Real Estate Investing Books
Trying to start building a portfolio of income producing rental properties. Does anyone have recs on good books to read or advice for starting out?
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Sub-5 units or larger buildings? Recommendations will vary depending on if you're talking small residential or commercial-scale properties.
For commercial, your top recommendations are going to be:
- Real Estate Finance & Investments (Linneman)
- Commercial Real Estate Analysis & Investments (Geltner & Miller)
- The Real Estate Game (Poorvu)
The first two are textbooks and invaluable from an analysis perspective. The third one is higher level and a great read.
To credit CREnadian, all of the above mentioned books are a great read and offer real, actionable takeaways you will be able to use on your task of identifying and investing in income producing rental properties. I would recommend to begin with The Real Estate Game as the man (William Poorvu) walks you through deals like a buddy at a bar would ie; where they took risk / where they messed up / where they hit home runs. Really gives you all the nasty details that will be your headaches you have to deal with running a deal on your own.
Linneman's textbook is pretty much the RE analyst's handbook with added expert commentary. I would implore you to by the audio commentary for an extra $30 with the book as he goes into greater detail on his thoughts of each chapter (comes with transcripts of the commentary as well).
Poorvu has also published a compendium of 22 Harvard Business School case studies he used as a professor covering acquisition, development, and financing. This one is tricky to find online but I would start my search at Thriftbooks.com - The title is "The Real Estate Challenge - Capitalizing on Change".
Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur by James A. Randel. A lot of good information on investing in commercial real estate.
+1 to above. I second the lesser known poorvu casebook recommendation.
You can get it used on Amazon from ‘Better World Books’ at the moment for roughly 27 usd.
There are two blue case books by poorvu that look very similar and this particular version is the best:
* The Real Estate Challenge: Capitalizing on Change *
-/-
Product Description (nb: make sure your version has these contents/points)
This is a collection of Harvard cases providing a framework for analysis of developing and investing in real estate. They include the basics of real estate investments, how the real estate environment of the 1990s is different from the 1970s and 1980s, and how to deal with change in a cyclical market.
Review
I. BASICS OF REAL ESTATE.
1. The Field of Real Estate. 2. Current Trends and Challenges. 3. Anderson Street. 4. The Millegan Creek Apartments. 5. Fan Pier. 6. SouthPark IV. 7. Angus Cartwright, Jr.
II. FINANCING OF REAL ESTATE. 8. Graybar Syndications. 9. Twinbrook Metro. 10. The Bourland Companies. 11. The McArthur/Glen Realty Corp. 12. JKJ Pension Fund. 13. JKJ/Gelco.
III. DEVELOPMENT OF REAL ESTATE. 14. 503 Cricket Road. 15. Concord Center. 16. Grosvenor Park. 17. Peterborough Court. 18. The Domik Project.
IV. REPOSI-TIONING OF REAL ESTATE. 19. The Tex-tile Corporation Building. 20. Lakeside Center. 21. Tysons Corner. 22. The Schneider Building.
V. TECHNICAL NOTES.
23. Management of the Real Estate Process. 24. Financial Analysis of Real Property Investments. 25. Note on Taxation. 26. Note on Forms of Real Estate Ownership. --Table of Contents
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