How to Build a Real Estate Empire,by the gang at Marcus and Millichap
What a great strategy, for a real estate investment brokerage firm to write a book that encourages people to learn about how to build wealth through investing in, you got it, real estate. What's even more brilliant is to highlight 4 of their (most likely) best clients and tell their success stories. Hats off the gang at Marcus and Millichap, they are definitely an aggressive firm that is going places!
Although the book claims to be for the more seasoned investor, there is much to be learned even for a beginner as long as they are interested enough to stay with it. The first four chapters tell about four investors and their successes. I would like it to have been more in-depth but you can get more than a few sound strategies from the short chapters (one per investor) that cover each investor.For example:
Ben Leeds says, "I am primarily an apartment investor. The multifamily segment is more definable, more predictable-a necessary commodity and more responsive to affective management. It is also easiest to finance...."
He also says he regrets everything he ever sold.
Leeds has 75 separate apartment projects totaling over 1,600 units with a value over $160,000,000.
I would have liked more than 25 pages about his story.
Next up is John Hamilton who built his real estate portfolio up from $0 to $200 million with some major hiccups along the way. I also would have liked more than 11 ½ pages on him.
A good tip from Gerald Marcil who has a portfolio of $150 million is to constantly monitor your holdings to see if the equity could be better utilized, with less risk someplace else. Something else he mentions that I am a big believer in partnerships. If someone wants to be a part time real estate investor, they should partner with someone who is full time. His chapter ends with, "If it was profitable and easy, everyone would do it."
The story of these investors absolutely shows that it is possible to build a huge real estate portfolio starting from practically nothing but determination and hard work.
The book then moves on to a bunch of interesting statistics and annotations which read a bit like a textbook, but are well worth glancing at and remembering them to use as a reference in the future. Some of the topics included are: a growing population and how it will affect real estate, lots of different market indicators and some great reference web sites. There is also a great section on real estate partnerships and how they can be structured.
Having written a book myself, A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate, by Kevin Kingston and having built a real estate portfolio of $25,000,000 starting from less than zero just 5 years ago, I will say that the concepts in this book are 100% worth knowing and the inspiration you can get from people that have built $100-$200 million portfolios are worth listening to.
By Kevin Kingston, author of: A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate
My Blog:
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/KevinKingston
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