Properties22

1. john zack Said,

   Review by john zack for Investing in Real Estate
   Rating:
   I bought the top 3 r.e. books (Investing in Real Estate, Real Estate Riches, Unofficial Guide). I could have bought just this one. It covers EVERYTHING the other books go over, AND it gives you FAR MORE DETAILS and far better explanations. I urge you to compare the contents–buying foreclosures, buying bargains, creative improvements, financing, paying less taxes, predicting appreciation, valuing properties. You will see what I mean. While Unofficial clearly beats Riches, it still gives you wrong or glossed over info much of the time. Unofficial is especially weak on financing, buying bargains, foreclosures, and valuation, though it’s pretty good on management. I can offer this critique because Investing In Real Estate set the standard from which I could make an intelligent comparison. All of those readers who rated UNOFFICIAL with five stars could not have known much about real estate. They surely believed that they learned more than they actually did. Over and over, I read similar topics in IRE and Unofficial, and each time I developed my understanding from IRE and quickly spotted the glibness of Unofficial. Don’t take my word for it. Go into a bookstore and compare for yourself. As to Real Estate Riches, DON”T BOTHER–unless you’re a rich dad groupie.

2. Cassidy Uranne Said,

   Review by Cassidy Uranne for Investing in Real Estate
   Rating:
   This is the 5th r.e. book on investing I’ve read. But it was the first one to recognize that we’re no longer living in the 1980s or even the early 90s. Sorry folks you can’t buy foreclosures at pennies on the dollar. You can’t find “motivated” sellers who will let you steal their properties for 60 cents on the dollar. Non-qual assumptions? Good luck trying to find one that’s workable. Cash back at closing–dream on! Yes the gurus will lead you to believe that anyone can use these and many other outdated and super risky “creative” techniques. I know from experience because I wasted much money, time and effort chasing after their promised rainbows. Luckily, this book offered welcome relief. Factual, up-to-date, and very specific about the real opportunities (and pitfalls) in foreclosures, high leverage, property improvements, and tenant management. Do yourself a favor. Before you run amok with illusive hopes, read this “state-of-the art” guide. Some years ago I read a great book (Million Dollar Habits) by Robert Ringer. The first chapter was called “The Reality Principle.” Well, Investing In Real Estate stands as one good dose of reality. This is the most real-world introduction I’ve found.

3. Anonymous Said,

   Review by for Investing in Real Estate
   Rating:
   This book is a very long read, so be prepared for it. It is jam packed with information and is probably the best real estate investment book I’ve read so far. The difference between other books and this one is that there is no hype or BS. I can’t stand Carlton Sheets and just love the slamming of the “investor wannabe who just graduated a nothing down course.” This book puts all hype to rest and reads facts. If there was a college textbook for Real Estate Investing this would be the one. I would have to say the only downside is the lack of detail when dealing with Probate and Sheriff’s Sales. I think they were so brief is due to the localized nature of them and differing laws from state to state. Other than that is excellent. But like I said, it’s a long read, but well worth it.

4. K. Johnson Said,

   Review by K. Johnson for Investing in Real Estate
   Rating:
   You’re not just buying a book to read here. The amount of information in “Investing In Real Estate” makes it an investment. These are the facts. The way things are. There has been spiked interest in RE recently because of the recent low interest rates which has caused an upsurge home-buying in many parts of the country. With all of the real estate courses, seminars, tapes and books being marketed, how rare is it today to hear the facts and not just the hyperbole? This is the most comprehensive and detailed, to-the-point real estate book available. If you’re a normal home owner and want to increase your home’s value with some shrewd fixing-up before you sell it, you can get tons of pointers here. Want to find the best bargain with your first purchase or your new home? Manage your property(ies)?
   What criteria do you use to find the best property? How do you check to make sure? Creative financing is also covered. This is not just for those investing in apartments or a duplex but everyone. Want to rent-out your house? You will learn the basic laws and procedures, and how to write up the most appropriate lease and how to cross your “T’s” and dot your “I’s.” Almost all of us know people who’ve rented their homes out and had “bad tenants.” You’ll learn how to screen properly here to avoid them, and how you can use the (local) law. There are many simple and proven math models on how to calculate the return you’ll get from buying a detached house, condo, duplex, tri, fourplex, or multi-unit apartment complex. The Gross Rent Muliplyer (GRM), Income Capitalization “Caps,” Net Operating Income (NOI), Return on Investment (ROI), and Before Tax Cash Flow (BTCF) etc. Add these simple equations and formulas to the fact that you likely live in the community (familiar with) you’ll be buying/investing in, and you’ll have the best chance to earn some positive Cash Flow, and choose the best option available. Ways to evaluate neighborhoods and areas that are up-and-coming, paying less taxes, and using depreciation and deductions properly are also covered. Very important for homebuyers and owners yes, but this is the most comprehensive book written for people who are looking to purchase property to plan ahead.

5. Hoppaguy Said,

   Review by Hoppaguy for Investing in Real Estate
   Rating:
   I’ve read many real estate books and this one is the best at covering the broadest spectrum. The best part about the book is that as other reviewers have stated, the book is up-to-date and not outdated like some other “get rich” quick real estate books. Those times are over. One word of caution is that the book does not touch on multi-family properties and could use a little more by the way of how to measure performance.

6. Finance Guy Said,

   Review by Finance Guy for The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012
   Rating:
   1st, Harry Dent is NOT an economist, he works with demographics. 2nd, in his last book “The Next Great Bubble Boom: How to Profit from the Greatest Boom in History: 2006-2010″ he predicted the Dow to be 40,000 in 2009. You call that spot on?? Is that just a finer detail?? Was 2006 the start of the Greatest Boom in History as the title indicates? Harry Dent is very good at putting quotes in books and his newsletters that he can draw on as being right no matter what happens much like a psychic reading. When he has made big calls to the extent of making it the title of a book, he was dead wrong. Both AIM and Mass Mutual once had mutual funds based on the Dent philosophy and were sub-managed by him. Both have gone bust as being some of the worst performing mutual funds in recent history. If you followed his investment advise over the last 5 years you would be flat broke by now.

7. Befragt Said,

   Review by Befragt for The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012
   Rating:
   The specifics of Dent’s thesis are more than covered in other reviews, so I’ll focus on considerations that someone might want to know when trying to decide whether to buy the book or follow its advice.

   First off, the book is fairly “readable.” Although Dent uses charts and graphs frequently (indeed, his methodology is to study past demographic trends to ascertain long term stock market performance), he presents his conclusions in an easy-to-follow format.

   Secondly, Dent does an excellent job supporting his central thesis that demographic trends can affect economic cycles. His book provides a well-thought out argument that the US, and indeed, the world economy is going to continue to decline as the result of the deflation of three bubbles, the stock market, real estate, and commodities.

   Thirdly, it appears Dent has previously made several significant contrarian predictions that have proven correct, perhaps most notably the collapse of the Japanese stock market in the late 1980′s and the tech bubble of the early 2000s. While Dent’s predictions aren’t always 100% accurate, they do appear to often hit near the mark (with the exception of his prediction that the Dow would hit 40,000, and probably a few others that I am unaware of).

   One thing that I find interesting is that, using demographics, Dent not only predicts economic cycles, he explains WHY the economy behaves as it does. In this regard, I find that Dent’s use of charts and past cycles is more persuasive that many other authors who simply identify patterns and make predictions based upon them (think of the Superbowl winner predictions, skirt length, or what have you).

   The major downside to the book, to me, are the fairly constant adds for “free e-mail updates” – do these e-mails include solicitations to buy Dent’s newsletter? I don’t know, but I sometimes felt like the book was a teaser to sell more stuff to me. I also felt that Dent’s free confession of mis-calling Dow 40,000 cut a couple ways – I appreciated his candor, but his post-facto rationales at points led me to wonder what might be missing from his current book. He’s certainly had his share of misses, and it brings to mind the old saying that “even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

   Anyone considering this book might also want to review behavioral finance – the notion of “availability error” (viewing current events through superficially similar previous events) and “confirmation bias” (we observe events that confirm our hypotheses). Behavioral psychologists note that the use of so-called judgmental heuristics (shortcuts to manage large amount of information) can make assessments of market odds difficult. I can’t say whether Dent’s predictions suffer from any of these flaws, but readers may wish to consider books like Taleb’s “The Black Swan” (one key point being humans see patterns where there are none), Paulos’ “A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market” (overview of behavioral psychology) or even Dreman’s “Contrarian Investment Strategies: the Next Generation” (extensive discussion of pattern-seeking) before committing their assets as suggested in Dent’s book. This is not to criticize the book itself, but simply to suggest that as with anything that purports to predict the future, readers should go in with their eyes open.

   I can’t say that I’d follow Dent’s stategies for investing, but the book at least made me think about how demographics could affect the economy. For that, I’d say its a decent read.
   

8. Professor Donald Mitchell Said,

   Review by Professor Donald Mitchell for The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012
   Rating:
   The main reason to read The Great Depression Ahead is to see the most persuasive case that can be made for an extended economic decline in the United States and other developed countries. After understanding that case, you’ll be in a better position to make decisions that will leave you better off regardless if the economy recovers quickly or keeps sliding down for several years (as it did in the early 1930s). Mr. Dent is better than most forecasters for this purpose because he provides lots of documentation for why he develops the scenario forecasts that he does.

   What’s the essence of the case he’s making?

   1. Developed countries are facing many years when there will be declining numbers of people in their peak spending years.

   2. A multi-decade commodity price cycle is about to peak to be followed by lower prices.

   3. The burst bubble in real estate will be with us for some time, and prices will fall further and longer than most people expect.

   4. There are no new innovations waiting in the wings to drive economic growth forward.

   He takes that scenario and develops investing, business, and personal financial planning solutions over the next century.

   The essence of the advice is to play it safe for now by being in short-term Treasuries and to later switch into Treasury bonds after interest rates rise a lot (expecting that the bond prices will soar as the yields once again fall to near zero). If you can sell your house now, sell it and rent. If you can sell your business now, do it. Otherwise, play it safe, hunker down, and wait for competitors to disappear.

   Economic forecasts are notoriously wrong. In fact, some forecasters “predict” the opposite of the consensus. Financial forecasts are even worse.

   Mr. Dent is famous for vastly overestimating how much the stock market would climb in the 2000s period. In this book he explains what he missed (commodity and real estate inflation coupled with unsettled world conditions due to terrorism and the U.S. trying to stamp out terrorism is unlikely places like Iraq).

   He repeats and updates all the graphs you saw in earlier books and adds some new ones. He has so many cycles that I wasn’t quite sure how he puts them all together. He offers free updates on this book’s forecasts via an address on his Web site.

   I’m pretty pessimistic about the economy and the financial markets over the next 18 months, but I can see that Mr. Dent is much more pessimistic than I am. He wrote this book before the U.S. and other governments began spending over $10 trillion to prop up the economy. As we saw in the second quarter of 2008, the government can spend enough to prop up the economy for a few months. There seems to be a will by government leaders to spend another $10-20 trillion in this cause. Since you and I will pay the bill, I can see why they are enthusiastic. Otherwise, everyone will want to kick them out of office as the economy sags and stays down.

   Don’t take the book seriously. Learn from the assumptions, keep your eyes open, retain lots of cash in safe places, and look for terrific bargains.

9. Jake Gay Said,

   Review by Jake Gay for The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012
   Rating:
   This is not a book for the ages, i.e. this book will not be read at all ten years from now. But even as for reading it in the present, this book pretends to be an exhaustive summary of today’s illness rather than what it actually is: amongst other things, a play to get scared folk, wannabe financiers and wannabe real-estate types to shell out the cash to subscribe to Harry Dent’s newsletter.

   The only positive about this book is that if you are completely ignorant, then this book has some information. But it is precisely these people that are easy to lead down the wrong path. The information about demographics is illustrative and makes sense, if you can separate it from the claims and propaganda that surround it. And finally, none of this book will be new at all to those who are interested in such things, the information all being available.

   This book is shilled by plenty of financial people, a head of a Federal Reserve bank and even a governor. To counter such power, let me critique it chapter by chapter:
   
   Prologue – Sounds very reasonable. Makes the case for everything being explained by an analysis of a lot of ‘cycles’ in history, and the process of Dent’s continuing evolution of his research methods.
   
   1.The Great Crash of late 2009-2010 – A full chapter of forecasts without any explanation why. Many of them sound reasonable, but it slowly starts to stretch your belief.
   
   2.The Fundamental Trends that drive our economy – Contains the two cycles that make sense, a demographic cycle and a technology cycle. However, the combination of the two cycles at the end of the chapter seems wrong.
   
   3.New Geopolitical, Commodity and Recurring cycles – Is he dreaming? This chapter seems fantastical. A civilization cycle every 5000 years?? A terrorist cycle every 8-9 years (based on 1993 WTC and 9/11, and therefore 2010!)??? Or, is that some kind of warning?
   
   4.The Greatest Bubble ever in real estate – This seems to be his area of expertise. Combines demographics to make sense in different real estate categories.
   
   5.Echo boomers continue to move – This chapter on migration makes sense ONLY given existing assumptions. But what if Americans cannot as many cars as they have in the past? What if oil reaches new peaks? These fundamentals will change migration trends.
   
   6.Changing Global Demographic trends – This might be new to many people, but if you’re aware of this already, again there’s nothing new. There is an investigation of many individual countries across the world.
   
   7.The Clustering of Risks and Returns – Seems designed to intimidate and seems out of place in a supposedly non-technical book. A clustering of various mathematical concepts and didn’t seem to have any connection (at least to me, and I don’t think I’m dumb), and the chapter ends by stating, out of the blue, that conventional investing strategies won’t work.
   
   8.Investment, Business and Life Strategies for the great winter – This chapter has his investing ideas. Invest in bonds; How to invest each year from now on; and what to do with your business, education and healthcare in the coming years.
   
   9.Political and Social impacts of the Great Depression – This chapter makes sense and ends with forecasts that might or might not be true.

   All in all, this book sounds like a wishlist of what Dent wants to come true. But is it reliable? He states that inflation cannot happen, but what if it does. Will you lose your money? Wolves like these among the sheep make this book dangerous, which is why the book insert has the ‘Read this at your Own Risk’ disclaimer. Ultimately, the topic he is addressing is a very complex topic which needs time and effort to be understood. But there is a mass market for instant comprehension that Dent is trying to satisfy. All said and done, in the Great Depression, the financial sector will collapse from being 15% of the US economy to less than 5%, and people like Dent have to find ways and means to survive. What better than coming up with a mass-market bestseller to enrich oneself and continue doing so.
   

10. T. Church Said,

    Review by T. Church for The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012
    Rating:
    I can’t believe this guy is back again. Just recently, I happened to see “Roaring 2000s” still sitting in my bookcase, laughed hard, and threw it in the trash. I read it back in 1999 because it was on all the bestsellers list. Everyone was talking about the Y2K and was grasping for anything that will shine a light on what’s to come. It was an interesting read, but most of his predictions did NOT come true. He said the technology of the 21st century is like the auto industry in the early 20th century, so invest in the internet and the technology now. I thank the starts I didn’t have any money back then to follow his advice. Not that I expected all his predictions to come true, no one has a crystal ball. But, Harry Dent is way off. (Dow never reached 35,000 in 2008, not 25,000, not even 15,000.) He is brilliant at making money for sure- he seems know what people want to hear at the moment and writes a book about it with an eye-catching cover, after the trend had already begun. Then He exaggerates it to seem like he is ahead of the curve. Duh, US has been in recession for over a year by the time this book comes out.

    Please do not reward someone who’s feeding on your fear. If you read his previous books, you’d know that he built his wealth by selling books and not by investing.

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