Clever Investor Reviews (Updated 2023): Is Cody Sperber The Best Real Estate Investor Guru?

Clever Investor is a set of real estate investing programs.

Like most real estate investing training platforms, you’ll likely be exposed to the “Big 3” investing types:

• Flipping

• Wholesaling
• Long-term buy-and-hold

Regardless of which path you go down, there is a lot of potential with real estate investing.

After all, it’s the world’s oldest wealth-builder.

However, before you leave this Clever Investor review and go sign up, you might want to ask yourself:

“Is now the right time for me to get into real estate investing?”

Because, no matter which way you slice it, real estate investing is extremely capital intensive, labor intensive, or both.

So if you’ve only got an hour or two a day, or your savings account is a few zeroes lighter than you’re comfortable with, this might not be the best time for you to jump into real estate investing.

But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. It just means you need a system to free up more time and give yourself a stronger financial cushion.

A good way to get yourself there is with Digital Real Estate.

Digital Real Estate takes all the best parts of real estate investing, while eliminating most of the headaches:

• Low cashflow

• Interest payments

• Mortgages

• High overhead

• Expensive repairs and maintenance
• Problematic tenants

And the best part?

Digital Real Estate allows you to build a passive income stream that’s actually passive!

An income stream that brings in consistent revenues every single month (from a couple thousand dollars to well over $10,000).

An income stream you could actually build in your spare time, and grow as large or as small as you want to, without having to spend hours a day analyzing deals, cold-calling homeowners, or dealing with contractors.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, check out Digital Real Estate.

This is the perfect first step to build recurring income that you can then use to start investing in real estate down the line.

However, if you’d still like to know more about Clever Investor, keep reading.

What Is Cody Sperber’s Clever Investor?

Clever Investor is a course holding platform produced by real-estate investor Cody Sperber which offers different educational items to help make money in real estate. These consist of courses, mentorship, business automation software program, and other things.

The merchandise gives a lot of in-depth content, and Cody has gone as far as getting home flipping stars from HGTV to help you create one of his products.

The focus here is generally on what he calls “creative real estate investing,” which means ways to purchase inventive real estate, which many people might not have read about in the past.

The organization comes with an A+ rating with the BBB, although there are certainly suspect reviews about his wholesale real estate flipping program/partnership deal.

In fact, there are several complaints as well that I will be talking about later.

Who Is Cody Sperber?

The Clever Investor is known as Cody Sperber, from Mesa, Arizona. Cody and his wife Shannon met in school while attending Arizona State University.

Cody Sperber received his degree in business with an emphasis in finance and real estate, and Shannon channeled her work toward becoming a physician of physical therapy.

Since getting married and graduating from ASU in 2005, Cody now has a home in Mesa along with two kids, Brynlee and Hudson.

Cody discovered real estate investing in college, but he did not go full time into flipping until two years after graduation.

After settling into his role as a bookkeeper, Cody’s real estate dreams were reignited when his very long-time friend Lyle prodded him into visiting a Jack Miller workshop series (Jack was a real estate OG from the 80s until his passing in 2009).

The training event was such a pivotal stage in Cody’s life that Lyle became knows as “the man behind the Clever Investor“.

Over the following few years, Lyle became Cody’s coach – in fact, he initially made it easier for Cody to restructure the methods in his real estate entity, showing him the most powerful technology and ways to make use of it.

After Cody got his business in order, the next 12 month were insane – flipping more than fifty houses, which laid the groundwork for his very first rental portfolio.

The rest is history.

Cody began the Clever Investor LLC in 2010 and, with the ongoing support of his teacher Lyle, has trained many others to get their start in real estate.

Cody Sperber claims to have created more than a thousand deals worth more than $200 million in total.

A big claim, even in a New York real estate market.

He has more than fourteen years of expertise in what he calls “creative real estate investing“, which can be perceived as either ingenious, or potentially devious…

Clever Investor Product & Services

The “Clever Investor” is the company behind it all… and currently, there are six available programs.

Which include:

• Fast Track Profit System
• 30 Day Deal Challenge
• Clever Investor Mentoring
• Your First Flip
• Deal Automator
• Direct Mail Dealmaker

1) Fast Track Profit System

First, you’ll find the 6 step system that Cody and his staff have designed. This is believed to be the “most complete academic course ever developed”…according to no one except Cody.

You’ll get access to more than twenty audio/video training clips, a business plan, the authorized contracts necessary, checklists, and a lot more.

The center of the training is divided into six modules:

• Module one – Setting Up Your Business
• Module two – Marketing
• Module three –Analysis And Inspection
• Module four – Property Acquisition
• Module five – Funding And Strategy
• Module six – Closing Deals

There’s a lot covered in this training, many different methods to make money in real estate… some fairly innovative like flipping houses with no purchasing them and with no renovation, inventive lease choices, renting properties and creating wealth, and much more.

There is a heck of a lot provided here. You have the various action plans, the authorized documents necessary, checklists on what you should search for in a great deal, and comparisons of multiple lenders you can apply for financing deals.

2) 30 Day Deal Challenge

This is a 30-day challenge is designed to help you create income within thirty days by flipping houses without actually purchasing them.

You use a step-by-step action plan for four days, which will hopefully help you get your first sale in that length of time.

You’re also supplied with all of the legal paperwork you are going to need and extras, like negotiation strategies Cody uses to get good deals.

Promotions for this appear to be everywhere online, and I will be discussing this in much more detail a little bit later.

It’s marketed as being “free,” but this is a tad misleading.

3) Clever Investor Mentoring

This mentoring service may be bought along with various items or all by itself.

Next, you’ll receive one of many teachers on the Clever Investor staff to try and be a mentor – in other words, not Cody himself.

They’ll keep you informed and offer assistance for questions and whatnot – they are real estate investors themselves that understand what they’re doing.

You will find various levels of mentoring provided that vary in price significantly.

1. Total Immersion costs $28,000
2. Protege Program costs $14,000
3. Apprentice Program costs $7,000 

You’re certainly going to need some serious money to subscribe to this. Based on reviews, the teachers are somewhat educated and will offer assistance, but they may not be very knowledgeable about your specific endeavors.

4) Your First Flip

This is referred to as “the total home flipping system” plus it’s a step-by-step training course that moves you from knowing absolutely nothing to making your very first flip.

Cody Sperber partnered with Ken & Anita Corsini from HGTV’s “Flip or Flop Atlanta” to build this course.

The course is presented in six different modules:

• Module one: Build Your Business
• Module two: Finding Profitable Properties
• Module three: Analyzing Your Deal
• Module four: Acquiring The Property
• Module five: Rehab Without Work
• Module six: Closing Your First Deal

5) Deal Automator

This is referred to as “all in one real estate investing automation.”

You get an automation software program that helps identify discounted deals, capture consumer and seller leads, and also analyze qualities.

This certainly does things a lot simpler and can help beginners figure out good deals, record leads, remain organized, and eventually drive sales. There are nine distinct characteristics that this particular software program has:

1. Instant Motivated Seller Lists: This automatic feature scours various diverse listing sites for home listings you can filter in different ways. Cody claims that this examines each house listing in the US.
2. 1-Click Lead Generation Sites: This is a website builder, so you can produce a simple website to get leads. It is effortless to create a website with this, but your site will be simple.
3. Instant Computer Generator – properties are analyzed by this feature and also provides you with value estimates. You can use Zillow, but Cody promises that his particular site utilizes a lot more information from more sources to supply much more precise estimates.
4. Deal Analyzer: This function enables you to discover details, plug them into the application and find out if they’re good deals. What you can do is enter the details about the home that the application gives you, then it will tell you if it’s a good deal or not. All kinds of statistics are supplied.
5. Automated Conversions: You are going to get permission to access the automated follow-up message program, which will instantly follow up with prospects via e-mail, voicemail as well as a text message. Additionally, you get direct mail templates which Cody developed.
6. Point and Click Contract Generator: This offers all of the various kinds of contracts and enables you to personalize them easily.
7. Step by step Deal Organizer: Here, you can keep your deals organized. It gives all of the required contact info along with a process list and a “scrum board” in which you can easily handle several offers without getting confused about what you’re doing in each.
8. Exit Strategy Optimizer Tool: This device lets you know what investment strategy will make you the most cash. It shows the possible income and side-by-side comparisons of the various methods.
9. Qualified Buyers on demand: This device automates the marketing process. It’ll instantly post properties on the market at multiple sites.

6) Direct Mail Dealmaker

The Direct Mail Dealmaker is about making deals by sending traditionally-fashioned direct mail… and it is referred to as “push-button direct mail fulfillment.”

Here, you receive Cody’s division and printing contacts so you can send direct mail without really being forced to post it yourself.

Kinda sketchy, but ok.

Also, you get a system that will enable you to locate higher equity attributes, eviction notice properties, pre-foreclosure properties, distressed properties, inherited properties, along with other types of situations that will probably get people advertising.

I am not entirely certain just how accurate this statistic is, but Sperber says that real estate millionaires get 90% of their deals from direct mail…although he certainly has financial reasons to gain from saying things like that.

How Much Does Clever Investor Cost?

When you’re brought to the product sales funnels that Cody and his staff have in place, it’s tough to locate the prices.

Typically you’re registering for long webinars (pre-recorded, by the way–NOT LIVE), joining “free” training (that gives nothing of value unless you pay) before actually learning just how much the darn program/product costs.

Fortunately for you, I have done a great deal of digging around along with lots of sitting through long webinars to discover the costs of anything provided by Clever Investor… and they are…

• Fast Track Profit System – $297
• 30 Day Deal Challenge – $97
• Clever Investor Mentoring – $7,000 – $14,000 – $28,000 based on purchase amount
• Your First Flip – $497
• Offer Automator -$99 per month
• Direct Mail Dealmaker – $97

What Does The Internet Have To Say About Clever Investor?

Overall the feedback from buyers who bought various Clever Investor is a mixed bag.

You will find many clients that happen to be satisfied with the format of the courses and the support provided.

Nevertheless, there are several notably bad reviews.

As you’ll get with lots of costly “make money” programs.

I’ve noticed several complaints from people speaking about how they think the mentorship has a feeling of disconnect to it–meaning that there’s a sense the teachers do not care a lot about your situation since it does not impact what they get paid.

I guess not all mentors are created equal.

Several buyers feel they’ve been misled by how much the programs include, etc., prices. I see how this could be an issue with the overly exciting video ads.

As you can see from this image above, this particular customer was not very happy.

They complain about being charged a renewal fee of 3x their initial purchase and still never got their money back.

There are several other types of the reviews sprinkled throughout Reddit, Trust Pilot, and the BBB.

Is Clever Investor A Scam?

So, is Clever Investor a scam?

Not technically. You can make money with this program, but it’s definitely not as easy as Cody Sperber makes it sound.

There’s a ton of work to be done upfront, no real guarantee of success, and – most importantly – the actual profit margins on real estate investments are pretty small.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with front-loading the work and making the money later.

But if you’re grinding it out for 3 months – looking at deals, sending out offers, negotiating with the seller and lender to buy a rental property – and then your reward is like $100 a month in profits, it’s not really worth it.

What if, instead, you could do that same 3 months of work (in your spare time), and your reward was a $500 to $2,000 payment that came in every single month (with a 90-95% profit margin)?

And what if you actually didn’t need to wait 3 months? What if you could get started today and have your first payment in a week?

And what if you could double it next week?

Well, that’s the power of Digital Real Estate. 

And, unlike traditional real estate, you can legitimately do this from anywhere. It’s a true lifestyle business.

Your laptop and an internet connection is all you need.

Some of the most successful students in this program run their entire 6-figure businesses from:

• A camper in the middle of the woods
• A beach chair on the water in Mexico
• A small villa in Greece

They’re able to travel around, living their lives first, and focusing on their income second.

Because even if they stop working for an extended period of time, the money keeps coming in. 

So adventure, memories, and experience are the top priority.

And they never have to worry about how to pay for the next trip, or consider asking for time off.

If this sounds more like the type of life you want to lead, just click here to find out more about Digital Real Estate.

How Much Money Can You Make With Clever Investor?

The marketing material that you’ll see advertised in various places tends to make people believe that they will become an overnight millionaire with his program. Cody does like to show off his bling, but he often claims that he “doesn’t want to brag”.

But this does tend to give people the wrong impression.

Of course, results will undoubtedly differ significantly from person to person. Some men and women aren’t cut out for real estate investing, while others are, and many are qualified real estate agents with many years of experience.

This is precisely why at the bottom part of the Clever Investor website, there’s a disclaimer in extremely tiny print that reads, “Any claims of income or earnings are both estimates or examples of possible income and shouldn’t be regarded as typical.”

There’s also a hyperlink to a different earnings disclaimer where the research was carried out by Clever Investor to discover how good their pupils were doing.

The Earnings Study: In this particular research, they emailed every buyer of the Fast Track Profit System merchandise to learn how the participants had been doing. After 580 pupils responded, the following are some statistics…

Experience in real estate 

•  0-6mo: 46.9 %
• 6mo-1yr: 17.3 %
• 1-2yrs: 9.8 %
• 2-5yrs: 10.7 %
• five yrs up: 15.3 %

Licensed real estate agents: (39/307) = 12.7 %

Period of time Spent: Approximately 50 % spent substantially less than 3hrs per week with the system

Spent cash advertising attempting to produce leads: (122/280) = 43.6 %

Made money in real estate since utilizing the program: (31/280) = 11.1 %

Finished a fast Flip (wholesale) for an average of $19,772 (out of just thirteen responses) = 67.9 %

Completed a Fix and Flip (rehab) for an average of $21,500 (only nine responses): 50 %

When I first came across this information, my mind was blown…but after exploring further in-depth, it seems to be an incomplete set of information.

There were 580 pupils total that responded from the Fast Track Profit System program, but few answered several of the questions… for example, questions about how much money they made.

These figures provide an idea of what’s possible, but in no way lets you know what’s typical or average overall… because of the general lack of responses received by Clever Investor in this particular research.

Does Clever Investor Offer A Refund Policy?

As you can see, it’s really 50/50 as to whether one is offered or not. According to this snippet from their terms of service page your guess is just as good as mine.

I imagine the language here is used loosely because an in-person event that you go to is unreasonable to get a refund from since you attended.

But a course program is more reasonable as far as a refund goes because you may have tried it and found out it isn’t for you.

In my opinion Cody could make his refund policy more clear and I think many of us would appreciate that.

Are There Alternatives To The Clever Investor?

Yes, there are plenty of other business models to choose from if you want to pursue this making money online.  Here are just a few:

• Local Lead Generation
• Digital Real Estate
• SEO
• Real Estate
• Website Building

What Is Our Top Recommendation For Making Money Online In 2023?

The ScamRisk team has spent months researching, reviewing, and vetting dozens of business models and thousands of programs.

While there may be no “perfect business”, the research IS conclusive:

Digital Real Estate is the #1 online business model for those just starting out.

Whether you’ve never made a dollar online, or you’ve been in this space for a while but never really “made it,” Digital Real Estate is for you.

Why?

1) It’s Flexible: got an hour a day? You can do this. Ready to drop everything else and dive in full time? You can do this. Yes, the more time you put in, the faster you see results. But even with a little time each day, you can move the needle in a Digital Real Estate business.

And because this system is so flexible, you don’t have to constantly be working to make more money. It’s called PASSIVE INCOME because if you stop working, the money doesn’t.

Imagine taking 3 months off to just tour around Europe, rent a cabin in the woods to write a book, hike the Appalachian Trail, or live on the beach and surf all day.

This is only possible if you have an income stream that’s not tied to your time.
Flipping and wholesaling are full-time jobs (and more), no matter what any real estate guru tells you. You always have to be searching for deals, because if you stop, so does the money.

2) You Own & Control EVERYTHING: Yes, in traditional real estate you kind of “own” the properties. But there’s also a ton of debt tied to most real estate investments, which means the property isn’t truly yours.

A lender can take it away if you miss a payment. Not to mention, loan payments really impact your profit margins.

With Digital Real Estate, you own the assets outright (with a 90-95% profit margin), which means you have all the power and all the control.

3) Little To No Startup Costs: It’s possible to get into Digital Real Estate with zero dollars upfront. Because, using the strategies outlined in this program, you can get a client to pay you BEFORE spending a penny out of your own pocket…even before you do any work.

Even without getting paid in advance, you can have your first Digital Rental Property up, running, and generating profits for less than $100.

4) Minimal Ongoing Expenses: With traditional real estate, monthly expenses are HIGH. Between loan payments, ongoing maintenance, and repairs (not to mention the possibility of having to go through the eviction process), profit margins are slim.

Plus, whenever you have a vacancy, factor in the costs to turn over a unit (plus the fact there’s no money coming in until the next tenant moves in).

With Digital Real Estate, a 100% online business with minimal maintenance and ongoing costs, you never even have to think about that risk.

5) Easy To Duplicate: Ok, here’s the best part: once you have your first Digital Rental Property up and running, you can literally DOUBLE your income with a few clicks, a couple keystrokes, and a single phone call (and you don’t actually need the phone call).

Remember: each Digital Rental Property is worth $500 to $2,000 a month in semi-passive income (over 95% profit). Every time you decide to create another one and increase your income, it gets easier.

Because you have more knowledge, more experience, more results, and more momentum.

If you wanted to double your income with traditional real estate investing, you’d have to double your monthly rent, double your deals/number of units OR double your profit margins. And, guaranteed that’s a lot harder than a few clicks and a few minutes of your life.

6) Make Money Helping Real People: This part is what makes it all worth it. With Digital Real Estate, you’re actually helping people by solving your clients’ biggest problem:

Small, local businesses need more customers, and with Digital Real Estate, you are unleashing a flood of happy, paying customers for these businesses.

You make money by helping them make money.

Not a big, faceless corporation either…a small business owner who’s using that money to put food on the table for their family, start a college fund for their kids, or take care of a sick parent.

Once you see how Digital Real Estate makes a real impact in the lives of real people, you’ll sleep like a baby with a big smile on your face.

Now, the choice is yours. You could continue browsing, looking at opportunities like Clever Investor which could one day make you money.

You could continue researching, never making a decision.

OR, you could take a look inside, consider what you really want, and join a program that makes your dreams a reality. At the same time, joining a community of over 2,000 successful students that are living life on their own terms thanks to Digital Real Estate.

A consistent, reliable, semi-passive stream of income that doesn’t depend on you or your time to keep producing profits.

All while genuinely helping real people who are grateful and happy to pay for it.

If this sounds more like what you want out of life (or if you just want some nice side income), click here to learn more about Digital Real Estate.