There’s an abundance of information in today’s world on pretty much every topic imaginable — including real estate. Websites, blogs, podcasts, and books can be incredibly valuable ways to expand your knowledge, refine your business, and improve your investing skills. Since real estate financing is a key component of real estate investing, reading real estate finance books is a great place to start your educational journey.
Below are 10 of the top real estate finance books that will help you improve your financial situation, build wealth through real estate, raise capital, creatively finance or fund deals, or improve your real estate financial literacy as a whole.
General real estate finance books
What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli
This is a great book that explains the nitty gritty of cash flow calculations relating to real estate investments, particularly commercial real estate. Its goal is to help the reader understand how lenders and investors will conduct a financial analysis and underwrite real estate investments to determine their potential value and risks in the marketplace with financial metrics. Frank Gallinelli helps readers understand and calculate factors like net present value, capitalization rate, return on equity, and other important metrics of real estate investing.
Real Estate Finance and Investment Manual by Jack Cummings
This is an older book that has been updated over time and covers all of the pertinent financial metrics a real estate investor would need to analyze for every type of investment imaginable. It’s a rather large book, over 600 pages, and allows the reader to focus on the metrics or financial information that is most relevant and important for their investments.
50 Real Estate Investing Calculations: Cash Flow, IRR, Value, Profit, Equity, Income, ROI, Depreciation, More by Michael Lantrip
If you’re looking to take your financial literacy up a notch, this is the book for you. It’s geared toward more experienced investors and breaks down tons of financial metrics used in real estate. The author provides the calculations, which can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not a math major, but also provides resources on how to use financial calculators or other automated tools to help you with complicated calculations.
Creative real estate finance books
Creative Seller Financing: How to Use Seller Financing to Buy or Sell Any Real Estate by Chuck Sutherland
If you don’t have a pile of cash lying around and aren’t able or interested in obtaining financing from a private lender or financial institution, you’re going to have to get creative when it comes to purchasing. Luckily there are several unique ways to creatively finance real estate property, like buying investment property with owner financing. This book walks you through the benefits and drawbacks of owner financing from both a buyer’s and seller’s perspective while explaining how the process works and gives real examples of deals purchased with owner financing.
The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down: Real Life Strategies for Investing in Real Estate Using Other People’s Money by Brandon Turner
This book is a popular choice for a novice investor interested in learning creative no- or low-money-down ways to purchase real estate. It gives a good general overview of the various strategies of real estate investing using little to none of your own money, including house flipping, wholesaling, and rental property investing. The book covers the pros and cons of each investment strategy with real examples. While this book is filled with useful information, it also comes with a lot of grammatical errors, so readers should be warned beforehand.
Raising capital
Raising Private Capital: Building Your Real Estate Empire Using Other People’s Money by Matt Faircloth
Matt Faircloth is an experienced real estate investor who has purchased, owned, and managed both commercial and residential real estate. His book focuses on providing readers with actionable advice on how to raise capital to privately finance real estate deals, including how to approach capital discussions with investors, where to find potential investors, and options for structuring private partnerships — which is especially helpful for commercial real estate investing or real estate development.
Raising Capital for Real Estate: How to Establish Credibility, Attract Investors, and Fund Deals by Hunter Thompson
Hunter Thompson is a real estate investor and fund manager of his own private real estate investment company. He shares his experience and expertise on raising capital for real estate syndications in a personal and helpful way for readers. The book includes very helpful tips on ways to build rapport with investors and establish yourself as an expert and even creative ways to bring investors to you.
Syndicating Is a B*tch: And Other Truths You Haven’t Been Told by Bruce Petersen
Real estate syndication is a common method for financing real estate in the private market. While it can be a very successful endeavor, it doesn’t come without challenges. This book explains how syndication works but doesn’t shy away from talking about its pitfalls, giving readers helpful tips and insights into what it takes to successfully syndicate real estate deals.
How to Legally Raise Private Money: The Definitive Guide to Syndication and Raising Money for Real Estate and Small Business by Kim Lisa Taylor
Raising capital is an art, but there is also a science behind it. Many investors don’t realize that raising capital the wrong way can land you in jail, so it’s important to understand not only techniques for working with investors and connecting with new funding but how to do so legally. Kim Lisa Taylor is a syndication attorney who has helped investors syndicate hundreds of real estate transactions. Her book shares useful and important information about the legal side of capital raising.
Financial literacy for active real estate investors
Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Michael Michalowicz
Knowing how to analyze investment opportunities and calculate important metrics like net operating income (NOI), return on investment (ROI), and cash flow are crucial as an investor, but so is knowing how to manage the income you earn and gain financial independence through your real estate business. Michael’s system for money management helps business owners and investors grow their businesses profitably, showing them how to allocate income and revenues to designated accounts while putting profit first. This is a great read for any business owner, real estate industry or not.
The bottom line
These are not the only books on real estate finance, but these highly rated books have helped thousands of new and experienced investors gain further insight, knowledge, and understanding of the financial real estate market.
