This book should be titled "How to make deals come together when everyone else said it couldn't be done". I have been in real estate for 23 years and Jim's book is now the touchstone reference that I go to whenever I find myself in a place where the typical conventional solutions won't solve my problem.
Professionally, I have made a lot of money from Jim's "outside-the-box" thinking. If you are in real estate and are sincerely committed to solving your client's problems, then this book should be the dog-eared standard by which you do your business. The concepts are easy to understand and have been tried and proven successful by Jim and hundreds of professionals around the world.
On a personal note, just two of Jim's suggestions (how to put the equity in your home to work and how to use real estate for your IRA, SEP and 401(k) accounts) have made me a bundle. This book gives you real life examples on how to tap into the resources that we all have available to us.
The question is - are you ready to start making money? If so, buy Jim's book and let me know how it turns out for you.
Robert D. Martin, CCIM
Broker
Ravenwood Real Estate
Eagle River, Alaska
Review #2
Goldmine for the investor
Misko's book is not long, but it is not light bedside reading. There are 47 separate strategies for financing real estate of all types, which are presented very (too) succinctly through a short paragraph on the idea, another paragraph or two outlining the actual strategy, and finishing with a scenario or case history of the strategy applied. Each strategy gets 2 short pages of treatment. There is also a glossary of real estate terms which is useful if not exactly complete, a list of potentially useful websites for the investor, a section on IRS trustees and custodians, and the complete Section 1031 (Starker Exchanges) of the IRS code!
Misko's point can be summarized easily: with enough imagination and luck in finding the opposite party to a transaction, almost any deal can go through as a win-win proposition. No one could argue with that.
If there is a problem with the book - and I think that for most people there would be - it is that many of these strategies are quite involved or complicated or at least very novel to less experienced investors, and really need a bit more in-depth explaining. The strategies are given little more than back-of-the-envelope exposition, and would all benefit from explantions targeted to a less sophisticated audience. Additionally, the examples should come with diagrams showing the flow of the deal, and the movement, source and uses, of all monies involved, as well as financial structures used. The strategies would be much clearer, and much more likely to be used by the reader.
On the whole, though, for the investor who is already involved in real estate, this book provides a wealth of ideas, any one of which could help close the next deal. Further, Misko gets the reader thinking in non-linear ways about becoming a problem-solver, which is perhaps the greatest benefit of reading his book.
Review #3
Not Put Together Well
I was very inspired by the title of the book but was dismayed with the content. Having purchased properties through traditional financing techniques, I was looking for other methods of financing to increase my financial leverage.
While I found many of the techniques discussed in the book very inspiring and got me thinking, the author was a sure let down in describing the details of his techniques on structuring the financing. The examples are somewhat abstract.
This is not a good book for the beginner and probably a bit difficult for the experienced. His techniques are not fully explained and are based on many assumptions of the reader's knowledge.
