| After attending several Marshall Reddick Seminar Programs in 2004, I took their bait, and boy, did I get hooked and reeled in. Reddick promoted leveraging yourself to buy real estate, using real estate agents from whom he received a kickback. Can't buy property on your own? No problem, get involved in an "equity sharing group" in which one person signs his or her name on the loan documents (thus personally accepting all legal responsibility) and the other members put up money in order to buy an interest in the property. The theory is that all group members share in the cash flow and appreciation when the property is eventualy sold. Reddick trumpets this approach as totally win-win for everyone in the group with no potential downside. Naive investors are never encouraged to check out the credit worthiness of their fellow group members. Many times properties don't rent for long periods, or they rent for far under what is expected, or require expensive repairs, thus requiring more contributions from the group. When group members cannot come up with the funds, the document signer is left holding the bag. When group members see that property values are quickly turning upside down, they often stop contributing, and the document signer is left as the one to take the foreclosure hit. If friends or family members get involved in one of these schemes together, those relationships can be left in tatters. Thus you can lose not only your money and your credit worthiness, but personal relationships as well. Reddick cares nothing about this in his quest to enrich himself. I personally bought four properties through Reddick in areas that he claimed were booming, using his recommended crony agents. Currently, all my properties have dropped considerably in value, and I have also had to drop rents from 2004 levels. It turns out that Reddick's glowing accounts of his "Preferred" investment areas are many times in trashy/high crime areas, and in developments that are oversold to investors, thus ensuring many transiently occupied rental properties, which result in driving out more potentially stabalizing homeowners, further depressing properties in his recommended areas, such as the Phoenix property I bought through him. I have had nothing but trouble with it from day one. First of all, the property management company that Reddick was in cahouts with, Brewer Caldwell, not only was extremely negligent in their fiduciary duty towards me, but also charged me all kinds of bogus fees when I terminated them. Even with my new management company, the last tenant moved out owing me $5,000.00 in repairs. The area I bought in is so bad that even though the house has been vacant since January, and I've dropped the rent $150.00, it still hasn't rented. I can't sell or refinance either, as it has lost a full third of its original value. Another management company Reddick was cronies with, in Idaho, claimed bankruptcy, and absconded with my tenants' $900.00 deposit. Please let this be a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of investing with the Marshall Reddick Network. When I bought in 2004, Reddick claimed, "This is the best time I've ever seen for investing in real estate." That has continued to be his steady mantra through the years, even as real estate has nose-dived. Even today, that enticement is being fervently pushed by him, and is currently quoted on his web site. In 2007, even as real estate was rapidly falling all over the country, Reddick preached, "There is no real estate bubble." Please run, do not walk, away from Reddick and his unscrupulous network. After my own experience with Reddick, I have been left to ponder, "Is this man actually a crook, or is he just extremely delusional?" And consider this: if you lose money in the stock market, at least you lose just the money you actually put into the market. If you lose money in real estate, you lose your investment money and continue to pay and pay and pay through the nose, for many years to come, putting your entire financial future, including your potential retirement, at risk. |
