BEFORE TAKING OUR CLASSES

For five years we conducted a pre-class survey of each of our attendees. Before taking the class the students used these words to describe how they felt about buying real estate:

AFTER TAKING OUR CLASSES

AFTER their class, these are the words students used to describe how they felt about buying real estate:

Dear Washington Housing Education,

 Because of your training and guidance, I not only found out I could buy a  home of my own, I learned the ins and outs of the process, and I DID buy my first home!  I realize most testimonials may seem to be about simple, easy real estate transactions, but they’re not all easy!  I’m writing this because the experience with my builder has been a bad one, and it’s only because of taking your Homebuyers’ training that I’ve managed to wade through all the obstacles I’ve encountered!

 When I got my BA degree in Computer Information, I was fortunate enough to land a good job with a national company.  I had rented all through college, so naturally I went looking for an apartment, not a house.  I paid rent for another two years.  I didn’t save ANY money during this time!  Any extra cash went to pay off my college loans, and some I began putting into our company’s retirement program.

 I figured it would take me five or ten years to save up enough for a downpayment, but I really hated the idea of renting.  Paying rent each month and living with the apartment’s rules made me feel like a kid, or a freshman in the college dorms.  I was living on my own, with a career, and I wanted to have my own place.  I wanted to buy my own home, but in my market that pretty much meant settling for a doublewide or getting into a condo. 

 In Feb 2005, I saw your seminar on television, and I decided to attend.  One of the things I learned in the first half hour or so was that there were plenty of ways to get into a place legally using resources out there.  If people with bankruptcies can get approved, so can young people like me who just don’t have a downpayment.  

 I learned about zero money down techniques, learned what to look for and what to avoid, like knowing how to pick a good lender.  I was amazed at the dangers of doing website purchasing and relying on the real estate rags at grocery stores!  Your seminar gave me lots of good information, and made me a lot smarter, and I started looking for 2 bedroom/two bath condos and townhouses.  I looked at new ones and used ones… some had more space but a bad floor plan, others had garages or other amenities. 

 Even though I still had no money for downpayment, only two weeks after taking my course, I made my initial offer on a condo unit that was under construction.  Even though the builder has caused one delay after another, I STILL haven’t had to pay anything towards it!

  Things went downhill from there. Sellers offer letter had only good points for seller.  Rejected, eventually got counter offers.  Finally got good offer. 

 If it hadn’t been for your Homebuyer Workshop, I don’t know how I would have made it through.  The builder did everything possible to make it a real nightmare.  They tried to bulldoze me into using their own lender, they insisted on doing things I didn’t want and they refused to change the smallest details, like light fixtures, even when I offered to pay any difference!  It was as if they didn’t care one way or another… I guess part of the problem is the “sellers’ market” … they knew they could find someone else to sell to, someone they could walk over.  Because of this First Time Homebuyers’ seminar I had the confidence to stand my ground and hold them to their contract!  I could not have walked through this process without your training and input. 

 This was a really, really rough example of home purchasing, but it was also very enlightening.  You gave me a real sense of confidence that I can handle almost any situation properly, or get the information I need to handle it, or find the right people to handle it!  Most either think they have to handle everything themselves, or blindly trust the “experts!”  The truth is, the experts can help, but you need to be an active participant in the process.  I know my role, my agent’s part, and my lawyer’s responsibility. 

 Speaking of attorneys, I made sure everything went through a lawyer.  I learned this from your seminar and it really helped.  It gave me access to legal power, and an attorney to look over everything.  Not much could be thrown at me that I couldn’t handle in the process.  I also learned the value of using a Buyer’s Agent as my go-between.  Knowing how to choose a good attorney and Buyer’s Agent, and how to work with them was invaluable knowledge I never would have had without this class.

 Even with all the problems caused by this builder, the end result is still good thanks to you.  My new mortgage will be almost identical to my current lease payment, and with tax breaks it will end up costing me less at the end of the year.

  I never thought I could have a home of my own this fast!  You prepared me for the good, the bad, and the ugly… and I definitely needed every bit of this in my purchase experience.  Without your training, I would’ve thrown in the towel and consigned myself to paying rent for years to come!  You have cut YEARS off the process, and given me the information and confidence I needed to go out and get my own place for no money down.  I can’t thank you enough!

--Chris Hinman           

Dear Washington Housing Education,

When I met Jenn at the University of Wisconsin, I already knew that as soon as we graduated, I wanted us to get a house.  I had been raised around real estate investors, and my folks had moved several times while I was growing up.  As a kid I remember sitting in the room with them, bored while they signed the papers on yet another house.  It was like second nature to me to hate renting, but I realized I really didn’t know much about the actual homebuying process.

 Jenn, on the other hand, had lived in the same house her whole life, right up to the time she went to college.  She had a lot of anxious feelings about buying a house.  After all, our first priority was to pay off all our accumulated debts.  This would mean taking on the biggest debt of our lives! She liked the idea, but the thought of it all, the unknown, made her real concerned and uncertain about it all.

 A couple of months after I graduated, Jenn found an ad for your First Time Home Buyer’s Seminar.  We both thought it would be worthwhile, so we signed up. 

 Even with my knowledge of real estate, I would have taken the course myself, even without Jenn.  Most of what I knew was about choosing good property as an investment, never the actual buying procedures involved. I was excited and ready to learn.  I expected to get a basic working knowledge of buying, but I did not expect the broadness of the course, especially things to look out for.  A lot of these I hadn’t thought of… and as it turned out, they were really needed in our home buying experience later. 

 One of the most valuable things you drove home was to never get emotionally—attached to a particular house.  This was a big help to both of us.  It’s one thing to dream about a place of your own.  Falling in love with one particular place can lead to bad decisions.  We saw people make this mistake on some of the houses we looked at, and get in bidding wars where they ended up paying $50,000 or more, OVER the asking price!   

 You also surprised me with all of the financial portions of the process.  These lessons, too, came in handy in our deal!  We had gotten all of our debts but our student loans paid off, and “Hey, we’re going into the biggest debt of our lives!”  This created a LOT of anxiety!  Your in depth financial talk helped us understand payments and loan amortization, and how it all worked.  This eased our fears a lot.

 All in all I felt like I got a beginning-to-end training on the biggest financial decision and process of my life!   Your seminar gave me a good working knowledge of entire process, and exposed me to lot of things that I would later encounter, so I knew how to handle these “surprises.” 

 Using what we learned, we chose a good Realtor to work with us.  We looked at a lot of houses before finding the one we bought about four months later.

 We had wanted a house that needed some remodeling work, not a real fixer-upper but one that was a little worn, so we could get a good price.  This one fit the bill perfectly.  Little did we know the man that owned it had had a LOT of legal troubles.  There were so many liens and lawsuits, at one point the bank didn’t think he had enough equity to cover them all (this would have meant he couldn’t even sell the house, because creditors had claimed so much of the value).  I didn’t even consider the possibility of difficulties like this when I was thinking about buying a house, until I took your seminar.  Like they say, “You don’t know what you don’t know!”  You explained liens, judgments and all the other financial obstacles in a clear, easy-to-understand format, so I felt confident talking with my lender and my broker about them. 

 Fortunately, in the end, there was enough value in the house, but the seller probably didn’t get any of the money from the sale! (it all went to his creditors). 

Then, out of the blue, the lender found all sorts of financial stuff under my name in the credit bureau.  There were pages of accounts with charges and liens against other people with same name.  Because of your seminar, I realized this was probably because of how common my name is.  I knew the steps to take, and worked with my lender to clear up this issue.  If not for what I had learned in the time I spent with you, I would have felt like this was a brick wall, enough to stop the whole process.

 Other issues included communication problems with the owner, who had already moved to California.  Finally, we closed on January 4^th, and our final cost of $247,000 was $8000 LESS than the appraised value!  This, in a sellers’ market!  Because of what we learned, we were able to buy our house for ZERO money down, and we used what we had been able to save to remodel the kitchen.  I wanted to have equity… two years later we’ve had it appraised at $325,000! 

 I’m excited.  I’ve recommended this course to all of my friends.  Some don’t think it’s worth it, but when you look at how much money a single mistake can cost you on a house deal, how can it NOT be worth the cost? FREE!!

 Now, we feel so confident after everything we walked through in our first deal, that we want to begin buying homes for ourselves for investment.  I can’t wait for you to come out with your course on investing.  Put us down for two seats!

Thank you!

--Chris Thomas and Jenn West

Dear Washington Housing Education,

 Even after Matt and I got our engineering degrees, we continued to rent.  We had nice place with cheap rent payments, but it wasn’t ours.  We never really talked a lot about getting a home of our own… but buying a home seemed like a distant possibility, something we didn’t even need to think about for a few years.

 A college friend attended your Home Buyers’ Seminar and was really impressed.  He urged us to take your course, and we did – but not with much enthusiasm. I didn’t really expect to walk away with much real information…I’m the ultimate skeptic’s skeptic!  Plus, you have to figure that both Matt and I are engineers… so we’re naturally skeptical!  In fact, I figured it would probably just be a big sales pitch, like those “free” workshops you see advertised.

 I was surprised and very impressed!  This seminar gave us the “inside scoop,” and we got pages and pages of notes, with information most Realtors would probably never share.  We found out the things to look out for, all the ways people can cheat you and how to recognize it when they’re taking advantage of you.  It was open, honest, and the value of the information was incredible.

  We left the seminar armed with our new knowledge and ready to buy a place of our own… sooner, rather than later!  We had saved a little money, but your seminar reassured us that we had more than enough to buy a house.  We weren’t sure about how good a deal we could get in such a hot market, but when you shared that you were buying properties yourself, we decided to go for it now. 

 Most of all, we felt a confidence about going through the whole homebuying process.  Even though we’d never really analyzed it before, there was probably more than a little fear of the unknown in our attitude before the seminar.  It was easy enough to put off such a big decision without really thinking through all the reasons… after the seminar, we were confident… and excited!

 Within days, we began looking for a home of our own.  In just a couple of months, we found our house.  We had actually put an offer on another house, but backed out because it just didn’t feel right.  With the guidance you gave us, we actually got out of that contract AND got our deposit back!

 Anyway, we made our offer on our house and closed just a month later!  In case it all sounds too easy, we had lots of issues with the sellers, the escrow account, and the lender, but we got it all straightened out, thanks to the strategic information and guidance you gave us. 

 Altogether it only took us three months after taking your class to move into a home of our own. We bought in a “sellers’ market” and still had equity in our house the day we closed.  Today, we have over $20,000 in equity… and I keep thinking about all the money we both paid for landlords’ equity over the years!  Never again!  I can’t thank your enough for all your training and assistance!

Sincerely,

--Christina and Matt Long

Dear Washington Housing Education—

 As far as I know, I am the only person who has taught in all three of the top first-time home buying seminars in the market today, including Dear Washington Housing Education's Homebuyers’ Workshop.  I am also a Washington State Housing Finance Commission Certified Instructor and a licensed mortgage broker in the state of Washington. 

 The founder of Washington Housing Education, Sam DiBello, is the most consumer-driven person and conscientious instructor I’ve ever known.  He makes sure all of the instructors are too! His consistent focus is on the best interests of his students.  He doesn’t hide anything, he tells all, empowering his students with the information they need and telling them their options.  He even tells his students how to get OUT of a contract with a real estate agent! 

 This is vastly different from all the other first-time home buying seminars in the Puget Sound area.  The primary objective of other seminars seems to be to teach just enough information to create a prospect who feels dependent on the agent’s services.  The other  seminar companies I taught for insisted that I use a fixed script that didn’t even allow time for students to ask questions!  Also, the other seminars include really heavy-handed sales pitches to sell the students on using their agents to buy their new home.  this one is different than every other home buying seminar instructor!

 Sam is honestly the very best teacher I’ve ever seen in front of a classroom.  He works hard to teach his other instructors how to be the same. He delivers his message in clear, easy-to-understand terms, with lots of slides and real-world examples. And he makes sure he answers every question! 

Students get a less slanted, more balanced approach with a lot of details the others don’t tell, won’t tell, and don’t want people to know.  Washington Housing Education gives their  students ALL the information, the pros and cons of both the real estate and the mortgage process, so they’re confident and empowered.   They really give their students options so they can choose what’s best for them, know when to say “Yes,” when to say “No,” and when to stand up for what they want!

 After getting my degree in International Business at Washington State, I worked for Bizillion.com until the dotcom bust, then with another telecom before hooking up with Washington Mutual. I found I had an inclination for banking and mortgage funding, and they gave me thorough training.  After working with a local broker for 2 years, I was hired one of top two loan originators in country, (name removed).  To generate new mortgage business, she taught seminars for both  (name removed) and (name removed), so I began teaching for these two seminar companies as well.  In July 2003, I became the in-house lender rep for Peoples Bank, handling deals for a large number of ReMax brokers including Sam and Renee Dibello, the founders.

 After becoming a Certified Instructor for the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, my feelings about quality education for homebuyers got stronger.  I felt a better approach would be to teach first-time home buyers the right way to obtain a mortgage in today’s changing market, and how to maximize their buying potential. I felt that by empowering individuals with the right information, I would create an atmosphere of confidence and trust.  I felt we would be genuinely doing a service to the customer, and still be able to handle loans for many of the participants.  The other seminar companies basically told me to “stick to the script!”

 I was impressed that the founders were so totally consumer-driven.  In their First-Time Home Buyer Workshop, they share as much information as possible, without any hidden agendas or sales pitches.  Based on Sam’s famous “10 Deadly Mistakes” List, students really learn what you should look out for in a deal.  The other seminars focus more on directing people to use their broker services. 

 Whether you’re an experienced homebuyer who simply wants a refresher, or a first-time homebuyer who’s always paid rent, you will learn all sorts of new strategies and new information at this seminar.  There are no sales pitches!  Most of all Washington Housing Education empowers consumers to be an equal partner in their home buying process, without pressure from an agent or broker. 

 In May 2004 I decided to go through training to become a Master Instructors for Sam’s Rutopia Educational Seminars, a kind -a national version of Washington Housing Education.  Teaching this Seminar is much more satisfying, and feels like I’m doing a real public service, not just giving a sales pitch.

 Sincerely,

 Drew Ebner