Real Estate Financial Clubs

[jeffrey]

Forget book clubs and poker nights. America's property craze has spawned a new social network: the real estate investment club.

Across the country, dentists, retirees, janitors and even teenagers gather each week in hotels, buffet halls, synagogues and the like to sniff for scuttlebutt and attend get-rich seminars with titillating titles like "Turn an Ugly House into a Pot of Gold" and "Exploding Profits Through Bankruptcies."

California now has more than 40 such clubs, Florida 50. The Georgia Real Estate Investor Association has grown so large -- its main monthly meeting can draw 1,000 -- the group recently bought a building to host an almost daily schedule of confabs.

In Texas, Randy Steadham, a former oil services exec who is president of the Realty Investment Club of Houston (none too subtle acronym: RICH), says his membership has quadrupled since 2001, to 2,100 people.

"I for one," he drawls, "have pulled all my money out of the stock market and put it into real estate."

Hmm. Substitute the words tech stocks for real estate, margin loan for interest-only mortgage, and the housing boom takes on an ominously familiar tone... [read more at money.cnn.com]