Multifamily Bootcamp Review 3 and 3D Printed Rockets
A look at a Bigger Pockets bootcamp and Relativity Space
Several months ago I was looking for real estate education to purchase. I received an email from Bigger Pockets about the upcoming bootcamps they created. I didn’t know much about these bootcamps so I investigated further. The bootcamps are 10 week courses designed to help investors learn and connect with others. There are multiple different versions of bootcamps. There is rookie, multifamily, BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat), short term rentals and creative financing. Rookie is about people finding there first deal, multifamily is about purchasing large multifamily properties, BRRRR, as the name suggests, is about buying a fixer upper, renting it out, then refinancing your money out. And short term rentals are about AirBnBs. Since my goals were to invest in multifamily, I purchased the multifamily bootcamp and plan to share my experiences with it.
To recap, the multifamily bootcamp was separated into 10 units. Each unit had multiple short videos that are designed to answer a question or discuss a topic. Once a week, there is an official Q&A where the teachers answer questions students have based on the current weeks lectures. Also, on the same week is an unofficial meeting that the students set up, called an accountability group. My over all rating for the bootcamp is positive, but I did have some issues.
Price: $225 - $515. The price was what I would expect from a course like this. If you are a bigger pockets pro member, the price was $225. If not, then it was $515. Since I am a bigger pockets pro member, which is around $300 a year, I got the $225 price. As opposed to other educational sites that might charge thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars, this was reasonably priced for people looking to get started.
Length: 10 weeks. I thought the length of time was fair. If it was any shorter, then I would feel like I was not getting my moneys worth. If it had been longer, I would not have complained, but I also understand that this bootcamp is a time commitment and not everyone has all the free time they need.
Knowledge Provided: Advanced. I was hoping this bootcamp would be for more smaller multifamily deals, since the people buying this bootcamp would be newer to real estate, but the topic seemed to be more in favor of buying large deals. The properties that the teachers showed off were large apartment complexes, and some of the homework involved calling brokers and establishing a relationship with them so that they can send you deals. While this is important in the long run, a newer investor does not need to call an apartment broker so they can be sent a 100 unit apartment. Especially if they don’t even have any investors that want to work with them. The information was good, but a little too advanced for me and most of the students. I will keep the information in the back of my mind for now.
Networking: I met lots of people at the bootcamp, and messaged a few people on the bigger pockets site, but only 1 really stood out as any potential long term contact. The rest I have not heard from. While I am not actively seeking to speak with them, they are not seeking to contact me. It seemed most of the formalities died around the end of the bootcamp. This is not the bootcamps fault, but is something to think about.
Upselling: There were a few times during the bootcamp where you were told of things that you can buy to help with the boot camp experience. One item was a deal analyzer tool that is built on excel. The tool is great and comes with video lessons, but again, is primarily used for large commercial deals. The bigger pockets rental calculator works find for small deals. The teachers also talked about their mastermind and a retreat that their company puts on where you see an apartment that they purchased While this seems like a great way to get started is to be boots on the ground at an actual property that is being bought and renovated, it costs around a thousand dollars just for the weekend retreat and travel is not included. No one was pressured into going to it or buying the mastermind, but they were definitely talked about more than once.
My final rating for this would be a 7/10. Everything was great, but was a little too far down the road in terms of achievability. It seems like something that I should have done in a few years when I am ready to scale up. There are other bigger pocket bootcamps out there more tailored to a newer investor. If you are more advanced, then joining this can really help you get noticed. Doing the homework every week is the easiest way. I did enjoy the time and the reason I started this newsletter to begin with is because one of the homeworks was to start a thought platform. A thought platform is where you can give people value by sharing information. This helps to get your name out into the world and make people want to trust and invest with you.
Relativity Space’s 3D Printed Rockets
3D printing has been an amazing invention that has changed so many industries. From 3D printed housed, to people opening stores to sell 3D printed items, it seems that 3D printing can do anything. This was the thought of Relativity Space. They are a new startup that seeks to be the next big commercial launcher. However, unlike other rocket companies, their biggest selling point is that their rocket is primarily 3D printed. The advantage to this is that is simplifies the building if it. The space shuttle had over 1 million parts. If 3D printing the entire rocket body in one piece helps to reduce this amount of parts by half, that seriously cuts down on the complexity. The Terran 1 is Relativities prototype that launched in March of 2023. The work on that will lead to the creation of Terran R. It will have medium and heavy launch capabilities while also being reusable. It will have a maximum payload size of 36.9 tons to low earth orbit while not being reusable and around 6 tons to geostationary transfer orbit while being reusable. The destinations of the Terran R will be Earth orbit, the moon and Mars. If you thought the 3D printed rocket was impressive, they are also 3D printing the engines. Similar to the parts analogy above, the less parts an engine has, the more efficient it will work since less parts are available to break. It uses liquid oxygen and methane as a fuel source. There are multiple engineering reasons for using methane, such as having a high performance and being cheap. But another reason for using methane is because it can be produced on Mars. When carbon dioxide and frozen water are mixed with electrolysis, the resulting material is methane. This is also why SpaceX uses methane engines. With a launch date set in 2026, it will be a great achievement to have another commercial launch provider that is seeking to push the boundaries of engineering and to develop space hardware further.
A fully stacked Terran R rocket beside its reusable first stage, Credit: Relativity Space