START WITH STRATEGY

Meyer presents a guide to personal real estate investing.

The author breaks down the basic principles of real estate investment through the use of what he calls the “Resource Triangle,” consisting of money, time, and skill. Meyer details these three elements as well as many other finance concepts; for example, he clarifies the difference between transactional income (working for money, converting effort and attention into income) and residual income (residual-generating stocks, payments from rental properties), noting that “when people talk about financial freedom, they are almost always talking about residual income.” Using charts and other visual aids, he steadily increases the depth of his discussions, moving with deliberation into the deeper waters of inflation, market fluctuations, and risk (he regularly brings these discussions back to basics, as when he elaborates on the Finance 101 metrics of risk vs. reward in any kind of investment). Meyer explains everything new real estate investors need to know, from the principal (the starting point, the money used for starting any investment) to the choice between raising equity from outside investors or taking on debt to finance a new project. The overriding goal driving all of these discussions is to familiarize readers with the amounts of time, patience, and money they’ll need to start investing. Meyer writes with an appealing humility and sense of perspective, far from the take-no-prisoners, master-of-the-universe tone found in many examples of this kind of book—he admits immediately that his own real estate portfolio is modest compared to the major players in the industry. The author is agreeably direct, telling his readers that the point of his own investing activity is to provide enough income to give him free time for more fulfilling things; “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” he writes, “but it can buy a liberating amount of choice, flexibility, and convenience.”

An extremely informed and encouraging blueprint for getting into real estate investing.