The Millionaire Real Estate Investor- Book Review

The Millionaire Real Estate Investor book author is Gary Keller. Gary is an American entrepreneur in real estate. Graduated from Baylor University in 1979 with a degree in marketing and real estate. After graduating in his early career he reached Vice president of a large real estate company in Austin. He established his company after a couple of years and became one of the largest real estate companies in town. Recognized locally and internationally for his philosophy of “People Helping People”. His books are best sellers books like The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, SHIFT: How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. And other publications that are found on the Amazon website. Gary received several awards from associations and well-known magazines like the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur award.

From the book title, one could conclude that the author’s target audience and readers are interested in the real estate business. But going through the book and reading it carefully I see it could serve several audiences. Planners need to understand how real estate investor work, how they find opportunities to build wealth, how they select people to work with, and finally through this understanding to locate development in the urban planning work. Architects or architectural firms need to know how real estate investors approach people like them to use their expertise in their work. And most important real estate investors locate their work to approach them for development opportunities. Financial advisors and consultants want to know at which level of the investor’s work they participate and in what real estate investment scale they could provide advice. Accountants need to know what type of work real estate investors have to prepare for their professional careers in this field. Managers who run businesses also must take a look at the complexity and the high responsibility they undertake when working with real estate investors. Readers and people who are likely to start a career in real estate investors need to know the many ideas, processes, and work procedures involved in this business and what type of people and psychology they need to have to succeed in the work.

Before we dive into the book theme a reader needs to know a realistic fact that real estate investment is a very hard business to do though he made it simple because it needs various disciplines to finalize the work. The investor on the top of the business pyramid, financial planners, specialist accountants, management specialists, engineering contractors, marketing and sales specialists, and consultant firms specialized in architecture and landscape.

The book’s theme is centered on creating successful real estate investors. That could be any one of the mentioned above that work in the cycle or ordinary people. First, the author tries to simplify the investment work in the beginning by introducing many ideas for changing personal psychology and removing his fear of investing in real estate. For example, “to become a real estate investor you don’t really need a lot of money” and “people will believe what they want to believe” and “employment and saving plans do not make you an investor”. Gary puts together the seven ways real estate investors think such as think power, think goals, think money matters…Etc. the path to change you and how you will think like a millionaire and how to find the proper path to achieving every way of thinking. Second, he introduces why is real estate investment is the best way to invest and why it is important. Your family may need substantial monetary support in their lifetime for their health, children, and the future of the family. He talks about the real estate investment work nature and what are the forces that move them. Basic economic forces like job growth, interest rates, area revitalization, and others. Human forces like relocation, marriage, family growth, and others. And the economy is cyclical, and the market is cyclical. Why real estate investment is “able” because it is accessible, appreciable, rentable, improvable, and so on. The difference between investor, observer, collector, and spectacular in the real estate business. Third, the author gives a brief about the business at the beginning of the book but in later chapters goes into details. He talks about establishing the business, work procedures, people involved in the business, and how to achieve the best work and money by connecting all people together to do the work. In establishing the business of real estate investment for a millionaire there are four categories of work: get a fee for selling a property, find a property and sign a contract to sell it to investors, buy a property and sell and finally buy a property and improve it to sell it. In terms of work procedures, there are five modules that real estate investors follow: net worth module, financial module, network module, lead generation module, and acquisition module. The net worth module is about defining the investment vehicle and budgeting your money. The financial module is to understand the three ways of wealth building – cash flow, appreciation, and debt pay down- and how they work. The lead generation module is about defining your real estate investment criteria. For people involved in the business, there are three circles’ Consultants like partners, support like contractors and investors, and services like painters and plumbers. Within this procedure, Gary provides very important technical work like filling and recording. Also, worksheets such as budget worksheets, personal balance worksheets, and property criteria worksheets. And finally, how to connect these people together to the process of prospecting, how to find a great deal, how to keep them active, and reward the most positive contributors. Fourth, Gary introduces various important issues, ways of work, and important characteristics of real estate investor work. For example, the seven issues of owning a million: criteria, terms, network, money, and you. In fact, these could be applied and used in any business not only in real estate investment. These seven issues bring to the top of investor’s work how to become an expert, how to switch from one side of real estate work to another and when, negotiate everything and anything and include an escape clause in your contract and the four stages of learning – understanding, knowledge, wisdom, power- and how to bring talent to the investor work environment. One of the critical factors of investor success is how to bring the six ways of creative financing to the business like wraps and syndications. Finally, he considers that 80% of his success comes from one personal character which is Accountability.

The book starts with the acknowledgment of the many contributors to this book publication. The book knowledge came from real practice information from real estate millionaires investors. The first idea came when of real estate investors who gathered 4 million from real estate before 2004.

 Real estate millionaire’s investor is a book about practice and provides themes, modules, and procedures to anyone interested in becoming a millionaire real estate investor. Through reading the book there is no clear text about theories and academic knowledge such as papers and academic research within the content. Most of the dense knowledge presented is built up by the author and the millionaires that were interviewed before writing the book.

As I have mentioned that Gary introduced the book content in brief at the beginning of the book and went into more detail in later chapters. The reader will witness some repeated ideas and text within the book. In some areas of the book, I think some parts should advance others when he started to talk about the business, procedures, and people he should have started with the business, the people, and the network involved then procedures and modules. But in my opinion, the reader will enjoy reading the book and will not feel bored in any chapter he read.

Gary as we may say presented ever-green ideas and concepts in his book that could be used in real estate investor work. He included excellent explanation graphs, numbers, tables, and workflows of the relevant content subject of discussion that made the reading enjoyable. When reading the content it opens the reader’s desire to start doing the same procedure that I mean to become a real estate millionaire investor. The book title reflects the book content and it’s designed very well to reflect the text inside. You can see as a reader that the index is reflecting the topics of every chapter exactly which makes it easy for the reader to predict the content when reading the book index.

Well, the book provides the best practices and guidelines the most people who became real estate millionaires that were interviewed before this book publication. Gary included most of the contributor’s bio at the end of the book and a small CV. I did not read any hint or mention of a university book, research, or paper rather than the research that Gary made in real life presented within the papers of his book.

I asked myself why I am going to read this book. In the continuous development required in the discipline of urban planning and urban design, it is essential to know procedures concerning financing large-scale developments. The process and funding procedure in the real world is a prerequisite for anyone working in urban planning and urban design though these professions are not required to conduct that work. The book introduced mainly small-scale property finance ideas and concepts which are also very important, but he covers home real estate in the USA.

Below is the standard model that real estate millionaires adopt in looking for investment opportunities.

 “Our standard model looks like this: $100,000 current market value, 20 percent discounted purchase price, 20 percent down payment, 5 percent annual appreciation in market value,5 percent annual appreciation in rents, initial monthly rents at 0.8 percent of market value, expenses and vacancy at 40 percent of rental income, and a 30-year loan at 7.43 percent “