Care to guess the number of Pasadena homes in foreclosure? According to foreclosure radar, there are close to 450 properties as of today in some form of the foreclosure process. Take a look at the map of foreclosure listings in Pasadena and you will see that it is not focused on one area, but is found throughout the city. As your IRA and stock market portfolio continues to belly flop, does real estate offer any investing opportunities?

Investing in real estate is defined by two types of people: actual investors and aspiring investors. How do you move from aspiring to actual? There is no limit to the number of seminars, books on tape, laws of attraction and generally anything else that might have a remote connection to real estate investing. The only limit it seems is self imposed – how much do you want to spend invest?

This past Tuesday (for the life of me I don’t know why all of the clubs meet on Tuesday) I had the opportunity to attend another free get together. Unlike the real estate investor meeting I attended a few weeks, this meeting was held at the Pasadena downtown library. At the last meeting I had to buy dinner, this time I didn’t even have to check out a library book. I just showed up.

While the crowd gathered, the speaker had set up his laptop and portable speakers to play motivational music. I heard the music to “Top Gun”, “Eye of the Tiger” and “We will Rock You”. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I was at a Lakers game.

The speaker Lloyd Segal, markets himself as “California’s Leading Foreclosure Expert” and is also the author of the book, Stop Foreclosure Now.

The attendance settled in around 25-30 and included a diverse group of people. If I am going to sit for two hours, my hope is the speaker is engaging and entertaining. I was lucky, because he was both. The presentation was delivered in an interactive PowerPoint format with demonstrations and audience participation and feedback encouraged.

The presentation started with an example of Mr. & Mrs. Smith are losing their home today at 10:00am, and progressed to an explanation of how the auction / bidding process takes place at the LA County courthouse. He then went on to explain the foreclosure process in California with a time line of events.

He then proceeded to offer several different scenarios where homeowners are facing foreclosure and showed you as an investor how to “help the homeowners” through a difficult situation. I liked the fact that Mr. Segal stressed the importance of dealing with the property owners in a respectful manner. He also went on to say that you will probably find banks these days to be very negotiable and willing to make deals on their non-performing assets, which are costing them thousands of dollars.

Why Free Seminars?

People do not conduct seminars for free. My guess is you probably wouldn’t either. There is usually another agenda, to sell books, tapes or another seminar. The free 2 hour meetings are merely a teaser in hopes that you will pay for the more in-depth seminar at a later date.

Personally, I think Mr. Segal’s methods work and the good part is that you have a very small investment in his full day seminar to find out for yourself. If you never buy a distressed property at least you have educated yourself to the process and to me that is worth something.

I am considering signing up for the Saturday seminar. If I do attend, I will provide a review of the meeting. I have a feeling it will definitely be worthwhile.