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How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust: Money-Making Strategies for the End of the Housing Bubble (Hardcover)

by John Rubino (Author) "The craving we all have for a place of our own probably dates back to the first hunter/gatherer who chased a bear from a cave..." (more)
Key Phrases: securitization machine, local home prices, housing bubble, Wall Street, Fannie Mae, United States (more...)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Positing that "the longer-lived an economic expansion, the deeper the resulting recession," Rubino (Main Street, Not Wall Street) argues that the housing bubble, like other investments, will soon pop. He explains that as stock prices fell in 2001, housing became the safe bet for American investors; but the very factors (i.e., low interest rates) that helped the housing boom will soon change directions. In such chapters as "Bubbles: Past, Present, Future, Foreign," Rubino lays out the last century's history of real estate ups and downs, both throughout the U.S. and in other countries. From here, with handy graphs and charts, he sets out a clear course for homeowners and investors to plan for the future. His solution? He recommends "shifting into reverse, financially speaking, and doing the opposite of what worked in the in 1990s." One way to effect such a reversal is, basically, to convert riskier investments into "cash" (e.g., money markets, bank CDs, and Treasury notes). While Rubino paints a worrisome picture of the future, he does offer readers useful tools and solid plans for preparing for it.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Ride the housing crash to big gains, build recession-proof wealth, protect your biggest investment We are in the midst of uncertain economic times. Though there has been a slowdown in the economy, real estate is the one area that has continued to grow. Until now. According to financial expert John Rubino, a real estate crash is coming--and it's going to be a bad one. Don't be caught without the information you need to protect yourself and your nest egg. After all, your house is your single largest investment. In his incredibly timely book, industry veteran Rubino outlines: -The present U.S. real estate market and how it got this way -Statistics that indicate the coming dramatic market turn, including the increased use of cash-out mortgages and near-record levels of consumer debt -Consideration of the events that will inevitably follow the bursting of the bubble -Strategies for protecting yourself -Clear ways to profit from the crash How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust is the essential how-to book to read if you want to survive, and benefit from, the upcoming crash.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Rodale Books (September 20, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1579548709
ISBN-13: 978-1579548704
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #295,081 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
The craving we all have for a place of our own probably dates back to the first hunter/gatherer who chased a bear from a cave and decided to settle in. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
securitization machine, local home prices, housing bubble, median home price, real estate bubble

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Wall Street, Fannie Mae, United States, Federal Reserve, Symbol Price, New York, Merrill Lynch, Freddie Mac, New England, Prudent Bear, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Wells Fargo, Doug Noland, Dow Jones, Business Week, Charles Schwab, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Equity Office, Further Reading, Goldman Sachs, World War, Archer Daniels Midland, Bank of America, Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 11 books:

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein on page 87, and Back Matter
Money Game by Adam Smith on page 115, and page 189
Extraordinary Popular Delusions (Dover Value Editions) by Charles Mackay in Back Matter
Wells Fargo by Ralph Moody on page 180
Places Rated Almanac (Special Millennium Edition) by David Savageau on page 221

See all 11 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

The Coming Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It by James Turk

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Retire On the House by Gillette Edmunds

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The Next Great Bubble Boom by Harry S. Dent

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Of Permanent Value by Andrew Kilpatrick

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Customer Reviews

29 Reviews

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

Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (29 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a great treatment, OK but there is a better alternative, May 2, 2004

By	David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson (Dawson's Landing, MO) - See all my reviews

SUMMARY:

I personally think the advice about "profiting" from the bust in this book is mostly worthless, indeed possibly even dangerous, but the arguments about whether there is a bubble & how to recognize it IMO are better.

DETAILS:

The first half of the book (which another reviewer suggests you could skip -- !!!) is actually the most useful IMO. It gives a general summary of the reasons that suggest current housing prices are unsustainable. The arguments are not very complex in construction, but I don't fault the book for it, I think it has a target audience, and that is the general public, not the subset who have a firm grasp of macroeconomics & math. My biggest gripe with this part of the book is that he expresses some facts in a misleading way, to my mathematically semi-sophisticated eye. For example, on p. 62 he has a graph of total US debt and GDP vs. a 45 year time axis. To the "untrained eye" (and he supports this impression in his text), it looks like debt is growing much faster than gdp. This impression is created by the fact that both are under $5trillion in 1957, and by 2002 gdp is $10t and debt around $34t. However, I suspect if you graphed the RATIO of debt to GDP (which is really the issue, what multiple of gdp is debt, i.e. very roughly, how many years of earnings collectively would it take to pay it off), you'll see the ratio MUCH higher at the start of the period than now, you'd probably see a decline in the graph slope for many years, then maybe an increase starting around 1985, based upon an eyeball evaluation of the two curves. That would have been a MUCH more meaningful graph, a more useful historical perspective. Maybe he thought that too abstract for his intended audience, being a derivative of the data (change over time in the rate of change of the ratio), but in this particular case I believe he has made more out of those historical numbers than is really warranted. The problem for me is, when you see that once you start to trust less all the rest of the arguments he makes, you instead find yourself wondering "what did he leave out or misrepresent this time?" But with that caveat, this is still the best overall attempt to make a case for a housing bubble, with the possible exception of a "Special Survey" done by the magazine Economist on 5/29/2003, which looks at the issue from an international perspective.

The last 1/2 of the book (the ostensible purpose, "how to make (or save) your money when the bubble bursts") seems even less well thought out. I'm not a professional investor, but I have been doing it a couple decades now & I came out of reading this book with very few viable (IMO) ideas on how to achieve what the title promises. For example, buying cash rich companies -- he lists msft, csco, intl, dell, nok. This advice is totally bereft of the context of stock price or p/e, and I'm sorry, a dollar is worth a dollar, and you can't say a company with cash is a good buy without even referencing how much cash you will pay for that cash!!! The suggestion of convertible bonds is also curious, I admit I have not looked at them much in my years, but my intuitive reaction is, won't these only do better than normal bonds as the stock price INCREASES (i.e. as it approaches the conversion price?), these bonds pay a lower rate & make up for that with the option to convert to shares at a fixed stock price. The value of that conversion option drops with the stock price (indeed for convertibles close to strike price, stock price changes are MAGNIFIED in the convertible pricing). So if what he suggest comes true, convertibles will be a WORSE buy than plain old bonds, overall. (maybe he suggests convertibles just as a safer alternative to stocks, and not necessarily better to buy than plain old bonds? If that's what he meant he should have SAID it though). And regarding gold pricing -- I actually have one raw gold producer that he mentions on my watch list right now, they are a major player in many other metals markets as well (copper, silver, etc). Having that POV, I can tell you that he has totally ignored the whole question of decreased industrial demand that would come with the kind of financial catastrophe he envisions, very relevant given the exposure this particular stock has to these other metal productions. Heck that is the reason that I am still on the sidelines, reduction of demand in China (which is creeping up in the news more in recent weeks as they attempt to engineer a "soft landing" to a badly overheated economy) could totally take the floor out from underneath a lot of these raw material producing companies.

Finally, while by no means suggesting this is a fair way to evaluate his advice in this second half of the book -- since the whole argument is predicated on the collapse of the housing market, which has not (yet) happened -- it should be noted that a quick review of many of his suggested strategies shows that anyone following his advice in the one year approx since he finished writing it (he mentions this being the beginning of June 2003) would have vastly underperformed the market, or even lost money, in the interim.

So, in short, I find the first half the book (is there a bubble, why) a pretty good introduction to the argument for it, not perfect, but perhaps the best one out there. I find the other half (what will happen to the economy when it bursts, how to profit/protect yourself from it) very much unsatisfying, and I am stuck where I started, thinking "I think there is a serious risk here" but still unable to figure out how to translate this concern into concrete action for my own personal finances.

*** UPDATE 9/12/04: Since writing this review on 5/2/04, I have found and read John Talbott's book from 2003 on the same subject,
"The Coming Crash in the Housing Market : 10 Things You Can Do Now to Protect Your Most Valuable Investment." Having read that, I have changed the title of the review, & I would now change my statement in my review above that this book is 'perhaps the best introduction to the argument for a housing bubble out there.' I now believe the Talbott book is better, the statistics in that book are more carefully and rigorously presented, and do not seem to suffer from the misleading presentations you see in this book. In other words, although both books make essentially the same argument, the Talbott book makes it more completely & convincingly.

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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Right Again, December 23, 2003

By	David Landis (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Back in 1999, when investment bankers were ordering $400 bottles of wine at lunch and Dow 36,000 was a credible forecast, not a joke, John Rubino was offering bear market strategies to readers of his column in TheStreet.com. Here's what he wrote on Oct. 21 of that year:

"Put simply, stocks are as expensive as they've ever been and the economy is running out of slack. Labor is so tight that companies are having to pay up to keep good people. Health care and energy costs are rising again, and interest rates are up across the yield curve. The inevitable result: higher costs of borrowing and doing business, lower corporate profits and sinking stock prices."

Rubino was clear-headed enough at the height of the stock market bubble to see the tunnel at the end of the light. Now he is sounding the alarm about the housing bubble. It's well worth listening to.

You don't need to be an economist or a financial expert to grasp the warning signals he points to: credit policies that have become shockingly easy, to the point where a down payment on a home has become optional; high levels of consumer debt, and soaring home prices. Meanwhile, job creation and income growth are stuck in neutral and profligate government spending has undermined the value of the dollar and left the U.S. up to its neck in debt to the rest of the world. Rock-bottom interest rates have been pumping air into the bubble, of course, but so has the relatively new process of securitization, a feat of financial engineering that allows government-sponsored agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create a virtual bottomless pit of new credit that is beyond the reach of anyone to regulate. Rubino does an admirable job of walking the reader, step by step, through this financial maze, explaining how it has held together so far, and how it could fall apart. He posits a number of scenarios for how things could play out, from the merely worrisome to the terrifying.

There are so many moving parts to the global financial engine, it's best not to get too hung up on exactly how or when the bubble will pop. Inevitably it will, and you'll understand why after you've finished the first half of the book. The second half of the book is your roadmap. It outlines a variety of strategies for sheltering your investment portfolio as well as your real estate assets from the post-bubble fallout. These include investing in commodities, particularly gold; selling stocks short, buying stocks in recession-resistant sectors, and buying bear-market mutual funds. Even if you don't think there is a housing bubble, the second half of the book offers a good investing overview that will serve you well no matter where you think we are in the business cycle. Rubino also offers a variety of defensive moves for home owners ranging from the drastic - selling, trading down to a smaller house, or moving to a less-overpriced housing market - to the less drastic but more complicated strategy of shorting housing stocks to hedge the value of your home.

Full disclosure: I used to edit Rubino's columns for TheStreet.com. So I have long known what new readers will soon discover: He's a talented financial writer with a deep understanding of the markets and a knack for explaining complex things in a simple and lively way. His advice was worth listening to in '99 and it is even more so today.

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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Next? The New, New Crisis, November 25, 2004

By	Thomas Mongle (Houston) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like a smooth attorney summing up his case to the jury, John Rubino gives you every reason in the world to be very careful now that real estate has superseded stocks as the investment of choice. Written in June, 2003, Rubino is early. But "early" means you won't get knocked down if you head for the door.
Real estate is a much more serious bubble than stocks could ever be because not only does it involve the roof over your head, it also constitutes your biggest debt, a huge amount of employment and business activity, and enough political ramifications to cause major tremors under our political landscape in the event the author is correct. Additionally, there is no liquid market for real estate as there is for stocks. That means there is no October '87 to clean out the system in one fell swoop. Real estate busts take years to work through the system, with all the resulting hardships and recriminations that go with the bursting of a bubble.
Rubino wasn't as prescient as Robert Shiller who published "Irrational Exuberance" in the same month as NASDAQ topped out above 5000, but if real estate does crack, this time nobody can say they weren't forewarned.
The first half of the book is an excellent detailing of how the real estate market works, its history, and how the current bubble came to be. This is interesting reading for those who need to get current on the dangerous game we're playing.
The last half of the book gets more specific, giving you a good overview of the alternatives to keeping you money in real estate, including everything from lifestyle changes to tax consequences to his main concern - safety.
All in all, an excellent (and concise - 250 pages) synopsis on what more and more experts are warning is our next major crisis.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars GOTTA READ!
Even though we are now head way on into the economic collapse, the ideas & investment strategies in this book can still be used! Read more

Published 25 days ago by Christopher Dowell

5.0 out of 5 stars $1.5/2 Trillion Debt Outstanding for Fannie and Freddie
1. States are required to balance their budget. 2008, forward will see big cuts in spending and tax increases at the state and local level. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Golden Lion

3.0 out of 5 stars Accurate Prediction But Now Past It's Shelf Life
I bought this book in 2004 when many reviewers' were arguing that there was no real estate bubble. Now in 2008 it looks like the author was correct. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Duff Dry

1.0 out of 5 stars not useful anymore
If this is the first time you've thought of or talked to anyone about real estate, it's worth a read. You get some history. Read more

Published on February 6, 2007 by Chris

5.0 out of 5 stars Advice Taken
Two years ago I purchased Mr. Rubino's book. Back then the housing bubble was a seldom-discussed topic. For me, the information and advice made absolute sense. Read more

Published on October 4, 2006 by Happy Renter

4.0 out of 5 stars An OK book, eye opener for mainstream investors, but old news for most financial professionals
First of all, a correction for the review from David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson. Graphing Total US Debt to US GDP shows that it was flat around 1. Read more

Published on January 3, 2006 by ReadingGuy

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyed reading this book, highly recommended!
The title is slightly misleading. The book is not focused on real estate bust. It starts with introducing the idea of business cycles. Read more

Published on December 29, 2005 by Ruslan Moskalenko

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of Extremely Valuable Information
Anyone with money invested in the market, especially
in real estate, would benefit from reading this book. Read more

Published on June 21, 2005 by Kyle L. Wilson

1.0 out of 5 stars yaa, yeah, doomsday,..snore..
no, not a kid,..a las vegas wage slave that made close to a million bucks,..buying and selling homes in Cedar City, Utah,..since this dreary crapola was published. Read more

Published on June 14, 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars Very important book that becomes more relevant each day
This book was way ahead of its' time!! Bottom line, if you have not read this book yet, you should do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. I really mean that. Read more

Published on March 27, 2005 by Bruce D. Collins

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