Real estate investment background of John T. Reed

I graduated from West Point and got an MBA from Harvard Business School. I have worked in the fields I write about and researched them thoroughly. I only write about subjects where I think the existing books are incorrect or incomplete or both. 

My books typically differ from those of other authors in a number of ways:

• more real world, for example, my baseball coaching books tell how opposing coaches try to cheat in the player draft
• more iconoclastic
• more thorough
• more tell you what you need to know; not what you want to hear
• more ethical and legal
• more safety conscious (mainly applies to sports coaching books)
• as much emphasis on risk management as reward 
• more likely to identify and explain the basic principles underlying expertise in the field, for example, the basic principle of offense in football is strength against weakness
• more strategic thinking (big picture), not just tactical 
• more holistic, that is, covering how seemingly unrelated factors affect outcomes like the character of individual football players or a landlord’s personality regarding dealing with difficult tenants or how different forms of asset ownership affect various goals like estate planning, asset protection, and so on

I grew up in Southern New Jersey and began my investing in real estate career there. I went to college in New York State and to graduate school in Boston. I also invested in Texas. I am a Vietnam vet. 

I have now lived in the San Francisco, California area for most of my life. In the San Francisco area, often the nation’s most expensive, I have owned two homes that were my principal residences and co-owned a condo and a three-bedroom house with my youngest son. My wife and I got married in 1975 and have three grown sons.

They are graduates of Columbia, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Arizona. The oldest and youngest work in the same marketing software company in Northern California; the other works for a for-profit K-12 on-line education company in Manhattan. One is married. They have a daughter and a son.

I began my writing career in 1976 and have been doing it ever since. I have had this website since December 1996.

Real-estate related education courses taken and/or taught by John T. Reed

Accounting 101 Monmouth College 1971

Accounting 102 Brookdale Community College

Required real estate license course to be a licensed real estate salesman

I was licensed as a real estate salesman in NJ and later in CA. I did not take the course in CA; just the test.

Dale Carnegie main course (public speaking)

Dale Carnegie sales course

Introduction to Commercial-Investment Real Estate by the Certified Commercial Investment Member designation course of the Realtors National Marketing Institute

Course A Fundamentals of Real Estate Investment and Taxation by the Certified Commercial Investment Member designation course of the Realtors National Marketing Institute

Course B Real Estate Development for Users by the Certified Commercial Investment Member designation course of the Realtors National Marketing Institute

Course C Advanced and Exchanges by the Certified Commercial Investment Member designation course of the Realtors National Marketing Institute

Robert Moore Property Management Course

Real Estate Investor’s Course Lowry-Nickerson

Real Estate Creative Financing Techniques seminar Lowry-Nickerson

Institute of Real Estate Management Fundamentals of Property Management Course I (subsidiary of National Association of Realtors)

Institute of Real Estate Management Practical Methods for Successful Property Management (subsidiary of National Association of Realtors)

Institute of Real Estate Management Executive Management Seminar Course III (Analysis of a specific property: 428-38 West Belden Avenue in Chicago)

Basic Real Estate Appraisal Course I-A American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers

Capitalization Theory and Technique Course I-B American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers

John Schaub’s Making It Big on Little Deals

Developing and Marketing Successful Seminars and Conferences by Anver Suleiman

Course on writing and publishing newsletters (probably Newsletter Association)

Real Estate Investment talk by Bruce Norris

Residential management talks by Leigh Robinson author of Landlording

Estate Planning course UC extension

Seminar on the Starker Exchange case with Starker’s lawyer and Marv Starr

Note seminars (mortgages taken back by sellers) Bill Mencarrow and his well-known associate Jon something

Nothing Down seminar back when it was still taught by Robert Allen

Exchange seminar UC Extension

Numerous adult education courses taught by John Beck who later became a famous TV infomercial guru then was ordered to pay $300 million restitution I think

Countless education sessions at national real estate conventions

Self-Publishing courses various

Entrepreneurship courses various

West Point courses:

Constitutional law course (at that time, junior officer were defense counsel in court martials)

Engineering Fundamentals (draftsmanship, surveying)

Psychology

Economics

Engineering mechanics

Structural Analysis

Structural Design, Soil, and Concrete

Leadership

Harvard Business School courses:

         Control (accounting)

         Marketing

         General Management

         Organizational Behavior

         Production and Operations Management

         Finance

         Managerial Economics

         Federal Tax Law

         Labor Relations

         Two real estate courses

Courses taught by John T. Reed

How to Increase the Value of Your Apartment Building San Francisco area

Dynamics of Financial Independence cassette course done with Paul J. Meyer’s Success Motivation Institute

How to Maximize Your Leverage and Minimize Your Income Taxes in Real Estate 2-day seminar taught around the US in 1979 and 1980 in partnership with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

How to Maximize Your Investment Performance and Minimize Your Income Taxes in Real Estate 2-day seminar taught around the US in 1981 in partnership with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Also been to and taught at dozens of baseball and football coaching clinics including being a football speaker at American Football Quarterly “University” and at NCAA headquarters—additional ways to teach and probably a hundred or more speakers

I have been a featured speaker at all sorts of apartment association, real estate investors associations including national, state, and local meetings all over the U.S.

My TV appearances were each debates with a prominent real estate investment guru

60 Minutes versus Joe Land

Good Morning American versus Robert Allen

Larry King Live versus Dave Del Dotto

Financial news Network versus Tony Hoffman

Local DC TV station also versus Tony Hoffman

KQED radio debate against Robert Allen

Since 1967, I have been marinated in this world of real estate investment advice for small individual investors. I have attended seminars, taught seminars, promoted seminars, been on a list of speakers with the other guys and many conventions. I have written books on real estate investment, read virtually every book on the subject until the last decade or so when they all turned into loss leaders to seek seminar attendees. I have reviewed a great many of the books on the subject. I have listened to their cassettes and recorded and sold my own cassettes. I have debated many of them in person and in print and in electronic media. I have analyzed their TV infomercials and written promotional material. I have sold my books to some of them then cut them off when they were slow or bounced a check. I have critiqued them at my guru-rating page. I was sued by one for three years during which I produced 500 web pages of information about him and his operation.

This is an incomplete list of all the classes I took and taught because I literally forgot many of them. Too much effort to try to run them all down now.