Real Estate Investing For Dummies, 4th Edition

Introduction

Welcome to Real Estate Investing For Dummies, 4th Edition! We’re delighted to be your tour guides. Throughout this book, we emphasize three fundamental cornerstones that we believe to be true:

• Real estate is one of the three time-tested ways for people of varied economic means to build wealth (the others are stocks and small business). Over the long term (decades), you should be able to make an annualized return of at least 8 to 10 percent per year investing in real estate.
• Investing in real estate isn’t rocket science but does require doing your homework. If you’re sloppy doing your legwork, you’re more likely to end up with inferior properties or to overpay. Our book clearly explains how to buy the best properties at a fair (or even below market value!) price. (Although we cover all types of properties, this book concentrates more on residential investment opportunities, which are more accessible and appropriate for nonexperts.)
• Although you should make money over the long term investing in good real estate properties, you can lose money, especially in the short term. Don’t unrealistically expect real estate values to increase every year. Downturns in the local real estate prices may create temporary buying opportunities, but we aren’t real estate day traders. When you invest in real estate for the long term, which is what we advocate and practice, the occasional price declines should be merely bumps on an otherwise fruitful journey.

About This Book

Real Estate ...