Real estate investment clubs are thriving

Roland Jones • Profile • E-mail

NEW YORK - On a hot and humid summer evening, about 50 novice real estate investors have gathered in a midtown Manhattan conference room for a seminar on investing strategies.

Today’s topic: Pre-foreclosures. Wesley Barney, founder of the Ultimate Investors Real Estate Club, is discussing the best strategies for finding and buying at a discount properties that are in danger of being reclaimed by a financial institution because their owners, often in financial distress, have fallen behind on mortgage payments.

“How do you get information about someone who is delinquent on their property, and how do you approach them about a sale?” Barney asks the investors, who are dressed in anything from business attire to shorts. “Well, you can get pre-foreclosure lists online, or you can do direct mailing campaigns.

"Then you start knocking on doors, and that takes guts,” Barney continues. “I used to do it on Sundays because folks thought I was a Jehovah’s Witness. … That’s how to do it — you’ve got to come up with your own marketing strategy.”

With the giddy days of the high-tech investment bubble a fading memory and home prices in some of the hottest housing markets up 100 percent over the past few years, America’s housing boom is providing investors with a tempting new chance to grab a slice of the fortunes now being made on the streets of many towns and cities.

New York’s Ultimate Investors Real Estate Club, for example, is one of 178 in the National Real Estate Investors Association, up from slightly more than 40 in late 2002. The association now counts some 35,000 individual investors as members.

One of about a dozen real estate investment clubs in the New York area, Ultimate Investors has seen its membership mushroom to nearly 300 over the past few years, says Barney. The  club offers paid members the opportunity to network with other investors and industry specialists at monthly meetings, go on field trips to scope out housing markets and attend educational workshops. Members, who pay $189 in annual dues, also get a newsletter on real estate investing.

Barney, worked for for the New York City Fire Department until becoming a full-time investor about five years ago, says that because New York City real estate prices are so high, the main goal of his group is to help members find affordable properties in up-and-coming markets like Syracuse, N.Y., and Kansas City, Mo.

Sylvia Scott, a mortgage specialist from Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., who is a relative newcomer to real-estate investing, recently placed bids on three properties in Syracuse — two single-family homes and a six-apartment building — after her husband, Louis, visited the city on one of Barney’s trips. “For people just starting out in real estate investing a place like Syracuse is a good place because the city is on its way up,” Scott said.

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