Customer Reviews

Starting and Succeeding in Real Estate

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

 

 

I don't know about you but I have a serious problem trusting the written words of someone who can't even bother taking time to proofread what they write. This book is so filled with grammatical errors, misspellings, and just bad writing that I found it incredibly distracting to read, incredibly disrespectful of the reader, and just plain unprofessional.

The content barely scratched the surface on many issues. There are much better books available from Amazon. Try "21 Things I Wish My Broker Had Told Me" by Frank Cook or "Your First Year in Real Estate: Making the Transition from Total Novice to Successful Professional" by Dirk Zeller.

I don't know about you but I have a serious problem trusting the written words of someone who can't even bother taking time to proofread what they write. This book is so filled with grammatical errors, misspellings, and just bad writing that I found it incredibly distracting to read, incredibly disrespectful of the reader, and just plain unprofessional.

The content barely scratched the surface on many issues. There are much better books available from Amazon. Try "21 Things I Wish My Broker Had Told Me" by Frank Cook or "Your First Year in Real Estate: Making the Transition from Total Novice to Successful Professional" by Dirk Zeller.

I am sorry to say that this book was most assuredly the worst book concerning tactics for getting started in real estate that I have read. It was full of spelling errors, grammatical errors, and typo errors. This should never happen in a published work. One gets the feeling after having read the first two to three chapters that the author simply wrote down as much as he could remember and then hurridly put the book out for sale at 22.00 bucks a pop. The author also has the annoying habit of using exclamation points where they are not needed!

The author, after the first parts of the book, resorts to giving the reader terms of the business. Fantastic. I think we can all find out what those terms mean without having to buy this book.

Save your money and look elsewhere. This book is not worth it.

Although there is usable, valuable information in this book, overall it's just OK. There are a lot of errors that should have been caught. That lack of attention to detail in a listing or sales contract could land you in court.

There was also some padding to make the book bigger. When the author tells you to make a list to compare brokerages, he includes the list three times so you can compare three brokers!

My guess is, that in the future, the author will write a better, more in depth book about real estate. He knows the business and has been very successful. In the meantime, "Your First Year in Real Estate," by Dirk Zeller, is a better introduction to the profession.

Now in an updated and expanded 2002 edition, Starting & Succeeding In Real Estate by experienced and successful real estate broker Mark Nash is a straightforward guide to what it takes to earn a living in the career of Real Estate. Individual chapters address real estate related terms and jargon, sales training, how to distinguish potential buyers from tire kickers, and a great deal more. Accessibly presented in an easy-to-understand question-and-answer format, Starting & Succeeding In Real Estate is a kind of single volume, do-it-yourself seminar and a very highly recommended, invaluable primer for anyone seriously considering this exciting line of work.

Starting out A Beginner's Guide to Real EstateYou stressed, you studied, and you passed your state license test with flying colors. Now what?

BY CHRIS LEPORINI

When starting a new career, it's often difficult to even know where to begin, particularly in a business as complex as real estate. New real estate professionals must tackle a dizzying array of details, from selecting a brokerage to polishing their sales technique. The Original New Agent's Guide to Starting & Succeeding in Real Estate... by Mark Nash, provides a starting point for newly minted salespeople and other readers considering a real estate career.It gives practical advice with a personal touch. Nash, a Broker Associate with Koenig & Strey/GMAC Real Estate in Chicago, describes it as "the book that I needed when I started out in 1997, as I flopped around looking for the answers to jumpstart my sales career." He alternates lessons on real estate basics with autobiographical asides, labeled "Mark's Story" detailing his experiences breaking into the real estate field. The book provides a rapid-fire introduction to the real estate business, outlining business decisions, identifying common obstacles, and defining industry terms. The Original New Agent's Guide to Starting & Succeeding in Real Estate assists readers in weighing vital early decisions, such as choosing their first brokerage. Nash advises new salespeople to use lists to make their decision-making process more concrete. In "Chapter 1: Address for Success," he recommends that readers draw on their previous jobs to pinpoint qualities to hunt for in potential brokers. This requires that the salesperson write down the professional traits that they liked (or disliked) in their previous managers. For instance, some of these qualities might include: team player, ethical, outgoing, sincere, methodical, and business plan driven. Similarly, he recommends writing a list of requirements for prospective real estate offices, using questions such as: · How far do you want the office from your home, daily travel routes?· What size office do you want to work for?· How much pressure to produce sales volume do you want from your managing broker?Learning industry jargon presents another challenge to real estate newcomers. "Chapter Nine: Understanding the Terms" defines the industry jargon, so that newbies won't feel lost when coworkers toss off terms such as assumable mortgages and inspection riders. Other chapters provide explanations for the alphabet soup of designations available to real estate professionals, from ABRs to SRESs. These glossaries provide a great way for new real estate professionals to get up to speed on industry terminology. The book also identifies common problems that new salespeople will face in the field, such as dealing with difficult personality types. "Chapter 3: The Welcome Wagon" summarizes "passive aggressive clients," "control freaks," and other problem personality types that real estate professionals might regularly encounter. The book offers techniques for dealing with each of these behavioral types-for instance, salespeople should disarm controlling customers by sticking to the facts over emotion. Although this section can familiarize new salespeople with the broad outlines of the problems they might face, it highlights a weakness in the book's presentation.The book covers a great deal of territory in a relatively brief space, preventing the author from lingering on any one topic for too long. Its to-the-point coverage of the real estate industry works better with some topics than others. Subjects such as definitions of designations or explanations of different commission splits lend themselves to brief coverage. However, issues such as buyer personality types cry out for a more detailed examination. (Entire books have been written on this subject alone.) Overall, the book presents a solid introduction to real estate fundamentals. New salespeople will find that after they've passed their license examination, their real work has just begun; with The Original New Agent's Guide to Starting & Succeeding in Real Estate they can get a head start on the challenges that lie ahead.

Now fully updated edition for 2004, The Original New Agent's Guide To Starting & Succeeding In Real Estate is a practical, career-oriented guidebook for those who aspire to a real estate sales profession. Expertly and accessibly written by expert and successful real estate salesman Mark Nash, The Original New Agent's Guide To Starting & Succeeding In Real Estate will teach aspiring realtors everything from how to get started, to marketing their services, to surviving relocation, to getting to know their community, and so much more. A very strongly recommended introduction and reference, The Original New Agent's Guide To Starting & Succeeding In Real Estate combines methodical instructions with a positive tone and highly accessible prose style for a career primer that anyone can learn from.

There is absolutely no doubt that newly licensed real estate agents are in dire need of career guidance. This book takes the reader from finding a broker with whom to affiliate to understanding the sometimes dizzing array or real estate terminology. It would be a handy little reference for the new agent. Dr. Kenneth W. Edwards, GRI, Book and Video Review Editor, The Real Estate Professional Magazine.

I just finished reading this book and am very disappointed in the lack of content. I wouldn't even recommend this book for someone new to real estate (as I am). It contains sections on prospecting, assisting buyers, assisting sellers, etc, but does not give you any good information in these sections. It basically tells you all sorts of things that you should think about when it comes to prospecting, buying, and selling, which most likely is what you are already thinking about and were hoping to find answers to in this book. Unfortunately there are no answers here. Save your money, there are much better books out there (for example Danielle Kennedy's "How to List and Sell Real Estate" provides much more content and gives advice on how to DO things and not just what to think about).

This book is a very basic introduction to the real estate business. If you want a general idea of what it takes to begin in real estate, this is a good resource. One issue that existed throughout the book were the constant grammatical and typographical errors. It was distracting at times and dimminished the impact of what was written.