Thanks Dazzling! First, on the IC, my impressions are similar to yours. The people are all so amateurish and innocent it suggests there couldn’t possibly be any hard sell con merchants among them – the moms and dads are most convincing sales agents to newbies because they just look so honest. But, in the two meetings I’ve attended, I’ve never mangaged to get hold of any real figures from people to assess real performances. I suspect that their successes are not as big as what they seem and they take place over longer timeframes than most people imagine. And as we all know, anybody can make money in a rising market.

Yes, I like the idea of a nice cuppa and a chat with people with interests in property at these kinds of meetings – you just never know who you will meet or what you will learn. I do wonder, however, whether I’ll get bored with it all. We’ll see. I intend to go to a few more meetings.

On your experiences of a Perth Property Group, I take your points about reasons why it didn’t work – I can just imagine how it turned out – a bit like herding cats. I’m not sure whether those outcomes are inevitable or highly probable – but whatever the case, I’d still like to have a crack at it. I’m wondering in particular whether it’s possible to set some kind of parameters up that mean only like-minded people get together; or maybe you call for particular skills, as required? The problem is that I don’t want to be too prescriptive here. It’s possible that if you have an open-ended agenda that some people would just ‘connect’ and take off in ways that were never originally envisaged. But I do think it needs focus.

Has your past experince put you off the idea completely? Instead of going for a free cuppa and chockie bikkie at an IC meeting, can I buy you one instead! I’d like to pick your brains – perhaps that’s worth more than a chockie bikkie?! Tempted?