Real Estate Book RecommendationsBuilding Wealth One House at a Time by John Schaub - This is the first book I personally recommend to someone brand new to investing. It's a very easy read and good for overarching concepts without getting bogged down in the technical details that often slow down beginners. There are some caveats to that book (I think his appreciation assumptions are unrealistic, which is the biggest flaw, IMO), but overall it's a solid place to start to wrap your head around the various concepts.
After that you will need to decide what you what to do in Real Estate to decide what path to start researching.
There's real estate books for every topic under the sun. Someone wanting to landlord versus rehab versus wholesale versus focus on SFRs versus commercial versus mobile homes versus mobile home parks versus storage units, etc. etc. etc. should all be focused on different things. So what are you looking to do?
Figure out what niche you want to focus on, and then target some good books in that area.
That being said, here's a few recommendations of some more "generic" books that may help you in the more common real estate pursuits.
Investing in Real Estate by McLean & Eldred is a good general knowledge book.
2 Years to a Million in Real Estate by Martinez and
The Weekend Millionaire's Secrets to Investing in Real Estate by Summey and Dawson are both decent books (both give fairly generic advice, but good to reinforce the concepts to make sure your head is fully wrapped around them).
What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow... And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Gallinelli is a good book with lots of formulas if you're into the math part of deal analysis. Read a mini-review of Gallinelli's Cash Flow book by forum member grantmeaname
right here.
The Unofficial Guide to Managing Rental Properties by M. Prandi is great. Lots of gems in it. I actually had it in PDF and loved it so much I bought a physical copy for my bookshelf.
Landlording: A Handymanual for Scrupulous Landlords and Landladies Who Do It Themselves by Leigh Robinson is a useful guide for someone landlording their own properties. It's fairly large, and better used as a reference manual than read straight through.
Many (all?) of those you should be able to find used (on Amazon, for example).
Other recommended reading:
BiggerPockets.com - their
Blog and
Podcast are both quite informative, and their
forums can be a good source of quick information as well.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad is often cited by real estate investors as an inspiration source, but I'm not even bothering to link to it for a number of reasons. In any event, it doesn't have much in the way of real estate investing, beyond "you should do it" instead of buying liabilities.
And, of course, experience is the best teacher, so you'll learn by actually getting out there and
doing it. But since a book is much quicker to do than a real estate deal, get as much knowledge into your head as you can - without succumbing to analysis paralysis - before you do so.
If you are thinking about going in a certain direction with your real estate investing, and want a specific book recommendation, please PM me and I'll let you know, and add it to this thread.
If you have any of your own books to recommend that have not been mentioned yet, feel free to post them, with a short description. If you just want to discuss these books, please do so over in the Real Estate Book Recommendations Discussion Thread.
[MODERATOR NOTE:] Posts in this thread that are not direct recommendations of a new book not yet listed(e.g. a post saying "Thanks!" or "I read X book - already recommended - and it's good") will be ruthlessly deleted pruned in order to keep this thread "clean" to use as a resource. If you want to discuss the books in this thread, or ask questions, please use this thread: Real Estate Book Recommendations Discussion Thread. Please don't use any affiliate links in this thread. [/END MODERATOR NOTE]