experience and I have a few observations to make after years of reader feedback. Here is one email I received from a visitor to my Web site: “Several months ago I started my journey as a real estate investor. Like so many other people trying to figure out where to start, I surfed the internet looking for advice. The first time I stumbled upon your site I remember feeling completely infuriated. How could you bash some of the gurus who got me interested in this...