  Save Your Money
Save your money. This is about a lightweight book as you can buy on real estate. A synopsis is, buy a house, fix it up, rent it for a while then sell it. Whoopee. Supposedly this is for beginners, but there isn't enough here to educate a beginner on how to progress. If you have never purchased a house, even the one you presently live in, it may educate you somewhat, but there are better books for investors, even beginners.
This book rocks!
For a novice, this book is absolutely incredible....
It is informative and SO EASY to understand. Empowering and practical! Everything about the basics.
Great intro and overview
I have purchased a couple of my own investment homes and my father-in-law also has owned several rental units for a number of years, and I found this book helpful. He covers many of the basic things you need to consider and also covers financial implications such as taxes.He covered things like expenses during rehabilitation that would be easy not to detail, so scores points for that. He also takes the time to explain depreciation and the resulting capital gains in enough detail that you won't be surprised when you talk to your accountant. He also provides good data on one of the most important aspects of residential investing: screening tenants. Lots of good ideas are presented here to help minimize the risk with poor tenants who can ruin your investment. Additionally, he hits all the usual bases for finding investment properties and covers some of the negotiation strategies for purchasing these properties. He's clearly done this a time or two and works to give you a good intro. He does leave you feeling like there's more to it that he should be telling you, but I suppose it's difficult to get all his years of experience purchasing properties into one or two chapters. If you're looking into residential real estate investing, read this book. But also read others so you have a well-rounded perspective and gain more details that aren't shared here.
Good intro to buying homes, but. . .
Overall, I thought that this book was very helpful and contained good information for someone considering investing in real estate. The author appears to have had success with landlording and knows his real estate market well.
One (understandable) problem with the book is that Mr. Irwin is writing based on his personal experience in what sounds like the southwest in a booming real estate market. One point that he makes several times is to pay for water bills, so the tenants won't be tempted to save money by not watering the yard, thus causing serious landscaping damage. This is really not applicable in the north or where there is significant rainfall. An underlying belief of Irwin's is that it is difficult to find properties whose income can cover all their expenses, and that the real money comes in selling for a profit. Accordingly, much of the book concentrates on flipping properties and other real estate maneuvers that are usually only successful/necessary in tight markets. In general the book advocates a high risk philosophy of investing, advising the reader to use the bank's money make money as much as possible. I thought the inherent risks of this way of doing things were not fully explained in the book. Additionally, he advises to stay away from old houses which he classifies as older than 25 years. I laughed as I read that, as virtually all of the houses in the town I bought my house in are between 60-120 years old. 25 year old houses are considered spring chickens where I'm from! The last weakness of the book is that it seems to overestimate ease of determining the "true" value of a house. It takes a LOT of looking at houses and checking final sale prices to say with much certainty what a property is worth. This review may sound relatively harsh, but for the amount of time it took me to read this book I found it helpful. I would wholeheartedly recommend the book for a beginner in a rental market similar to the author's market. However, for someone in a region similar to mine (the depressed real estate market of Troy, NY) you may want to check for some other similar books. And for all I would advise to stay away from the higher priced "Make your fortune in real estate" packages advertised on TV and such. Real estate information is most efficiently conveyed in paperback books like this one - in straightforward text without motivational speaking or overly unrealistic portrayals of the real estate world.
Good advice. Quick reading.
This book doesn't waste time. The format is short chapters with concrete nuggets of advice.
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