Can the Bruce Norris Real Estate Program Really Forecast Success For You?
Real Estate Investing Truth
Hey, how’s it going? Welcome to a castor oil dose of truth on the web.
You came here today to read my review on Bruce Norris.
And (turn your Bose-IPOD combo up for a sec) just to make sure you and I are talking about the same guy, let me clarify.
I am talking about Bruce Norris the real estate guy, not Bruce Norris the playwright!
Before we jump into the review I would like to ask you why you chose to be here rather than good ole Facebook or Insta-whatever it’s called.
I mean here’s the usual I get from people that stop their Google go-carts and hang out with me for a bit.
–They have:
- A really sucky J-O-B and they’re looking for the escape hatch instead of hitting the snooze button of life–and some greener pastures would be nice but not necessary. Just different would be great. A change of scenery… a little adventure and a lot more freedom and self-expression.
- Or their 9 to 5 is a bowl of cherries (and they can tie a knot in ’em with their tongues), but they’re bored, tired of working for a capitalist SOB (like most wannabe, LOL). You know the guy/gal that wants to capture cash for themselves and end the effects of being sentenced to a time-clock punching purgatory till they are too old to wear a two-sizes-too-small speedo (sorry FYI> you are always to old to wear a speedo, so nevermind). So set down your 1980’s bottle of hydroxycut and keep readin’. I’m not done yet.
- They would really like to have freedom in their schedule and answer to themselves only.
- They want answers…truth and a vehicle to make their money making desires a reality.
I know I wanted some or all of those things…
So my 2 cents (after losing everything chasing my dreams)…
Investing in real estate is a respectful, exciting and legitimate way to make a living. For sure there is potential for great profit and it’s quite the rush to be your own boss in this context.
But can I just tell you something? This is what I thought too. I jumped into real estate investing with both feet. For a while I did well and things were going smoothly.
But then in a scene from Jumanji meets the Matrix the bottom fell out and I quickly found myself in a snowballing in overwhelming mess of financial ruin.
It was a terrible time. Something I never want to repeat.
In a twist (good twist…seriously) of fate, I found a guy named James who introduced me to a different way of making money–with digital properties. I could still be my own boss and realize profits that were equal to or greater than what I could make in real estate investing. With a fraction of the risk.
Check out the video. It explains what I mean. 3 minutes man…
Then….
I promise, the review on Bruce Norris is next.
Bio and Background
Bruce Norris is a top-flight real estate investor, hard money lender, and educator. He has made a name for himself on the California real estate scene and heads up The Bruce Norris Group.
At his website, thenorrisgroup.com, the Bruce Norris bio states that he’s been involved in well over 2000 real estate transactions as either a buyer, seller, builder, or money partner.
Norris is 64 as of this writing .
He founded The Norris Group in 1997. It’s a family-run firm that invests in single-family homes, educates other investors, and provides hard money loans.
The Norris Group offers real estate courses, live events, seminars, hard money loans, a trustee program for those with money to lend, a radio show and a bunch of free resources including blogs and articles.
The group manages $65 million-$70 million in assets for lenders who loan money to investors for purchasing, repairing, and reselling California real estate.
Norris’s first job was working at a gas station filling cars with gas . This was in the early 1970s. He remembers that it was not a job that he enjoyed at all and he figured out pretty quickly that that’s not what he wanted to do for a living .
He also figured out early on that he didn’t want to work for somebody else. He wanted to be in control of his own finances and his own time and efforts. He wanted to have his own business that he could run without having to answer to somebody else.
Norris got into real estate because he saw the income potential of it. He was working for a company in California buying properties. Pretty quickly he became one of their best buyers . He was able to see how much money could actually be made in real estate. “I could do something and $20,000 would fall out from the effort instead of $25 an hour.”
He got into real estate by being able to refinance his house and use the funds to launch himself into full-time investing.
He admits to experiencing a lot of bumps in the road in his early real estate investing years, particularly since he didn’t know much about construction or sales.
Norris talks about the worst mistake he ever made, back in 1989, when he built seven customs homes in Palm Springs, California.
The real estate market shifted and suddenly he was stuck with seven homes he couldn’t sell . He owed $3000 per month on each one of them and was faced with a $21,000 obligation every month. The investors who were supposed to be partners with him in this venture bailed and he was left holding the tab.
He had to come up with a way to make that payment monthly. He did make it happen but the project was a mistake that he never has forgotten.
Norris’ Ability to Forecast Patterns in Real Estate
Norris has become well known and trusted in California for his ability to predict long-term real estate market trends and timing. In the mid 90s he spent a lot of time studying real estate cycles.
“I studied statistics and put together 25 years of data so I could try and figure out what was next. That was our first report, The California Come Back: Why Prices Will Double in the Next Eight Years. And that happened.”
The next report he wrote was in January 2006, The California Crash. This was an in-depth look at California market correction, with statistics to support his predictions. Many investors paid attention to the report and protected themselves and escaped the fire of the crash.
When that Norris real estate forecast turned out to be accurate, it put him and his group on the map. He suddenly was the guy who had made two major forecasts that both turned out to be true. He was somebody to listen to.
Tip of The Iceberg was Norris ‘s 2010 report. He looked at government intervention and how it impacted real estate professionals. He also discussed potential dangers of market manipulation, Investment strategies by market price range, and gave insights into some California’s most important real estate markets.
Norris is very actively involved in educating real estate investors in California . He is frequently on the road giving lectures or seminars or speaking at real estate investor association meetings.
At the time of this writing, over the next two months his schedule includes two all-day seminars called Cashing in on a Boom : Investing in Quadrant 4; a property-buying Boot Camp for three days; and speaking gigs at the Northern California Real Estate Investors Association (where he will share reasons why investors should stay put, sell or 1031 exchange), the Orange County
Real Estate Investors Association and the Women’s Investment Network In Southern California.
The Norris group website states their vision:
The Norris group strongly believes in the tremendous value professional real estate investors bring to the marketplace . As residential redevelopment specialists, real estate investors create jobs , beautify neighborhoods , Increase tax revenue , and turn neglected, vacant blight into liveable homes. For this investors deserve a reasonable profit and should be seen as an important partner and solution in the current real estate downturn.
I thought this was a great collection of statements.
Sometimes real estate investors get a bad rap as people who are just out to take advantage of innocents by grabbing their houses, paying them as little as possible and walking away with a fortune.
I like that Norris’s vision sees a bigger picture and sees the value that real estate investors bring in lifting the look of a property and thereby contributing to the neighborhood.
Products
Now let’s take a look at the products offered by The Norris Group.
Norris Group Real Estate Investor Premium Subscription
Norris has three basic real estate investment education opportunities. The first is called the Norris Group Real Estate Investor Premium Subscription.
This subscription is digital and it requires an Internet connection. The description says:
We’ve taken our body of California specific investor education and have placed it online. You can now enjoy over 50+ hours (and growing) investor library with a computer, tablet and or mobile device.
The subscription costs $350 per year.
The course Proceed with Caution costs $59 . This is a recorded live event and comes with a 290 page manual. It also includes audio, video, and extra downloads .
In this course, Bruce Norris shares his latest predictions in an all-day seminar designed to help the real estate investor network be able to anticipate to what’s ahead on the real estate landscape.
California Investor Distressed Property Boot Camp Review
The third product offered by the Norris group is called California Investor Distressed Property Boot Camp.
This is a three-day in-the-trenches intensive for real estate investors. It’s a live event that includes the course manual as well as forms, checklists, call scripts and formulas.
The Boot Camp takes place inside the offices of the Norris Group in Riverside, California. In this three-day intensive, Norris teaches investors what to do on a daily basis to buy and sell real estate in the current California real estate market.
You have to call to get the price for the Boot Camp. However I saw on a BiggerPockets.com thread that the cost is $4997 for three days . If you bring a friend or a partner, the price is reduced by $1000.
I haven’t been able to find any independent reviews about the boot camp. However I did find a comment in the thread (also on Bigger Pockets) by an investor from Aurora, Colorado, who said:
I can’t speak for the Boot Camp, but Bruce Norris spoke at the bigger pockets summit. I think he’s one of the most knowledgeable experts on looking at market trends. He has a radio podcast is worth listening to.
A resource that the Norris Group offers is hard money loans. These are for California real estate investors. The website gives specifics on the program and also on terms.
There’s a whole chart on terms particular to the type of project that funds are being requested for, and a page on details about the trust deed investment program.
The trust deed investment program is basically for a person who wants to act as a bank and loan money to investors. In this trust deed investment program, the Norris group acts as a personal broker. In other words, if you have money to lend, you become a private money source for California real estate investors who purchase, repair and resell California real estate. The Norris group acts as your broker.
The Norris Group is a California Department of Real Estate licensed broker. According to the website, it has brokered more than $350 million of loans since 1997. The website states that the group currently brokers several million dollars in privately funded notes every month, and it’s looking to add more interested trust deed investors to their network .
There are quite a few more details available about this program on the website.
The Norris group has a very active radio broadcast program. All broadcasts are also available on ITunes. Here you can see the extensive list of people that Norris has interviewed. These include Rich Ford, Rick Sharga, Jim Fetgatter, Aaron Norris, Mark Dowling , and Ted Boecker, among others.
A customer review gave a five star rating to the broadcast, and said:
Very informing podcast. Bruce provides the best education real estate investing by bringing the most knowledgeable guests and posing the right questions to them.
I have been an avid listener for a couple of years and cannot get enough.
By the way I should say here that the Norris Group has a well-thought-out professional website. It is streamlined, concise and well-organized so that you can quickly get to the information you need. It’s intuitively set up and isn’t overloaded with verbiage that you have to wade through. It’s a non-stressful visiting experience.
At this website there is a Free Resources tab. This includes blogs, a listing of California investment clubs, a page of links to all of the I Survived Real Estate events from 2008 to 2000, a page of listings of California auctions, a real estate directory, and a page about foreclosure laws .
There are also a ton of podcasts available if you just google Bruce Norris podcasts. I found podcasts on blogspot .com, Stitcher.com, Podbay.fm , podfanatic.com, expert file.com, and bigger pockets.com.
YouTube is another platform The Norse Group uses for making its information available. Its channel is called the Norris Group Hard Money and Trust Deeds. It maintains an active and current presence, with videos posted as recently as six days before this writing. Looks like videos are typically posted about once a month.
Bruce Norris a Scam?
I always look at consumer watchdog sites and gripe sites to see if a person I’m reviewing is the subject of any complaints. I found no complaints on Bruce Norris or The Norris Group.
Everything that I see about Bruce Norris looks trustworthy and positive. He has proven himself to be a person who is well-informed on the California real estate market and is able to forecast trends, cycles, changes, and timing.
He is active in the real estate investment education scene and in doing this has further established himself as a upper echelon real estate educator. This guy really knows his stuff and he’s been in the industry for a long time.
In a 2013 Bruce Norris interview in the Los Angeles Times, an event was described that happened a number of years ago.
Norris went to see a guy who was selling his home in Garden Grove. His intent was to buy the house. He and the owner had a long discussion about the purchase, about terms and escrow.
Norris didn’t receive any sort of pushback or countering from the owner during the conversation. It was like everything that Norris said that he wanted, the guy just said yes to. No resistance and no negotiating.
Something seemed very odd about this and it made Norris uncomfortable. In the middle of the conversation he told the guy that he didn’t want to talk to him about the house anymore . He asked the guy if he was okay and the man said he was not .
Norris gave the guy a book. It was called The Greatest Miracle in the World. It was a motivational book. He went back the next day. The guy met him at the door and said to him, I want you to know the book you gave me saved my life. My intention was to sell you my house and kill myself .
Norris never forgot that. He says now:
When I sit across from somebody, they are not just a pile of equity, they are a person.
Good man, in my opinion.
Well, that’s the end of my Bruce Norris review. Thanks for joining me for it.
I hope you found it helpful.
Hey, if you skipped that video at the beginning, would you humor me and go back to watch it? Only three minutes!
I think you’ll be glad you did.
