by Eric Tyson and Robert S. Griswald
Real Estate Investing For Dummies®, 4th Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2020 by Eric Tyson and Robert S. Griswold
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019948942
ISBN 978-1-119-60176-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-60177-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-60178-4 (ebk)
Welcome to Real Estate Investing For Dummies, 4th Edition! We’re delighted to be your tour guides. Throughout this book, we emphasize three fundamental cornerstones that we believe to be true:
Real Estate Investing For Dummies, 4th Edition, covers tried and proven real estate investing strategies that real people, just like you, use to build wealth. Specifically, this book explains how to invest in single-family homes; detached and attached condominiums; small apartments including duplexes, triplexes, and multiple-family residential properties up to 20 to 30 units; commercial properties, including office, industrial, and retail; and raw (undeveloped) land. We also cover indirect real estate investments such as real estate investment trusts (REITs) that you can purchase through the major stock exchanges or a real estate mutual fund.
We’ve always relied on tried-and-true methods of real estate investing, and our core advice is as true today as it was before the real estate downturn in the late 2000s.
If you expect us (in infomercial-like fashion) to tell you how to become an overnight multimillionaire, this is definitely not the book for you. And please allow us to save you money, disappointment, and heartache by telling you that such hucksters are only enriching themselves through their grossly overpriced tapes and seminars.
Unlike so many real estate book authors, we don’t have an alternative agenda in writing this book. Many real estate investing books are nothing more than infomercials for high-priced DVDs or seminars the author is selling. The objective of our book is to give you the best crash course in real estate investing so that if you choose to make investments in income-producing properties, you may do so wisely and confidently.
Here are some good reasons why we — Eric Tyson and Robert Griswold — are a dynamic duo on your side:
Robert Griswold has extensive hands-on experience as a real estate investor who has worked with properties of all types and sizes. He is also the author of Property Management Kit For Dummies (Wiley) and was the author of two popular syndicated real estate newspaper columns for more than 20 years. He has appeared for more than 15 years as the NBC-TV on-air real estate expert for Southern California. And for nearly 15 years, he was the host of the most popular and longest running real estate radio show in the country — Real Estate Today! with Robert Griswold on Clear Channel Communications.
Robert also holds the Counselor of Real Estate (CRE), Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM), Professional Community Association Manager (PCAM), and Certified Property Manager (CPM) designations. He earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees in real estate and related fields from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
Eric Tyson is a former financial counselor, lecturer, and coauthor of the national bestseller Home Buying For Dummies (Wiley), as well as the author or coauthor of numerous other bestselling books in the For Dummies series, such as Personal Finance, Investing, Mutual Funds, and Small Business.
Eric has counseled thousands of clients on a variety of personal finance, investment, and real estate quandaries and questions. A former management consultant to Fortune 500 financial service firms, Eric is dedicated to teaching people to better manage their personal finances. For more than 25 years, he has successfully invested in real estate and securities and started and managed several businesses. He earned an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics at Yale.
Whenever an author sits down to write a book, he has a particular audience in mind. Because of this, he must make some assumptions about who his reader is and what that reader is looking for. Here are a few assumptions we’ve made about you:
If any of these descriptions hit home for you, you’ve come to the right place.
Throughout this book, you can find friendly and useful icons to enhance your reading pleasure and to note specific types of information. Here’s what each icon means:
In addition to the content of this book, you can access some related material online. Head to www.dummies.com
and type in “Real Estate Investing For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the search box to find additional tips for investing.
If you have the time and desire, we encourage you to read this book in its entirety. It provides you with a detailed picture of how to maximize your returns while minimizing your risks in the real estate market. But you may also choose to read selected portions. That’s one of the great things (among many) about For Dummies books. You can readily pick and choose the information you read based on your individual needs. Just scan the table of contents or index for the topics that interest you the most.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Understand that real estate is just one of many available investment options for you and grasp why you may want to consider it in your investment portfolio.
Identify the pros and cons of managing rental properties and how you can fit real estate into your overall personal financial plans.
Examine the gamut of real estate options so that you know which ones may be better choices for you, depending on your circumstances.
Separate fact from fiction when it comes to passive real estate investments (for example, real estate investment trusts) and riskier approaches like no money down and property flipping.
Begin to assemble a team of competent professionals who can assist you with investing in real estate.