As you know, one of my goals is to own an investment property in the next few years. In preparation, I have begun reading books on real estate investing so that when the time comes, I will be prepared.

Being a novice, I decided to read “Real Estate Investing for Dummies” (ISBN 0-7645-2565-4) written by Eric Tyson and Robert S. Griswold.

As is the purpose of all the “Dummies” series of books, it is to basically walk a novice thru all aspects of the subject matter – in this case, investing in real estate. The authors state that “Real Estate Investing for Dummies covers tried and proven real estate investing strategies that real people, just like you, use to build wealth. Specifically, this book explains how to invest in single-family homes; detached and attached condominiums; small apartments including duplexes, triplexes, and multi-family residential properties up to 20-30 units; commercial properties, including office, industrial, and retail; and raw (undeveloped) land.”

The book is very thorough. It starts off with comparing real estate to other types of investments and how real estate can be an integral part of your financial plan.

The book explains the different types of mortgages available (in the US) from banks as well as discussing seller financed dealers and borrowing against home equity.

The book then details different methods of finding and evaluating properties. It goes thru the standard number crunching such as calculating Net Operating Income (NOI) and cashflows. It discusses 3 approaches to determining the value of the property: Market data approach, Cost Approach and the Income Capitalization Approach.

Now that you have purchased a property, it discusses the managing of the property.; skills required to be a good landlord, dealing with tenants, using property managers.

All in all, the book is a good first read for a novice real estate investor. There was nothing magical or innovative with the content. It was all material that I had read in other real estate investing books. There were lots of good suggestions throughout the book such as discussing various ways to advertise vacancies and dealing with tenants on a variety of issues.

Since the book was written for Americans, many of the suggestions did not apply to Canadians so I tended to quickly read/scan over those areas such as financing properties and dealing with tenants. For Ontarians, a landlord should get to know the Ontario Tenant Protection Act extremely well.

Table of Contents

Part I: Understanding Real Estate as an Investment
Chapter 1: Stacking Real Estate Up Against Other Investments
Chapter 2: Covering the Lanscape of common Real Estate Investments
Chapter 3: Even More Real Estate Investments
Chapter 4: Building your Team

Part II: How to Get the Money: Raising Capital and Financing
Chapter 5: Sources of Capital
Chapter 6: Financing your Property Purchases
Chapter 7: Shopping for and securing the Best Mortgage Terms

Part III: Finding and Evaluating Properties
Chapter 8: Location, Location, Value
Chapter 9: Examining Leases and Understanding Value
Chapter 10: Crunching the Numbers: How Much Should I Pay?
Chapter 11: Preparing to Make an Offer
Chapter 12: Due Diligence, Property Inspections, and Closing

Part IV: Operating the Property
Chapter 13: Landlording 101
Chapter 14: Protecting your Investment: Insurance and Risk Management
Chapter 15: Recordkeeping and Accounting
Chapter 16: Tax Considerations and Exit Strategies

Part V: The Part of Tens
Chapter 17: More than Ten Ways to Increase a Property’s Return
Chapter 18: Ten Steps to a Real Estate Fortune (Or a Great Second Income)

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