A Solid Plan, But Could Be a Little Risky

This was an older book, written before the 2008 home mortgage crisis. The strategies that David Bach are sound, but without a substantial cushion could be dangerous for those that over-leverage themselves. I would recommend this book, but I would also suggest reading more contemporary treatments of the topic.

I paid thousands of dollars to learn the information in this book the hard way over 6 years...Wish I had found this faster and before all the other classes.

Very easy to read, bit by bit, and chapter tips at end keep readers on track to actually apply the advice here easily.

Informative but very outdated (obviously, due to publication date), a lot of this info is not relevant now but you can draw parallels to today’s standards.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

One might think that a book about making millions in the real estate market that was written in 2005 would be hopelessly irrelevant today. However, that is decidedly not true about The Millionaire Homeowner. David Bach turns out to have been remarkably prescient about the housing and lending crash of these past few years. In fact, in this book, he describes the causes and effects of the crash in detail, before they happen, and advises against each of them.[return][return]I'd highly recommend this book to anyone for several reasons. First, it is short and an easy read. Second, it is an excellent primer for basic real estate and finance terms and concepts. Lastly, I firmly believe in his path to wealth and that he has grasped a measured, sober way to build wealth and value that is pretty approachable. He has lots of gems like "It isn't timing the market, it is time *in* the market." [return][return]If you are renting, or if you own your own home, you should read this so that you can better understand your next step. This book is great even for those who think that buying their own home would be impossible. And shockingly, it is probably even good for those who have been bit by the downturn and need to know what went wrong, or what to do differently next time.

The good -- the tax information, the Starker exception, some nuts and bolts information about interviewing real estate agents.

The bad -- constant exhortations to buy no matter what; that you can actually afford more house than you think; have you heard that you can put no money down?; ARMs save you soo much money, as long as you think you'll make more later they're a good idea; that the market always rises and home prices haven't decreased year on year since the fifties -- reading a book written like this in 2006 was horror-show creepy.

The indifferent -- all of his books have about 25% overlap in content it seems. Also he made a halfhearted attempt to reel it in at the end, but one epilogue of "nothing is guaranteed" after 13 chapters of "this is how you get rich" doesn't quite cut the mustard.

Kind of schlocky title, but has some timeless information. I rented this from Libby because it was the only real estate investing book available on audiobook.

Interesting because it was written before the 2008 crash and so it's funny to see people predicting this years beforehand and nobody doing anything about it... Lenders and real estate investors fully knew it was risky and just rode the wave til it crashed. Wild.

Again with Bach, this book shows you how renting gets you nowhere, and buying gets you rich!

I'm currently re-reading it.

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.

Great for beginners like myself. I'm Canadian and some aspects may not translate 100% due to differences in American laws. The action oriented ideas pushed me to take the next steps and get out of renting.

Finally, it is still relevant even after the "market crash" if you consider that just like anything else, things happens in cycles. In fact, there was a little nugget of advice on page 229 when he says the best time to jump into a hot market is right after it's cooled. Are we not currently there?

Dated but some decent ideas

"I liked it." - 3 out of 5 star rating.

A book about a whole bunch of really great topics, that I am already fully aware of and have been exposed to numerous times prior to reading this one.

Of course, this comes to no fault to the author. In the land of Financial / Retirement / Investment / Real Estate books, the balloon is overfilled so much... a mere whispered breath could cause it to pop. What I mean by that is, there are more books within this category that you can shake a stick at - to illustrate my point in an old timey way.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, but again there are about 400 other books on the shelf that say the same thing for the most part, with slightly different variants one way or another.

Hell, there are so many of these types of books that say nearly the same thing, I might as well write my own and join the party. Maybe one day.

What I do appreciate about Bach and this book is that he is all about the long game and very risk adverse - which definitely aligns with my way of thought for the most part.

If you've never read a book like this before, or maybe only 1-2 others at the most, you'll likely really enjoy this and probably land it at a 4 star rating.

3 or more books of this category... and what you get here is a nicely done refresher content quick read.

A good “elementary” read, could have read this at 15 years old and it would have been a good starting manual— if I could have used that 80-something-% of my income as a live-at-home girl on a first property instead of a better “savings account option” as I would have liked to, and should have! Some glaringly outdated stats (inflation, whew), this hasn’t kept up well with the current Canadian market, plus the super salesy tone that i found hard to get past to get to the realistic factors. But it might be a good book to have on hand to introduce my kiddos we’re ready to discuss their own relationships with their own lenders, agents and equity team.