10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good book for the prospective landlord, February 22, 2003
This book was written in 1994 and may be viewed by some as being dated. The author is a small real estate investor and tells of projects that he personally has been involved in as well as the project of other people he knows. The stories are real and there are before and after photos in the book, which is quite uncommon for a book of this type. There is a chapter on "Success Stories" that I particularily enjoyed. There's a chapter of the "Fixer-Upper" which was also good. Many of the other chapters about tenants and management were covered in other books with mcuh more depth. "Landlording" by Leigh Robinson is an excellent book on the tenant and management side of the business and is much more comprehensive than this book. This is a good book, but not a great book. I appreciate the author's experience in rental properties and I liked to see the photos which help tell the story and make the examples very real. This book does not have all the answers and if you expect that you will be disappointed.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disjointed, but maybe helpful, June 14, 2000
I felt the Author spent too many pages on telling stories of things he had heard that others had done in this business. Very few things seem to be from the personal experience of the author. I came to the conclusion by the time I had gotten bored with the book that the author wrote it to "build wealth with royalties" instead of rental properties. It has a few good ideas and points but seriously lacked any connection with the next topic or idea.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Puff Peice..., December 30, 2001
Not much substance here. It's a 75,000 foot book. After reading it, there is no way you could even contemplate running a business with the tools it gives you.
Contrast this to the Nolo Press book on being a land lord. That's a 10,000 foot book. The Nolo book talks about real issues (ex. asbestos, lead paint, etc...) It gives you a CD ROM with all the government mandated forms. What's more, it gives them to you in Spanish, too. The Nolo book goes into detail about you, your rights and responsibilities... more like liabilities... of having undesirable tenents (ie. drug dealers). I haven't found another book out there that drills down into issues that can get you sued if you don't follow them. This book doesn't touch any of that. It's like it doesn't exist.
The Milin book makes this one look good. The Milin's is definitely dated. Suprised they just don't mention bearer treasury bonds as a method of financing... These folks are once removed slum lords. They have an interesting theory: 3 bedroom, 2 bath houses. As far as liquidity, that's as good as you can get. But their methods of management would land you in real hot water. For example, Sam the tenent has agreed to cut the grass as part of the rental agreement that the Milin's insist on. Sam is blue collar and has a small amount of insurance. Well, Sam leaves the grass clippings around. Billy slips on them while he's walking by. Per the law as pointed out in Nolo, the landlord will probably be sued. Why? Cause Sam among other things is the poor guy. And the rest of that book is filled with such non-sense. Some of the more pretentious statements are how they suggest you can represent yourself, "The English Aristocrat" or the guy who's just too cheap/dumb to even get a DBA much less a Sub Class S corporation. It's rather easy to unfold that story: tenent gets lawyer. Lawyer shows that landlord is a sham. Landlord loses lawsuit. Landlord has no corporation to shield assets. Landlord loses rental house. Rather [bad]to even suggest such stupidity.
None of these books cover insurance very well in realistic terms, either. Only Nolo does.
What is a gaping hole in most books are the realistic finance angles. Nothing down? Yeah right. Give me a break. What's your time worth to you? For how much work you will do to find this deal (along with 200 other people fighting for it) you could have saved yourself time and money by just doing conventional financing. The McGraw Hill book on Real Estate Investment Finance is probably the best I've seen. Banker's are not going to waste their time. Life is just a bit more complicated than a one chapter overview.
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