I’m thrilled to announce the release of two books I’ve been working on for much of the past year:
THE BOOK ON FLIPPING HOUSES:
How to Buy, Rehab, and Resell Residential Properties
THE BOOK ON ESTIMATING REHAB COSTS:
The Investor’s Guide to Defining Your Renovation Plan, Building Your Budget, and Knowing Exactly How Much It All Costs
I started this website 5 years ago, with the goal of tracking my foray into real estate investing and keeping me accountable for taking action and making progress with my real estate business. It quickly morphed into an educational platform for helping other up-and-coming investors get started with their real estate careers and even helping experienced investors take their business to the next level.
I’ve received over 10,000 comments, emails and private messages from my readers over the years, and the two most common themes among them are:
1. “I want to flip houses, but I don’t know where to start!” Whether it be new investors interested in flipping their first property or more experienced investors who can’t seem to consistently make a profit on their deals, it’s clear that people are looking for a step-by-step guide to finding, analyzing, buying, rehabbing and selling their next property.
2. “I’m terrified to make offers because I have no idea how much my rehab is going to cost!” One of the hardest parts of successfully flipping houses is understanding the process and the cost of renovations. Without a clear framework and a path to understanding the cost of completely basic repairs, it’s nearly impossible to be confident about your rehab project.
I initially sat down with a goal of writing a book that would solve these two needs. That book quickly turned into two separate books — one providing a step-by-step process for flipping houses and one providing a framework for defining and estimating the rehab portion of your projects.
After completing the manuscripts, I sat down with my friend Joshua Dorkin, founder of BiggerPockets.com, to discuss how best to make the books available. As it turned out, Josh was getting ready to launch his own publishing brand, and we decided to team up to make my two books the first two books in his “BiggerPockets Presents…” series of real estate investing books and guides.
The books are available in two formats — Digital PDF (eBook) and Paperback — and will available on both BiggerPockets.com and Amazon.com (Amazon orders will be starting April 8).
Whether you’re an up-and-coming investor looking to get started in this business, an experienced investor looking to hone your flipping skills or a fan of 123Flip.com who just wants to support my efforts over the past 5 years, I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy of my new books!
J – just wanted to say I purchased your e-books Tuesday and as of this afternoon (Thursday) I have already read both. I’ve been a real estate agent in the Louisville, KY area for about 5 years now (since I was 19 years old) and have been working with my partner on getting into the investment game, especially with the way the market is turning. While I have a fair amount of knowledge on the investment side from working with my investor-clients, I must say you definitely done a thorough job in establishing a successful, proven system.
I simply wanted to thank you for sharing your invaluable information, experiences, knowledge & materials with those eager & aspiring to get into this portion of the industry. Your keen & careful attention to detail is clearly portrayed through your books and blog, and I am sure that is what can be attributed to your great success. I can personally say first hand that I’ll be implementing your system into mine as I begin working on my own investments!
For everyone else that may be reading this…GET THESE BOOKS, THEY ARE PHENOMENAL! Not only are you given tons of motivation, but these books will provide you with invaluable tools that will ensure you’re successful as well!
Sean –
Thank you so much for the kind words and the great testimonial! I really appreciate it…and good luck with your investing!
Hi,
What is the difference between these books and your articles in your blog? I also wanted to let you know that I have recently being offered I believed an amazing opportunity by a friend of my Dad’s… He said to me: “If you find the deal and it makes sense I will fund it” . He also said: “We can get into Multifamily properties too…no problem” . He mentioned that he will do most of the work because he has systems in place to make it all happen. He will even put it for sale himself. I would like to do it myself so I can learn…don’t you agree? He offered 1/3 of the profit… I do not know if that is good but I guess it is okay at the beginning while I learn more about this business. Sooo… I do not have to put any of my money into the deals… my problem is: I’ve never done any of this and the fear to mess things up is crawling in my head. Another problem is… How do I know if the area where the property is located is good for investment? Should i do all this under my own name or should I create an entity? am lost…can you help? I want to purchase you books so it can give me a better understanding of this business. I am looking for step by step instructions to do this business …let me know…
Thanks.
BTW… I read Mr. Sean Williams comment and I am super excited to buy it but please let me know what you think about this opportunity and maybe you can give me advice in how to proceed.
Thanks.
Javier
Hi Javier,
About 25% of the books are stuff that I’ve written previously about on my blog, on BiggerPockets.com, etc. The other 75% is new content written specifically for the books (the estimating book is 100% material that I’ve never written about anywhere else).
As for the opportunity, if the other gentleman is putting up 100% of the funds and is willing to do much of the work, it sounds like a PERFECT opportunity for you. You get to learn, and he’ll still be paying you! My suggestion is to let him know that you’re looking to learn as much as possible from him and that you’ll remain loyal to helping him after you’ve gained some experience and have the ability to go out on your own. He’ll appreciate the fact that you don’t plan to just take the new found knowledge and then run away. In fact, he’ll see it as an investment IN YOU, and it could be a great, long-term relationship for both of you.
Congrats!
Is there a way to buy just the ESTIMATING REHAB COSTS book?
Hey Risto,
Unfortunately not…the estimating book is an extension of the flipping book, so we’re trying to keep them together…
Got my books in the mail today and can’t wait to dig into them. Thanks again for all the help and info you continue to provide!
Hi J,
I’ve been a visitor to your blog/page since last fall and I have your experiences and information to very helpful. I am a novice rehabber/flipper and I’m interested in purchasing both the digital and paperback versions of your books. I don’t usually use my credit/debit card to make purchases online and I was wondering if in the future, will you allow for purchases to be made via PayPal?
Hi Kelvin,
We don’t currently have any plans to support payment other than credit card…sorry about that…
Thanks for putting these together, just ordered on BP.com I’ve been following your blog for years!
You need an affiliate program – real estate brokers like myself could really promote. 🙂
BTW, I plan on making my purchase of your books in just a few minutes.
Thanks Sandra!
We’re considering an affiliate program…I’ll let you know once we figure out the details…
I’m about finished with your first book (currently on the staging chapter). It has been extremely helpfull. My partner and I have officially started looking for homes in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Home prices are very high and competition is even higher (Cash buyers at $500k+!!). With that said we’re still doing it!
A few questions:
1. I’m creating our busines plan and using yours as a template. Do you know of a website that gives up to date market trends with graphs, charts, ect.?
2. Can you say honestly whether or not your book on Estimating Rehabs will be helpful to us here in the SF Bay area?
Thanks,
Brandon
Hey Brandon,
As for the first question, I would stick with local government websites and data that can generally be provided by competent real estate agents/brokers. Local data is key, and local sources will have access to it.
As for your second question, the main goal of the Estimating Rehab Costs book is to lay out a systematic approach to estimating costs — it discusses the 25 major components of a typical rehab, along with the couple hundred most common renovation tasks associated with those 25 components. For each task, I provide a typical range of prices, along with some suggestions on how to find out what your local pricing for the tasks would be. The main purpose of the book (laying out a modular approach to estimating and describing the components/tasks in detail) will most certainly be applicable in the Bay Area (I lived in Cupertino/Mountain View for 10 years, btw); the range of typical prices will likely not be very applicable, as there are certain parts of the country where prices are much higher than typical, and the Bay Area is one of them. But, you should be able to leverage the systematic approach to be able to fill out the pricing template with prices specific to your area.
Hope that helps!
Any plans on making the books available as Kindle or mobi books? I try to stick to Kindle books and only get print as last resort.
Hey Ruben,
Unfortunately, the books contain a lot of images and tables, neither of which converts well to Kindle or .mobi — so, at least for now, we’re not providing those formats. That said, we do offer eBooks in PDF format. If your E-reader supports PDF, you should be good…
@ J Scott / Sandra ,i agree he needs an affiliate program. aaaaaand
I just happen to be an affiliate marketing pro of 10 yrs and with lots of affiliate revenue under my management. if you want to do an affiliate program i can help. and sure we can work something out.
Now, im off to signup for the newsletter and get the books which is how/why i got here originally, i just cant help myself when it comes to a shameless plug….