Real Estate Financing Blog

Essentials of Corporate Finance Mcgraw Hill Irwin Series in Finance Insurance and Real Estate

Essentials of Corporate Finance, 5/e by Ross, Westerfield, and Jordan is written to convey the most important concepts and principles of corporate finance at a level that is approachable for a wide audience. The authors retain their modern approach to finance, but have distilled the subject down to the essential topics in 18 chapters. They believe that understanding the “why” is just as important, if not more so, than understanding the “how”, especially in an introductory course. Three basic themes emerge as their central focus:

1. An emphasis on intuition—separate and explain the principles at work on a common sense, intuitive level before launching into specifics. Underlying ideas are discussed first in general terms, then followed by specific examples that illustrate in more concrete terms how a financial manager might proceed in a given situation.

2. A unified valuation approach—Net Present Value is treated as the basic concept underlying corporate finance. Every subject the authors cover is firmly rooted in valuation, and care is taken to explain how decisions have valuation effects.

3. A managerial focus—Students learn that financial management concerns management. The role of financial manager as decision maker is emphasized and they stress the need for managerial input and judgment.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Good book
This is a great finance book that makes learning easy. to get the most out of it you need a finance calculator like the hp bII. it shows how to use the calculator to find the answers to finance problems.

5 Stars Quick and accurate service
I was pleased by how prompt I received my order. The book was in the condition described and the title/author matched the description. Overall, I would order from them again.

5 Stars Great Intro. Book!
This is a great book. Very easy to read. Very easy to follow along with the examples given. Some of the practice problems take some extreme thought or extra lecture by the prof. to know how to do them. Other than that, this is an excellent book!

1 Star Never Got It
Amazon was great about refunding the cost. The seller never got the textbook to me and was not very good about getting feedback to me on what was happening with the textbook. I finally got an email confirming that it would not be to me in time for my midterm (order 5 weeks earlier)so I contacted Amazon to refund the full cost.

5 Stars Essentials of Corporate Finance
This book was a requirement for my finance course. By purchasing at Amazon I saved $50.

Essentials of Corporate Finance

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Rich Dads Advisors The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing How to Identify the Hottest Markets and Secure the Best Deals

If you’re interested in real estate investing, you may have noticed notice the lack of coverage it gets in mainstream financial media, while stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are consistently touted as the safest and most profitable ways to invest. According to real estate guru Ken McElroy, that’s because financial publications, tv and radio programs make the bulk of their money from advertising paid for by the very companies who provide such mainstream financial services. On the other hand, real estate investment is something you can do on your own–without a large amount of money up front! Picking up where left off in the bestselling The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing, McElroy reveals the next essential lessons and information that no serious investor can afford to miss. Building on the foundation of real estate investment 101, McElroy tells readers:

• How to think–and operate–like a real estate mogul
  
• “The Top Ten Real Estate Markets to Watch”
  
• How to identify and close expert deals
  
• Why multifamily housing is the best real estate investment out there
  
• How to surround yourself with a team that will help maximize your money
  
• How to avoid paying thousands in taxes by structuring property sales wisely
  
• Important projections about the future of real estate investment




• And more.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Brilliantly detailed
This is a detailed and brilliantly written piece of work that is going to help me move up to the next level and make millions! Thanks!

5 Stars A great addition to the Rich Dad series
If you have read other books from the Rich Dad series then this is a must read. This book focuses on more specific issues with investing in real estate and focuses on multifamily investments. It covers looking for the deal, going through the process of negotiating the deal, and most importantly, doing due diligence! For someone wanting to get started in real estate rentals then this book has a lot of useful information.

4 Stars Pretty Decent Intro To Apartment Complex Investing
I came across this book at Barnes & Nobles and since it was under the Rich Dad banner I gave it a shot. I liked the section of dispelling the myths of investing in multifamily units, i.e. “you gotta start small”, and “you need the Midas Touch”.

The author discusses several projects that he has worked on and breaks down the process into several key steps.

Truthfully, it’s not a “be all, end all” book for apartment investing, but I liked the fact that he explained his methodlogy in a simple, easy to digest fashion.

I invest heavily in single family residences and tri/quad-plexes, since the rental market is hot(smokin’ like Texas BBQ) and sellers are deeding me houses at a rate of 5 per week. Apartment buying in this market AND for the forseeable future is going to be the next big thing.

You need to seriously educate yourself about this subject.

4 Stars Not just for the advanced investor
I recommend this book to anyone who read the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. This book was well written and covers a lot of areas of investing, from understanding a hot market, multi family units, securing the deal, making sure you got the best deal and much more. This isn’t just for the advanced investor, even newbies can understand these concepts. Now I know why they’re Kiyosaki’s advisors, they know they’re stuff!

Rich Dad’s Advisors: The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing: How to Identify the Hottest Markets and Secure the Best Deals

[...]

5 Stars First step into multi-family investing
This book is the next level of The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing. This time, the author educates readers about multi-family investing, which is different than single-family investing. A multi-family investor can benefit from economies of scale. For example, how many ads do you have to place when you are advertising for a 100-unit apartment complex versus a 100 single-family homes? One versus a hundred.

In this book, the author provides his beliefs why multi-family properties are the best real estate investments, how to identify and close deals, and how to build a team that will help with your real estate investments. I would also suggest educating yourself more on the subject before jumping into multi-family investing, but I think that this book is a great start.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

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She writes:

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eanwhile, Joshua Aizenman and Gurnain Kaur Pasricha showed in a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that, using either measure, ARRA’s “net fiscal impact” was zero.

What gives? Did Paul Krugman’s prognostications about Fifty Little Hoovers come true? Not so fast. The NBER study asked not whether ARRA boosted the economy but merely whether it stimulated government spending. (Tax cuts are completely out of the story.)

There is no doubt federal outlays grew – to the tune of about $160 billion through last December according to the CBO. But, the NBER authors say, belt tightening by state and local governments almost completely offset this increase.

As the NBER authors note, “the counterfactual of the performance of the US economy in the absence of the fiscal stimulus is hard to ascertain.” In other words, no one knows what would have happened to government spending without the stimulus. They assume it would have chugged along at typical post-World War II levels, while others think we were headed for The Great Depression 2.0. In any event, it’s certainly not hard to find a governor who says that, but for those extra federal funds, their budget situation would be a lot worse.

So was ARRA a flop? No more so than usual. States and localities generally save federal dollars for a rainy day if they can get away with it, much like individuals save tax cuts. This tendency also frustrated Washington architects of General Revenue Sharing during the 1970s and 1980s.

Tracy is on target, but my take is a little different in one respect: almost every state has a balanced budget requirement, which means that all the Feds did was allow states to cut less spending than they otherwise might have. And as it is, they still cut a lot.

The Living Trust The Failproof Way to Pass Along Your Estate to Your Heirs

If you are concerned about estate planning you may be surprised that, even with a will, the probate system can eat up as much as 10 percent of an inheritance and delay the process two years. In The Living Trust, noted living trust authority Henry Abts presents a simple, inexpensive legal alternative that eliminates the costs and delays of probate and ensures that your loved ones will receive their inheritance promptly and exactly as you intended. This new edition has been completely updated to reflect the federal tax codes and up-to-the-minute developments in the legal system.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars The best
Henry Abts has a true passion for Estate Planning, this is his legacy. After seeing $93,897.00 spent in probate I wanted to find out “WHY” and if it can be avoided for my personal Estate. Yes it can and Henry puts it in plain everyday language.

5 Stars Still the best book I have seen on the subject
If you want to know the history of living trusts in modern America and how the legal community looks at things this is a must read. Anyone who does not have a living trust either has no assets or no sense.

4 Stars The Living Trust
Although this book is somewhat out of date, it is an excellent tool for learning about the living trust which is a very important tool in estate planning. I highly recommend it.

2 Stars Disorganized, repetitive and much too long.
This book contains quite a bit of good information but only after you wade through about 90 pages of sales pitch for living trusts. When you finally get to the part of the book containing actual information about trusts it is disorganized and repetitive to the extreme. Much of the book appears to be excerpts from trust seminars given by the author which are strung end to end to bulk out the book. A good rewrite and editing would make this a more readable, concise and useful book.

5 Stars everything you ever wanted to know about living trusts
I read this book and it was just what I needed to lean all about the purpose and need for living trusts. If you are thinking about your estate planning this book is definitey a good read and very informative. I called the number mentioned in the book for a referral but no one ever got back to me. I found that very strange as the entire book is based on useing a trust professional certified by the author. Despite this, the book is very interesting and you will probably get all the information you need in regard to the subject matter. I am glad I purcheased this book and I can now say I know a lot about the need for living trusts and how to get one that meets my estate planning needs.

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He asks me whether their op-ed, Trading Away Productivity, in the New York Times this past week was correct.

I'm pretty sure that they are not correct, for reasons I am about to give. But the topic is really not within my wheelhouse, so I went searching for critiques on line. The only one I could find is on CafeHayek; the fact that it is there doesn't exactly reassure me. I also wasn't crazy about the argument.

Anyway, Tonelson and Kearns argue that labor productivity in the US has not gone up, because much more manufacturing assembly is done abroad, and that therefore the division of GDP by US work hours to get productivity is misleading.

But the only aspect of output that goes into GDP is value added. GDP is thus measuring value created in the US divided by hours worked in the US, which is as good a measure of average labor productivity as I an think of. Indeed, the whole point of trade is that different nations produce different things based on what they are comparatively good at doing. This even works within nations, within states and within cities.

Let me stipulate that I have long thought that trade was a good thing, and impediments to trade were generally bad things. My dissertation was on US commercial policy in the 1970s, and to me the evidence showed that protectionism created a lot of bad outcomes without a whole lot of good ones. I can't help but notice that a lot of places over time have become rich because of trade, from the Hanseatic League of Cities in the 13th century to Singapore today. I should note that Swati Dhingra, a Ph.D. student who is finishing her dissertation at Wisconsin, has done sophisticated work merging industrial organization theory with trade theory to show the benefits of trade might not be quite so large was we think. But Tonelson and Kearns seem quite crude by comparison.

But I have not studied these issues in depth for some time, so if I am fundamentally wrong, I would welcome correction.