And so…  what’s it’s all about?  An why did I think anyone would read it?

I’d probably describe it best as being two books in one.  Quite a few readers of my first book, “What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow…,” told me they wanted to see more examples of the 37 key calculations I discussed there. That’s an entirely reasonable request; most of us learn better from examples.

So, I began with the idea of creating a workbook of sorts.  For each of my 37 metrics I created a series of sample problems that the reader could work through.  And, of course, I provided the step-by-solution for every problem.

I would humbly submit (all right, maybe not so humbly) that this was a good idea, because to master anything you have to roll up your sleeves and get involved with it.  You can’t just read about these concepts, you have to practice them if you expect to internalize them as part of your approach to investing.  And that, by the way, is how “Mastering” got into the title.

It’s one thing to master these concepts, but it’s yet another to understand how to integrate them and apply them — and that’s why I wrote the second part of the book, the case studies.  I took four different type of properties — a single-family rental, a development project, and apartment building, and a commercial property.

What I tried to do here was to take real-life situations, where you have to deal with asking prices that may be realistic or not; where you encounter seller representations that may be accurate or not; where you have to make judgments and forecasts using imperfect current knowledge.

One of my goals in this part of the book was to show you how to play, “What if…” with your forecasts so as to give you a sense of the range of possible outcomes for your investment if things like rent projections, interest rates, resale costs varied.  Also, in a departure from some of my usual topics, I tried to show how to look at a re-hab project — specifically, how to estimate an appropriate price for a property that you plan to re-develop into an income-producing investment.

Part 2 of the book can stand on its own, so if you’re comfortable with concepts like NOI, cap rate, discounted cash flow and IRR, go ahead an read this part first.

You’ll find more about this book, and my others, here.

This is a place that welcomes beginners, experience investors, and real estate professionals alike.  If a topic is pertinent and meaningful to you as a real estate investor, developer, appraiser, consultant, or educator, then it belongs in this blog.

So we may talk about where we think the real estate market is headed.  We’ll certainly discuss  nuts-and-bolts topics, like, “What exactly is a profitability index?” and “What’s a back-door approach and when do you use it?”

We want to tell you about useful resources as soon as we discover them (and so you won’t have to wait for our not-so-rigorously scheduled newsletter).  We definitely will talk about technology.  Do you know about the hidden gotchas lurking in Excel 2007?  And there are plenty of useful tips we can give you about using our RealData software to best advantage.

We’ll do our best to keep the conga line moving, but urge you to jump in with your comments.

Welcome aboard.