The Complete Guide to Real Estate Finance for Investment Properties: How to Analyze Any Single-Family, Multifamily, or Commercial Property

Rating:
Summary: Great book for the beginner and good review for the pro
Review: I have read many books dealing with real estate finance and while they all have some merits, this seems to cover most areas sufficiently. The only caveat is do not buy this book if you are going into commercial property because it does not cover triple net leases or any other analysis that might come up with commerical properity. However if you want to learn about returns with single family or multi family buildings, then this is the book for you. Berges other book on multi family buildings is also quite informative.

Rating:
Summary: It's About Time!
Review: It's about time somebody wrote a book that really deals with the financial aspects of real estate in an in-depth and informative way. I've seen a couple of other real estate finance books that sell for over $100 that are intended to be used as text books and deal more in the realm of theory. Steve Berges' book takes the theory found in college level text books and simplifies it so that the average person can understand it. He then takes it a step further by showing the reader how the theory can be applied to real world situations by providing actual examples. According to the jacket of the book and some of the comments inside, the author has an MBA in finance and is also an active real estate investor, which suggests to me that he knows what he's talking about.

Since math never was one of my best subjects, I found the step-by-step examples and analysis to be very helpful. Berges covered many topics related to finance including future value and present value concepts, understanding income capitalization, IRRs, ROIs, NPVs, income and balance statements, and much more. All in all, the book was very helpful to me in understanding how to analyze income producing properties such as apartments and commercial buildings. The author did an excellent job in writing about a topic that has been all but neglected by the so-called TV gurus.