Disclosure: I received a complimentary advanced copy of this book and consider the author a personal friend. However, none of that prevents me from giving my honest impression in this review. If I think the book sucks, I’ll say it sucks.

Pamela Slim’s book, Escape from Cubicle Nation, hits the bookstores today.

If you have any interest in entrepreneurship, running your own business, or life in general then I suggest you get thee to Amazon post haste and secure yourself a copy.

I’ve enjoyed Pam’s blog for the past couple of years. Her “voice” is fresh, funny, and down to earth. I expected nothing less in her book, and was not disappointed.

Having been held captive in the Cubicle Nation myself for 20 some-odd years, I can always relate to the advice Pam doles out. Escape from Cubicle Nation is a great read and is chocked full of sage wisdom. One does not have to be a corporate prisoner or a budding entrepreneur to get something of value from this book. Several times I found myself saying, “Huh, I need to do that” or “Great idea!”.

I’ve read upwards of half a bazillion books on business, leadership, and entrepreneurship and can honestly say that Escape from Cubicle Nation is one of the best. Let’s face it, business books can be mind-numbingly boring. Not so with EfCN.

For you real estate mavens out there, don’t think that this book won’t apply to you. It’s not just a primer on how to leave corporate America. It’s also about things you can do to make your existing business better, stronger, faster. There are real life examples from real life people. One thing I particularly enjoyed was the discussion of the emotional aspects of venturing off on your own. This is a huge part of running a business and is often glossed over, if discussed at all. Trust me, much of what Pam writes has direct application to real estate – and any business.

Written in a style that will make you smile, nod your head and think, Escape from Cubicle Nation is a must read for anyone remotely interested in improving and building upon their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Congratulations Pam. I know how much effort you put into this, and it shows. I wish you ridiculous success with it. (And the new blog redesign is fabulous. Welcome to Wordpress and Thesis!)

Disclosure: This is not a paid review. I was provided a complimentary copy from the publisher but under no obligation to write a review.

How to Buy Your First Home, 2E by Diana Brodman Summers covers a lot of ground in 174 pages (plus 113 additional pages including a glossary and several informative appendixes). 

The book is well written and broken into a logical sequence of sections that include:

Preliminaries
Searching for Your Home
Finances
The Buying Process
The Future

Each section includes several chapters written in easy to understand language. Scattered throughout the text are “Attorney Tip” boxes and “Click On This” sidebars with URLs for pertinent web sites —both of which should be helpful to first time home buyers.

The Glossary is extensive and very well done, almost worth the cost of the book on its own.

I’d be remiss in not pointing out one flaw in the book. Granted, I am a real estate broker and may be biased, but this statement by Summers struck me as being very poor advice:

Never let your real estate agent know that you are willing to go higher in an offer for a home. The higher the selling price, the more commission they make. While it is not ethical, your real estate agent may be tempted to tell the sellers that you are willing to pay more.

If you can’t trust your real estate agent, you are working with the wrong agent. To withhold any information from them out of fear they will utilize that to gain a few extra dollars is not a good idea. Better to do your due diligence up front in selecting the right agent, and work with your agent openly and honestly in all aspects of the transaction. The vast majority of agents have their clients best interests in mind. Given typical commissions and brokerage splits, your agent might make an extra $240 if you pay $10,000 more. The agent that sacrifices a potential future client (along with their family and friends) for that kind of money is the agent that likely won’t be in business very long. 

That aside, How To Buy Your First Home contains a great deal of sound information and advice for the first time home buyer.

See the Google Book Search for full table of contents, index, and samples from most chapters.

Full disclosure: This is not a paid review. The publisher did provide a complimentary copy of the book, but with no obligation to review — good, bad or otherwise..

Retire Rich from Real Estate: A Low-Risk Approach to Buying Rental Property for the Long-Term Investor. (Amazon non-affiliate link)

That’s a mouthful of a title, and covers a lot of territory.

And the author, Marc W. Andersen, Ph.D. does an admirable job covering that territory.
Retire Rich is well-written, and loaded with knowledge and tips, particularly for newer real estate investors.

Thankfully, Andersen does not propose any “get-rich-quick”, no money down, “anyone can do it” type of advice. His “formula” is a long-term investment return, not quick flipping.

And that’s sage advice in my opinion.

The book is well indexed, and has a great glossary — that alone is worth the price of admission.

Andersen writes in an easy to understand voice, and covers a lot of ground including (but not limited to):

• To buy or not to buy
• Identifying potential long-term investment properties
• Finding properties
• Determining operating expenses and cash flow
• Valuing and financing investment properties
• Property management
• Insurance and taxes
• Bookkeeping
• Selling the property

As a long-time buyer and seller of investment property, Andersen appears to be in a good position to offer advice, and includes many actual examples from his real estate investments. He’s got the right attitude toward real estate investing…

From the Introduction:

Creating wealth from real estate is a long-term proposition and the road is long and treacherous. It is not realistic to think you can make your fortune overnight.Once you make the right purchase you must learn how to hold on to and effectively manage your property.

The book has been reviewed on several real estate investing blogs and every review I’ve seen has been positive.

My only beef with the book is the author’s opinion that most listing agents are out to double-side transactions. As an agent who abhors dual agency, I find that annoying. However, the sad fact is Andersen isn’t just saying this on a whim — he undoubtedly has experience in seeing this practice first-hand.  

Well-written and reading more like a handbook to long-term real estate investing success than a gimmicky approach, Retire Rich from Real Estate would be a great book for anyone involved in the real estate market to add to their library.

Retire Rich from Real Estate: A Low-Risk Approach to Buying Rental Property for the Long-Term Investor
Marc W. Andersen, Ph.D.
Published: December 2007
ISBN: 978–1–57248–646–1
$18.95 U.S. / $24.95 CAN 
($11.03 on Amazon) 

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Disclosure: The following is a commercial post

Real estate investing — despite the market downturn, folks are still jumping on the bandwagon. Given that there are some fabulous deals to be had out there, that may not be such a bad idea. But jumping into real estate investing without knowing what you are doing can be a recipe for disaster.

Real Estate Alley is a new real estate investing forum. Their "tag line" is "Learn real estate investing". Running on the latest version of vBulletin, the forum is clean and fast. Categories include: Real Estate Investing, Foreclosures, Rehabbing, Short Sales and Rental Properties. A nice coverage of the big investing topics without crowding the forum as many new forums are inclined to do.

The forum is new, with the oldest posts dated around August 18. There are currently 75 registered users — not a bad number for a new forum in a crowded field. The forum posts are a little sparse — 36 threads containing 98 posts, but that is to be expected.

Some of the users are obviously brand new to real estate investing, but there were many solid answers to newbie questions by what appear to be seasoned investors.  I saw no signs of "flaming" or derogatory comments toward rookie investors — a great sign for a forum that proposes to help people learn real estate investing. In many of the larger, more established investing forums, it is often difficult for new members or those less knowledgeable to break into the forum and feel comfortable posting. Not so at Real Estate Alley.

The vast majority of Internet forums die a slow death. New real estate investing forums are up against some very large, and very well established forums such as Biggerpockets.com, REIClub.com and CREOnline (though its format is just awful to navigate).  This is going to make it difficult for Real Estate Alley to get a foothold and grow, but if you want to get in on a friendly forum in the beginning stage — whether to learn or to help — then Real Estate Alley could be one possibility.

[tags]Real Estate Alley, real estate investing, real estate forum[/tags] 

Disclosure: The following is a sponsored review. It is not a site/product endorsement.

FHA information is a handy thing to have. Though often maligned, the FHA loan program has for decades helped many people purchase a home. With the recent sub-prime collapse, FHA loans may be seeing a surge in use, and with that comes a need for consumer related information. 

The Mortgage Loan Place offers a free 20 page guide titled, "A Complete Guide to FHA Loans" (PDF download). Anything that has "Complete" in the title will cause me to raise an eyebrow. I'm on the retentive side, and "complete" to me means COMPLETE. And really, by definition, a "guide" can hardly ever truly be deemed complete.

That said, this guide is well structured and contains a significant amount of information for the real estate consumer considering financing options, including FHA refinance loans. 

As a guide of this sort should have, it contains sections on the whats, whys and hows of FHA loans. It even delves into various types of loan products such as option ARMs, interest only loans and fixed rates. A nice addition are sections on possible changes to the FHA program, HUD owned homes and the HUD "Good Neighbor Next Door" Program. The guide is well written, at a basic level that is easily understood by non-real estate professionals — it's obvious intended target.

One thing I appreciate about the guide is that clearly it is not a platform for shameless self-promotion by the Mortgage Loan Place. There is no, "use us for your FHA loans, we're the obvious choice" type of stuff. In fact, they encourage people to speak with different lenders. Other than non-intrusive "Mortgage Loan Place" text in the page footers, there is no other mention of the author/sponsor — not even a contact number or embedded link. It's pretty darn transparent information.

I really only have two points of minor criticism: 1) the document is not dated. Perhaps that is done so it is never "out of date", but undated documents that contain timely information that can change tends to bug the old semiconductor engineer in me. The use of terms like "testified recently" and "passed by the House last year" just begs for us to know when the document was written. 2) There a frequent references to the FHA loan limits. I can understand not putting in limit table, as they vary by metro area and county and any table could swiftly be rendered out of date. But why not embed a link to HUD's FHA Limits page? A real estate professional should know where to find the limits, and yes, the average consumer is more than capable of searching for them, but why not make it simple and embed the link.

The Complete Guide to FHA Loans is a document with a lot of pertinent information. Good for the consumer, and a decent refresher for a real estate agent who hasn't had to recently deal with an FHA buyer.

Disclosure: The following is a paid review. It is not a site/product endorsement. More on this at the bottom of the post. Please take the poll!

Overview: MyMovingQuote.com is a web site designed for two main purposes. It provides tips and information on moving — from a local to an international move — and it provides a venue to get quotes from up to 10 moving companies delivered to you via email and/or telephone.

MyMovingQuote has multiple sections for various types of movers — local,  long distance, international and office movers. It also includes info and quotes for auto shipping and local storage (Including self storage).

Information: The information pages are organized in a left column menu and include what you would expect — moving tips, packing tips, moving with kids and pets, choosing a mover, etc. The tips aren't earth shattering, but would probably prove useful for someone that hadn't moved using a moving company before. The moving glossary was relatively short, but could prove quite useful in decoding some "movers speak".  

Moving Quotes: The big draw of the site is the proposed ease of obtaining up to 10 quotes from movers specializing in the various flavors of moves. Although I felt bad about sending a "fake" request out, it didn't seem right to review a site like this without fully testing the main event.

I chose a local move within my zip code as a test vehicle. Getting to the form was easy enough. It's the focal point of the home page and hard to miss. You select the type of move you want and the date of the move from drop down menus. Easy enough. You also have to select the "Shipment size" from a drop down, and here it gets a little confusing. The options are broken down by number of bedrooms, which I can handle, but I had two choices — "4 bedroom, 9800" pounds or "4 bedroom, 10990 pounds".  I have no idea how much my stuff weighs. I suspect there is more that 10,990 pounds of crap piled in the garage. I just picked one and decided to see what would happen. The next screen asks only for a zip code (tip for MyMovingQuote — put the zip on the first form). Once I had that in, I was taken a list of companies that serviced my particular area and need (2 in my case) and to a standard name, address, phone type of form. I was a little confused why I was also presented with check boxes for storage, auto transport and corporate relocation for a local move. I assume this form is used for all varieties of move and they need that info for a long distance move.

So I complete the form (literally in seconds), click submit and kick back to see what happens. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised when less than an hour later I had an email from a local mover. They didn't really give me a quote, it was more of a guestimate based the information I provided. Understandable as no mover is going to give you an exact quote until they can physically see how much crap you've got shoved in the garage….

About an hour and a half later, I got a phone call from a different company (despite me listing my contact preference as via email — but that's not that big a deal and out of the control of MyMovingQuote). The young lady was very pleasant and also provided an estimate that was within 2% of the previous company. She was more aggressive in trying to get out for an actual quote than the email was.

I promptly thanked both companies, and explained that I was reviewing MyMovingQuote.com and wouldn't be needing their services. Both responded positively and actually thanked me for making the effort.

The Ugly Stuff: many (probably all) of the "directory pages" are very poorly written. Here's an example:

Moving Companies Phoenix AZ:

Remember, with proper planning and a great moving companies phoenix az, your move can be hassle free! Just avail of our services for your moving companies phoenix az needs and you’ll know the difference with Mymovingquote.com. With our moving companies phoenix az, you get provided with the best moving service you could ever ask for. (their emphasis)

It actually degrades from there.

You may "get the best moving service", but you sure don't get the best writing! This page was obviously written in an attempt to get good organic placement for the search term "moving companies phoenix az". It's very difficult to read, and provides no benefit to the site user. And it doesn't work that well from a search engine perspective either as the site ranks #14 in Google for that term, #18 in MSN/Live and it's not in the first 150 results for Yahoo. 

Conclusion: Getting quotes from multiple movers worked well. Granted, it was only one trial. I'm sure the success rate depends on the individual moving company, but obviously MyMovingQuotes "back end" for getting the quote request to the movers works. The information provided on the site is secondary, you can get similar info on dozens of web sites — including many real estate sites. Finally, they really need to consider losing the pages written strictly for SEO purposes (or hire a new SEO guy…) as they are ineffective and irritating.

If I needed a moving quote, I'd probably give it a whirl.

Disclosure part deux: I tried to present a fair and balanced review and I feel that a site related to moving and moving companies fits into a real estate blog and may be of interest to some readers. I registered at ReviewMe.com a couple of weeks ago, mainly on a whim. Trust me, I won't be retiring on review money any time soon! I know that monetizing blogs and paid reviews are the subject of some controversy. Personally, as long as it's fully disclosed and relevant to the blog, I don't have a problem with paid reviews. But I'd love to hear your opinion, oh avid readers. So let me have it!

[tags]MyMovingQuote.com, paid reviews[/tags]