There are many lists of best real estate books or rental property investment books. If you do a web search, you’ll often find a guru interested in selling you an expensive real course. If you’re looking for ways to invest in rental properties, you often find yourself on a “squeeze page” where you feel compelled to “buy now” or you’ll “lose” millions of dollars in real estate wealth.
Unfortunately, these kinds of sales pages don’t really give you the full picture of what you’re buying, and often trick people into paying a high price for something they don’t need. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to become an expert in rental property investments. Buying real estate books is a much more cost effective way to increase your knowledge.
Investing in rental properties requires many different areas of expertise. You must become good at budgeting, negotiating, marketing, lending, contracting and home improvement, legal matters, rental property management, etc.
So where do you start? I have some recommendations to help you find the right one. best real estate books:
- Buy any book by John T. Reed. Reed has written a library of books on real estate investing. He covers just about every real estate topic he can imagine. His books on buying 20% below market value are excellent. You can find some of Reed’s used books on Amazon, but he only sells them through his own website. All of his books are reasonably priced and you won’t go wrong buying any of them. Reed doesn’t mince words when he talks about the pros and cons of real estate investing. He also has a few select reviews from so-called “gurus.”
- Diane Kennedy’s “Real Estate Loop-Holes” is an excellent short book on some tax issues to consider when investing in rental property. You can learn about 1031 property exchanges so you can sell your property without paying capital gains taxes.
- “Means Residential Repair and Remodeling Costs” is the bible of home repair estimating. Before you buy any rental property, you really need to know how much it will cost to update the property. Probably the biggest mistake new investors make when starting a rental property investment is underestimating the costs to repair the property.
There is a jewel of a real estate book that can transform your ideas about real estate investing. Priced under $30, it can provide you with a strategy that will forever change the way you think about rental property investing.
