80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A little helpful, but mostly just really annoying, August 9, 2005
This review is from: 101 Cost-Effective Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home (Paperback)
First, what I thought was useful about this book: the author does seem to really have thought about how much value various home improvements add to your home. It's basic, but probably something we don't always think about. Essentially, what you can see is what sells. So even if your wiring really needs updating, don't expect buyers to be wowed by that. They expect it. On the other hand, just cleaning up your yard (much cheaper) will result in much more of a "wow" factor.
Now for the various annoyances.
Grammar and usage: I'm a word nerd, and when I see words used incorrectly or sentences constructed poorly, it kind of pokes me in the eye. My eye got poked a lot in this book (affect for effect, it's for its, in to for into...). Oh, and in his introduction, he doesn't even address the parts of the book in the correct order; he has Parts Two through Four completely goofed up.
Telling us how clever and wonderful he is: we keep hearing how great his company is, and just what that company's name is, just in case we forgot it. We hear how much experience he has in the business, just in case we forgot how he explained it in the introduction.
NOT giving us 101 ways to increase the value of our home: As the previous reviewer noted, the book is divided into 101 sections, but not all of them deal with home improvements, per se. Examples: Pros and Cons of Using Subcontractors; Licensing, Insurance, and Bonding Requirements; Appraisal Method #1 through #3 (each listed as a separate "home improvement")...
Not even writing much of a new book: He constantly quotes directly from his previous books, listing the title, publisher, and year each time he does, so we can rush out and buy it, I guess. Sometimes his quotes last for more than a page! I would say at least 10% of the book is just direct quotes from his other books. I'm sure glad I didn't read them! Now I don't have to!
And the worst annoyance... going on and on and on to explain something any moron could understand instantly: On removing junky cars, boats, etc from your property, he goes into this ridiculous analogy of trying to sell a dirty car to illustrate why the cleanup is a good idea. On cleaning up the inside of your house, he rambles for two pages about how he chose a tree nursery based on the cleanliness of the place, then writes one paragraph about cleaning up your house. He uses a makeover analogy (two paragraphs about women getting made up) to tell us why we should paint the interior. He gives the helpful advice of putting seldom-used items on the top shelves of very tall cabinets (after he pointed out that tall cabinets might be a disadvantage to shorter people -- really?). And did you know that a dining table and chairs are the main pieces of furniture in a dining room? Very revealing! I could go on (I really could; there were examples on almost every page), but I won't.
This book could have been a pamphlet and would have been just as useful. The one good thing it did do is present some things you might not have thought about when deciding to improve your home. Unfortunately, it also presented plenty of things that everyone already knows.
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56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
There are actually 75 ways listed..., March 9, 2005
This review is from: 101 Cost-Effective Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home (Paperback)
They kinda cheat a little. There are only 75 ways listed (they start numbering with chapters like "how to work with your subcontractor," in order to get a total of 101 chapters.
Further, it's on a five-star rating system: only four star and five star items are considered cost beneficial. It would be a lot nicer to focus on the four and five star stuff, and leave the excess out. I don't want to read about things it costs me more money to do than I'll get back in selling: I just want to know what those things are, so I don't concentrate on them.
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