Product Description

With more than a million copies in print, Robert Allen's Nothing Down for the '90s has probably helped more people achieve success in real estate than any book in history. Countless numbers of his readers are now financially independent and many actual millionaires attribute their wealth to his techniques. Why has this blockbuster bestseller been so successful? The answer is simple: it works! Now, in one of the most practical books you'll ever read, Robert Allen has created effective new wealth strategies for investing in real estate.

Real estate remains the one reliable investment in which profits can be made consistently, no matter where you live. Whether employment figures and stock prices are high or low, the real estate market never dries up -- it is one of the most dynamic income-producing vehicles ever created. The demand for housing will continue to be strong in most areas of the country for the foreseeable future. There will, of course, always be plenty of foreclosures, which are great opportunities to purchase properties cheaply. And, finally, mortgage qualification today is simpler than ever, with new mortgage packages that did not even exist twenty years ago.

Nothing Down for the 2000s shows you how to locate the best buys, deal with real estate agents, and manage properties, all with little -- or no -- money down. Discover step-by-step techniques and dynamic strategies to:

• Use real estate to build monthly income

• Finance bargain properties for equity or cash flow

• Guarantee and secure your retirement

• Find and profit from foreclosures before they are publicly listed

• Sell and trade for maximum gain

• Increase property value

• Use owner financing to create opportunities

• Obtain direct, legal tax cuts

• Profit from conversions

• Develop effective negotiation techniques, and much more

Excellent for beginners or experienced investors, Nothing Down for the 2000s is the key to generating low-risk, high-profit wealth and to a potential future of security and financial independence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296032 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743261555
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Real estate is both the "simplest, easiest, safest, shortest route to financial freedom" and an invigorating self-help regimen, insists this latest edition of the bestselling financial primer. Real-estate guru Allen’s system has two tenets: 1) buy residential rental properties from desperate "don’t-wanter" sellers, and 2) pay "nothing down," using "Other People’s Money." After a broad but incomplete introduction to conducting and valuing real-estate transactions, he gets down to the nitty-gritty. Tenet 1 requires searching classified ads, hunting for For Sale signs, rummaging through foreclosure, bankruptcy and divorce records and otherwise beating the bushes for motivated sellers, then wangling the price down further. Tenet 2 requires a labyrinth of "creative" financing schemes involving various combinations of partnerships, options, floating bank loans, life-insurance policies, unsecured notes, second and third mortgages on multiple properties and other "paper formulas." Allen sells this program, with much motivational hectoring, as an opportunity for self-actualization. He insists that the only barriers to success are fear and lack of imagination, provides readers with worksheets to help them set concrete goals and discover their purpose in life, and suggests a visualization methodology called Neurobics to get them fantasizing about the wealth that will be theirs in the real-estate business (after an initial "starvation period"). Despite himself, Allen portrays real estate not as a safe and simple road to riches but as an all-consuming life project, full of endless trolling for leads, hardball negotiations, murky wheeling and dealing and sudden scrambles to meet financing deadlines and loan payments. Personality types who thrive on such a highly leveraged career of risk-taking and sharp practice will love this book. Others may balk at the total reconstruction of character and lifestyle Allen’s book appears to demand.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Robert G. Allen is one of America's most famous and most influential financial advisors of all time. After graduating with an MBA from Brigham Young University in 1974, Allen began making small real estate investments, transforming his tiny nest egg into a large, multimillion-dollar net worth in a few short years. He shared his powerful system with the public in the #1 national bestseller Nothing Down, which has sold more than a million hardcover copies and enjoyed forty-six weeks on the New York Times national bestseller list. Following that success, his other bestselling books include Creating Wealth, Multiple Streams of Income, and The One-Minute Millionaire. For more than twenty years, Allen has been successfully sharing his wealth-building techniques in frequent seminars throughout the fifty states and Canada. A popular television and radio guest, he has appeared on hundreds of programs, including Good Morning America and Larry King Live. He has also been featured in such national publications as The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Barron's, Money, and Reader's Digest. He lives in the San Diego area.

John Dossett has starred on Broadway in The Constant Wife, Democracy, Gypsy (Tony nominee), and Ragtime. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in Dinner at Eight, Hello Again, and on television in Law & Order and HBO's John Adams. John has read extensively for Simon & Schuster Audio.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Thank you for reading the latest edition of Nothing Down. I was thirty-one years old when Simon & Schuster published the first edition of Nothing Down. Little did I know at the time that it would go on to become the all-time bestselling real estate investment book. It has sold well over a million copies and helped untold thousands buy their first home or investment property...and for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, earn their first million. (If you're one of those, please go to www.millionairehalloffame.com and log in your success story.) Although I've updated the book to reflect current laws and tactics, the principles in this book are timeless. The following phrase is still as true:

Real estate is the simplest, easiest, safest, shortest route to financial freedom. This is also as true today as it will be twenty-five years from now. If you want financial freedom, real estate will be a large part of your portfolio.

Although these principles are timeless, you and I are not. If you'll indulge me, just before you launch into this book, let me tell you about a lesson I learned recently that has caused me to be even more intent on getting this timeless message out to as many people as possible.

Time moves rapidly for all of us. For me, it almost came to a dead stop on March 15, 2003. On that day I was driving home after giving a speech to about a thousand beginning real estate investors at the Anaheim Convention Center (near Disneyland). It was a very rainy night and there were numerous accidents on Southern California's freeways that evening. At about nine P.M., just north of San Diego, my Lexus skidded off the freeway at full speed and smashed directly into a large tree. Miraculously, another motorist witnessed everything and called 911. It took the rescue crew over half an hour to extract me from the wreckage using the "jaws of life."

I was transported to the Scripps Trauma center in La Jolla where I spent six days in intensive care with my multiple injuries. Even though the airbags had deployed, I broke my left wrist, blew out a quadracep tendon in my right knee, had my scalp peeled back (probably by the rearview mirror) leaving a nasty scar on my forehead, suffered cracked vertebrae, a broken big toe, multiple bruises, cuts, and a serious concussion. They tell me that amnesia is common for someone who has had a close encounter with a tree at high speed. Mercifully, I have no recollection of the accident, the ambulance ride, the operations, and most of the first three days of the hospital stay.

In addition to the physical trauma, there were emotional issues to deal with. What goes through your mind when you realize that you were seconds away from death? It's all pretty heavy stuff. I have come through all of this and am healing nicely both physically, spiritually, and emotionally, although I'll probably have lingering pains and limps and other issues to deal with for the rest of my life.

So why bring all of this up at the beginning of a book on real estate?

When I look at the photos of my demolished car, I wonder how I could have escaped alive...or more important, why I was able to escape alive. (After serious consideration, I've decided to post the photos of my crashed car at www.robertallenrealestate.com.)

I feel as if this has given me a new lease on life -- my second chance. The "old" Bob was too focused on unimportant things. The "new" Bob is more connected to heart and soul and love and people. I have so much love for Daryl, my amazing wife of twenty-six years, as she stood by me through such a frightening ordeal. When I became fully conscious again, it was wonderful to see my two older children, Aimee and Aaron, standing at the foot of my hospital bed, and then to receive a phone call from my youngest son, Hunter, who was at the time serving as a missionary in Brazil. I have so much love and respect for my business partners and associates for letting me take this extra time for "research." Thanks a million.

Finally, I thank God for this "accidental" wake-up call. I wouldn't wish the same experience on anyone else, but I pray that each of us can wake up to the new life that is possible -- to leave behind the parts of our old selves that don't serve us and embrace the attitudes and feelings that lead to a new life and a brighter future.

I hope that you allow this book to be your mentor to a new life. As you read this book, I hope you'll be inspired to believe that you, too, deserve a second chance -- a life of financial freedom and prosperity. I hope you'll read this book and be empowered to learn techniques and strategies that will move you more quickly toward what you want. I hope you'll find yourself saying, "I can do this."

I've intentionally written Nothing Down in layman's terms (because that's who I was when I made my first million). Yes, you can find more technical investment books -- and I encourage you to read them -- but this book is designed to reach the part of you that has always known you were destined to be financially successful. There is so much you can accomplish in life, you don't have to be held back by a lack of finances. Besides, real estate investing can be a lot of fun (mixed with a modicum of frustration to keep you humble).

The mere fact that you picked up this book tells me that you are blessed (or perhaps afflicted) with an entrepreneurial spirit. While in Hawaii a few years ago, as I sat at the breakfast table on the outdoor patio, a swarm of little tropical birds flitted anxiously around my table chirping and begging me to share some of the crumbs from my breakfast muffin. I flicked a few crumbs off the table and they attacked the crumbs as a flock. I wondered if there was an entrepreneurial bird among them, so I placed a large chunk of juicy muffin on the edge of my table. The flock flitted about, chirping and screeching, but not one dared land to enjoy the moist morsel. For several minutes nothing happened, and then finally one of them landed on the farthest edge of my table. He glanced out of one eye at me...very leery, skeptical, skittish...and out of the other eye at the prized muffin. He moved his way, ever so carefully, toward the muffin and finally began to pick at it, retreating from time to time to enjoy his luscious treat and then returning for more. And then he did something unexpected. He purposefully dragged the muffin off the table so the other birds could enjoy it. This was apparently an enlightened bird, willing to share his plenty with his feathered friends.

I hope you will become like that little bird, and dare to do things the other birds won't do. If you do, you will eat well all of your days. Just remember to share some of your well-deserved excess. Moreover, teach other birds how to do the same. There's plenty for all of us...if we're just courageous enough to go get it.

As long as I continue to breathe, I'll continue to teach as many people as I can that we are all destined for greatness. Regardless of what other people may have told you, I know you can become financially successful.

I wish you well. I hope that someday we can meet and that you can tell me, "You know that little bird? Well, that's me."

Have a great life.

Copyright © 1980, 1984, 1990, 2004 by Robert G. Allen

Customer Reviews

Good book - but doesn't explain the risks.
Buying a property for no or little money down is possible, and this book shows the principals and strategy for making alot of money from the property market using this strategy. It's money well spent in comparison to the Sunday morning info-mercials on this topic.

There is NOT good coverage of the RISKS. Allen is suggesting the most highly leveraged transactions you clould ever enter (short of buying futures on margin). Win, win big. Loose - you are Bankrupt (if your starting with minimum assets).

This is a good way to make money, there are risks and you must understand them. As well as knowing your market.

If you buy with no money down AND the market is going up you can't really loose. The things that spoil this, are:
* Macro economics - interest rates go out of control.
* Local markets. E.g. what is going to happen to the property market in Florida after the sting of hurricans?

The author brings home the power of leverage (this is pivotal to growing your net worth, whatever your strategy). He doesn't cover off the risks so well. Must have for prospective real estate investor; but underplays the downside.

Post Script: Clearly the people who wrote the next couple of reviews really don't like any critique of Allen's work. I wrote this book "UNDERPLAYS" the downside, I didn't argue the book ignores it. For example, the medium and long term impact on Florida's real estate values can't be determined yet - insurance increases and coverage issues wont surface for at least a few months, when they do, it will impact premiums. The damage and loss will also act as a detterant to potential buyers considering a move.

The exit strategies outlined in the book are superficial. Also, in the simplest of terms, getting rid of don't want property in a down market is very hard work (it isn't always possible).

This book addresses the risks of the last property crash quite well, and is not a get rich quick book. It does not, however,(IMHO)address SYSTEMIC or MARKET risk adequately. As pointed out, it was on the NY times best seller list for weeks (btw you can now pick it up really cheaply new or secondhand on Amazon, $8 off list price, cheaper than Barnes & Noble - mine will be listed shortly; this is a great service Amazon provides).

Timing the market is great in theory, but buy high sell higher is very hard work in a crash!!!!! Of course, we aren't heading for one .... there is no need to worry. Buy high sell higher can be fools gold - in particular if the market is a BUBBLE (for a good account of every market bubble since the Sixteenth Century read 'Devil take the hindmost: A history of financial speculation, Edward Chancellor.

I still think this is a good book, but want a better one? My suggestions would be Managing Rental Properties for Maximum Profit, or Investing in Real Estate 4th edition (very good coverage of leverage). I'm looking to buy my second US investment property (my previous realestate experience has been overseas) and I am researching my next steps.

Although this is an interesting and good book, the advice in these alternatives appears much more realistic and sound.

What is your purpose for investing in real estate?
One of the things that impressed me the most about this newly revised edition of Nothing Down and about Bob Allen in particular is the emphasis of finding your purpose. This is something that no other real estate author talks about.

Most real estate books you get the usual do this, do that. With Allen you get all of that too PLUS Allen shows you how to find your purpose or why real estate investing might not even be for you!

Nothing Down for the 2000's is a great book and deserving of it's high ranking here at Amazon.

The All-Time Best Real Estate Book now revised
While Nothing Down techniques have been around for decades and although Robert Allen didn't invent them, he certaintly was and still is the most visible real estate investor/teacher/trainer.

And they still work. I used and am still using these techniques to buy nice rental properties in 2004.

In nothing down you learn how to buy real estate properties using none of your own money and even without reference to a job and even with no or bad credit.

Robert Allen also teaches how to avoid "alligators" and what to do if you become a "don't wanter" of real estate properties.

If you have no credit or bad credit, Robert teaches you a very effective technique to establish your credit. Even so, Allen affirms that you don't need good credit to use his techniques. I can tell you he is correct. I started buying real estate with none of my own money and with bad credit after a business bankruptcy. Using Allen's techniques helped me re-establish credit and get bank loans, bank approved visa and mastercards within months.

I repeat: Using Allen's techniques also helped me buy real estate with bad credit. No don't need good credit or any of your own money to make these strategies work.

Glad to see that Robert Allen has updated his classic. I also recommend Multiple Streams of Income, The 1 Minute Millionaire both of course by Allen and Real Estate Money Machine and 101 Ways to Buy Real Estate Without Cash by Wade Cook.

Thank you Robert for updating the all-time best real estate book on buying real estate with nothing down. And the price is a lot less than those late nite informercials.