This helpful guide for new landlords examines the management process in-depth, providing a personal touch and firsthand...
A manual delivers advice on managing rental properties.
After writing a guide to purchasing rentals, Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing, 2016) returns with his wife as co-author to counsel new investors on effectively running their properties. “What exactly are we talking about here? What IS landlording?” the couple ask before answering with a common theme throughout their how-to book: “Landlording IS a business.” The main point behind each chapter examining common tasks is that “the differences between a business and hobby is having systems and processes for everything you do.” The many processes they delineate for landlords establish mostly safeguards against tricky legal situations: “You don’t want to find your mug on the front page of the Sunday paper for discrimination that you didn’t even know you were doing. Ignorance is no excuse for discrimination.” In particular, their lengthy dissection of fair housing practices draws specific and important distinctions taken straight from personal experiences, like the difference between refusing to build a tenant a ramp and denying a tenant the option to construct the ramp. They even venture into marketing, explaining how various laws can play a major role in advertising an apartment to rent and attracting the best tenants possible. Over the course of the volume, numerous lists like “6 Ways to Keep Yourself Free From Lawsuits” and a guide to evicting a tenant sometimes rehash material or present seemingly obvious details, such as getting copies of a lease to all parties. But the thorough nature of this step-by-step format ensures that new landlords can be confident they have everything covered, even down to knowing the proper equipment and lighting tips for producing the best ad photos. The authors also include case studies of fractious tenants and evictions from their own experiences, reassuring new landlords that there is a way to solve even the most difficult situations.
This helpful guide for new landlords examines the management process in-depth, providing a personal touch and firsthand insights.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9907117-5-9
Page Count: 392
Publisher: BiggerPockets
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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