Buying-the

Ron LeGrand is the man when it comes to Quick Turning houses. I highly recommend this book to anyone starting out in real estate investing. The book is easy to read, very educational, and very inexpensive. You could buy his course to go in depth, but you have enough info here. Great Job, Ron! Keep up the good work!

This book was well worth the time and money I've spent on it so far. There are more techniques than a beginner as myself can use. This makes some of the chapters seem a little dry. Some of Rons techniques seem somewhat scandalous, if not downright unlawful. I wonder if Ron has created any enemies in Florida? His big push is--get out and make offers. Nothing will happen until I do. Ron has definitely done a great deal of research in the field. I have listened to his spiel in person, and know for a fact that he pulls no punches. This book, along with the tape set of the same name includes so much information that they must be studied over and over again. A Downside? Ron includes absolutely no information concerning tax shelters. In a business like this, especially if you make large profits, Uncle Sam will definitely have his greedy hand out. Capital gains and income tax, to name two. Just don't let delusions of grandeur mask the fact that there are always risks and downsides.... Buy it and read it.

This book is great for whetting your real estate appetite! And of course you have to buy other, more in-depth courses if you want to ascend the ladder of higher learning & success in the RE investing world -- that's if you're not too negative and scared to go for it. After high school, don't you have to go to college and maybe even grad school if you really want to make it in your chosen career? Sure you do -- that's a no-brainer. Well, real estate investing is no different. Anyone who thinks they're going to get their entire education out of one book or tape set is extremely naive. This stuff works for those who will work it. RE is a HUGE subject and you need to go slowly and learn well or you WILL screw up. Like anything, you have to gradually get your head around it. I came from a poor background. I was a street-tough who was in and out of jail. Thanks to creative real estate investing I've positioned myself so that money will no longer be an issue in my life. Want the same? Don't buy into the excuses -- your own, or anyone else's. That's called the hypnosis of the culture and it aims to get you down in the hole that it's in. This book is great! It's a great place to start in real estate. If Ron didn't touch on subjects lightly, everyone would be overwhelmed. Eventually there's an ocean of info in the RE investing world. He's letting you wade in about knee deep instead of drowning you all at once. I've been studying this stuff since I got out of the military 12 years ago and I'm still learning. Speaking of the military, Ron's RE boot-camp seminars are also great. That's where you get your real training. This book is here to merely introduce you to some broad concepts. It will help you open your mind to all the possibilities that await you out there in the RE world. Just like in the military, this book is just your "indoc" or indoctrination. That is the purpose. Oh and by the way, everyone loves to say it won't work in their town. Wherever you live it won't work, right? So do the rest of the investors in your town a favor and move. And as soon as you move it'll start working again, right? (a little seminar humor) But, seriously, I can go to anywhere in the US and buy decent houses for 10 cents on the dollar -- I'm living in one right now. So to the reviewer down in NJ - it's called a "short sale" not a "time warp" and it works in any town where there are houses. :-) For real though, a "short sale" is just one of hundreds of techniques to buy houses cheap. Hey guy, maybe you should've bought some of Ron's more in-depth courses and you would have learned the details of how to buy real estate cheap. Ron could charge double for what he teaches and it'd still be a steal. In the long run, going out on your own and doing RE the old "trial and error" way (without proper training) will cost you 50 times as much as just paying up-front and getting trained by someone like Ron who's been out there and made the mistakes for us. And no, I don't work for Ron or get a dime for going on like this. It's just that... unlike some reviewers here, I actually know what I'm talking about because I've put in the hard work and time and money and long hours getting real with real estate -- not just being a spectator. So all I know is that this book made a big change for me. It's a classic! Speaking of classics... I remember a guy telling me Star Wars sucked, before I saw it. I decided to go to the theater and see it for myself. Well, I don't know what that guy was on, but we all know it was a classic. Ron's book speaks for itself guys. Pick up a copy and see if it speaks to you. Peace Out. R. Rogers

I found the book overpriced for the value received. After buying and reading the book, I discussed with a friend who is also shopping for an RV. He purchased a similar book, with the same number of pages and content, for less than 1/2 the cover price. I found 2/3rd's of the book "fluff" and common sense, with 1/3 of marginal value.

Last year we watched our neighbors go off camping every weekend and decided this was our year to join the RV crowd. My neighbor told me about this book he bought that saved him thousands of dollars and took all the hassel out of buying, so I bought his copy. That was a great investment, the book "The Rv Buyers Survival guide" by Bob Randall. It's not full of color pictures but it is full of clearly written information that walks you step by step through the RV buying process. It even has it's own support website if you have a question for the author...too easy. The website has all the tools the book talks about using and made our quest a fun adventure. His tips on negotiating tatics was worth the price by itself. Oh,did we save any money after reading the book? Well near as I figure about $11,000 on a $61,000 Rv How I do :-) Thanks for the great book Bob, I now know the meaning of "Happy camper" ---George

My husband and I were very interested in getting into Rving, but were very intimidated by all the choices and the pushy sales people. We figured we better be more prepared so we made the right choices. The best thing we could have dome was buy Bobs book ..Rv Survival Guide, it took us step by step through the entire process and gave us the confidence to go shopping with true conviction, and confidence we wouldn't be taken. We followed his step by step approach and got what we wanted for about 20% back of the list price. Thanks Bob this is an excellent book and it saved us thousands of dollars and lots of frustrations. Thanks for writting it. .....Terry

For many years I have been working in real estate and I found this book to be very brief and basic. I cannot see how a home owner would benefit from the basic advice talked about in this book. Perhaps a book on home contstruction would be far more helpful to you. My customers ask me for advice about books to read when they buy a house and this is not one of the titles I would give them. This is not an expensive book but my main concern is reading a good book that I can learn from, not just getting a low price on it.

Doing construction work for the past 25 years makes me very knowledgable about houses. I bought this book to become a home inspector and found it to be lacking in many ways to say the least. Your local handyman could teach you more about inspecting houses than this book can. The most important topics for home construction and inspections were not even discussed in this book.

Although subtitled "For Pros, by Pros," I think any homeowner or home buyer can benefit from Inspecting A House. This winter it saved me potentially thousands of dollars in repair costs by pointing out the danger of snow build up along the eaves and dormers of my house. It's also helped me identify areas of potential concern where a little preventative maintenance can save me a lot of money down the road.

Inspecting A House's strengths include its in-depth information, easy to understand conversational tone, clear illustrations, and revealing four-color pictures of what to look for (and look out) for. Each chapter concludes with a handy checklist which you can easily photocopy and take with you as you examine your own house or go house shopping.

Inspecting a Book would be a bargain at twice the price.

Clear, easy-to-read, but Pentium Pro processors aren't exactly cutting-edge anymore. It relegates PIIs to "advanced" and doesn't deal with them. Nice as a general reference, but pass it up if you want specific considerations for building a PII or PIII.

THIS BOOK IS OUTDATED AND REALLY WON'T SERVE YOUR NEEDS NOW. IT HAS MOSTLY INFO ON BUILDING LOW MHZ CPU'S WITH OLD FASHIONED SIMM MEMORY. I HAVE NEVER BUILT A PC BEFORE AND YOU NEED MORE INFO THAN THE BOOK PROVIDES. IT DOESN'T TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT PARTS WILL WORK TOGETHER. BECAUSE THE INFO IS OUTDATED IT DOESN'T ADDRESS COMPATIBILITY ISSUES. SOME EXAMPLES ARE: A HARD DRIVE OVER 8.4 GB WON'T WORK ON OLD MOTHERBOARDS, THE DATA TRANSFER RATES (UDMA) HAVE TO BE COMPATIBLE BETWEEN THE MOTHERBOARD AND COMPONENTS OTHERWISE THEY WON'T WORK PROPERLY. IT MOSTLY TALKS ABOUT SIMM MEMORY BUT DIMM IS PROMINENT NOW AND YOU NEED TO KNOW HOW THE NONASECOND SPEED DETERMINES WHAT DIMM MODUAL TO BUY AND STUFF LIKE THAT. THIS BOOK GIVES VERY BASIC INFO AND BOTTOM LINE: WHEN YOU ARE SPENDING $500+ WITH NO KNOWLEDGE YOU NEED TO KNOW EVERY DETAIL. WITHOUT ALL THE DETAILS YOU WILL WASTE ALLOT OF MONEY. SPEND A LITTLE MORE AND GET A HIGHLY DETAILED CURRENT BOOK.

I liked this book for my needs. I bought it four years ago. Rather than show you everything under the sun it shows you how to assemble the computer and install the OS. It even shows how to format the hard drive with the system. This is good info if you want to install Windows 3.1. I admit DOS and the fdisk are dead now days but it is still used for Windows ME and Windows 98.

This was the only book that went right to the nuts and bolts of building a PC with out a lot of BS to read through.

I admit that with Windows XP you just need to load it into the CD ROM drive and let the OS install with out any DOS line prompt commands but this book would still work for building a PC today. The slave and master settings and jumper settings are still used today.

From almost any point of view this book is very poorly written from the bizarre layout to the frequent grammatical errors. If you have any experience with e-bay at all you will soon realize that there is nothing new here with the possible exception of some websites that you could have found on your own. If you have no experience with e-bay, you won't learn much either since the explanations are not clear or thorough. For example, the "chapter" on Accounting which consists of one page essentially suggests that you get a spreadsheet program or an accountant. You don't need a book for this kind of advice!

Terms are often introduced without definition, although they are sometimes defined later in the book. Examples are "Dutch Auction" and "Reserve Price."

Here is an example of the writing style: "I have discovered that several people would like to start their own business at home." Was this book written for only several people? I don't think I am one of them! And a spelling/grammar example: "You're own your way . . ."

In summary, this is not a useful book. I am "own my way" to a book store where I can see what I am getting!

If you like small books that nearly require a magnifying glass to read this is for you. Small print on a small page with more white space than print. Home made appearance. Decent information horribly presented. Better books are out there. If you can only afford one or two - this is not one of them.

This book is VERY homemade by Ms Graf. The typeset is tiny. Apparently she was her own editor and publisher. There are many, many gramatical errors in this book. She typed "you" instead of "your" page after page. Content is okay. Nothing you couldn't learn if you have spent any time on ebay yourself. I was pleased of the resources she lists in the book to help get you started in the right direction for selling on ebay. Plus, she does give simplistic instructions for a beginner on ebay. If you can overlook the gramatical errors and the non-professional printing, this book does contain some information that might help a beginner.

WARNING: Lee Burbidge IS a "sleazy salesman", through and through. I worked for him and his sons for a few years, and became very intimately acquainted with their business practices. Lee's son Brae, by the way, interestingly enough also posted a review on this page (see the September 10th entry). I'd be suspect of any review of this "book" posted from their homebase of Utah. The Burbidge's are not interested in providing quality services to the public. They are long-time seminar shysters who will take advantage of anyone unlucky enough to wander into their web.

I bought the package expecting just a book, but recieved a video, audio tapes, workbook, how to pamphet, fact sheet forms and open house instructions. Christmas came early at our house. The product is very professonally done and the information is great. I recommend this package to any serious minded "For sale by owner" seller, or anyone who wants to understand the for sale process. It is a great common sense education.

I bought the kit and followed the instruction. With some luck, I sold my house in one day open house. The kit is still brand new. I am going sell it in the auction site. Thanks to the author. It is my first time selling house by my own and I know nothing about the selling before I got this kit. It is a wonderful experiences.

While it's true that a lot of this information is common sense, as well as available on the ebay help pages, there's definately useful information in here also. Such as specific advice about how to go about communicating with buyers if you're a seller, and many other basic things a beginner might have questions about and needs to be walked through.

There's also a good section about buying collectibles in general, which i found informative.

If you want to get started on ebay, i recommend picking this up at your library, and skimming through it a bit, reading particular parts of the ebay process that interest or puzzle you.

The Official ebay Guide gave me the basics to everything about ebaying. Answered many questions that I had from the past couple of years of ebaying & now wanting to get a whole lot more. This books raised many more questions that the book could answer. However it gave me the basics and left me in search of more detailed information. So, the book is just what it listed a Guide. Now I look for the Handbook to ebay.

This is the best book on Ebay because it taught me in a very simple and complete way how to find the things I want. So many books of this kind are complicated and frustrating --- but not this guide. The layout and information are completely accessible, and I enjoyed the author's knowledge and humorous approach.

Of the several foreclosure manuals I've read, this is definitely the best. The author gives several examples of his own purchases making it more believable. This one is not quite as hyped-up as the usual get-rich-easy real-estate book. The 3 phases of foreclosure, along with lots of good technical how-to details are covered. I highly recommend it!

This book help me get staarted in Real Estate. I bought my first house as a Pre Foreclosure and made a $ 20,000.00 dollar profit. A great place to start.

George Achenbach, has written other real estate books under the names Val Cabot and Lee Crown. He has been a builder of 7,000 houses and a buyer of foreclosed properties. He tells of his sucesses as well as his unsucessful ventures into the foreclosure world. His book has pictures of and descriptions of the various foreclosure cases with which he has been involved. His book is written from the prespective of somebody who actually worked foreclosures for many years. This is not the easiest area of real estate investment to work, but through deligence and perserverance the rewards can be extremely lucrative. There are other books on foreclosure, but I can't think of any that are as good. Over 50,000 copies of this book have been sold and with good reason. There are a lot of PRETENDERS in the foreclosure field with books and course that have high promises and little substance. George Auchenbach is the REAL Deal. He's done foreclosure investing for many years and has written an easy to read layman book on foreclosure.
My only criticism is that some aspects are dated. The cases in the book stretch back over the 30+ year career of the author and therefore some of the dollar amounts and the years of the transactions are old. However the principles and lessons learned from the author's experiences are timeless. This is best book on foreclosure that I've read, but I'm still looking for something better, that perfect book. If I could I would have rated it 4.5 stars. I recommend this book to anyone interested in buying foreclosure real estate.

The book doesn't tell how to sell or make money like the cover implies,and the information is very basic at best,and is for a complete beginner at auctions and computer use

I found this book very disappointing, and the title is misleading. I thought I was going to learn all about collecting online and finding, buying and selling collectibles and antiques. Instead, there is detailed blow by blow descriptions about computers, how to choose internet providers, internet language, etc. There are nice pictures of antiques and collectibles, but they don't pertain to the author's discussions, and I felt they were used as fillers and fluff just to get enough pages in the book. This book would be good for the complete novice who has NEVER touched a computer or the Internet.

Advanced users might already know most of what is in this book, but for "newbies" like myself it is wonderful. It gave me the confidence I needed to start using online auctions, and I've found some nice Christmas gifts at good prices.

This short book can be summed up in the following points:

Do not buy foreclosures - they are too risky. Instead, buy from banks - you can fully inspect the property and the bank will be willing to negotiate and finance. Contact banks and real estate agents about bank sales. Do not buy a property to rent out unless you are fairly sure of the tenants - don't be tricked by the "lost references" or offer to fix up the place. Never rent under Section 8.

The main point is that there are professionals who bid at foreclosure auctions, you could get in over your head, you need to have money up front, and the place will most likely require lots of repairs, which you may not be able to identify until you buy it. . . .

The author does make one unintentially humorous statement, along the lines of -- "There are scavengers in all waks of life." He is saying this to criticize some ... artists, but I thought the term could be applied to most of his readers -- isn't a scavenger someone who is trying to obtain something disgarded for the potential hidden value? . . .

Happy hunting!

This is very average book. It will help you a little bit but it doesn't give you all the info you need to make such a risky decision. It skims through, not giving much detail on process, nor explaining how to make a profit. The set up of the book is pretty confusing. Doesn't seem to flow, it jus jumps around & will make you confused. The one good thing about the book is that it does do a very good job on giving you the pit-falls of investing in a foreclosed property. That's the biggest asset of this book, I think!

Some of the reviewers didn't like the author's occasional negative views of potential situations. First off, there is no negative theme/undertone throughout the book--just an occasional "here's the worst case scenario of doing it this way". Unfortunately nothing he said was untrue--and to leave these things out would be negligent and might leave the unannointed to believe that there is no risk. There is CONSIDERABLE risk. You play the odds; but he does not leave you playing the odds uneducated about what the bad side is. The book is written so that any person off the street can understand it (although there are one or two instances that someone unfamiliar with real estate will have to re-read a paragraph to get the idea). This being the case, it would be outright irresponsible to NOT give examples of the worst case scenario. I found this book an EXCELLENT primer on what's involved in the process. My family has been in real estate (brokers, construction, mortgages, appraiser, assessors--you name it) for as long as I've been alive and have dealt in foreclosures. Now I've caught the bug and read this book to "fill in the gaps" potentially left when you learn by example. And if you happen to never have problems with a tenant, then you don't live in the northeast! (which is where the author did his business)