Real Estate Appraising From A to Z

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Summary: A thorough exposition of how to appraise real estate
Review: "Real Estate Appraising from A to Z" delivers up exactly what it promises - a thorough, understandable course on appraising. The author discusses appraisals as a business and how to get into the appraisal business, but it is much more that just that. If you are looking at purchasing property for investing. If you are looking at purchasing a new home, wanting to know the value of vacant property, etc. this is an excellent book. It covers all the bases when valuing a property. Some of the subjects discussed include community factors, market influences, potential hidden problems and how to find them, building inspection, the cost approach to valuation, the income approach to valuation, and writing a proposal. Given the thorough coverage and easy to understand writing style, this book is a highly recommended purchase for anyone who might be interested in appraisals (either doing them or understanding someone else's), or investing in real estate.

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Summary: Recommend this to real estate investors.
Review: As a real estate investor I am very picky about recommending books to people unless I know the book is very good. I purchased both the inspection and appraisal books from this author and recommend them to other investors I know since they are outstanding in their in-depth content. Many of the topics and advice in these books are far better than other books I've read. You will learn about the realities of investing in real estate and how to save thousands of dollars when you invest in a home or rental property.

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Summary: Great book with great advice
Review: Before I listed my house for sale I bought this book to learn what price to tell the realtors I would accept. A few years ago I was going to sell my house and the brokers that came by wanted to list my house for a lower price than my neighbor's house sold for a month earlier. I decided not to sell back then. Now I put my home on the market again and this time I learned why my asking price was correct based upon what I learned in this book. When the brokers came by I made sure they realized that I had good reasons to justify the sales price I wanted to get. That alone earned me a lot of money in the final selling price.

I'm not an appraiser but by getting the concepts that they use from this book I was able to know enough about it to help sell my house. It was great advice and the book is great and enjoyable to read since it's not boring! Get this if you buy or sell real estate since you will learn a lot.

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Summary: Easy to follow and a great read for real estate enthusiasts
Review: Easy to follow and the book was a great read for anyone who is a real estate enthusiast. My husband and I own many investment properties and I read quite a lot of information about real estate to learn new ideas. Appraising is an important subject that we need to know about, along with many other subjects dealing with the business. This book was great for us and was money and time well spent. Although we're not interested in becoming professional appraisers, we still need to know the techniques and methods the professionals use to determine what is a good deal when we look at many investments on a yearly basis. Your money and time will be well spent with this book whether you are a serious investor or just a beginner.

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Summary: Very helpful with a lot of great information
Review: For someone who is looking to get a good understanding of how to estimate the market value of their home, then this book should be your choice. Although it is written to train professional real estate appraisers you can certainly learn a lot of good information from it even if you're a beginner. After reading this book and speaking with some Realtors in my area I realized that I had more of an understanding of real estate appraising concepts that the Realtors had!! If you want to make sure you don't sell your home for too low or buy it for too high a price, then read this book and don't just rely on what the Realtor tells you is a good price.

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Summary: Appraising From A to Z
Review: I felt this book lacked needed information for any serious student of Real Estate Appraisal. It did not seem to fill the void for information required for a beginning Appraiser and definetely would not be of use to an intermediate or experienced appraiser. It completely eliminated the Income Approach to Valuation saying it was beyond the scope of this book. If you do not need a comprehensive book on Appraising and are looking for a quick overview on the industry this is probably the book for you. However, Fundamentals of Real Estate Appraisal by Ventolo/Williams provides very complete detailed information in easy to read format.

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Summary: Appraising a home is made simple with this book
Review: I have been a real estate appraiser for over 5 years and this book is a great reference for me that I use often. Most of the appraisal books I've read were too boring, but this book tells it like it is which makes it stand out from the rest I've read. If your an appraiser or just looking to go into the business then get this book.

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Summary: Good info BUT incomplete and organized loosely
Review: I know alot about building and am getting into home inspection. The information in the book was helpful but I know from looking at inspection checklists and other books that this one left out or short-changed some critical inspection areas. It almost seemed as though the author just got tired of writing certain sections. All in all it's a decent deal for the money but it could only be an introduction to much more carefully crafted reference/instructional books.

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Summary: Great book and highly advisable to read.
Review: I purchased other books by this author and the prior edition of this book. This is the 4th edition and is excellent. If you want to become very knowledgable about real estate appraising then this is the right choice. It is written in a very enjoyable writing style as though you were a client of the author getting advice directly from him. There were so many topics covered that it was a lot to digest but everything was helpful to me and probably will be to you too. All three approaches to estimating real estate values were talked about - direct sales, cost, and income approaches. If you are a home owner and want to determine the price to sell your house for then you have what you need in this. There are photos and sample appraisals that can simplify the whole process and you don't need to be a technical person to understand how paid appraisers do their job.

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Summary: EXCELLENT appraiser book for learning appraisals!
Review: I read a lot of excellent book reviews about this book from many well-known book reviewers. So I bought the book since I am an appraiser and found that they were correct - this is a great book for anyone to learn how the professionals appraise real estate. You don't need to be an appraiser to use this as a reference since the author explains everything very clearly and it's easy to understand. I highly recommend this to anyone in the real estate business or any home owner. I saw that some of the Top 50 book reviewers on Amazon have rated this book with 5 stars also. (Apparently the somewhat negative review written by "A reader from arlington, va United States" was written by someone who doesn't even know that this is a real estate APPRAISAL book and NOT a HOME INSPECTION book since he/she criticizes the book since it's not incredibly in-depth for HOME INSPECTORS. Obviously the book author is interested in writing content to train people about real estate APPRAISERS not to become home inspectors. The book author even mentions that in the book very clearly since the book author has a very in-depth home inspection book which goes by the different title of Home Inspection Business From A to Z. Maybe that "reader" should learn to "read" the title of a book before he orders it and writes a book review!!)