Best Rental Property Books

Rental property is an amazing way to invest.

…and it’s definitely better than house flipping.

House flipping is about a quick sell and making a bunch of money quickly. The problem comes from the constant grind required to find deals, fix them up, and sell them.

Rental property is about creating a lifetime of passive income. You can quit your job, retire, and enjoy life.

This is a list of the best books on rental property.

1. The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Intelligent Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing!

By Brandon Turner

In The Book on Rental Property Investing, real estate investor and co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast Brandon Turner has one goal in mind: to give you every strategy, tool, tip, and technique needed to become a millionaire rental property investor―while helping you avoid the junk that pulls down so many wannabes!

Written for both new and experienced investors, this book will impart years of experience through the informative and entertaining lessons contained within. You’ll find practical, up-to-date, exciting strategies that investors across the world are using to build wealth and significant cash flow through rental properties.

2. The Book on Managing Rental Properties: A Proven System for Finding, Screening, and Managing Tenants with Fewer Headaches 

By Brandon Turner

No matter how great you are at finding good rental property deals, you could lose everything if you don’t manage your properties correctly!
But being a landlord doesn’t have to mean middle-of-the-night phone calls, costly evictions, or daily frustrations with ungrateful tenants. Being a landlord can actually be fun IF you do it right.

That’s why Brandon and Heather Turner put together this comprehensive book that will change the way you think of being a landlord forever. Written with both new and experienced landlords in mind, The Book on Managing Rental Properties takes you on an insider tour of the Turners’ management business, so you can discover exactly how they’ve been able to maximize their profit, minimize their stress, and have a blast doing it!

Inside, you’ll discover:

• The subtle mindset shift that will increase your chance at success 100x!
• Low-cost strategies for attracting the best tenants who won’t rip you off.
• 7 tenant types we’ll NEVER rent to―and that you shouldn’t either!
• 19 provisions that your rental lease should have to protect YOU.
• Practical tips on training your tenant to pay on time and stay long term.
• How to take the pain and stress out of your bookkeeping and taxes.
• And much more!

3. Build a Rental Property Empire: The no-nonsense book on finding deals, financing the right way, and managing wisely.

By Mark Ferguson

This book is not full of theories and made up stories. It contains real-world case studies and information on investing from an investor actively investing in today’s market and is relevant in 2018.

Here are just a few of the topics covered:

• Why rental properties will help you retire faster than other investments
• The risks of investing in rentals
• How to determine what a good rental property is
• How to determine what type of rental to buy
• How to get a great deal on properties
• How to finance rentals, even if you have more than 4 or more than 10
• How to invest in rentals with less cash
• How to repair and maintain properties
• How to manage rentals or find a property manager

4. How to Quit Your Job with Rental Properties: A Step-by-Step Guide to UNLOCKING Passive Income by Investing in Real Estate

By Dustin Heiner

The problem that affects almost everyone today is being stuck in a career they hate. People are conditioned to work their lives away for someone else and only get paid for the hour they work.

How to Quit Your Job with Rental Properties is written by Dustin Heiner, an active real estate investor who has created enough passive income to quit his job. He is the author of the popular passive income idea website www.MasterPassiveIncome.com.

This book contains step-by-step training to help you acquire rental properties to allow you to quit your job and be financially free so you will never have to work again. Designed for the newbie or seasoned pro, anyone will learn how they can earn passive income from rental properties and quit their job.

5. First-Time Landlord: Your Guide to Renting out a Single-Family Home

By Janet Portman

Do you own a house you’d like to rent out rather than sell? It’s a common scenario in today’s market, especially if you’ve inherited a house, are moving to another home, or are buying an investment property. And it may mean you’re about to be a first-time landlord. Follow the advice in this book to ease into your new role and earn substantial profits while avoiding costly mistakes.

• Learn your legal obligations.
• Estimate costs and profits.
• Choose good tenants and avoid problem ones.
• Make the most of valuable tax deductions.
• Handle repairs and property management tasks.

The 4th edition is updated to cover the latest laws and practices affecting first-time landlords of single-family homes.
Includes samples of forms every new landlord needs, including a rental application and budget worksheet.

6. Every Landlord’s Tax Deduction Guide

By Stephen Fishman

Rental real estate provides more tax benefits than almost any other investment. Whether you own a ten-unit rental apartment building or rent a room in your home through Airbnb, you need to know about all the valuable deductions you are entitled to take as a landlord. Every Landlord’s Tax Deduction Guide is the only book that focuses exclusively on IRS rules and deductions for landlords.

With this book, you will learn about:

• depreciation, casualty and theft losses, start-up expenses, and other common landlord deductions
• IRS rules on deducting repairs and improvements
• vacation home tax rules, and
• proper record keeping and accounting, and much more.

The book also covers landlord tax classifications, reporting rental income, hiring workers, and deducting rental losses.

Filled with practical advice and real-world examples, Every Landlord’s Tax Deduction Guide will save you money by making sure you owe less to the IRS at tax time.

This edition is updated and revised to cover tax rules for Airbnb-type rentals.

Why Rental Property?

The wealthy diversify their streams of income. They invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, technology, etc.

Rental property is one of the most lucrative investments. In fact, a huge percent of millionaires invest heavily in real estate.

They aren’t doing this by flipping property, their time is way too valuable for that. Instead, they are buying rental property.

There are 5 key reasons to invest in rental property:

• Income from rent
• Depreciation on taxes
• Equity paydown by tenants
• Appreciation by increasing rents and property improvements
• Leveraged with a low-interest rate and stable loan

Rental Income

This money comes in every month. Month after month it’s there for you.

Sure, there is some vacancy, but you build that cost into your numbers. Also, as you get more property, the vacancy becomes almost a constant thing that is easily planned for and accounted for.

Depreciation

The tax benefits are definitely one of the biggest reasons to invest in rental property.

Basically, your property will “depreciate” according to the IRS until it has no value in 27.5 years. So, every year you get to deduct a major portion of the value of the building from your income.

This is literally the definition of a tax shelter because the asset isn’t truly depreciation. It’s probably appreciating.

Equity PayDown

Over time, your tenants are paying down the mortgage on your rental property. So, not only is the value increasing, but the debt is decreasing. You get to pocket this spread.

The best part is how someone else is paying for it.

Appreciation

This is like icing on the cake. You invest for the cash flow, but over time the rental property will most likely appreciate at or above the rate of inflation.

If you are investing in a growing market, your property may appreciate well above the rate of inflation and you’ll make up big time.

Leverage

The debt market related to real estate is one of the most stable and mature debt markets in the world. You can access low interest, high leverage debt very easily and quickly.

Because you only need to invest a small portion of the value, your return on actual capital invested can be very high when investing in rental property.