Product Description
The Real Estate Game is a comprehensive guide to successful real estate investment from one of the masters in the field. Drawing upon four decades of experience developing, owning, and managing properties and on almost thirty years of teaching at the Harvard Business School, William J. Poorvu offers an insider’s perspective on how to make smart decisions about real estate.
The real estate “game” is played by people, and it’s the stories of real people that make Poorvu’s introduction to the industry colorful and interesting. The reader meets players ranging from real estate moguls to small-scale developers to individual investors in exotic investment instruments. Their stories evolve throughout the book and illustrate how these people — with all their complicated needs, talents, and motives — fit into the larger process and context.
In clear and nontechnical language, Poorvu explains how variables — players, properties, capital markets, and the external environment — come together to influence the shape and outcome of a real estate deal. He explains the time frame for different kinds of real estate investments and walks the reader through the key “periods of play” in the real estate game: concept, commitment, development, operation, reward, and reinvestment.
The Real Estate Game introduces a simple but powerful “back-of-the-envelope” technique for analyzing the financial implications of a potential deal. Using this tool and others, Poorvu shows readers how to use direct investments, syndicates, and REITs to get into the real estate game across a broad range of property types: residential, office, hotel, industrial, and retail.
Offering unique insight into the ways that developers and investors can create value, The Real Estate Game is both a perfect introduction for the novice and an invaluable overview for the experienced professional.Amazon.com Review
Real estate is as much about people as it is about property, and, after location, success in real estate depends upon understanding the motives of those who play the game, because many critical decisions revolve around what real estate people think, how they act and why. The Real Estate Game, by William J. Poorvu and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, is a clear, comprehensive overview illustrated with real-life experiences about individual investors, small developers, and moguls. Poorvu has developed and managed real estate and taught real estate investing at the Harvard Business School for over 35 years. This book is drawn from his course, and is designed to help investors make the right decisions derived from the right assumptions and to provide an insider’s perspective on how to spot risks and develop strategies that provide protection and adequate investment returns.
The book uses the analogy of a game to illustrate some of the intricate and unpredictable interactions in real estate deals, and it lays out the rules of the game, including identification of the key players and periods of play: concept, commitment, development, operation, reward, and reinvestment. Readers are taught to be “value investors,” ready to buy at the right price at the right time, because the best opportunities come from buying at a discount-to-replacement cost. The value investor must be prepared to sell at the right juncture, and must not be compelled to be in the game when conditions make the game not worth playing.
The case studies that run through the book show how to evaluate, develop, and operate all kinds of real estate investments from the points of view of all involved in the process. There’s an extensive appendix covering the different property types, and the authors’ “back-of-the-envelope” method for analyzing the financial implications of a potential deal is probably worth the book’s weight in gold. –Scott Harrison
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
There may be a few hundred wheeler dealer types in the United States that would relate to this book, but even they would find it laughable. This book is designed for Donald Trump, not for the early or even moderate real estate investor.
Unless your attempting to buy vacant land in Nevada and build your own version of Las Vegas, I would pass on this book. It contains virtually nothing for anyone wanting to buy a residence of any fashion, unless you want the 400 unit apartment complex, and if that is the case, you really don’t need this book.
William J. Poorvu and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, your book might do well back at Harvard with your fellow graduates, but the average investors ego wouldn’t allow him to try and compete with your own.
Rating: 1 / 5
If you are looking for “real learning”, skip this book. Some of the stories are interesting and do sometimes make for good reading, you won’t lean any new skills from this book.
Rating: 2 / 5
William Poorvu teaches at the Harvard Business School and also invests and develops on his own. He uses case studies to show examples of the techniques and rules he uses when investing which is how MBA’s are taught. Overall its some great real world advice with no promises of making you a millionaire overnight.
Rating: 4 / 5
A good read, with some interesting points. Presents a great overview of the subject for the novice. The experienced reader may find it to be a bit of an oversimplification. The case studies are good, too.
Rating: 4 / 5
I think that this is one of the best books I have read on real estate. Successful real estate investments are not just about finding the right property, doing the due diligence, and closing the transaction. It is also about understanding how the players in this game think and act and what their motivations are behind it. The authors propose that investors be value investors, just like Warren Buffett in the stock market investing. They need to be willing to buy at the right time when opportunities are being offered at a discount-to-replacement cost.
There are many people involved in each transaction, and it is hard to understand how these people fit in the big picture. In this book, the authors show readers the function of buyers, sellers, attorneys, and appraisers. I highly recommend this book to people interested in real estate.
- 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
Rating: 5 / 5