Customer Reviews

Managing Rental Properties for Maximum Profit, Revised 3rd Edition: Save Time and Money with Greg Perry's Foolproof System for: *Buying the right ... tenants *Getting paid on time *Fixing and

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is good for those who have very limited experience in managing rental properties. It's main focus seemed to be on managing time and for those of you who don't know the secret I will let you in on it. Excellent Tenants = Minimal Time. It's finding and keeping the excellent tenants that require some time. This book goes into detail about how to do just that. If you are a struggling landlord or a complete newbie than this book is for you.

However, if you have some experience in this area, or are an effective manager outside of rental properties you will probably be an effective rental manager. Other things to consider is that Mr. Perry seems to specialize in very low cost rentals so much of his ideas are drawn towards those crowds. For Example

Getting Tenants the book says advertising the local newspaper is the best, it does work but for higher cost rentals I average about 70% of new tenants from the internet.

Dishwashers and Garbage Dispoals - you might be able to get away without them in cheap units, but try renting a unit at 1500 a month without them - it just wouldn't work.

Wainscot - Again nice idea for those low income units, but most people look at wainscot as that cheap stuff you had on your vacation home when you grew up.

Electric Water Heaters - Keep gas if you have it already, electric heaters are always more problems and will cost more in the long run - gas is always easier and better. BTW, if you go to a plumbing wholesale warehouse (usually open only to licensed plumbers) the gas units are cheaper than electric.

When buying a home Mr. Perry seems to think that plumbing problems are easily fixed. Caveat Emptor - A person who bought a house that I passed on due to plumbing problems just spent $22,000 in getting it re-plumbed. From my experience I walk away from any house that 1) has foundation problems 2) has flooded recently 3) has major plumbing problems. I am highly suspicious of any house that has 1) Roof Problems 2) Electrical problems.

Things not mentioned that might help you out.

Automatic Rent Payments - I have about 50% of my tenants on automatic rent payments. It's easy to set up (talk to your bank) and you get your money every month on the same day.

If you have more than 5 units I strongly urge you to look into incorporating. It limits you liability and there are positive tax reasons to do so. This book barley mentions corporations and in a slightly negative way too.

If you buy in the right area and market your unit accordingly it is very easy to get some long term leases written up. I have approximately 70% of my tenants on 3 year or longer lease agreements.

While mentioned I have had a great deal of success with Townhomes and Condos - just be aware that this is very AREA sensitive. The plus side to these is that you can be a truly hands off landlord. Write your rental agreements that the tenants agree to take care of all repairs inside including AC/Heat. The associations take care of everything outside and all you do is collect the rent. True your returns are not as high, but it is the simplest form of rental management that I know of. Also, if the townhome/condo is slightly upper scale you will find that your vacancy rates drop considerably. The shortest tenant I have ever had in a townhome/condo was 1 year with my average being around 6 years.

Anyhow, This book is good for the beginners, that is why I gave it 4 stars.

This is not the best book on land lording, and not even the second best, but none the less this is a book worth reading. However, if you are a serious landlord and are only going to read one book, this is not the one to read. The #1 book to read is "Landlording" by Leigh Robinson, which I rated as 5 stars. "The Landlording Kit" by Jeffrey Taylor is rated 4 stars by me. And Greg Perry's book and Richard Jorgensen's book "The New No-Nonsense Landlord" is 3 stars. The Milan book is a solid one star.

I still recommend that you read this book, just not ONLY this book. The author claims that he "owns and manages or co-manages nearly 50 rental properties." That's a pretty vague statement. He could own and manage 1 property and co-manage 45 properties and that would be "nearly 50 rental properties." One of his early points is that your name and phone number should not be advertised in the rental ad. He says that you should establish an open house Friday afternoon and Saturday morning and have all the prospective tenants come around at one time. This would save you phone time with prospective renters, but I'm not sure that this would always be effective. When renting averaged priced rentals in the season, this might work; but I can see times when renting a high priced property or renting out of season that there would be few maybe no prospects at your open house. In another chapter the author suggests filing your deed at the courthouse with the clerk of courts as routine with every lease signing. First of all in Pennsylvania the Clerk of Courts only handles criminal proceedings, so that wouldn't be the right place to file anyway. But more importantly filing the lease is an unnecessary cost as well as a very public window into your private affairs.

On the other hand another tip of driving by your rental properties when in the vicinity makes a lot of sense to me. Checking up on your rentals routinely can be a good dose of preventive medicine. Another excellent tip is to lower your tenant's utility bills. Even if the tenants pay the entire heat bill, insulation, storm windows, etc. will be appreciated by the tenants and lower heat bills will cause a renter to stay longer. Providing appliances is a great landlord debate. Personally we provide apartments with refrigerators and stoves, but many houses are rented without refrigerators. Some higher end properties are rented with dishwashers, and washer and dryers. If I house has a garbage disposal, we'll keep it. But if it breaks it will not be replaced. Recently one disposal had a tendency to attract beer bottle caps. First and second repair bills were at tenant expense. My philosophy is that the more and heavier things that the tenant owns, like refrigerators, washers, and dryers, the less likely they will move. But I can't give you proof for that.

Mr. Perry does recommend that you buy houses where the rent is 1-2% of the purchase price per month. In other words a $100,000 house would rent for $1,000 to $2,000 per month. That's a great idea but hard to execute in reality. Two percent is very hard but not impossible to get. You'll have to look hard and NOT be in a high priced area.

This is not a bad book, but it's not the best either. There are many tips in the book. The author has some good ideas, but other authors have more.

This book provides practical advice that makes sense for those of us who are not (yet) "big hitter" real estate investors. Its strengths include the many tips that will set your business apart from the competition and make your good tenants never want to leave. In particular, I appreciated Mr. Perry's human and reasonable approach to investing, a refreshing point of view in the sea of get-rich-quick real estate strategies. I thought the book had few shortcomings, but it seemed a little light in certain areas, such as basic formulas to analyse investment properties. I was suprised by this given the book's title and his emphasis on paying as little as possible for properties and only buying properties that provide positive cash flow before adding in tax benefits (this can be difficult if not impossible in certain parts of the country). Overall, the book is very good and I would recommend it without reservation to others that are considering becoming a small-time landlord.

This is a nice practical book for beginners in real estate management (like myself). There are some good ideas, but nothing that blew me away.

It is worth noting that the book is oriented toward buying houses for rent (as opposed to multi-family dwellings). The author is from Oklahoma and talks about buying several houses for $30,000 a piece -- I live in Chicago and we sell parking places for that much. Still, most of the concepts carry over to any kind of property and I would recommend the book.

Although the title would insinuate that this is another get-rich-quick book, Perry actually lays out an effective strategy for individual investors managing from one to a handful of properties. Written from the perspective of someone who will purchase and manage rental properties themselves, the book covers the basics of managing residential rental property. Perry also stresses the importance of building good relationships with neighbors and tenants. All in all, he outlines many reliable business practices that small property owners would want to know.

This book does not discuss commercial property or dealing with rental management companies and other agents. However, even if you plan on relying on a rental management firm, this book will equip you with the basic knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. You will have to look elsewhere to find a book that discusses dealing with housing inspectors, title agents, attorney's and the like. There are several other books on the market that fulfill this need.

Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone considering managing rentals themselves or renting out a house through an agent. It is a great summary of many solid business practices.

I read a previous edition of this book from the library and had to get my own copy for reference. A lot of other books that offer practical information tend to treat tennants like cattle. This book is best for people with relatively few units. It gives great hands-on advice on how to be a stern, but fair and approachable landlord. It also gives great tips on saving time and getting good people to rent your apartments.

We had a problem. We wanted to get rid of our rent house and get out of the business.

We looked through lots of books and settled on this and another one. The other turned out to be for more professional rent house owners.

This one spoke DIRECTLY TO US.

We were surprised at how this author seemed to be talking directly to us, in a manner that a friend would do. He told US advice, not just on how to sell our rent house but how to make it work if we kept it. We decided to give it another round of tenants but ony if we followed the advice in these pages. Much of it, such as the open house concept that we'd only thought applied to houses for sale, dramatically worked to change EVERYTHING about rent houses for the better! We now love being rent house investors and we are looking for more properties. If this book had cost twice as mich, it would be worth only a fraction of its value even then. I strongly encourage you to read this if you really dislike being a landlord.

I have struggled to keep up with my 2 rent houses. What a nightmare they were! I have ALL the books and never until this one have I got REAL answers to my problems. I am SHOCKED this is not required reading by every property owner in America, not just rental property owners. You never know when you'll inherit a house you can't sell (that was my problem) and you're faced with being an instant landlord. For answers, get this book!

Rating for beginners: 4
Rating for others: 3

This author goes through the motions on what you can expect from running a rental property. As the title indicates, his focus is on maximizing profits. Of course, the tradeoff is greater time outlay on the landlord's part.

If you're just starting to consider landlording and don't own any properties, this book isn't a bad starting point but much of it is common sense.

A better addition to your library would be "Property Management for Dummies". It is more complete and a great source for all levels of landlords (newbies on up). The Dummies' author, Robert S. Griswold, covers all the subject matter in Perry's book plus insurance, evictions, and other lawsuits in greater detail with more graphs and charts to illustrate the author's points.

The advice was easy to read and will be easy for me to implement. There were several ideas that Mr. Perry brought up that would have taken me years to discover on my own. His approach is also the most humane of the three books on the subject that I have read... the others treated tenants as money milking objects, Mr. Perry treats them as he would like to be treated.