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Apparently my blog program only lets me type so much before it starts to freak out, so here is the rest of my post…

… I guess the main issue I had with the book was the writing style. The book didn’t seem to fully captivate my interest like a book on this topic should have. I suppose some of it could be attributed to the fact that I read it 15 pages at a time on the bus on the way home from work.

In short, the Virsnieks plan is to essentially buy low, sell high, and use the rent from your tenants to pay the mortgate. To seasoned real estate investors this probably seem like a no brainer. If you fall into this category I would not suggest this book to read. If this seems like a groundbreaking idea, then this book would probably be a great read for you. Personally, I had a teacher in high school of all places enlighten me on this idea first, so the majority of the ideas covered in the book weren’t really much of a surprise to me. I felt that I got some good words of wisdom from the book, but not enough to justify the amount of time invested in it. I wish I would have just read a few choice chapters and been done with it.

As I mentioned a few posts back I read a book called “How to invest in Condominiums” by Andris Virsnieks. I did not finish this book entirely, but this is mainly because the book did not fully captivate my attention. Mind you that I read this book because I have been very interested in investing in real estate in one form or another for quite some time.

According to the title of the book, it covers such topics like:

• Select the right condo
• Make the real estate market work for you
• Attain positive cash flow
• Reduce your tax basis through depreciation
• Live rent-free and retire early

Judging by the cover it seemed like an interesting read. After getting a ways into the book it seemed to cover the same stuff over and over again. I guess that since I had been thinking about investing in real estate for so long I had already thought about many of the strategies that Virsnieks covers in the book.

The basic investment plan suggested by Virsnieks essentially goes a bit like this. First you must select a brand new condo. A remodel or apartment conversion just will not do. He does not believe in buying an older unit to upgrade into a more valuable one. Not only must the condo be new, but it also must have high demand for the units. If there is not high demand for them, then it may be harder to sell them later. The other main point that the author reiterates throughout the book is the value of hiring a property management company to take care of all the dirty work for you. Virsnieks claims that the management company typically takes about 9% of the rent for their services, but it is well worth not dealing with all of the hassles. He says that by purchasing a new condo and hiring a property manager, then you will only have to spend about 40 minutes a month on your investment. That 40 minutes will be spend going over the property management statement and depositing the check in the bank.

Virsnieks makes the whole process sound quite easy in the book, and indeed it should be. There are a few problems that I have with how the book is set up though. The majority of his purchases were made back in the 1970s, so it is somewhat hard to wrap my head around the purchase of a $23,950 condo in Seattle that rents for $265/month. These days a cheap livable condo in Seattle goes for about $175,000 or more. He also makes mention of mortgage payments in the 13%+ range, which is unheard of these days. If you applied everything on a strict percentage basis, it would all probably match up about the same, although in Seattle I believe that condo prices have increased more than rents have.

When I went to return my most recent book to the library I decided to pick up a new one while I was there. The one that I chose is called “How to invest in Condominiums,” by Andris Virsneiks. I am only 19 pages into it so far, but I have a good feel for it so far. It appears that it will be fairly informative while keeping at a level that will be easy enough for anyone to understand the basic concepts. The author makes is very clear in the first few pages that investing in condominiums is not a difficult task if done correctly.

The sweet thing about this book is that it is a signed copy. That kind of surprises me for a library copy. Maybe someone was bored and decided to forge his signature into the book. The book was written in 2002, conveniently at the beginning of the real estate boom but I’m sure that the majority of this information can be applicable in any market environment. I also found it interesting that the author did his condominium investing in Seattle, which is the area that I am from.