2 Years to a Million in Real Estate

by Matthew A. Martinez

Book Overview

Quit your day job

Make a million in real estate

It's easier than you think

A few years ago, Matthew Martinez was a lot like you - he worked hard to make as big a salary as he could. But it wasn't enough. He worked by the clock, and yearned to be his own boss. With a small amount of savings, he acquired his first rental property. Two years later, he was making more from his rentals than he was working...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071471871
• ISBN13: 9780071471879
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Useful Information to Reference for Future Real Esate Deals

I think Matthew's book is a good read for the beginning/ intermediate real estate investor. I am 33-years-old and pretty well versed in real estate, having my RE license in CA and having done probably 3-4 personal deals, but the book opened my eyes to some new ideas. For example, Matthew elaborates on a plethora of unique ways to fill a vacancy, how to evaluate in detail potential investment properties, different ways to get financing for down payments, etc. He also lists a ton of other real estate investment books to reference. I think the main thing I have come to realize from reading his book is that cashflow is king. Building a million dollars in equity really is not the point. Receiving a nice monthly cashflow stream from buying the right properties is what it is about. After I read his book I started evaluating certain investment markets which showed me that you can realistically have probably $50k- $200k to put down and be able to cashflow $1k- $4k a month, which I personally would consider a pretty nice start. And if you're worth a million and own the right cashflowing properties? Well, I'll be writing a book like Matthew at that point!

A good read with practical steps

This book is great. Matthew is not your typical get rich guru (although he got rich quick), he's more like one of us: going to work and paying the bills. He decided that there was more to life than this and took matters and real estate investing into his own hands. His book also differs in that rather than investing in single family homes he focuses on multi-unit buildings. There are few books out there that cover this topic for beginning investors. [...]

Great instruction manual

I stumbled upon this book by reading the author's complementary review of Larry Loftis' book on duplexes, triplexes and quads. I thought it spoke well of the author to write a nice review of a "competitor" so I gave the book a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. The book is EXTREMELY complete. (In fact, I preferred it to Loftis' excellent book) The first several chapters deal with the author's beginning as a dot com worker who started to dabble in multi-unit investment and chronicles how he quickly increased his net worth and eventually quit his job to devote himself fully to his real estate "empire". The remainder of the book was very meaty as well. It basically gives all of the ins and outs of buying and managing properties, including a secion on dealing with Section 8 tenants which I'd not come across elsewhere in my reading. There is also a lot of information about landlording and the laws which deal with it. Martinez seems to be quite the careful sort, and I guess experience in real estate must teach you to always be on the lookout for potential troubles. Perhaps his guidance and advice will allow me to skip any "shortcuts" I might otherwise have tried. In my view, a successful "how to" book must inform and motivate. Martinez does a good job of that, motivating the reader with the success stories included in the first few chapters while also being extremely informative in the remainder of the book. Don't be fooled by the sensationalist title, which kind of makes it seem like a get rich quick book (though I'm sure the title helped to sell a lot of books). What the book IS is a thorough manual of how to proceed in investing and managing your rental properties and growing your wealth along the way. Five stars.

Practical Advice From Someone Who's Been There...

In spite of the inspirational title this is NOT a get rich quick infomercial style real estate scheme. You feel the author's pain as he describes the tenant who doubled his water bill filling up the neighbor's pool. Then he explains the micro-economics of how that increase in expense effects his property value. As a real estate broker with a good grasp of the market, I found that he does both an excellent job describing property investing fundamentals, but then applying them to specific properties. I highly recommend this book.