Scammer or the Real Deal? Larry Holder: Maybe Irrelevant Now…
Hey there.
I’m Paul, the Real Estate Spy.
I make it my business to put real estate guys and gals under the microscope, and it’s Larry Holder’s turn today.
(Although . . . preview . . . there isn’t a whole lotta stuff out there about him. But I’m getting ahead of myself. . . . )
First, I want to do a quick check-in on YOU.
Yep, you.
What brings you to this page? Beyond the obvious, I mean (the review on Holder).
Why are you looking into real estate investing trainers? You wanna get into real estate investing yourself?
Cuz . . .
You’re working a 9-5 that’s got you sucking wind? Getting a paycheck that oughtta come with a defibrillator? Got a micromanaging bad-breath suit that makes you wanna jump off a cliff?
I can relate. Or, I could relate. Some of that was me, and I did what you’re doing: looked at real estate as my ride out of the badlands.
Jumped into investing and did it by the book. Got my properties, held some of ’em, flipped some of ’em, made enough profit that I kept at it. Until . . . it all went south and my properties went bye-bye. (To the Holder review in a sec, I promise.)
I found myself horizontal, staring up at a little blue patch of sky, way, way up high. No, I wasn’t in the slammer. I was in the deepest hole, financially, of my life.
On my agonizing crawl back up to the land of light and sunshine, I met a guy with internet investing skills. He introduced me to digital property management (learn more about that) and that set me on a brand new course.
It’s what I’m doing today, and because YOU’RE here, looking into real estate investing, I just wanted to let you know that you can learn more under the recommended resources section.
And now, to the promised review.
A Look At Larry Holder: Background and Bio
I scoured the Internet for information on Larry Holder, real estate investor and trainer, and, as I hinted at earlier, couldn’t come up with much.
I found a couple of reviews that made it look like he was a going concern at one point, but that looks like it was about 10 years ago.
He founded a company in 2001 called WEI Inc. Through this company, Holden offered real estate investment courses and mentoring. Then apparently he changed the name of it to Legacy One in 2004.
I can’t find any information that’s current about either of these two companies. Any links to the Legacy One website just go to blank pages. It looks like the company is shut down.
Real Estate Programs
Supposedly Holder used to have two products, one called the Finders Program and one called the Mentor Program. The first one cost almost $2500 and the second one cost almost $8000.
It sounds like these programs/mentorships were pretty much the usual–showing newbies how to get going in real estate investing. The Finders Program had an added incentive component (you find a foreclosure, we pay you either a finder’s fee or a percentage of the profit).
I found a question on CREO (Creative real estate online forums), posted in 2005. The question was if anybody had heard of Larry Holder.
The person was trying to find out if Holder and his company were legitimate. There was one answer, posted the same day in response in 2005.
The answer went something like this: His crew went through Omaha last year. I attended to find out what they’re all about. When I asked some real-world type questions, he berated me and changed the topic. Seems like they want you to pay them $2000 to train you to find foreclosures that they will buy it and split the profits with you.
Larry Holder: A Scam?
RipoffReport had a complaint posted in May 2004.
The author of the complaint was from the Woodlands, Texas. He reported seeing an ad in the newspaper that promised a $5000 finder’s fee or a 50-50 profit split for working with an investment company and finding foreclosure properties.
He went to the given location for an appointment and an interview about the work and ended up in a room with 10 other people listening to a sales pitch.
The pitch was that everyone in the room could be part of the investment program where they could get the $5000 finders fee or the 50-50 profit split if they themselves first paid a fee of $2527 (or $8000 for mentor).
There were two rebuttals on RipOffReport to this complaint. One rebuttal was posted in 2009, five years after the complaint had been filed.
The author (Bill) wrote that he had just finished taking the training with Holder and found his team to be sincere and helpful.
There was a second rebuttal posted in 2008. The author, Rick, wrote that he attended the seminar, heard the pitch, went to the training. He described his resulting plan for getting going in real estate investing and was very excited about it.
There’s no way of knowing if these are rebuttals are genuine or if they were posted by someone hired by Holden.
On YahooAnswers, someone who found the Legacy One website posted the following question: The website boasts that Millionaire Mentor Larry Holder is a real estate expert who will teach you on a one-on-one basis how to invest in real estate. Can anyone give me some input before I join?
A response to that question was posted six years ago. It sounded pretty canned. In other words, like someone from Holder’s company could have written it and posted it.
The end of the response goes something like this: Working with Larry is a great opportunity … I’ve doubled my income in two years … I just bought a giant house … my kids are now in private school … If it weren’t for Larry none of these things would have happened.
Okay so that could be completely genuine, but it does smell a little bit fishy to me.
The second response to the YahooAnswers question was also posted six years ago. It went like this . . .
If he allows you to work on his team for free, that’s one thing. If he asks you to pay $6000 to learn how he does it, that’s another. As soon as he asks for money upfront, it’s not a good deal for you.
That’s about the extent of what I can give you on Larry Holder. I couldn’t unearth any concrete, first-hand information about his programs, and like I mentioned earlier, the website to his company just goes to a blank page.
His LinkedIn profile is bare-bones.
Youtube and Podcasts
He doesn’t have a YouTube channel or podcasts that I could find.
I’m not going to spend more time on this guy because it looks like he isn’t a player these days. It appears that he did have programs and an active presence maybe ten years ago, but he seems to have disappeared. At least off the real estate investing map.
Hope that helps!
Thanks again for stopping by.
