Mortgage-Free!: Radical Strategies for Home Ownership (Real Goods Solar Living Book)

Rating:
Summary: Freedom is not radical!
Review: This book could serve well as a "bible" for anyone interested in stepping out of the rat race! Mortgage-Free! : Radical Strategies for Home Ownership is an excelent read! This book contains good down to Earth, anecdotal, practical, useful information for aquiring land, planning and building a healthy home for you and your family, and finding quality life outside of the mainstream dog-eat-dog society. This book is an excelent primer for anyone who wants better!

Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone who wants to take control of life.
Review: This is not just another book on buying real estate. If one applies the strategies Roy presents you can only improve your standard of living. This is just not a book of theory. Roy is living what he says and gives numerous examples of other families going the same. This book is a must have for anyone that is considering building their own house and becoming self-sufficient. The book contains various strategies on achieving mortgage free home-ownership and includes an though appendix of resources.

Rating:
Summary: Radical but not realistic for the average person or family
Review: Who has this much time to take off of work to build a house almost entirely by yourself? Or has the skills to do most of that work? My father and grandfather and, indeed, one of my nephews, are homebuilders not just for their own families but for others as well. That took years of training. If you are just starting out, perhaps the advice to just keep adding on as you can afford it is good, but most people aren't settled down into an area for the first several years out of school or after marriage. My husband and I got this book hoping it would give us advice to minimumize a mortgage but it is really about building from the ground up and that requires time and skills we don't have. If you have such time, are a bit savings, or even a lot of house building skills (or family who lives near by and will help) then you'll probably find this book far more useful than we did. Ultimately, there are things we don't know how to do and taking the time to learn is more likely to result is damage to the home or our pocketbook later on. I was glad to know that for those who can, this book should be helpful in a general way.