Rating: 
Summary: Not for the Faint at Heart
Review: Do you like buying properties? Fixing them up? Working with people? Can you go against everything that is "common sense" about property ownership? Then this book is for you and you will be extremely successful. One week after buying this book I refinanced my duplex so as to buy 2 additional properties which would bring in the equivalent of my current working salary. To be clearer, in one week I have doubled my salary but the second half of it is mostly tax-free. If you find nothing compelling in what I have just described then buy another book (perhaps something on the stock market?), but if you want to create a similar situation for yourself, then this book is invaluable. Dolf doesn't take you by the hand through this process, but he shows you how you must change your thinking so that you research and invest more successfully. For the nuts and bolts, there are many other books. For the formula that turns it all into gold, Dolf is your alchemist.
Rating: 
Summary: Good beginner's book
Review: This was a great book for someone needing that little extra push to get into real estate. If you are a veteran investor or even someone who has been in real estate for a little while, you probably won't get anything from this book. I personally got a lot from this book in different areas. Once you get through much of the soft information, you will get to the some good information. I must admit, it doesn't even come close to Rich Dad Poor Dad, but it's an easy read. Again, if you are a beginner, read this.
Rating: 
Summary: A nice read, but short on information
Review: I found this book to be very easy to read, and it should be. There is little, to no, hard information about securing a mortgage or evaluating the value of a property. The author, Dr. Dolf de Roos, spends most of the book formulating an arguement for Real Estate investing over the Stock Market as well as relaying some very nice anecdotes about property he's bought. I put down this book with the same information I picked it up with : buy undervalued property, look at a whole bunch of properties, evaluate the potential return on the property, tax laws can be your friend, and use as little as your own money as possible. There are some elementary formulas for calculating such things as your annual % return, but these are formulas you should be able to develop if you passed 5th grade.
I like the Rich Dad series of books and in general they can be very motivating. This was the fourth book in the series that I have read and I agree that it is by far the weakest. That said, the Rich Dad books should not be read by themselves. Thier anecdotal information should be supplemented with other books containing more formal knowledge, especially this one.
Rating:
Summary: Light weekend reading for someone interested in real estate
Review: Other reviews here have summed up this book well in the fact that it is an incredibly vague motivational type of book more than it teaches you how to invest in real estate at all. It seems that all "Rich Dad" books are vague and such, but at least Rich Dad/Poor Dad gave a different philosophy of how to think about money and such. This book gives nothing more than a sales pitch about how wonderful real estate is and then tries to sell you his other products. I personally have had very bad luck with these types of authors that try to sell the grass that's always greener on the other side. You buy their other books and it just routes you to a home study course which routes you to the seminars which routes you to the personal coaching lectures, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Changing from stocks to real estate
Review: I enjoyed this book and learned much more than I expected. Dr. Deroos is enthusiastic. I have been very much a stock investor and successful. Except for the taxes. The best part of this book is the chapter that compared the long term ramifications of stock vs. real estate investing. The tax advantages of real estate and the leverage have made me start looking around Los Angeles for my first little apartment building. Buy it and read several times. Another great is the audiocassette version of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The 5 cassette pack is unabridged and should be listened to completely once a once until you have made it. Bill Allen, Southern California.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK
Review: well basically this book i found was pretty interesting and loads of reviews that i have read has actually been to the "bad shape" of the book.But i strongly believe that to kow the how-to's,one has to understand the why-to's.Infact it is from the why-to's that loads of information can be achieved.It is not the basic why-to's that i am toking abt,for eg,property values tend to be very stable and stuff like that.These are basic why-to's.The more complex ones are the ones we should learn from for eg,how the real property price can be found out which i am sure most novices wouldn't know how to.So stop grumbling abt the "bad work" on the book and get real.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: Although I liked the first "Rich Dad" book very much, this book was terribly disappointing. Yes, it does make a simplistic case for real estate over stocks, but fails miserably in actually explaining the nuts and bolts of real estate investing. As an Australian, the author seems to know little about the U.S. except that California is growing faster than North Dakota and thus will make a better investment. Yet, he fails to note that most California rentals fail to yield a positive cash flow. And in the coming recession, cash flow is king. This book strikes me as an opportunistic quickie to take advantage of stock market turmoil and the "Rich Dad" brand identitity. For much more depth and "how to" information, I think Investing In Real Estate (Mclean and Eldred) provides a far superior book. It covers every thing mentioned in the de Roos book, plus many topics that aren't discussed at all. Come on Rich Dad, you can do much better than this!
Rating:
Summary: A Blatant Marketing Pitch
Review: Of all the books in the Rich Dad series, this is the weakest. While I had enjoyed mostof RK's books, & found them enlightening, this book in the "advisor series" is long on why to's and very short on how to's. It is, at best, suitable for someone who doesn't understand the benefits of investing in real estate. For the most part, it does a good job of explaining why real estate is an attractive investment vehicle for wealth building in comparison to other more traditional investments. But it doesn't go nearly far enough if you've made the decision to move forward. Given that it is a book on real estate, one would expect that there would be a section (maybe worksheets) that goes through all the calculations & analysis you should run through in the evaluation stage of screening properties. Assumedly, you're supposed to buy the $300 software package to do this. Throughout the book, the author insists that banks are happy to hand over money. However, to get further details on how to obtain such easy financing, you need to buy another of his books, "Mortgage Magic". As an experienced property investor myself, I think he's glossed over many obstacles that will cause problems for a potential investor, seasoned or otherwise. Given that both the financial analysis of deals and their financing are critical aspects of any real estate investment, I find that the exclusion of these two topics renders the book almost useless unless you're just looking for a property primer to excite you to learn more. Assumedly, to get a more complete picture, you'll have to lay out the bucks to buy the other products. Thus, the book, in my view is more of a marketing brochure typical of your more savy corner real estate brokers than a book for those serious enough to follow through.
Rating:
Summary: Want to understand why Real Estate is the BEST investment?
Review: This book is for you. Dolf's matter-of-fact, easy style, shows any real-estate investor who is just starting out why Real Estate wins hands down against any other type of investment. Even for the experienced investor -- Dolf has a few insights into how to put deals together that will maximize your cash flow and increase your chances of success. A great, fun and entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: Advantages of Real Estate over Stock Investing
Review: New Zealander Dr. de Roos learned about investing in real estate while he pursued his education in electrical and electronic engineering. A few weeks before getting his Ph.D., one real estate deal netted him $35,000. His best job offer was to earn $32,000 a year. He thought. Why bother? And so began a full-time real estate investing career that led to him teaching real estate investing with Rich Dad, Poor Dad author, Robert T. Kiyosaki. Both played Monopoly as children, and found the real thing even more fun and rewarding as adults. From those experiences, Mr. Kiyosaki reports that 'Dolf de Roos walks his talk.' For fun, they will go out looking at property together in Phoenix where they both live now. "If driving around town looking at properties is a chore for you, then property is probably not for you," says de Roos. In simple comparisons, Dr. de Roos shows you how property investors can earn hundreds of times the returns of stock investors. He had noticed as a young man that many rich people either made or kept their money in property. Some of the advantages over stocks include greater stability in value, ability to borrow almost all of the purchase price, tax laws that allow deducting expenses for depreciation on an appreciating asset, potential to buy below market value, possibility of making improvements that add value beyond their cost, opportunity to refinance to extract cash without selling the asset, cash income to cover carrying costs, little need for day-to-day supervision because you can hire property managers to take care of almost everything, and real estate values moving up consistently. The drawback of real estate investing is that you will invest a lot of time getting started. For example, you will probably have to look at 100 properties to possibly buy one. If you want to earn a living from real estate investing, you will look at many thousands of properties before you will have enough invested to become inactive. During those beginning years, you can be vulnerable to problems with renting or fixing specific properties, finding time to be your own property manager before you can afford one, and setbacks during times of rising interest rates or falling property values. Having established the potential benefits in part one, part two goes on to describe what you need to do. It begins with finding property to look at, looks at analyzing potential deals, recommends how to negotiate and submit offers, shows how to use more of other people's money and time, describes improvements you should look to make, and explains the risk of government involvement. After reviewing Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I got lots of questions about the tax advantages of real estate investing. For people who do not understand the subject, this book won't be enough. Although it has a lot of case histories, this book doesn't do any of them in enough detail for a reader to see exactly what happens throughout the investing and ownership process. This book also is accurate only if you pick locations where prices move up annually at a pretty consistent rate. Although one of the eight rules is be a countercyclical investor, the book needs to emphasize how much more money you make when you buy at the peak in an interest rate cycle and refinance at the bottom of the same cycle, and how the economic cycle affects pricing of property and your ability to rent it. Also, you need to take advantage of trends. With the aging of people born after World War II, this will mean a shift in where property is attractive in the decade ahead from communities where it's a good place to raise children to those where it's good to retire. There's a vague allusion to these issues in the book, but much more is needed. For example, a new factor like foreign terrorism in major U.S. cities could have a large effect on future property values in those cities. After you read this book, think about what allows you to sleep best at night about your finances. For some, that will be part in real estate. Invest in what gives you the best return in piece of mind, as well as income!
|
