The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy and Hold Real Estate Investing

• Brandon Turner

‘One of life’s most painful moments comes when we must admit that we didn’t do our homework, that we are not prepared’

Investing in real estate is something I have always wanted to do. I knew from an early age that I did not want to spend my life paying someone else’s mortgage in the form of rent, and was adamant that I could achieve more than simply finding a family home to settle down in and wait until retirement.

I am a competitive person by nature, but I get incredibly frustrated when I feel that I am underperforming, or underachieving. While eager to ‘get on the property ladder’, I am even more eager to do well once I become a real estate investor. Choosing this book is one of the greatest things I could have done on my journey to become a successful real estate investor.

This book will act as your comprehensive guide to approaching real estate investing, providing you with  in-depth discussion and clear, concise examples on searching for properties, funding them, screening tenants, managing tenants, and everything in between.

For those of you like myself, with zero experience, looking to equip yourselves with the tools to get started, this book will give you everything you need. I already feel knowledgeable on the steps involved in becoming a successful real estate investor.

Chapter 1: Why I Love Rental Properties

I often swing between being really excited about an investment, to thinking it must be too good to be true, but at the end of the day, investing in anything will always be about two main things, value and cash flow. This chapter will help you get a clear understanding of what to look for in a potential property for it to be a good deal.

Chapter 2: The 5 Keys to Rental Property Success

Most people, myself included, initially look at real estate because they think it will be easy cash. Rent coming into the bank account each month without having to lift a finger, passive income, early retirement, etc. While this is true to a degree, it’s just not that easy, you need to plan your deals down to the finest detail for it to work.

This chapter will explain to you how your mindset will need to be before you attempt to purchase a property, and go through the integral parts of a successful plan.

Chapter 3: Four Sample Plans

Honestly, this was my favourite chapter of the book. The guides and the theory is all great, but it needs to be practical and relatable to real life situations. If you want to do well in real estate investing you better make sure you know at least basic accounting, and if you’re not good with numbers, you better get good, because every detail matters, and if you aren’t making the right projections, a good deal can turn into a terrible deal very quickly.

These plans give a vivid description of how to accurately project whether or not a deal can be successful.

Chapter 4: The 10 Members of Your Real Estate Team

You might think this real estate thing is dead easy and you can do it all yourself once the details make sense. No. Like any successful business, (and this will be a business), you need to hire the best possible employees in order to cash flow and achieve a solid bottom line.

I don’t mean actual staff, but you will need to surround yourself with people who understand the industry and can assist you in navigating through the process successfully.

Chapter 5: Analysing a Rental Property

The more I read through this book, the more I realised how little I actually knew about how to be a successful real estate investor, I knew nothing.

This chapter will go through, in immense detail, exactly how to analyse a potential property. It is not simply mortgage payments vs rental income, there are so many more details that a novice just wouldn’t even begin to think of.

Chapter 6: Investing While Living in an Expensive Area

This will be so relatable to many of you reading this. We all know how expensive it is living and especially renting in Dublin. This does NOT mean you need to head down the country to make an investment, you just need to execute intelligently in order to be successful.

Chapter 7: Types of Rental Properties 

All real estate investments are not created equal. I used to think I was going to just save up €40 or €50k and get a nice 3 unit gaff in Rathmines or something, I’d cashflow €2k in rent and I would be good to go. The fact is, it’s just not that easy.

You need to understand and acknowledge that there are many different types of rental properties, and in order to plan effectively, know what you are going for.

Chapter 8: Location, Location Location!

Again, you might think you know exactly what you want, but are you 100000% sure? You better be. Before you commit to an investment in real estate, you NEED to know every detail about the location. Vacancy rates, average rent, crime rates, flood history, the list goes on, but the lesson remains the same, do your homework before you commit.

Chapter 9: How to Find Rental Properties

This is something I have honestly been neglecting, I thought it was the least of my concerns, but there is so much competition in this industry, particularly in Dublin due to the high rent, you need to think outside of the box here.

Ask yourself honestly, could you find 100 potential real estate investments per year? Where would you start? Because that is what will be required.

Chapter 10: Which Properties Make the Best Rentals?

This book is full of valuable information, phenomenal insight into what to look for and what NOT to look for when navigating this landscape. Like me, many of you are probably confident you have what it takes, driven and focused on being successful.

I found myself regularly taking deep breaths going through this book, grateful for the insight, as I have already avoided so many mistakes myself just from reading about all the potential red flags that I would never have thought of.

Chapter 11: Submitting Your Offer

Being a successful real estate investor is something I aspire to be, and I’m slowly realising that the only way to achieve this goal is to make as many offers as possible. There are specific details, clauses, and contingencies that go into making offers on real estate that never even crossed my mind.

This chapter will go through exactly what is required in making an offer, and how to improve your odds on being accepted.

Chapter 12: Real Estate Negotiation

Anyone who has ever read the book ‘In Business As in Life – You Don’t Get What You Deserve, You Get What You Negotiate’, written by Chester Karrass, will already understand how important this part of the process is.

The discussions you have with your lawyer and the property owner can make or break your deal, and a great deal won’t be easy to find unless you’re willing to fight for it.

Chapter 13: Financing Your Real Estate Investment

Reckon you know what you’re doing on this end? I thought I did. I fancied my chances of AIB giving me a decent mortgage, and with my First Time Buyers Clause, I could get a 90% LTV rate and find a great deal in no time.

Yes, this is the plan for most of us, but it’s not the only way to finance a deal, and you could argue that there are much better ways.

Chapter 14: How to Get a Loan Approved, Guaranteed

You’ll find as you read this book that all is not as it seems, nothing is black and white, and no two deals are going to be the same. This chapter opened up my eyes to the fact that there are certain things that banks are looking for, and there are different ways to approach the loan application process.

Chapter 15: The Due Diligence Process

With no background in real estate investing and zero knowledge of property law, I found this chapter incredibly useful. There is a specific way of operating when you get to this stage of a deal, with many things to be wary of.

While I am nowhere near a deal being reached myself, after reading this book, I feel a lot more equipped on how to handle myself when I do arrive in this scenario. 

Do not jump into the purchase of a property until you, and your lawyer, are satisfied that all is how it seems.

Chapter 16: Getting Ready to Close

This was another chapter that emphasised to me just how important it is to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s as a deal can really go up in flames at any stage of the process, and you’ll need to be prepared.

The closing of a real estate deal can be expensive, but there are handy ways of approaching the process, and the manner in which Brandon Turner goes through his personal anecdotes make it much much clearer to folk like myself who are very early in the research process.

Chapter 17: Managing Your Rentals – Part 1 & Chapter 18: Managing Your Rentals – Part 2

Oh, so you thought once you have the keys, that you’re done? Time to retire and go chill on the beach? This may be a bitter pill to swallow, but once you’ve actually closed the deal, that is really where all the hard work begins.

Even if you’ve managed to close a phenomenal deal on paper, you need to have your ducks in a row in order to make sure it’s a successful real estate investment.

Chapter 19: Exit Strategies and 1031 Tax Exchanges

I recently went through the process of asking every single person I knew about the equivalent of a 1031 Tax Exchange in Ireland. An Irish Solicitor by the name of Terry Gorry eventually got back to me with some useful information.

Terry is also a real estate investor and has a YouTube channel with some helpful videos.

This chapter will drilldown how important it is to educate yourself on real estate as a whole before committing, and fully understand the numbers in a deal before it’s too late. 

The last thing you want is to make loads of cash on a property, only to lose your capital gains to the tax man. 

Chapter 20: Final Thoughts

I would recommend dropping any ego you’ve got about investing before picking up this book. I thought I knew exactly what I was doing, and was completely humbled.

This is a book designed to assist you in avoiding mistakes, saving years of trial and error and equipping you to be a really successful real estate investor.

I plan to revisit this book again next year, as it has taught me many many lessons on the industry, and I plan to use it as my bible for real estate investing for the foreseeable future. 

Check out Biggerpockets.com if you are interested in this industry, there is a great community of like minded individuals and useful anecdotes to further help you on your quest to becoming a successful real estate investor.
Interested in buying the book, I got it here: https://www.bookdepository.com/Book-on-Rental-Property-Investing-How-Create-Wealth-Passive-Brandon-Turner/9780990711797?ref=grid-view