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"Live on passive income" buying neighborhood flats; the last promise in the networks

2022-04-21T13:26:34.172Z


A new type of 'influencers' promote real estate courses where the objective is to accumulate properties in working-class areas to achieve a dream life


"Would you like to learn to play Monopoly in real life?"

Carlos Galán appears in one of his social media ads with the top hat and mustache of the rich uncle from the famous board game.

This 30-year-old from Zaragoza promises to teach you how to buy cheap apartments in working-class neighborhoods to put them up for rent.

One of his credentials is his long experience: he says that at the early age of 12 he inherited his father's small real estate estate with the task of managing it.

Over the years, he has accumulated more than 30 properties, enough to "live on income", or as they say now, "live on passive income", the new expression that triumphs on the Internet as the way of life of people who more knows.

This is guaranteed during your two and a half hour free online lessons,

which is his way of attracting clients for a three-month course for which he charges 1,500 euros.

As he tells it, that price is a bargain because the students will achieve a happy life in which money will never limit their dreams: “It is the financial freedom of the rest of your generations.

The business will be inherited by your children, grandchildren and so on.

Do you realize we're talking about something big?"

There have always been real estate investors who have dedicated themselves to accumulating properties and managing tenants, but perhaps never before has this

modus vivendi

been promoted as brazenly as it is now.

Social networks have given a powerful loudspeaker to a new type of commercials that promise to reveal to ordinary people the supposed secret of the privileged classes not to work for the rest of their lives.

They promote investments of all kinds: in cryptocurrencies, the stock market or real estate.

And among the latter, the “star” option according to Galán and other

influencers

is to buy flats to rent in poor neighborhoods.

Why?

Because cheap real estate is seen as a faster way to recover the money invested and receive monthly income.

They are relatively affordable investments for the middle classes and in general there is no shortage of tenants: young people, immigrants and all those who cannot access property, a market that, they say, will not stop growing.

Galán assures that with his method it is possible to build a five-story estate in five years contributing very little capital, that is, playing with bank money.

Facades of blocks of flats in the Simancas neighborhood, in the east of Madrid. Victor Sainz

But experts in the real estate market recommend distrusting promises of life resolved with little effort.

“Living on rentals is not easy at all,” says Miguel Ángel Gómez, who has been in the sector for 26 years and is CEO of GH Casas and president of Amadei, a Madrid association of real estate professionals.

“People are

pelá

and banks don't give mortgages like that because like that.

You have to question whether the real business of these

influencers

is in real estate or in giving online courses”.

Gonzalo Bernardos, who has directed a master's degree aimed at real estate professionals for 22 years at the University of Barcelona, ​​warns that these new online courses for ordinary people are mostly "smoke".

However, they can be very profitable for their promoters: “These teachers tend to have little experience and wisdom, but they are very good salespeople.

Oddly enough, many people bite."

Bernardos knows that the demand for these lessons is high because before social networks became popular, he saw how people without pedigree filled auditoriums in face-to-face paid courses where they made exaggerated promises.

These teachers tend to have little experience and wisdom, but they are very good salespeople.

Even if it seems a lie, many people bite

Gonzalo Bernardos, Professor of Economics at the University of Barcelona

The young Galán says he is used to criticism, as stated in a telephone interview with this newspaper.

He contradicts that his messages are so direct that they can generate mistrust.

“There are those who can see us as smoke sellers.

It's part of the game and you have to live with it.

I am quite comfortable with the promise of the courses”.

He says that he has taught eight editions of his quarterly course since 2019 and that he has had more than 2,000 students: "We have purchased more than 800 flats worth 49 million euros and generating around five million revenues a year."

These numbers have not been independently verified by this newspaper.

In his videos, former students appear talking about the benefits of the training program.

Simona Constantín says that thanks to the course she managed to buy four flats in just six months.

“The truth is that I don't believe it.

I have the four rented houses and they are giving me 1,400 euros a month”.

Another former student, Javier, says that he lived in fear until he discovered this way of life: “Now I can do whatever I want.

I have 25 apartments and it is likely that at the end of the year or the beginning of next year I will have 30 rented apartments.

Right now the total gross income I have must be close to 19,000 euros per month.

Carlos Galán in a screenshot of his website explaining the keys to his 1,500-euro course to learn to live on real estate income.

Galán talks in his promotional videos about how to find profitable and safe real estate, how to negotiate with the bank or how to find the ideal tenant.

One of his tips is not to get discouraged because the flat is ugly: "Keep in mind that everything has a rental demand and the fact that you wouldn't live there doesn't mean that there isn't someone who does."

There is a fundamental reason that makes this passive business "permanent and possibly endless", as he explains: many people can not afford anything other than rent and the number of renters is going to continue to grow, according to forecasts.

And he gives another important recommendation: you have to go into the neighborhoods.

“We must go find where there are fish.

To get higher profitability sometimes you have to be willing to get your ass wet”.

The true objective of his course, he assures, is to "help" ordinary people discover this opportunity silenced by the elites: "I'm going to explain to you all that the rich don't want you to know."

She says that there is a false myth in the street according to which only the wealthy classes can afford to invest in real estate.

“Do you know who are the beneficiaries of these false beliefs?

Indeed.

Precisely those investors with a lot of money who want to keep all the bargains.

The more people know how to access these properties, the more it will cost them to continue consolidating their assets at the expense of the ignorance of normal people like you and me”.

“Really, there are a lot more people living on rents than you can imagine,” he says.

“You may be thinking that this is not as simple as it seems, but I assure you that it is.

What I have achieved, thousands of my students have achieved,” he adds.

“Once the first step is taken, the fear disappears and the result is already unstoppable.

You are going to accumulate one floor after another almost without remembering that on each floor you have a tenant, ”he guarantees.

You are going to accumulate one floor after another almost without remembering that on each floor you have a tenant

Carlos Galán, promoter of the Real Estate Freedom courses

These courses have proliferated during the pandemic, when the demand for online training has grown and the real estate market has remained very hot.

Before entering this world, Galán had graduated in Economics and had written in 2015 a book that appears as the second best-selling finance on Amazon.es,

Independízate de Papá Estado

.

He created his YouTube channel on real estate investments in July 2019 and has already accumulated more than 350,000 views.

Many students are young people frustrated by their limited salaries, according to several course promoters.

The idea has spread that studying a career and carrying out a profession is not a guarantee of a comfortable life, they say.

"Now people with an average salary cannot go out on the weekend with their partner or take a trip in the summer," Juan Tamarit, a 30-year-old from Barcelona who teaches the Inmoemprende courses, says by phone.

He points out that this does not mean that studying a career is no longer recommended to prosper and that he would never advise against going to university.

Tamarit says that at the age of 22 he discovered investing in cheap flats, when he had already lost faith in the system of working for others.

Her “niche” are very, very cheap flats, for deed prices of less than 20,000 euros.

His debut was a “bargain”, a small bank apartment that she acquired for 10,000 euros in Escodines, a neighborhood in the municipality of Manresa, 57 km northwest of the city of Barcelona.

It was spent, including the reform, 17,500 euros.

He put it up for rent for 460 euros to a recently divorced tenant, a resident of the area, and he soon recovered the investment, according to his account: "In less than four years he had made it profitable," he says.

“My mental spectrum was opened up.”

"Vital experience"

Another master of investing in cheap flats is the Asturian Rubén Calvo.

His free masterclass is the beginning of "a very beautiful path", a "vital experience".

The big moment of that eye-opening lesson is a rather nondescript day and time: a Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.

During the day, he has been in charge of generating expectation.

He writes six reminders in a WhatsApp group where he has captured 219 interested parties and when the time comes, he punctually sends a link to a video platform, where he appears on the screen.

You can see that he is a guy in a hurry because he speaks at breakneck speed: “I'm only going to be with you sixty minutes on the clock.

We have little time because we are investors, entrepreneurs”.

He explains that his method focuses on apartments between 40,000 and 80,000 euros, which can then be rented for rents of between 400 and 800 euros.

Rubén Calvo in a screenshot of his website Exponenciales, where he promotes a master's degree to live off the rent of cheap flats.

Before entering the subject, it is presented.

He is also an early investor.

He says that his grandfather passed on his passion for real estate from a very young age and that at the age of 18 he had already founded his first company.

Then, he explains the bases of his method and gives several pills of wisdom ("select the tenant well", "do reforms in the kitchen and the bathroom, but it is not worth investing in parquet", "remember that it is not a floor for live us”).

He talks about beginning students, like Yaiza, “who is already on the second floor”, and others who own half a Monopoly board: “I have students who manage family assets of more than 200 floors.

Rebeca, in Barcelona, ​​250 flats from his family.

Jose, who is a student of mine in Murcia, manages more or less 85 assets”.

In this game, some start with an advantage.

Several mantras are repeated in the courses of these professors: if you leave your savings in the bank you are losing money;

the pension system is unsustainable and we are not going to have enough for retirement;

the most comfortable way of life is passive income;

professional investors have no liquidity, we play with other people's money;

My purpose in life is to help other people do what I have done...

Calvo spends the last 25 minutes persuading his listeners to sign up before midnight for his paid course, a program of 10 one-hour classes he calls a "master."

He explains that he will only admit the top 35.

The price?

“The total valuation is 2,850 euros, but if you access today the price is 990 euros, VAT included.

How should you think?

This is not an expense.

It's an investment,” he says.

"Whoever is going to take action is going to get the money back. What are you waiting for?"

At that moment, the countdown begins until midnight for the neighborhood landlord apprentices and at the exact hour this teacher who promises passive income but seems to lead a very accelerated life says goodbye.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-04-21

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