[...] Million Dollar Journey presents Book Review: Retire Rich from Real Estate. [...]

[...] reading the reviews on Million Dollar Journey and Thicken My Wallet of “Retire Rich from Real Estate” by Marc Andersen, I contacted [...]

I enjoyed the review. Just wondering if there are any other books you would recommend to someone with an interest in acquiring some rental properties, but who is just getting into the game and looking to get up to speed. One I’ve found that looks useful is “What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow” by Frank Gallinelli. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[...] book has been reviewed on several real estate investing blogs and every review I’ve seen has been [...]

[...] Also check out reviews from Thicken My Wallet and Million Dollar Journey. [...]

Hey lei, hate to be a downer, but replace “real estate business”, with “stock market investing” and the statement is still true. And yet “wise” stock market investors lose billions of dollars/day, just like real estate investors lose money all of the time.

Replace that with “self-employed field” or “making Facebook applications” and your statement is still true, but still no more useful. Real estate is definitely not a magic solution.

Investing wisely is a requirement for every investment that you make and it’s never been a guarantee of success. Please don’t imagine that real estate investing is anything other than hard work or you’ll get burned by those who are doing the hard work.

[...] I get into the top articles of MDJ for January, I would like to announce the winner of the "Retire Rich from Real Estate" book [...]

Love to see a comparison of the two once some people have gotten their hands on “Retire Rich from Real Estate!”

[...] Million Dollar Journey reviewed the same book yesterday. Clearly, he reads at a slightly faster pace! [...]

As for the 10% rule, I think the rule is even more valuable for cities like Vancouver and Calgary, where imo, you’d be crazy to purchase a house specifically to rent it out. The 10% rule would tell me to leave those alone.

Gates, your criticism of Dr. Andersen doesn’t make much sense to me. If you read the subtitle of his book (as seen in the photo), it reads: “A Low Risk Approach to Buying Rental Property for the Long-Term Investor”. He’s not talking about buying and flipping homes so the value of each of the individual properties he owns over the past 20 years is irrelevant. He’s buying for the cash flow, not much different from the long-term dividend investor that buys blue chips and doesn’t much care what happens to their value in the short-term.

Considering this book is US-based and recently published (I’m assuming), I think it’ll be a difficult sell as most people have been scared off by serious home price drops in the US. All the more reason his buy and hold approach should be worth considering. There will likely be lots of great properties available that should meet the 10% rule in the near future (and likely now) and perhaps even in Canada soon enough. Like FT said, they’re not obvious as they would have been scooped up already but there are some out there (we own two).

Successful real estate investing is challenging and it takes a certain kind of person to succeed at it. But then again, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Dr. Marc Anderson is a real estate investor who has 20 years experience buying homes and renting them out for profit.

15+ of last 20 years have seen home values go up in NA. It’s kind of like writing a book talking about how much success you had in the bond market from 1979 to 1989 and how you locked in T-Bills at 16% for 10 years.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that he has tons of useful insight, but that 10% rule seems rife with issues these days. Not just in silly places like Calgary, but even in low-cost Winnipeg. A 200k house is going need 20k in annual rental income. That’s $1667 / month in a land where luxury 2 & 3 bedroom apartments go for $1100!

The market of people who can pay $1700/month but still want to rent AND don’t want an apartment is tiny. So basically, you have to get one of the 70-year old houses for 90k in the “not-so-nice” districts and rent those for $900 to people who can’t afford it. And then, b/c you own a 70-year old house, you basically have appreciating land value (hopefully) coupled with a steeply depreciating home b/c it’s 70 years old! And all of that ignores the fact that property taxes in Winnipeg are nearly double those in Edmonton or Calgary.

The wife & I make 75k/year and I would never rent a home at 10% of the value. My mother’s 250k home is simply not worth $2100+/month.

I know a guy (in Winnipeg) who does real estate for a living, but he has no cash flow. He charges 5k for a beginners course in real estate investing but otherwise ends up even despite working lots. Maybe he’ll make it big, maybe it’ll feel like he made it big in a few years (b/c he’ll ignore inflation) or maybe the property he’s spent so much time gathering won’t be worth anything.

Again don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the book is all you’re pimping it be :) I just want to point out that finding cash-flow positive real estate is not an easy thing, especially if your time is worth good money.