My First REI Club Meeting

I left work around 5:50pm in order to give myself ample time to make it to the REI Club meeting. Registration was from 6:30-6:50pm, and the meeting was to begin promptly at 6:50pm. The meting location is in South Austin, so I figure 40-65 minutes would be ample time - especially since it is after the 5:00-6:00pm rush traffic.

WRONG!

I ended up getting to the meeting at 6:48pm. Evidentally, I was not the only one stuck in deadlocked traffic as there were about 15-20 people still signing in. Iwent ahead and signed in, and thinking the meting would start any time, sat myself down and got out my notepad. The meeting actually didn't begin for about another 5-10 minutes. Time that I could have been networking, but didn't. Once the meeting started, the host asked that everyone introduce yourself to the people sitting next to you. I introduced myself to a woman sitting behind me (no one was sitting immediately next to me), and we chatted for 6-8 minutes. She is a member of the club, but like me, has not done her first deal yet. It just felt great to finally talk to someone face-to-face about REI who understood where I was coming from (remember, my wife and friends aren't very receptive to the idea).

The meeting itself was very informative. The host, Bob Guest, had a great presentation on rehabbing. For anyone interested, they can download the presentation slides at the Real Estate Investment Club of Austin, LLC web site. He said that 70-80% of the material is from Ron Legrand's Quick cash books.

As far as attendance, I'd say there were probably around 45-50 people at the meeting - most of which I'd say were newbies like me. When I was signing in, I noticed a table with name tags for members. There were probably in the neighborhood of about 50-60 of them. So, I would make a rough estimate and say there are probably something like 75-95 fulltime members, and the meeting draws in about 20-30 newbies each time. Again, this is just a guess.

While I thought the meeting itself was everything I thought it would be and more, my goals for this attendance were never realized. I never got to network beforehand, because I was running late due to traffic, and I had to leave before the meeting was over in order to do some personal stuff at home. Now that I know what traffic is like, I'll definately leave early next time. The downside, though, is that I never got to meet a lot of other investors to get their opinions like:

What locations do you focus on?
What types of properties do you prefer?
What is your maximum ARV for a property?
What attorney/title agent/CPA/other would you (not) recommend?
Do you have a minimum amount of profit for each property?

And so on ...

But, maybe next time. Although, now I have to wait another month.