THE FOUNDER

Sam DiBello is someone who truly cares about helping people buy, sell and profit from real estate -- and he has all the skills to empower them in the process.  For many years, Sam and his wife Renee had been partners in an successful real estate business in Bellevue, Washington. Where other brokers and agents concentrated solely on business, listing, showing and selling. Sam found a bigger need he could fill:  

As a young man, and a Viet Nam era veteran, Sam had experienced the frustration of not being able to buy a home because he didn’t know the ropes.  Sam said,

“I didn’t know the answers, I didn’t know where to find the answers… I didn’t even know the right questions to ask! Everyone seemed to be taking advantage of my ignorance!”

“Had I only known what I know now, about how the system works, I wouldn’t have wasted ten years paying rent… I could’ve been in my own home all along!”

After the military, Sam landed a job as a corporate executive with Toshiba America Information Systems in Irvine California. He lead executive briefings and non-disclosures for  high-level Fortune 50 companies, but after six years he realized that high-level corporate politics just didn’t fit his straight-shooting personality, so he decided to resign and take a year off, relax and find an occupation that would allow him to work directly with the public.

Sam and Renee decided to start a cable TV show, dispensing valuable advice about buying and selling homes. Soon, Sam was being asked to teach his principles in live classes.  Sam finally agreed and in his first class he had a moment that opened his eyes to the power of the information he was sharing:

“In my very first class, on our first break I noticed a woman quietly crying.  I asked her if she was OK, and she blurted out, ‘If I had only known the things you taught in the first ten minutes of this class, I would have never lost my home!’

“Thirteen years earlier, during a terrible time in her life, she had lost her home and been forced to rent ever since — all because she lacked the key information I was sharing.”  

This woman changed the course of his business and his life.  She was the first of what has become a legion of students whose lives have changed due to Sam’s teaching.

In 1997 Sam and Renee established The Washington Housing Education Network, a group of seasoned industry professionals who shared the DiBellos philosophy of "free education" to the general public. The all volunteer  standard is what still drives Washington Housing Education today.

Then something remarkable happened. They started receiving hundreds of e-mails from people in other parts of the country asking "When are you coming to my town?" He and Renee went on to create Rutopia Educational Seminars where today, Sam found a way to educate more people than ever with his “First-Time Home Buyer Video Seminar Online.”  Where the rest of the country must pay a small fee to get this information, certain western Washington State gets in for free.