AI Scams Are Targeting Real Estate Investors: Here's How to Prepare
AI Scams Are Targeting Real Estate Investors: Here's How to Prepare
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July 18, 2024Ways to Find Cheaper Money to Fund Land Flipping Deals in 2024
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June 5, 2024Real Estate Wholesaling to Flipping Land with Guest Deshawn Jackson
April 1, 2024Deepfakes
In 2018, a video quickly went viral featuring President Obama sitting in the Oval Office warning viewers about the dangers of misinformation being spread using video & audio technology.
It is then revealed that Obama was actually being played by actor and filmmaker Jordan Peele, and the video was created using minimal editing and artificial intelligence.
This example proves just how easy it can be to create an imitation of something or someone that is hard to differentiate from the real thing. The aim? Tricking people into thinking it's real.
This is what we call a "deepfake". They come in the form of video, audio, photos, text messages; basically any form of media created using AI techology.
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Future of AI Scamming
In 2018, the Obama video was convincing, nowadays not so much due to the rapid advancement of AI.
In fact, AI scams were one of the five most common types of investment fraud in 2023, according to an analysis of FBI and FTC data conducted by Carlson Law.
These same AI systems can also generate falsified documents and impersonate sellers in the real estate industry. In fact, it's already being done by "title pirates", scammers who use AI technology to create fake title and identification documents.
It is evident that as AI technology gets more advanced and accessible to the masses, it is necessary for all investors to be able to identify any malicious activity and protect themselves from ai fraud.
How to Protect Yourself
The National Cybersecurity Alliance recommends anyone who may be targeted by AI scammers do the following:
1.) Be Mindful of What You Share Online.
Limit public access to any personal information such as photos or video content of yourself, or any kind of personal documentation. If you do decide to share media publicly, consider adding watermarks that are difficult to remove.
2.) Report Deepfakes
If you discover deepfake content impersonating the likeness of you or someone you know, report the content to the platform it's on for removal. If necessary, get help from a legal professional who is knowledgeable of ai.
3.) Follow AI news & Stay Educated
Keep an eye on recent updates to AI technology and emerging scams or red flags so you know what to look for before it happens to you. Learning more about how AI works can give you insight into how it can be used to harm others, and can be a great way to spot scams early on.
5.) Research
Take the time to research the background of any individual or company you're considering doing business with. Look for reviews, testimonials, and any red flags during interactions.
The Future of Real Estate
As AI continues to evolve, so too will the tactics employed by scammers. By remaining vigilant and adopting proactive measures, you can minimize the risk of falling victim to AI scams. Remember, in the digital landscape, caution is paramount, and skepticism can be your greatest asset against the wolves in AI clothing.
In regards to real estate transactions, due diligence is the key to safeguarding your interests and financial well-being. By staying informed, verifying information, and exercising caution in all real estate transactions, you can mitigate any potential AI threat.
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Listen to the Latest Podcast
View Transcript here
Ron: Do you need real estate experience to come in and be a successful land flipper? We have engineers in here. We have doctors in here. We have teachers in here. We have pilots in here. There’s no clear cut like winner type of person. There’s a type of person, not type of occupation though. I was a college basketball coach.
He was an outside salespeople. We didn’t have real estate experience. Now the people who come in and they’re doing deals and wholesaling, they come in and they absolutely crush it because wholesaling houses. It’s more competitive. So these people who are doing deals and wholesaling, they come in and like land flip.
It’s easy. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the real estate investing podcast. I’m your host, Ron Apke. And today we are going to talk about something that we are constantly, constantly getting asked. And that is do you need real estate experience to come in and be a successful land flipper? And not even do you need like, is it helpful we’ll talk about in this episode, but we have so many people, I talked to so many perspective, people who are looking to get in this business and they’re concerned because they’re coming from X occupation and they don’t have real estate experience.
They haven’t done that. Uh, but that’s all we’re going to talk. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. I think it’s really important to kind of see the types of people that are successful, the types of people that maybe aren’t successful and everything in between. We’re going to talk about, but first getting into my background, where I came from, I had one rental property and also bought a primary residence.
So those are two real estate transactions that I’d done in my life. And we came into land flipping. I was a college basketball coach at the time I was taking phone calls from sellers. When I was on the road, traveling for basketball on the road, recruiting all this different types of stuff. I was a college basketball coach, a full time college basketball coach.
Ours were absolutely insane. It was way, way more than a nine to five while it was different where I maybe had some more gaps than a nine to five. With my traveling with my recruiting with all this stuff. It was easily 60 hours a week Um at its peak off season, maybe a little bit less But during the season is when I really started this business Honestly the lane flipping business and it was 60 70 hours a week without a doubt I don’t think there’s any doubt about it and hours were crazy So that’s what I was doing when I got in land flipping and it was just a mindset honestly that Myself and my brother Daniel my partner had when we came in like we’re just gonna make it work He was working a full time job, but probably 40 hours a week as well.
So we just had to learn we had to grind we knew we had to work extra hours after hours and it It was just, it was a mindset thing. Like, I think if we wanted to make excuses for ourself, why we weren’t going to make the business work, I think we definitely could have, and we could have got out of the business.
Um, but that we knew that wasn’t what’s best for us. So we just worked like it, we worked, we obviously having two people do this business can help for sure. But I was a college basketball coach. He was an outside salespeople. We didn’t have a real estate experience. Really. Uh, we are coming in, we’re ready to learn.
We’re ready to learn from mistakes. And that’s one of the biggest things when people come in is like, are they willing to learn from their experience? If you’re not, it can be a lot more difficult for sure. Where, Yeah, you have educ, you, you get education from us. If you’re getting education, you get education from YouTube.
What, wherever you’re getting education from, you cannot avoid learning mistakes. Like you cannot avoid mistakes in this business completely. There are gonna be mistakes that you make, whether it’s pricing account, whether it’s speed of something, uh, whatever the situation is, saying no to a deal, you should have said yes to saying yes to a deal that you should have said no to.
There’s more expensive mistakes. That can happen, and we try to help you avoid those as much as possible, but mistakes happen. Some kind of small mistake is going to cost you some money, but what can you get from that mistake? What are you going to learn from those mistakes? And that is the most important thing to move you forward.
So going to the people who have Joined our program, the members that are successful. We’ve tried honestly to like, we’ve tried to narrow it down. Like this type of person is successful. This type of person is not successful. We have engineers in here. We have doctors in here. We have teachers in here. We have pilots in here, everything in between.
Like there’s not an occupation that we haven’t had come through our program. There’s no clear way. like winter type of person. Uh, there’s a type of person, not type of occupation though. And that’s the thing. There’s a difference. You have teachers out there who shouldn’t be a teacher, like that’s their occupation, but their skillset is way different than being a teacher.
You might have engineers out there who have a salesperson skillset who just haven’t tapped into that salesperson skillset. So that’s the biggest thing is it’s more the skills and characteristics you’re bringing in other. Instead of the occupation, people choose occupations for weird reasons. You gotta realize in the United States, we’re choosing it when we’re 18.
A lot of people change majors, obviously, but when you’re 18, you’re going into college, you’re asked to basically decide what you’re going to do. That major is very, very important. So you go in and you choose to be an, an engineering major or something like that. Like if you change, you’re probably going to be there an extra year or two if you change your junior year or something like that.
So you’re 18 year olds to 18 years old. I wanted to be a pharmacist, like that’s what I wanted to be. And if I looking back at that, like I thought I was crazy and by the time I was a junior in college. I thought that was crazy. So I had to switch things up. I had, uh, overload my classes so I could graduate in four years because I completely, not completely switch, but I switch, I have a chemistry degree.
No one on the street is walking by me talking to me for 10 minutes and being like, Oh yeah, you’re definitely a scientist. No one’s saying that to me. Uh, and that’s because we choose, we choose. You’re supposed to choose in the United States, like your occupation for the next 40 years when you’re 18 years old.
And it’s silly, it’s crazy. But that’s why the point of this whole little rant is occupation. A lot of times doesn’t line up with the person’s characteristics or skillset. So when we have a teacher come in, An engineer come in, like, yeah, you would think a teacher, I don’t know, teachers have so many different skillsets beyond it, but an engineer you would think would be more data minded.
And then they come in and they’re killer salespeople. So that’s why we haven’t really been able to see different occupations come in. And kind of line them up with success rate because it just differs. Like it is more characteristic. Are you, are you consistent? Are you willing to learn from your mistakes?
All these different characteristics, bringing in skills, like bringing in a salesperson type of skill is important for sure. Bringing in, you don’t need to, but I mean the willingness to sell is important. You’re going to be talking to sellers or me talking to buyers, everything like that. And then also just like.
The grit of being a business owner. Like this is a entrepreneurship venture. This is your owning a business. You’re responsible for your own stuff. Like there’s a lot of grit. You gotta, there’s going to be hard days for sure. And those characteristics being able to fight through tough times, being able to be consistent through tough times is so, so important.
So finally I wanted to get into, we talked about people who are coming in without real estate experience. Let’s talk about people who come in with real estate experience and the number one type of people, or the one number one. A group of people who come in from real estate is wholesalers and you have two groups of wholesalers You have group a and they’re doing two three deals a month.
They’re not making the money They went from wholesaling, but they do know how to do deals. They do know how to find deals They come in and then you have group number two who tried wholesaling. They failed at wholesaling houses And they’re coming in because they thought this would be easier, less competition, everything like that.
Very two distinct different groups. One is successful in wholesaling, but they’re just can’t get over the hump where they want to be. The other has, I don’t like saying failed, but the other has not been successful in wholesaling up to this point. And they’re trying to switch the, just the mindset between those two is completely different.
Group B who wanted to switch because they can’t get deals and wholesaling. There, I don’t want to say they come in and they automatically fail, but the mindset, the characteristic that is often surrounded about someone, uh, who tried something a little bit, you don’t know how much they tried though. That’s the thing.
Like if they tried wholesaling for six, eight months, they come in like that. Yeah, they have a shop. But if you tried wholesaling for one month, then you come to this, you flip flop to the next thing. Like you, you don’t have any better chance in land than you do in wholesaling. And that’s just the truth.
Now, the people who come in and they’re doing deals and wholesaling completely different, they come in and they absolutely crush it because wholesaling is wholesaling houses is more competitive. Like, it’s not like a question is wholesaling more competitive than land flipping. It is more competitive by every single statistic you look at every market is going to have more wholesalers than land flippers.
So these people who are doing deals and wholesaling, they come in and like land flipping is easy. It’s not. You gotta learn a lot still. But the ability to get deals is completely different. There’s no doubt about it. These people come in and they do really well. They know how to find deals. They combine their knowledge that they brought in from wholesaling to What we teach and they combine these two and it is extremely powerful.
Um, they’re problem solvers because wholesaling, like. You got to figure out a way to get deals. That’s the thing when you’re wholesaling houses, this is not as difficult to get deals. So they need to like, they need to work for every single deal. And that’s the mindset that they bring in is like, okay, I did five wholesaling deals last month.
They come in with that same mindset and then they’re doing 10, 12 deals a month before you know it. And they’re just, the margins are better. Everything’s better. You also have people come in with other types of real estate experience. You have a real estate agents. I, I don’t see any, like they understand real estate, they understand transactions.
I don’t see anything that like defines their success or not success, anything like that. Um, but overall, honestly, The biggest thing for people who come in from real estate is having an open mind because we do things differently Things are different than most different types of real estate So people coming in with an open mind understanding the biggest thing is like the blind offer thing So when we send mail we are offering on these people’s land With a blind offer you got to price the mail everything like that.
That’s not something really any other industry in real estate is used to. So coming in, being open minded to that, understanding the reasons behind that is so big. And that’s really for everyone. When you come into this business, if you’re trying to learn from us, it doesn’t matter where you’re trying to learn from, but you need to be open minded to.
different strategies, all that stuff. And then on the way you want to learn as you’re going as well. Other than that, guys, if you guys are listening on Spotify or Apple, share this on your social media. This really helps share our podcast on our social media. Really helps grow our social media. Uh, if you found us from social media, wherever you found us from, share it’s on that platform.
If you’re watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button to hit that like button. We post three or four videos every single week. Have a live YouTube every week, 5 30 PM Eastern time on Wednesday. Other than that, thank you so much. We’ll see you next time. As always, thank you for joining. Please do us a huge favor and like, and subscribe our YouTube channel and share this with a friend.
It really means the world to Ron and I, but more importantly, it could help change the life of someone else. Thanks for joining and we’ll see you next episode.
Watch the Full Episode Here
https://youtu.be/GOs9u1Mp5xA
