55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too moderate for me, October 21, 1999
By A Customer
Having read "Home Buying for Dummies" by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown which I highly recommend (with five stars) to all the home seekers, now I understand why I'm not really happy with this book. I find this "Idiot's Guide" approach too moderate, lacking in-depth analyses or comments in many areas. (e.g. how to spot ideal locations, etc. ) The author, in my view, doesn't take a stand and states her opinion clearly enough, which sometimes makes me feel like I am reading a free government brochure on home buying A to Z. Perhaps one single volume is not enough to cover such vast and complicated areas as buying and selling homes.
Although I will keep this book and use it as a reference/glossary when necessary, I'd probably rely on Tyson/Brown's book for "tips" most of the time.
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51 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best home buying primer, February 2, 2004
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying and Selling a Home, 4th Ed (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm currently in the rush to buy a condo in a seller's-market city, and in the last two weeks I read through a dozen home-buying advice books. The Complete Idiot's Guide is by far the best of the bunch, and in case you are comparison-shopping, I think it's much better than the For Dummies title.
The biggest reason is the book, now in its fourth edition, is very comprehensive. The bulk of it covers the buying aspects, but there are a few chapters devoted to selling, and this is a great arrangement. As a potential buyer, it's to your advantage to know what it's like to sell, so when you select a property you will instinctly think of the time when you need to or have to sell. In my caes, I plan to live in the condo for about 5 years and then move to a different city, so having a seller's perspective while I shop for a condo is really helpful. For instance, I saw a nice condo yesterday which I would have bought but when I considered the selling perspective, I saw some problems and decided not to pursue it. As a home buyer, especially a first-time home buyer like myself (that's why I bought this book!), you really want to make a well-rounded decision. Sure there's no perfect house out there -- unless your definition of "perfect" is imperfect -- but the last thing you want is spend half a million dollars on something you regret right after you sign the closing docs.
Second, compared to many books this one is very well written. Maybe I have a slight bias in favor of female writers, but I find women tend to be better in explaining complicated concepts than men. This book is a perfect example of my stereotype. Every chapter is easy to read and follow, and you see the major points right away. The For Dummies title in particular suffers from information overflow and leaves you wondering what you've just read. Which makes it next to being worthless, especially if you are in a rush to get acquainted with the real estate market. There's a lot of information in this idiot's book but the top-notch organization makes it easy to digest... and remember.
(Don't forget, you don't want to carry a home-buying primer around when you shop for a house! If you did you'd simply be taken for an unpleasant ride by greedy sellers and brokers.)
Third, like I mentioned before, this book also covers aspects of the selling process, so it's a great book to keep in case you need to sell. In addition, when you do sell, you can review the home-buying chapters to learn what motivates the buyer, so to get your best deal!
To be honest at first I didn't like the format of this book; the page is wide and there seem too many words. But because the authors write well and clearly, I eventually found it the best primer on home buying, with bonus coverage on the basic of home selling.
Very highly recommended, especially to previously clueless people like yours truly.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
OVERSIMPLIFIED, June 14, 2005
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying and Selling a Home, 4th Ed (Mass Market Paperback)
I bought this book because of some of the lame reviews I read in the "Home Buying for Dummies" reviews. Had I spent 2 seconds to flip through and read a couple of paragraphs it would have stayed on the shelf and $20 bucks in my pocket.
On the flight to the city where my wife and I are considering buying a home, she read the Idiots Guide while I read the for Dummies. She constantly was showing me how pathetic this book is with paragraphs dedicated to "Why do you want to buy a home?" and "Banks are in this world to make money". Topics were disorganized and had no useful content. I actually was thankful that the book is double spaced with large fonts so I would have to read more of it! Within 2 minutes she wanted to take the "for Dummies" book from me.
Bottom line... Swing by the book store and see how bad this book is for yourself before you order it online. If you really want it, I'm sure there are plenty of used versions -- in near new condition, since there was nothing worthy of highlighting -- online.
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