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The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apartment Buildings
Whether you?re a first-time real estate investor or a seasoned professional, The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apartment Buildings helps you map out your future, find apartment buildings at a fair price, finance purchases, and manage your properties. Now revised and expanded, this Second Edition includes tax planning advice, case studies of real acquisitions, and appendixes that add detail to the big picture. Plus, it includes a handy glossary of all the terms investors need to know, helpful sample forms that make paperwork quick and easy, and updated real estate forecasts. With this comprehensive guide at hand you?ll find profits easy to come by.
336 pages, Paperback
First published November 16, 2001
82 people are currently reading
333 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 11, 2021
35th book of 2021: Incomplete, Incorrect
There are many poorly written books on real estate; this is one. The amount of content that relates to motivation and feel good stories is usually inversely related with the usefulness of the book, a 'chicken soup index' if you will. Complete guide is about 50/50, and even brings a story direct from Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Perhaps more unique however, is that there are few books whose advice I wholeheartedly disagree with. The author shows a clear disdain for buy and hold: please forgive my frankness, forget the buy and hold strategy. Have a well defined plan going in, execute, and get out. Yes you can make money by buying and holding, but the real money is made by buying and selling.
This may have made sense in previous buyer's markets with stagnant real estate prices and 8-12% cap rates, but is certainly not relevent in 2021, and likely to lead to suboptimal returns . Furthermore, the author relies on cash on cash return and cap rates as the principle barometer of success, but this is where a more professional privaty equity mindset is better suited. Rather than cap rate, or dollar gain in the value of the property, what matters most is the MOIC (multiple of invested capital) of a deal, and more relevant for the party interested in making a purchase decision, the expected MOIC divided by the expected effort to achieve that MOIC. I only have 5 years of experience in the field, but even in the small sample size of ~20 deals I've done, flipping an apartment has never made sense due to the immensity of transaction costs (~9%) involved.
I learned two things which can merit the second star:
1. Use turnover rate as a means of measuring retention of tenants.
2. Using an owner carryback loan to get more leverage out of a deal, i.e. a 75-10-15 strategy.
Still, the majority of advice would mislead newer investors, this is a book best left in the dustbin of history.
There are many poorly written books on real estate; this is one. The amount of content that relates to motivation and feel good stories is usually inversely related with the usefulness of the book, a 'chicken soup index' if you will. Complete guide is about 50/50, and even brings a story direct from Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Perhaps more unique however, is that there are few books whose advice I wholeheartedly disagree with. The author shows a clear disdain for buy and hold: please forgive my frankness, forget the buy and hold strategy. Have a well defined plan going in, execute, and get out. Yes you can make money by buying and holding, but the real money is made by buying and selling.
This may have made sense in previous buyer's markets with stagnant real estate prices and 8-12% cap rates, but is certainly not relevent in 2021, and likely to lead to suboptimal returns . Furthermore, the author relies on cash on cash return and cap rates as the principle barometer of success, but this is where a more professional privaty equity mindset is better suited. Rather than cap rate, or dollar gain in the value of the property, what matters most is the MOIC (multiple of invested capital) of a deal, and more relevant for the party interested in making a purchase decision, the expected MOIC divided by the expected effort to achieve that MOIC. I only have 5 years of experience in the field, but even in the small sample size of ~20 deals I've done, flipping an apartment has never made sense due to the immensity of transaction costs (~9%) involved.
I learned two things which can merit the second star:
1. Use turnover rate as a means of measuring retention of tenants.
2. Using an owner carryback loan to get more leverage out of a deal, i.e. a 75-10-15 strategy.
Still, the majority of advice would mislead newer investors, this is a book best left in the dustbin of history.
April 24, 2018
Well wrote. Full of working knowledge.
April 24, 2019
Good overview.
May 21, 2019
Good information
November 15, 2019
Lots of useful information for very beginner's. I wish there was much more depth on tons of areas that were mainly glossed over. A solid starting spot I think I was just wishing for something more
December 8, 2020
Helpful guide, interesting case studies and motivating points about life beyond investing. Would be interested in an updated version.
October 14, 2021
If you are interested in this venture then it is a very informative and well-written foundational read.
March 26, 2025
Invaluable information.
August 13, 2016
Excellent real estate book. I used this to create a new excel model and hope it will catapult me into multi-family.
November 30, 2015
Great!!
Yup, it's the real deal.............. Well written, enjoyed reading all the technical methods for evolving from residential to commercial RE.
Yup, it's the real deal.............. Well written, enjoyed reading all the technical methods for evolving from residential to commercial RE.
September 16, 2015
Good reference book for both aspiring and sophisticated investors.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews