Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The primary author of the book, Ralph Roberts, filed for bankruptcy in June, 2012 in Detroit, MI. Not disclosing that fact is inexcusable. He has a website that still has a front page, but all the associated sites have been closed down. I sent an email to the contact from his website to query his bankruptcy, but the email was returned "undeliverable". I sent an email query to his co-author with no reply. To Mr. Robert's credit, he does mention to having lost property to foreclosure himself, but he buries the admission in the introduction with no further explanation or detail. In addition to the omission of the author's bankruptcy, the book has one other glaring omission; the maxim that in real estate, never trust anyone. More politely put, trust but verify, then verify again. (Don't just trust my allegations above; jump on Google.) I am a 20-year real estate investor specializing in foreclosures, both flipping and renting, and I've never been foreclosed, never filed bankruptcy, never even been late on a mortgage payment. If Roberts is advocating the conservative approach that has worked for me, then he's the wrong person to be penning the book because that's not what he does. If he's advocating the high-flying approach that brought him great success and fame, then he should also write an epilogue about bankruptcy and personal foreclosure. The target reader for this book is a beginning or intermediate investor, and that person needs to have a boots-on-the-ground approach. You can't learn that from a guru that does 100 deals per year. My maximum production as an individual investor was about nine properties per year (flipping about six each year and keeping three) and I can't see any one person doing much more than that. A beginner should be shooting for two per year. After a number of years that may be ramped-up with additional financing and a support team, but the investor wouldn't be reading this book at that point. Although there is a lot of good information in this book, but there is a lot of outdated and impractical information as well. In acquiring foreclosed property, the process that I follow generally follows his outline, but the details are substantially different and in some instances contrary to his recommendations. I'd give three stars for content as an entry level primer if it were not for the bankruptcy omission. That reduces my rating to a zero, but that's not an option, ergo the 1-star.