Building Wealth One House At A Time

For someone interested in real estate-investing, but with no experience, this book is loaded with practical advice and wisdom gathered from a career spanning several decades and market cycles. John Schaub presents a process of buying single-family homes for investment income in such a way that understandable, practicable and scalable. It is not a 'get-rich-quick' scheme, but a roadmap to a destination of financial security that will be reached after many years, involving some honest effort and a great deal of patience - like all wonderful things do. This book was written in 2004, and there are more up-to-date editions available. Definitely worth checking out!

John's books and seminars have really been a help to me. I have been a landlord for nearly thirty years and read a lot of real estate books. This is not a get rich quick book as so many are. His philosophy is more get rich slow. John provides a wealth of real world information. You have to develop your own philosophy of land lording, but this is a real start.

John Schaub has written an excellent book on the qualitative aspects of real estate investing. It doesn't deal much with the important mathematical aspects of estimating your projected return on investment. Instead, it deals with what types of real estate investments provide the best return with the least amount of work, what type of investing strategy to use, and how to find good deals. He advocates a long-term buy-and-hold approach instead of short-term flipping. John Schaub's approach to real estate is very similar to Warren Buffett's approach to stocks: buy low and hold for a long time.It seems that most real estate investing books are get-rich-quick schemes aimed at the ignorant, gullible, and desperate. This is one of the few good books. I highly recommend this book, but it should not be the only book you read before beginning investing. A good companion book would be Investing in Real Estate by Andrew McLean and Gary Eldred.By the way, the review by John Matlock "Gunny" is fake. If you read lots of Amazon.com reviews, you'll see him around a lot. Check his review history. He reviews more books than any human could possibly read, and he only writes 5 star reviews, so he is probably a reviewer paid by the publisher.

Highly recommend.

If I had to pick one single book to recommend to real estate investors, this is by far the best. No hype, no "something for nothing" strategies that don't work in the real world. The author lays out a simple but effective strategy to build a million dollar net worth by purchasing rental homes that appeal to the working class and professional.It worked for me and I'm sure it will work for you. Sure, financing has changed since he originally wrote it, but the principles are timeless. Think of it as a slow and steady wins the race approach to investing.I purchased ten duplexes with the principles outlined in this book. Thereafter, I kept buying one every year.Oh....the original book is the best. I wasn't impressed with his other books.Bottom line, don't waste your money on real estate guru seminars or coaching. Instead of wasting $20,000 on a real estate boot camp, buy this book and invest the money you save from going to the guru camp to purchase your first rental.

Very quick read, and lots of great advice. This book focuses on creative deal structure from the perspective of a practitioner. It doesn't get into heavy real estate economics/financing, and it doesn't have a strong organizational structure. Still a great read, though.

I like the author’s honest and straightforward advice. I am already an investor in this single-home rental business but I still learn a lot from reading this book. He inspires me to expand my business further and doing it the right way. Lastly, I am a huge fan of Habitat for Humanity and I am so glad that the author devoted the last chapter in the book to talk about this wonderful organization!

I found this book was not very focused. It also focuses exclusively on single family homes. That may work in your market if you can pick up single family homes for $20,000 and rent them out but in my market values are high. Starting from the basic insight that renters have low incomes and therefore can only afford to rent cheap property, your goal as an investor is to buy cheap property while not investing in junk. I have found condo townhomes to be the best vehicle for this but this book does not focus on them at all. Eldred's book 'Make Money with Condominiums and Townhomes' is better if that kind of property makes sense for your market.

This book along with investing in Duplexes, triplexes & quads are the two book everyone should read. Both compliment each other and you will be ready for action! I bought my first property right after reading these two books a few weeks ago and im building a new high-end Duplex :)

In very good shape

This book is quite a good read, though it contains no new ideas - it is the same as many other real-estate books, without any new concept or ideas. Hence I didn't find it worth the buy.

First - if you haven't read any other real estate investing books and you're looking for good all around advice (and you live in the US) this book is a good foundation building start. I love the concept of focusing on one house at a time and John Schaub lays that out marvelously in the beginning of this book. He also provides good tools, worksheets and suggestions for finding the deals and what to do with them. It's really a solid beginner book for understanding the basic concepts of real estate.For example, he provides some solid market fundamental information, explaining that there is no national house market and no national house trend that matters to any investor - no matter what asset class you're investing in. It's a local market. He provides a very clear and strong explanation of this.He also teaches something called the Rule of 72 which was something I hadn't read about before (and I've read A LOT of real estate books).All in all - it's a good read but definitely one that I find hard to get excited about. I think that is more about me and how many real estate books I've read than it is about this particular book. So I guess the bottom line is that if you're an experienced real estate investor and/or you've read a lot of real estate books then this book is not for you. If you're a beginner looking to build a good foundation - this is worth putting on your reading list.For Canadians - the fundamental lessons he is teaching are good but probably not the best read for you as many of the concepts are very specific to the US.

great