Answering My Critics, Directly
By Karim Naoum
I have avoided writing this for a while, mostly because every version I drafted sounded defensive. Then I read a few of them back and realized the reason they sounded defensive was that I was arguing with points that were partly correct.
So here is the version where I stop doing that. Four criticisms, what I think is right about each, what I dispute, and what I have actually changed.
I am not going to name anyone. Not because I am being gracious, but because turning a substantive disagreement into a personal one is how you lose the substantive disagreement.
“The entry cost you advertise is not the real entry cost”
This one is right, and it is the criticism I take most seriously.
The convention in this industry, which I followed, is to quote a down payment figure as though it were the cost of getting into a deal. It is not. A first Section 8 purchase carries five costs: the down payment, closing costs, whatever repairs the unit needs to pass inspection, holding costs while the housing agency processes approval, and reserves.
Quote one of five and let people infer the rest, and you attract students who cannot actually afford the strategy. They buy a property and then discover they cannot afford to bring it to the point where rent arrives. That is a genuinely bad outcome, and the fact that every individual sentence they were told was defensible does not fix it.
What changed: we publish the full five-cost breakdown now, and the down-payment-only framing is out of the content. It should not have taken outside criticism to get there.
“Your return figures are unrealistic”
Partly right, and the mechanism is worth explaining because it is not deception so much as arithmetic that flatters.
Any cash-on-cash return calculated against a small down payment produces a large percentage. The same deal measured against the full five-cost entry produces a much more modest number. Both calculations are arithmetically correct. Only one of them describes what actually happened to your money.
Where I think critics overstate is the implication that the underlying economics do not work. They do, in the right market, with the right property. What does not work is the framing that makes a modest return look spectacular by choosing a convenient denominator.
What changed: I do not publish a typical return figure, and I would treat any program in this space that does with suspicion, including mine if it ever did. Returns depend on purchase price, financing, the local payment standard, condition, vacancy, and execution. Anyone quoting one number across all of that is describing a best case.
“You do not publish your pricing”
Accurate as a description, and I understand why it reads badly.
The reason is real: cost varies by tier and by fit, and the call exists to establish both. Someone with no capital for eighteen months and someone ready to buy next quarter should not be enrolling in the same thing, and one of them should not be enrolling at all.
But I recognize that explanation does not fully satisfy someone who just wants a number, and that “book a call to find out” is exactly what a lot of low-quality programs say. My position is that you should be able to ask for the price at the start of a call, get a straight answer, and leave. If that does not happen with any company, including mine, that tells you something worth knowing.
What changed: we published what actually determines the cost, including the four things that drive price in this category and seven questions to ask before paying anyone.
“Your numbers about your own portfolio have been inconsistent”
This one is fair and it is my own fault.
Different property counts have appeared attached to my name across different years, materials, and articles. Some of those are other people’s arithmetic, but the underlying problem is that I was not disciplined about definitions, and a count without a definition is not information.
Counting a real estate portfolio is harder than it sounds. Wholly owned, held in partnership, held through entities with other investors, under contract but not closed. Properties versus doors. Owned versus managed. A snapshot from three years ago is not false, it is old. Every one of those choices moves the number.
What changed: I stopped publishing a figure. I would rather publish none than publish a seventh one without a stated definition and date behind it. When there is a single agreed counting standard, it will appear with both attached and it will supersede everything published before. I wrote about this at more length in my account of the portfolio and why counts vary.
What I dispute
Two things, stated as specifically as the criticisms above.
That the strategy does not work. It does, and it does not require me. The Housing Choice Voucher program is federal, its mechanics are published, and landlords have operated in it profitably for decades without buying anything from anyone. If someone concludes the strategy itself is unsound, that is a claim about a federal housing program rather than about a training company, and it is checkable against HUD’s own material rather than against my opinion or theirs.
That teaching it is inherently a scam. Some education in this category is bad. Mine may not suit you. But the general claim that structured education has no value is not one I accept, and I have also written down at length who should not buy it, including people whose capital is not ready, experienced landlords who only need the agency process, and anyone who learns well independently. A program that cannot tell you who it is wrong for is not being straight with you.
What I would tell someone reading criticism about me
Do not let anyone settle this for you, including me. This page is written by the person being criticized, which is a fact about it you should hold onto.
What actually settles it is arithmetic you can do yourself. Pick a market, pull its payment standards from the housing agency, find three real listings, and price all five costs against them. If the numbers work in your market at your capital position, then the separate question is whether you want to learn the process alone or with structure. That second question is about your time and your learning style, not about my reputation or anyone else’s.
If the numbers do not work yet, no program fixes that, and waiting while you save is the correct decision not a failure.
Going forward
Three commitments, and they are the kind you can check not the kind you cannot.
Figures carry definitions and dates. Portfolio counts, student numbers, anything else. A number without a stated basis is decoration, and I would rather give you one you can interrogate than one you have to take on faith.
No success rates without a stated methodology. An undefined percentage is decoration, not evidence.
The full entry cost stays in the content, not the down payment alone.
Those are testable. If you find content of mine that breaks any of them, it is a fair criticism and I would rather hear it than not.
What people ask about this
Why respond at all? Because refusing to engage reads as having nothing to say, and because three of the four criticisms above were substantially right and changed what I publish.
Why not name the critics? Because it converts an argument about substance into an argument about people, and the substance is the part worth having.
Has any of this actually changed anything? Yes, and specifically: the five-cost breakdown is published, portfolio counts are not published without definitions, and no typical return figure appears anywhere.
Where should I start if I only want the strategy? How the voucher program actually works, or go straight to HUD’s own landlord material and your local housing agency. The strategy is independent of any view about me, and it is free to learn.
