Lee,
I have never lost a dime in the 6 REIT’s that I have invested in the past (W.P.Carey, Cole, Grubb). This is real estate and if you buy at the top, you’re probably going to lose. I didn’t touch anything after 2004 until recently. During the 90′s I made very good income from Non-traded REIT’s.

It’s only now that this site will get any attention because of the market collapse. From 1992 through 2004 everyone loved REIT’s and this type of website would have been a joke. Anyone who bought REIT’s, RE Limmited Partnerships or even a single family home in from 2004 through 2008 was a complete fool. Anyone who bought a house during this time probably lost more than the average REIT. It’s just common sense, IMHO.

I’m a reporter with the Wall Street Journal looking for investors in non-traded REITs who felt they were mislead about the product. Please contact me at angela.pruitt@dowjones.com.

When I was talked into this, I thought the person I was talking too was a financial advisor. Why would a true financial advisor not want to give you good advice to help you? (Please anyone thinking of investing read up on the difference and on fudiciary duty and all of that.) Now I know he was just a broker/dealer who was wanting a commission even though I told him over and over again how I promised my husband on his death bed I would be careful with our money. My husband who died of cancer was way more worried about me than about his disease. I told this man that. And he still completely stabbed me in the back and apparently twisted the knife a few times too. After my husband’s passing I was planning on going to my bank where there is a free financial advisor. If only I had stuck with that plan. This man’s wife knew someone in my family and told my family member her husband would be so happy to help me if I need it that he is a financial advisor. I think laws and rules should be changed and people like this man should not have the title of “financial advisor.” I can think of a few things I would like to call him.

He told me Behringer Harvard REIT 1 was the closest investment to a c.d. He told me the principle and the dividends would NOT change. Because it was not publicly traded I kept asking him how I would sell it if I ever needed this money. He said B.H. would buy my shares back if I ever needed the money. Because he was a friend of someone from my family, because I thought he was a “financial advisor,” and because his wife came to notarize my husband’s will at the hospital and she seemed so nice, I trusted him. He and his wife are supposedly such a nice, Christian couple, and on and on. No, they are FAKE. He put $125,000.00 into B.H. REIT 1. He lied through his teeth and told me it is “so safe.” No, I didn’t read the prospectus. He hurridly went over it. Oh, this just says some risk involved, of course there is always some risk and stuff like that he said. I have received paper work where he totally and falsely increased my net worth and my income.

125,000 dollars, it may not be a lot to some. But for some people it is the kind of money people commit suicide over. I am not saying that would happen to me, but I am saying I could see it happening to someone. I admit I was stupid and too trusting, but how do these brokers do this to people? How are they allowed to say they are “financial advisors.” They are not. They are just trying to sell something. I did not know about the commission. I tried to pay him with a personal check after I met with him the first time. He said, oh, you don’t pay have to pay me. I assumed he must be getting a few hundred dollars from these companies. Had I known that I was going to buy him a new car with the commission he was going to make off of me, that obviously would have been a huge red flag. Knowing what he had done to me he had the audacity to show up at my dad’s funeral. Once again, acting like a nice, caring friend. Screw him. I think him and people like him are scum.

Stay far, far away from these types of “investments.” Trust no one when it comes to money.