Pssst – Wanna Be a Real Estate Millionaire?

Author Tex Norton

Editors Note:
Tex has been kind enough to offer up a wealth of knowledge in his serially released Real Estate Investing Guide.
Enjoy!
Mike

FOREWARD

In 1958, William Nickerson wrote “THE” book on how to make money in real estate. The book was titled “How I Turned $1000 into $1 million in Real Estate in my Spare Time.” I was in my early-20s and wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was age 30. After reading the book, I figured I could do that, so I did. It’s also important that you realize $1 million of purchasing power in 1960 would require more than $7.69 million today (circa 2012 due to ongoing inflation) (source Bureau of Labor Statistics website inflation calculator at ). It’s actually much worse due to the higher taxes today and the way they’ve changed the inflation calculations. The BLS figure only takes direct inflation into account and in recent years, the government has dramatically changed (fudged) the way they calculate inflation in order to make it appear lower than it really is. However, we’ll learn some ways to legally avoid these higher taxes under current tax laws.

Today, thousands of books have been published on real estate investing. I have yet to find one as good as Nickerson’s. It is still the best “How To….” book I’ve ever read – on any subject. I’ve written this book in gratitude for his pioneering efforts.

But wait, you say! Everyone “knows” that real estate is in the dumpster today. After all, we’ve had the bursting of the real estate bubble and all real estate prices are much lower today than just a few years ago. We’ve got the banks foreclosing on millions of homes and at least a fourth of all home owners owe more on their houses than the market value of their house. Unemployment is extremely high and folks can’t find work. Why would you expect me to want to invest in real estate during these terrible economic times? Ah, grasshopper, because this is the precise time when the greatest profits are made. Keep the faith and reserve your conclusions until you finish this book.

There isn’t much new today in real estate investing, but real estate has become a big business for self-appointed gurus. As a result, they’ve given all kinds of new names to the very same techniques we used back in the 1960s. However, according to them, you couldn’t possibly learn what you need to know from a mere book, so these same gurus want you to spend thousands of dollars to attend their boot camps. If that’s the only way you can learn, then by all means, take some of those courses. However, I learned from a book because that was all that was available when I started. If I can do it, so can you! If you do decide to attend some boot camps or attend expensive lectures, I suggest you first check-out the following website: There are a lot of phonies and con artists in this field, and John T. Reed’s site is one way to double check the credentials of the guru you’ve selected before you risk your money. Reed is a very difficult person to try to get to know, but I believe he has presented an accurate assessment of the players based on what I think I know about those same players. Another way is to just Google the guru’s name. You’ll be amazed at some of the comments you’ll find on-line.

One purpose of this book is to familiarize you with all of the techniques you can use to purchase- or make money in real estate. Another purpose of this book is to take you step-by-step through as many transactions as possible so that you will know what to expect in each instance. It is not the intention of this book to sell you on the concept that real estate is a good investment medium. It is not the intention of this book to convince you to invest and become wealthy. It is not the intention of this book to motivate you. I accept you as an adult looking for helpful information and I expect you to use-, or not use, the information provided as you see fit. That decision is strictly up to you. I think you’d be making a mistake to not implement what you’ll learn in this book, but that is your decision. Remember Pareto’s Law? That law states that only 20% of the folks reading this book will do anything whatsoever with the information they learn. Only 20% of the 20% will really follow through and apply what they’ve learned on a consistent and on-going basis. That means only 4 people out of every 100 folks reading this book will make a sincere effort to understand and apply their newly-gained knowledge. In what category will you place yourself?

If I’ve done my job as the author of this book, it will become an investment bible for your real estate empire. I read Nickerson’s book from cover-to-cover seven (7) times and I re-read various portions of his book hundreds of times. Every mistake I ever made I subsequently found covered in his book. I just missed it or it didn’t register when I first read it. I tell you this because unless you already have a solid background in real estate investing, you’re not going to understand everything I have to say the first time you read this book.

The other aspect I hope to achieve with this book is to make it succinct. I get very upset after reading a 300- to 400-page book only to realize that the author could have presented the entire content in about ten pages. I intend to respect the value of your time – and mine.

Related posts:

1. Potpourri
2. Investing 101
3. Are Rogue Traders Stealing Us Blind?
4. How To Get Rich Part 2
5. It’s Always RE-active; Never PRO-active

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2012 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Authors, Economics, Opinion, Preparedness, Tex Norton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.