Simple and clear explanation on real estate investments

David Bach's very simple concepts of savings, applied to investment in real estate. A great book for anyone who is almost ready to start looking for a house but still has fear that it's an unreachable or dangerous endeavour.

This is a good book about residential real estate for the average homeowner.

Although this book is sort of basic on some of its messages, it is quite inspiring to get people to buy their first home. I even put a deposit on my first condo within a few months after reading this book the first time.

Informative but very outdated (obviously, due to publication date), a lot of this info is not relevant now but you can draw parallels to today’s standards. A lot of the info is also geared towards first time homebuyers which is great for me but the book isn’t advertised towards that demographic

Well written and action oriented, but not a lot of depth in any one area.

This book was fantastic and I recommend anyone looking at buying a new home to read it to become educated. Since I have already been through the home-buying process, I knew a lot of what the book was explaining, however, I did still learn a lot of information that I can use in the next time I purchase a home. Although I would rather be rich now and this book, along with the rest of his Finish Rich series, is in hopes of preparing you to plan for your future retirement years and years down the road, David Bach provides low risk opportunities for investing. In the situation I am in right now and the way the economy is, reading this book just comforted me on making the right decisions and reminded me why I bought my home in the first place. As many people know, Garrett and I have a love/hate relationship with our home and as we sweat over maintaining a nice living space and area, it will be worth it later in life when we can 'finish rich.'

This book has simple practical recommendations to help manage personal finances. He strongly suggests making everything automatic to make certain things get done instead of relying on self-discipline alone. He also encourages living within your means. The first sensible thing to start with is to pay yourself first, before taxes such as a 401k. He gave advice on purchasing a home as a step to eventually get into your dream home. He mentioned a mistake that a lot of homeowners do after selling their first house, they upgrade to a bigger house which hinders the ability get ahead financially. You stay in the same financial situation. Another alternative is to sell the house and buy another modest home to sacrifice for a better financial future. Apparently, holding onto your first house to rent out is also a good plan to increase your worth. It seems like you might have to wait many years though and if you have a late start, it might feel a little discouraging. I like the personal stories shared in this book to show the possibilities of what can become of your finances with homeownership.

I love the automatic millionaire book. But this is definitely specific to a few big cities like he states buying a $200k house and 5 years later it’s worth $600k. Um not in our world even in a big populated city. Still a good investment a few good pointers but expected return will not be like it was in 2005 in Francisco.

Great insights. Good step by step guide with specific how-to’s and important considerations to think about in the property-buying process. The information on lending and financing should be taken with a grain of salt since the book was written prior to the 2008 housing crash. It relies on the some of the poor lending practices that are no longer in practice.

My wife and I went to a home-buying seminar put on by our credit union, and one of the speakers recommended this book. It's a quick read, and although it's a little dated -- author David Bach is writing in 2005 just before the housing bubble crashed, and he also over-explains some computer things like how to access Google -- the main points still seem valid. Namely, it's easier and more affordable to buy a house than many renters assume (especially if you aren't holding out for a dream home), real estate that you aren't buying just to flip is one of the best low-risk ways to build your finances, and paying half your monthly mortgage fee every two weeks won't squeeze your budget too much but will net you the equivalent of a whole additional month's payment every year, drastically reducing the overall interest you will pay over time.

Bach does include some tiresome cliches like cutting out a daily latte as another pathway to prosperity, and he mistakes correlation for causation when he notes that the average renter has far less personal wealth than the average homeowner, but these faults are oddly so glaring that it's easy to see past them to the advice that's good. And while the more advanced topics in the book like leveraging one house purchase against the next, converting your home into a rental property, and gaining the millionaire status of the title are not currently as interesting / relevant for me, I'd still recommend it as a good introduction or crash course for anyone else looking to transition away from renting in the near future.

This is a great primer on the advantages of investing in real estate. If you're still renting, you NEED to read this book/listen to it on CD. Don't forget to check your library to listen to it for free!