Massland seminar - Mark Rolton

I am thinking about going to one of their seminars on property options, I have seen the DVD and looks interesting.

Has anyone been to their property options seminar ($5000), if so has anyone made money working with their team?
 
I've been to his seminar. DH was really keen, I was a bit sceptical but went along anyway. Mark Rolton is great at motivating a crowd and has some great ideas about making serious money.

I don't know of anyone from the seminar I attended who has made money using his techniques. From the little I retained, it is a lot of hard work to make 1 deal and it helps to have a bit of luck on your side, as well as having good contacts.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
 
Ever tried to use a property option?

i have. twice. each time (and that "time" = about 40 hours of research and about another 40 of negotiation) they just fell apart.

you are told you can get people across the line by explaining the fact that the DA is your deposit, and as it is still in their name, if you walk away, they get a free DA and increased value over their land.

anyone holding any kind of land with VALUE will instantly ask "so, what if the DA doesnt pass....? do i get a deposit or does it all fall in a heap?"

how do you answer that? are you prepared to compensate, or put even more money down to correct the failed DA?

"so, lemme get this straight, i continue to pay the holding costs on my land, while you pay for a DA which has no guarantees of passing, and at the end of it all, i get maybe my holding costs back for the period of the DA and no profit....?"

property options work with bleed money - say, a $10k non-refundable deposit with you retaining rights to the DA which is paid for - on top of your deposit - from your pocket.

only works in a bull market - or for REALLY stupid people.

save your money. ask around why a few banks wont lend to Massland. ask Mark Rolton if he secured any of his landmark properties with finance or an option - you will be surprised.

people who know how to use options make their money by doing just that - not running seminars at $5k a head for 200 people.

i got suckered.

o woeth i.

move along.
 
has anyone on this forum ever made more than $500k in profit using a similar strategy as Massland where you never intend to settle once you get the DA?
 
Ok
I've done the HS course and been working (or trying to) work with options for the last 2 and a bit years. I now no longer have anything to do with Massland or anyone associated with them.

My experience with Massland, including dealing with a number of their former staff members/deal finders leads me to make the following comments/suggestions (and I stipulate with no admission of liability that these are based on personal experience ONLY and are suggestions ONLY. There are no direct accusations or implications intended to arise from my observations. Make your own choices and decisions based on your own research).
1 - The best thing I could suggest you do where Massland or ANY seminar spruiker/presenter is concerned, PRIOR to paying any money or signing JV agreements with them, is conduct Due Dilligence - obtain financial statements via your accountant or solicitor verifying the commercial viability, loans/finance available and current projects that are in their name etc. DD can be performed between your solicitor and accountant and theirs. It's standard practice so they shouldn't have any problem in providing proof of their status. Any legitimate company should have no problem in proving their status to a prospective business partner, which is what a JV partner is, do not be under any illusions about this aspect of it. Do not miss this step.
2 - Confirm in writing the experience of their 'mentors' and 'coaches' - a good question to ask of any seminar provider is have their mentors been successful in their own rights (have they signed up options, been paid out, done deals etc). I would question any organisation where those coaches and/or mentors hadn't done so? How can they teach you if not? I have no idea about the Massland staff, so can't comment either way, but I think it's a good question to ask.
3 - Confirm in writing the 'successful students' and the amounts they've been paid out and if they match what's been said in public. Successful organisations are more often than not able to provide willing references easily and quickly. Talking to them shouldn't be an issue either.

The theory presented on options in the course isn't new. Options have been used by developers for decades and continue to be used today. Can you get land using a DA as a deposit and a $1000 option fee? You can try but only if you like abuse. Industry standard is 1% of the settlement/strike price or less but very few if any land owners will stand there and cop what Mark tells you works day in day out. It is nowhere near as easy as what he purports it to be. This is why that particular course has over an 80% failure rate of people getting out there to do it for any protracted period of time (at least that's what I've heard, I cannot verify that however so apologise if that's inaccurate).

Options are very, very hard work, they rarely come off unless you already have a buyer waiting, and money for an option fee. Trying to make the kind of profits Massland speak of without a DA is nearly impossible, and even then without a buyer, or without people who are willing to deal with you/buy from you, its very hard to achieve. Essentially you need to find a land owner who doesn't know what he's got for it to work.

Consider also if you're new to the game and relying on your JV partner for funds, experience and so on, what then when they turn around to you and say 'you go do it all, find funders, find buyers, do the DA yourself'? I personally would question what the purpose of being in a JV would be at all if this were the case, and i'd be handing over 85% of the profits for what?? Food for thought there. Consider also that developers pay acquisitions people and DA managers (two seperate job descriptions there) over $100K a year to go do that exact same job (find land, negotiate, option it up if possible etc).

There are a number of other development courses out there that deal with options but also give you a good grounding in development as a whole, which in my experience is vital if you're going to use options at all. Carly Crutchfield and Rob Balanda both provide good courses from what I understand.

But again, before handing over a single cent to Massland (or anyone else, I don't discriminate) get written proof of all claims made, something that will hold the seminar provider/company legally accountable if they turn out to be inaccurate, inflated, or just plain false. You can then ask yourself the question - if a group/individual refuses to prove their status/worth/claims that they've made on a stage somewhere...why is this so? That's only a question I personally would ask myself if I encountered something like that.

Good luck with your decision.
 
Avoid them like the plague.

Had 1 dealing with them and they could never return a phone call or keep to anything they promised. Heard lots (and lots) of good excuses though!

I got my money back 3 months later but I seriously question whether they are as good as they say they are based on my experience.

If it takes 3 months to refund a seminar that didn't go ahead, how do they manage to buy sites etc etc.

The guy lost me when he said he doesn't do seminars for the money - yeah right 400 people (the figure they mentioned) at $5k per head. Even allowing for a healthy cost to run the event, still a profit in my book.

So if he's not running them for the money, he should be!

DJB
 
Great Posts Matt and DJB!

Having worked for a living (i.e in a job) for developers doing options and having done it a bit myslef I can tell you it is a lot of hard work in practise and simple in theory.

It reminds me of a very wise boss who knew the game who would always say two comments to me:

"you make your profit when you buy the land" = a good deal is when the land is undervalued. Construction, design, etc.. is just the process of getting that profit. The land is the key.

and "if it was easy everyone would be doing it"

The fact is most developers are very cashflow poor and asset rich, struggling to paywages, holding costs form one job to the next.

As such they are constantly looking for ways to cover operational costs and a seminar is great for getting money and other people to promote your business and do the leg work.

Ask yourself this:

If you had a sure fire way to make $$$$$$ why, on gods earth, would I sell my knowledge for $4k!!!!!!!!

Peter
 
LOL Peter, but then again when you have 400 people in a room at $5k a head and pushing $15 and $25K 'mentoring' programs.. are you really even a developer at that point? Or just a seminar spruiker saying your'e a developer so you can get more people into a seminar to be developers etc etc.... who knows the truth eh :D
 
True!

However I predict once the Property Market shoots up and everyone is talking investment....... BINGO! the next Henry Kaye will arise.

Peter
 
true true...but then would it be a surprise if these guys were all in with each other? Hmm.. now that would be a story wouldn't it..

the truth is out there :eek:
 
Carly Crutchfield is flogging the same thing. when i asked her team to give me samples of P/L on her projects to confirm the profits she claims, they made all type of excuses in not providing them.

In her course she claims to include an EXCLUSIVE feasibility program worth 1000s of dollars to design. What a laugh, all it was a excel sheet. It did not even have any formulas( you can to add and subtract with your calculator before you entered any figures). My 10 year son could have done better.

I found they they give very, very general answers to everything I asked. Like Massland, they make it out that all their techniques are simple, but when asked for specifics they fold like a deck of cards.
 
true true...but then would it be a surprise if these guys were all in with each other? Hmm.. now that would be a story wouldn't it..

the truth is out there :eek:


Arrr Mat007. It be true. They all know each other and revolve around the same circles. I've been going to their free seminars for the past few years now - just to use them as a milestone in my progress, and i've come to realise that they all know each other and promote each others products. And the content their promoting is nothing new. It's all very glossy, rosy, simplistic and very one-sided to fluffen up their positions. This board has all the information they promote and more with compounded benefits, is free and presents discussions on BOTH sides of the coin.
 
CFP - well blow me down and hornswaggle me. what a dark and dastardly tale me hearty.
You know that comes as no surprise to me at all - I am waiting for the day when these guys meet their maker..
 
Options are commonly used by property developers, but they usually entail a substantial option fee. Having said this, it is particulalry hard to get someone to grant an option over their property, as they have no certainty as to what is going to happen. Probably more importantly though is the fact that options are simple, you don't need a course to learn about them, just a lawyer to write the contract.
 
APerry, very good points, although what I'm finding in the market of late is that agents are out there saying "big non refundable deposits" and "never use options" (cause they want their commissions up front) whereas developers are saying "not on your life until we get a DA and know we can do what we want" and most of them won't deal unless you DO use an option while they conduct due dilligence/DA/research... so the agents need to get with it a whole lot more because I've seen a number of good deals go south due to agent interference and ignorance, essentially losing the vendor large sums of money. You'll find that either you meet the developers conditions, or the deal wont' go through.. the market of late (at least from what I'm seeing) has a lot less flexibility thanks to the risk factors involved.
DAs take a long time (some up to 18-24 months thus the timeframes of the options) as do the due dilligence side of things. That's not the developers fault, that's council. Plain and simple... and Project specific of course..
Agents who want to sell to or deal with developers need to get that straight. If you mess with the developers margins/ability to profit, they'll move onto the next deal very quickly, and it's the vendors loss at the end of the day. Developers aren't stupid, or cash rich as agents and some vendors would have you believe.. big Non-refundable deposts do not happen except at the very top end of town, eg: you're optioning a twenty storey building for redevelopment or something and the deals' worth $50Million plus.. Reasonable option fees can be offered if the option conditions are met by the vendor, but typically that won't be a huge amount.
Personally I think just a little bit of education and realism, and a little less greed would go a long way..there are some good agents out there too don't get me wrong, i've worked with a few around the place..these deals can definitely be win/win between the acquisitions groups and the agents, if people think with their heads, think strategically and not with green eyes and dollar signs...
but hey what do I know :)
 
Carly Crutchfield is flogging the same thing. when i asked her team to give me samples of P/L on her projects to confirm the profits she claims, they made all type of excuses in not providing them.

In her course she claims to include an EXCLUSIVE feasibility program worth 1000s of dollars to design. What a laugh, all it was a excel sheet. It did not even have any formulas( you can to add and subtract with your calculator before you entered any figures). My 10 year son could have done better.

I found they they give very, very general answers to everything I asked. Like Massland, they make it out that all their techniques are simple, but when asked for specifics they fold like a deck of cards.
Wife and I went to a Carly free seminar where she offered a 30 day money back guarantee for her property development dvd course, ..... nothing to lose we thought, so we paid the deposit.

We received the dvd and manuals and watched solidly over a weekend. Very poor quality dvd set, .... basically a single camera pointing at Carly, which was fine when she was talking, but when she was using her laptop to generate an image on the projector screen to one side of the stage you couldn't see what she was describing. Anyway we returned it.

That's when the fun started. They obviously weren't setup for the course to be returned, I think we must have been the first to do so ..... it took weeks to eventually get the deposit back after finally threatening legal action.

I think it worked out that the number of people who signed up for the dvd course that evening would have netted Carly $80k-$100k+ for an hours talk. The course would have cost next to nothing to produce and the info and tools were very basic. That's where the money is, ... running the seminars.

We have just had a dual occupancy project approved through Ipswich Council. We did the research ourselves and hired a Town Planning consultant to handle the application and surveying.

Martin
 
Don't forget to sign up to Mr Roultons exclusive millionaires club!!
It is a very impressive broucher for it, him standing next to a
Pourch Boxter
Which is next to a Private jet.
Then there is the Boat,
The house, to big to fit in the colour broucher......
On and on it goes.
Don't say much about what you get, apparently connections with Big Players, etc etc.
From memory (Sorry if I get it wrong) this could coast you $25,000 to join.

I much prefer great posts like this one, then move onto another semester SS Forums to learn more, plus Jans book which I am reading now.
 
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