I know. I know. I seem to be on a real estate kick! It is probably because I have been reading so many real estate investing books lately. Go figure.

My latest book review is a book titled “Successful Real Estate Investing - How to Avoid the 75 Most Costly Mistakes Every Investor Makes” (ISBN 0-471-45397-8) by Robert Shemin. As you can guess from the title, this book lists 75 mistakes (plus 3 bonus mistakes!) made by real estate investors and how you can avoid them.

I found this book was difficult to review. I’ll try to explain.

First of all, the book was not written in chapters. Basically, each mistake was approximately a 2-page entry in the book. I found that the topics did not flow together nicely. One minute you are reading about not doing criminal checks on your potential tenants, then you are reading about not having a high enough cashflow, and then right back to penalizing bad tenants. The structure was really all over the map.

Secondly, the tone of the book made me skeptical. Right of the bat, you can sense the direction that the author is going. “Within one year, I bought 12 duplexes while keeping my job.” At some point in the book, the author was flipping 200 real estate properties in a single year. Are the claims true? I don’t know. Even if the claims are true, it just doesn’t seem like a prudent way to do business. It seemed a little over the top.

Thirdly, this book read like an infomercial. I lost count of how many times I was supposed to either call his 1-800 number or sign up for his real estate course. One of the mistakes was “Not Budgeting for Your Real Estate Education.” The author says that “now I budget $50,000 to $100,000 a year” for expenditures on education. Think he wants you to think it is ok to spend money on his courses?

I’ll admit, there were a few good points scattered throughout those 75 mistakes. It wasn’t all bad.

My theory is that this book was made as a teaser to get you to purchase his expensive course material. Maybe the principles apply better in the United States. Maybe I’ll just never be rich like Mr. Shemin. I would not recommend this book. If you see it on the library shelf, pick it up, skim thru it, and put it back on the shelf.

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