Real Estate Investing: A Look at Ted Thomas Training and Education | Can It Work for You?
Hey, thanks for stopping by and visiting my site. I’m glad you’re here.
I assume that you came here looking for information on tax lien certificates as a real estate investing strategy. The man of the hour is Ted Thomas and I will tell you all about him in just a few minutes.
Before I do that though I would just like to check something out with you.
>>What brought you here today?
Are you looking to add to your income? Replace your income? Are you sick of your job? Want to get out of your 9-5 and be your own boss, work from home, make your own decisions, be financially free?
These are all great goals and I totally get all of them. You were me a few years ago. I was looking into real estate investing as the ticket to my financial freedom.
I got heavily involved in the real estate investing market and had a bunch of properties and was doing well. But suddenly the bottom fell out and it all went up in smoke.
I lost everything and had to start from scratch to make my comeback. Believe me, that road was no fun.
I still think that real estate investing is an honorable way to make a living, and can certainly lead to financial freedom. But there is a lot of work that goes into it and there is a lot of risk as well.
This is why I decided, after I crawled out of the pit, to pursue something different that had less risk and as much or more income potential.
I found this through a guy named James. And before we get to the review on Ted Thomas, I’m going to tell my story.
Silence everything and take three minutes to check out this video then you can find out another opportunity for creating the life you want, making the income you want, and exposing yourself to minimal risk.
Do me a favor . . . watch this video (IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING) and then we’ll get to the interview.
OK, here we go with the stuff you came here for . . .
Who is Ted Thomas?
Ted Thomas has made a name for himself as an authority on tax lien certificates and tax deed education.
His website (tedthomas.com) focuses on tax liens and deeds. There’s a list of 25 of the most frequently asked questions about tax liens, as well as explanations of tax certificates, what a delinquent tax deed auction sale is, a list of tax lien certificates states, a list of tax deed states, an explanation of the nature of a tax lien, an explanation on the nature of a tax deed sale, and an online purchasing guide about how to buy tax liens.
Ted Thomas is based in Florida. He is an educator, publisher and author, with several real estate guidebooks.
According to a Ted Thomas biography on smashwords.com, Thomas got into real estate investing after observing his parents who worked hard for years and still ended up with almost nothing.
He wanted to find an investment strategy that people of all ages could implement to become financially secure and free.
Thomas spent a couple of years researching and traveling. He visited 30 states and hundreds of counties, interviewing dozens of government officers and venture capitalists.
The results of the research and interviews, according to the bio, was Thomas’s educational program for investors on government-sponsored programs for low-risk and high-yield return opportunities in the United States.
What is Tax Lien Certificate Investing?
An explanation of tax lien certificates on Ted Thomas’s website begins with a description of the tax lien.
Local governments receive most of their operating funds from property taxes. When a homeowner either can’t or chooses not to pay their property taxes, the government puts a lien on the property.
The lien is a document that describes the debt a property owner owes for past-due property taxes. When the local government sells a tax lien certificate to an investor, this provides revenue that helps the government continue operating.
The incentive, or reward, to investors for purchasing these tax lien certificates is the interest rate which can be 16%, 18%, or 36% annually (depending on the state), according to Thomas ‘s website.
Tax lien certificates are typically available for purchase to investors at annual government auctions, but sometimes they can be purchased without an auction.
According to Thomas, investing in tax lien certificates is one of the safest and most secure investments a person can make.
He describes some features of tax lien certificate investments:
About 50% of states in the United States sell tax deed certificates. The other half of states sell tax deeds.
Each individual state sets its own laws and regulations regarding sales of tax lien certificates. Typically local governments administer the sales.
The interest rates which a tax lien certificate pays are set by individual states.
There are no middlemen involved in the buying of the tax lien certificates or their redemption. No commissions or brokers are involved.
Thomas states that 95 % of all tax lien certificates are usually paid off within three years of being issued. Typically they are paid off by the property owners themselves. This usually happens when they have funds to get current.
There is security in tax lien certificates since they are secured by the real estate itself. So if a tax lien certificate is never paid by the owner, then at a certain point the investor may take the property for the cost of the unpaid property taxes and fees.
Tax Lien Home Study Course
Thomas has a home study course that goes into more depth on this investing strategy. It’s available on his website and is called Retire Young and Rich: An accelerated video training course. It costs $997.
According to his website, Thomas has been teaching thousands of investors how to do this kind of real estate investing. He supposedly offers these courses online and off-line to investors in United States and Canada and other countries. (I haven’t been able to find any current live courses.)
The website blurb for Thomas’s course Retire Young and Rich describes it as an accelerated learning system, incorporating interviews of other successful real estate investors who allegedly are making thousands of dollars every month investing in tax certificates and tax default properties.
In this course Thomas and other property investing professionals discuss their tricks and strategies for investing in and selling property.
I found another Ted Thomas home-study course at shortsalemasters.com.
This course is called Ted Thomas Introduction to Quickstart. It includes a 200 page manual, a tax lien directory, a manual to operate by mail, six audio CDs and two DVDs. This costs $1995.
It also includes a monthly audio CD for six months, a monthly Insider Report for six months, a membership to Ted Thomas’s weekly live question-and-answer hotline for six months, and Ted Thomas’s Real Estate Insider Newsletter for six months.
I also found a book on Amazon by Thomas called Ted Thomas’s Secrets to Earning 16%, 18%, 24%, Up to 50% On Secured Government Certificates Guidebook. The date on this is 2015. The Kindle edition costs $97.
Ted Thomas Seminars and Training
I haven’t been able to find any current Thomas seminars that are live. The last one I found was conducted in May 2015 in Connecticut. This was a seminar hosted by a real estate investment association. The cost for that was $29 for members and $39 for the general public.
The webpage for this particular event mentioned Ted Thomas’s Reference and Membership Library. This is a searchable database–supposedly the largest of its kind–on tax lien certificates, foreclosures, tax auctions, tax sale lists, bank owned property, bankruptcies and government properties.
Apparently this database includes information for all 50 states, 3300 counties, and more than 1,400 municipalities. It also has 10,000 direct links to county treasurers, tax collectors, tax assessors, marshals, sheriff, and constable sites.
Reviews are mixed regarding Thomas’s materials.
Scam?
Naturally, on his website there are glowing testimonials about how much money people made in the short amount of time.
Scam.com had a comment thread with both positive and neutral reviews.
Here are excerpts from a positive one:
I happen to know Ted Thomas from the early 1990’s. I know for a fact he is not a scammer. Interesting to see how quickly everything gets labelled scam in here…. He is actually a very wealthy man, and he made his millions investing, and selling information. Selling information is not a scam in itself….I have looked at liens and tax deeds. It is a valid investment vehicle, and everything Ted says is true. The problem is, like anything else, this approach takes a lot of work, practice and research before you can make significant dollars. The other problem is the competition. Because there is real money in this, there are others looking as well. There are only so many land titles to go around. –WhiteTiger, 2006
And a neutral one:
Ted is a very smart man, who graduated from Harvard. Tax Liens & Deeds are a great avenue for a high ROI, however there is much work that needs to be done in researching the properties & liens. Purchasing the liens & deeds is easy. It’s all of the research hours that the courses don’t really touch upon.
Also the courses in my opinion are too over priced. $2,000 for 2 dvd’s, 6 cd’s, and a 200 page manual – come on….
RipOffReport.com had a negative and positive review.
On more than 1 occasion, after doing all the work [and yes, it’s a lot of work to prepare to bid at a public auction], he didn’t return my phone call, send money-order check to bid even after we discussed what property to bid on and how much would be the maximum. When I did all the work, called him to verify what’s the max price to bid on, he didn’t come through, broke his promise, shattered his integrity, left me high and dry.
And a positive one from Singapore…
I invested in Ted Thomas Tax Lien and Deed Home Study Course in Jan 2015 in Singapore. I ended up investing close to 4,000 SG at a Success Resources event. The demand for his course was amazing…. It took us a few weeks to get started since there is a lot of information. Ted’s team was always there to answer my questions.
Several other independent real estate investor review sites had some iffy things to say about Thomas. I found this on homebasedbusinessreviews.com, referencing his free live seminars.
General criticism is that the stuff he gives out is outdated and useless. Like so many of the other Real Estate/Tax Lien experts, it’s all about the money. And I don’t mean YOU making money, I mean THEM making money, YOUR money!
So–reviews are mixed. Still, there’s enough material on Thomas’s website, and enough positive reviews online, that it seems safe to say that this guy has a legitimate offering.
CONCLUSION
Whether his material is worth a grand or two is debatable. He is a rich guy now, but it’s not all to do with his successful real estate investing. A lot of it has to do with the sale of his training materials to folks like you.
I’m not dissing his stuff. Just saying, remember that his business now is largely education and the selling of that.
Be sure to check out his free stuff–blog posts on his website, and his YouTube videos and podcasts (he just has a few). And consider springing for the Kindle book on Amazon before you lay down the $1000 for the whole course.
Thanks again for stopping by. Hope this was helpful!
If you didn’t catch the video early, go back and give it a look. Just three minutes! It could change your life.
Really.
