When a housing boom is over, its the _seminarists_ who are among the few that still make a generous living in real estate. Those late night ads hawking tapes and books are particularly amusing, eschewing that the market is still strong and you can make millions in real estate. Some have been on TV for years. Some made very little in real estate but are very good at selling seminars and books. Its like buying a new diet book thinking… _I am finally going to do something about this._

In Damon Darlin’s post [Tricks of the Seminar Trade [Walkthrough]](http://walkthrough.nytimes.com/?p=488) which is an offshoot of a great article he wrote about the topic of infomercials. One of his experts was John T. Reed who tracks the returns of these real estate gurus.

[Here’s a list of these infomercial real estate gurus that John T. Reed tracks](http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html)

>Their aim is to get you to the free seminar, where you will learn next to nothing. Then they will try to sell you another seminar, where you will learn little except that you need to take a more advanced seminar.

Their goal? To get your credit card out of your wallet or purse. [Here’s a place to complain](http://www.infomercialscams.com/).

A message from the School of Reality: If it sounds to good to be true, then it usually is. You can rack up frequent flyer bonus miles in more productive ways.