5 Best Real Estate Books for Beginner Investors

Looking to get into real estate investing but not sure where to start? Check out this video for my favorite real estate books and bonus books!

Ariel Herrera 00:00

Are you looking to get into real estate but not really sure where to start. There's a lot of resources out there between blogs videos, but ultimately my favorite are books. And this video, I'm going to show you my five top books to get into real estate. My name is Ariel Herrera with the analytics erielle channel, we bridge the gap between real estate and technology. I'm a data scientist as well as a landlord. And I can attest that these books that I'm going to show you have really helped me in my journey. And this is the kind of content that you enjoy them, please subscribe as well as like this video. So I know to make more of it. Alright, let's get started. Several years ago, as I was commuting from New Jersey into New York City, two hours each way, on a bus on a train, I thought, How do I get out of this? And how do I start making some other sources of income, so I'm not just dependent on one. And in that process of trying to escape the nine to five grind, I read a ton of books. And some of these contributed to how to put more money into your 401 K, how to start a business on Amazon. But ultimately, what really led me to like passive income was real estate, I found it very enticing. And my first book that I ever read, it's actually not a common book that most people start off with. But this is called crushing it in apartments and commercial real estate by Brian Murray. And the reason why I found this book first, and found it to be one of the most interesting I've read is for mindset, and you'll see that as a repeated theme in some of the books that are my favorites. So in this process, I don't come from a wealthy family. And I'm thinking, How do I become a landlord? Is it possible for me to actually retire on this one day? How complicated is it? Those big buildings that I see, could I own that one day? And this book showed me? Yes, it's completely possible. So in this book, Brian Murray goes into how he wasn't even a pro and investing, but how he bought his first commercial property and use that as side income. And he goes into detail of how he was able to upgrade the property, add value to it, the steps to analyze the property. And I just loved that it showed you don't have to come from some family that you know, knows everything about real estate, you can come from ground zero and still make it so this was a great book, for my second book, which is one of my ultimate favorites is the book on managing rental properties by Brandon Turner and his wife, Heather Turner from bigger pockets. And the reason why I love this book is because it's so practical, Brandon goes step by step, how to find a property, how to get a loan, how to find tenants, how to create a tenant lease, what to look at when you're trying to evaluate cash flow. So the metrics but puts it very simply, the step by step process is what I was looking for, when I decided that I did want to become a landlord, once I decided what are the next steps. This shows you what the next steps are. And he also provides a lot of useful Excel spreadsheets and templates, which I actually use a template for my first property that I was renting out in order to create that lease. So I highly suggest that once you made that transition of wanting to become a real estate investor, and you want to know the steps that it takes to read this book. Now for book number three, it's not particularly a real estate book. But it does talk about systems which is so important in real estate. And this is called The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. So he has a lot of other books. And the whole theme is if you want to escape your nine to five, or just have more time for yourself so that you could focus on different business ideas, and you can't do everything yourself. You need to learn how to take some tasks that you currently have, and be able to hire them out overseas or locally. And he shows how to build systems at what time do you recognize that you need to have a system in place. And this was really great for me to understand that you can't do everything yourself. And as I was collecting rent safer mark my tenants, I wasn't just doing checks or cash, I was making sure that everything was digitized, getting paid electronically, and I could track everything, all my income and expenses within one portal. So those are the type of things that as a real estate investor, you have to always be mindful of even starting small you should always try to have systems in place and this book is great on understanding that book number four I absolutely love. This is called the house hacking strategy by Craig curl up. I actually read this book a little bit after doing house hacking for the first time but It, Craig does a really great job at discussing how do you start with almost no money and get into real estate. And through house hacking, you're able to actually live in the property. So it's owner occupied. And you can either rent out bedrooms and your property, you could turn your garage into another unit. Or you could have, say, two units like a duplex live on one side, while you run out the other. And the benefit here is that you get someone to help pay for your mortgage, and you're able to save even faster for the next property. So if you want to start with low money down, this is one of the best ways to do so. And Craig, again, goes through step by step, and how to actually analyze these house hacking deals to and for my fifth book, and one of my most absolutely favorite books is retire early with real estate by Chad Carson. So Chad goes into detail. If you want to escape the nine to five or just have a really good cushion for retirement, then this is the book for you. And it's one of the strategies that you need to take. Chad goes into detail of using the 1031 exchange to be able to scale from a single family property all the way up to say a 16 unit or more. And he has a lot of other experts that are in this book that detail how they got started and how they were able to ultimately retire on real estate. So the number one thing here is that it's not just a mindset of oh, maybe you can retire one day on real estate. But this is actually a pathway there's different pathways to take. And you could actually start to map your own and see, okay, I want to retire, say in 1015 20 years, this is the exact path that I should take. So highly recommend this book, I have three bonus books that I also want to be able to recommend to you. I do like to share a lot with friends and family. So unfortunately, these books have left my hands and I don't physically have them. But my other favorite books include 10x by Grant Cardone, and this book is excellent again, for mindset to understand how to actually go from one goal to a higher goal and be able to do even more. So for example, say if your goal is to own one single family home, be a landlord and use that single family to be able to retire one day. Well, why one? Why don't you scale 10x, and you look to get 10 single family properties, or you look to get a 10 unit building. While the benefit here is even if you don't achieve that number 10. If you've maybe achieved seven single family properties, well, you did so much more than your initial goal, and you set yourself up in an even better position. So I highly recommend that. And then a second book, which is not as real estate related, but does deal with a huge concept networking is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And this book is excellent to be able to understand how to build relationships which is huge in real estate you need to have relationships with the tenants that you have as well as other factors. So you need to be interacting with real estate agents potentially real estate related lawyers as well as contractors, wholesalers and more. So I highly recommend to read this book which has been around for decades so the principles really stick in for the last book which you probably have heard and if you haven't already then please get it is Rich Dad Poor Dad and even though Rich Dad Poor Dad isn't my ultimate favorite mainly because I had a lot of the same concepts and understood them from being in business classes like depth income liabilities, assets, but if those are new terms to you definitely read this book because it shows the benefit of living below your means being able to have different sources of income and how to actually be financially free. So read Rich Dad Poor Dad for those tips.

Ariel Herrera 08:57

I hope this has been useful. I love being able to read books to gain knowledge and if you do to them, please add comments below so I could see what other books are you reading or have impacted you and your real estate journey? And if you haven't already then please subscribe. Thanks