Real estate is a big investment. When making any significant purchase in life, don’t rely on just one source of information. Read the best real estate books, listen to podcasts, and gather all the information available. Before buying property, I literally did months of research. Anything I could get my hands on from blog posts to podcasts I read and listened to. But mainly, I searched for the best real estate books.
Table of Contents
- Why Would I Want to Read the Best Real Estate Books?
- Knowledge
- Three Of The Best Real Estate Books On The Market
- The Book on Rental Property Investing
- The Podcast With the Book
- The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller
- Mindset is Key
- Getting the Money: The Simple System for Getting Private Money for Your Real Estate Deals by Susan Lassiter-Lyons
- Final Thoughts
Why Would I Want to Read the Best Real Estate Books?
Being financially wealthy is when your money is making you money. So much in fact that you don’t need to work if you don’t want to. In simpler terms, your income isn’t tied to your time. Next to investing in the stock market, real estate is the second-fastest vehicle to build long-term wealth. Wealthy people pay themselves first and take their money to invest in assets like stocks, bonds, real estate.
Basically, anything that puts money in your pocket each month is an asset. Real estate is a real-life example of this. If you owned four rental properties (debt-free), you could have around 5-6K in monthly income.
How sweet is that? Wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could invest in real estate using only a small amount of your personal savings? Wouldn’t it be even better if you could live off the passive income from your real estate investments? Does it surprise you to know that both are possible? Similarly, like any other investment, real estate investing also runs the risk of you losing your investment/hard-earned dollars.
Fortunately, there is a key success in real estate investing. And that my friends is….
Knowledge
“Next to investing in the stock market, real estate is the second-fastest vehicle to build long-term wealth”.
After all, knowledge is power. Likewise, the more you know about investing before you get started, the greater success you will have. No shocker there.
To answer my first question, “Why would you want to read a real-estate book”? My answer is obvious: To build wealth.
And that is where this collection of the best real estate books comes into play. There are literally hundreds of books on how to buy anything from your first home to investment properties.
Some are good, some are of questionable quality, and some just give downright crappy advice. That happens with all types of books. Even day trading books.
Below are three of my favorites. I suggest pulling out your credit card cause I know you’re going to want to buy them.
Three Of The Best Real Estate Books On The Market
- The Book on Rental Property Investing
- The Millionaire Real Estate Investor
- Getting the Money
There is a ton of information out there, and to try to read it all is a fool’s game. For these reasons, I thought I whittle down the list to 3. Start with these and then move on from there.
Let’s get to it…
The Book on Rental Property Investing
I’ve read through many real estate books, but none have come anywhere close to this one. Brandon Turner―co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, active real estate investor, and bestselling author ―has one goal: to help you win at the real estate game.
With 400 pages of in-depth advice, The Book on Rental Property Investing gives you practical and exciting strategies to build significant cash flow with your rentals.
Turner’s book is a comprehensive guide with in-depth discussions and clear, concise (an honest rarity these days) examples on searching for properties, funding them, screening tenants, managing tenants, and everything in between.
At this point, it’s safe to say new and experienced investors alike will find his book useful. The pages are filled with easy to understand dialogue on building a realistic plan, finding incredible deals, analyzing properties, building a team, finance your rentals, and much more; everything you need to become a millionaire rental property investor.
The Podcast With the Book
For those of you who love podcasts as I do, please check out their podcast biggerpockets.com. In my opinion, they are the real estate authority, the Facebook of Real Estate investing). Combined with the information in the book, my knowledge has skyrocketed.
Another huge selling point in my books is that Brandon is absolutely hilarious, no lie. For those writers out there, you know how incredibly difficult it is to translate comedy into writing, but he nails it.
His comedic timing is incredible, and he’s genuinely funny. Apart from this, his writing style made learning about tax laws and other technical terms so much fun.
Although the book focuses primarily on smaller multifamily residential properties (2-24 units), you can still apply the principles to larger properties as well.
On the whole, if you’re a newbie interested in the real estate niche, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I learned a ton from this book and one which I most certainly look forward to rereading time and time again. Unlike other real estate books, this one provides a spectacular checklist to get started, along with a few tips and tricks of the game.
The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller
Coming in at a close second for those thinking of investing in real estate to build wealth or escape the shackles of a job, this book is a must.
Gary Keller is an excellent writer and provides you with the motivation to get started. It gets you excited and gives an excellent roadmap to the journey of real estate investing.
Keller goes on to describe several strategies on real estate investing and creates a cohesive and detailed account. Keller shows you how to minimize the risk of real estate investing by following a few proven models that give you the wiggle room to deal with the unexpected.
What I like the most about this book is it teaches you not only how to invest in real estate but gives you the mindset of how a real investor needs to be.
Mindset is Key
Just like in stock trading, your mindset needs to be in the right place. Everyone can increase their wealth if they act like an investor, and this book teaches you how to be an investor.
Once Keller teaches you the principles of wealth accumulation, money flow, and the investor mindset, he focuses on wealth accumulation through real estate. He gives you the basic models you need to follow.
A word of caution, however, it’s long. Like 400 pages long. I think Keller could have gotten his message out in 200 pages, but that’s not for me to decide.
As predicted, this book, like many other real estate investing books, seems to promote highly leveraged positions on severely discounted properties. Just keep this in mind as leverage or margin can be a slippery slope like in stock trading.
Nonetheless, Keller clearly hit the pavement and did a ton of research with actual investors (himself included) in the trenches.
That alone is valuable information, the information you’d be wise to heed. Overall, this book will inspire you to start investing and is a great read, especially for newbies!
Getting the Money: The Simple System for Getting Private Money for Your Real Estate Deals by Susan Lassiter-Lyons
If you need to raise private capital to fund your real estate deals and have no clue where to start, this book is exactly what you need!
Real Estate investing is a proven wealth builder, but the barriers to entry can be tough unless you have a money tree in your back yard.
You need money to make real estate purchases, and what this book does is show you how to get money for your real estate deals.
When you read Getting the Money, you’ll uncover three gems. First is a simple framework to raise private capital for your real estate.
Second, the three types of private investors and how to approach each of them without looking like a complete fool. And thirdly, how to close deals while making the process fun and profitable.
This book solidifies my belief that anyone can join the real estate investing arena; it’s not an exclusive privilege of the wealthy.
Susan shows us how she uses creativity and personal authenticity to raise millions of dollars to invest in real estate. I found this to be incredibly inspiring!
I especially liked that she set dedicated an entire chapter at the beginning of the book to talk about honesty and authenticity. How fantastic is that!
Susan knows the importance of personal credibility in any business dealing. To be honest, that lesson didn’t have to be in the front of the book, but she placed it there for a reason. For that, it lends credibility to her as an author and to the book in general.
Final Thoughts
As always, please do your own research before undertaking any investing endeavor. Whether reading the best real estate books or researching stock market sectors.
Have faith in yourself and surround yourself with mentors and like-minded people; people who are on your journey. It reminds me of when I first started trading stocks. I had no idea where to start. So you know what I did?
I invested my time, money and energy in a community that provided me with quality education and mentors; that community was Bullish Bears. Don’t forget to take our free online trading courses.
