The TurnKey Investor’s
Essential Lease-Options Lessons
By Matthew S. Chan
www.turnkeyinvesting.com
Ascend Beyond Publishing
ISBN: 0-9713947-1-7
242 Pages
Matthew Chan is a businessman who has
found a work niche that he undoubtedly loves. He has many interests and one
of them is sharing knowledge. The TurnKey Investor’s Essential
Lease-Options Lessons is an important contribution to this
activity. Property managers will be very interested in reading these
“real-life investment stories and case studies from the field!”
TurnKey Investing
with Lease-Options: How to Simply & Safely Create 12% Returns With
Investment Property
http://www.bookreviewers.org/turnkey_investing_with_lease_options.htm
provided a more generic overview of the entire process, the business, and
information on how to invest. Chan’s followup book provides an interesting
depth for those who face property management issues each day. *
How best to start
talking about investment properties than to provide pictures and details for
review. The first two chapters cover Alabama and Georgia properties. After
each picture and description, the acquisition information is provided and
then followed by the Lease-Option terms. It is quite easy to see what is
happening and it appears that there is a major difference in the two costs.
However, property managers must quickly learn to think that lease-option
means the future. Planning for the future’s “current market” is a major part
of that planning.
Most of us who have
any background with real estate can probably come up with a war story or
two. A recent memory for me was when tenants in my best friends’ house left
and took most of the furniture! It is hard to accept when it happens, but
it teaches a hard lesson quickly. As property manager, you might say that
Chan has “seen it all.” For the book, he even divides the lessons down into
easy and hard lessons!
One of the easy lessons
that I thought very important was the story that people will buy two-
bedroom houses. The underlying lesson to be learned here is that
individuals who are going to go into business should not assume that the
“conventional wisdom” they hear about their areas is indeed factual. Chan
urges to research and verify what is being said, then make your decisions.
The hard lessons, of
course, were more costly and frustrating—but they are the more important
ones. One of the harder ones for Chan was that he couldn’t understand why a
nicer property was just not selling. The reason? The individuals who had
been hired to “bring the property back to standards” had not performed!
Double trouble: the tenants had treated the property badly; the contractors
had not done their jobs! It is indeed an unfortunate lesson that we must
all learn—never assume that tenants will treat your property like you would
and never assume that employees are doing the job for you. It’s the world
we live in today! Again Chan explains: Plan to visit or stop by your
properties. Provide specifics to your contractors and ensure completion of
satisfactory work before payment.
When you read these
types of stories, somehow they seem funny at that time. Indeed you may one
day look back at some of your war stories and smile in remembrance. These
events, however, are not the least bit funny when they occur. What Chan has
done in admitting and sharing these problems is give you, as a new
inexperienced property manager, an opportunity to learn in advance. For
those property managers who have some experience, this book will bring back
some of your own horror stories and may remind you that you have yet to set
into practice activities that will ensure that an experience will not happen
again.
No matter what lessons
have been learned—good or bad, it will routinely lead to some type of
business change or procedure for Chan. It could mean that there is a need
to hire staff. Here, too, Chan shares his stories about decisions in hiring
his office manager.
Throughout this book,
there are little nuggets to be mined; for instance, Chan’s group never takes
cash. Payment by check or money order is required. Why? For protection of
both his company and the tenants. They copy every transaction as
documentation of payment. Now, that seems like a lot of extra time and
effort, but when your realize that there is a potential for legal action at
any time, it becomes a sound business decision.
This book is definitely
a specialized book for those who are in the property management business or
are thinking of becoming involved. It is an excellent source of detailed
information and could easily be a training tool for new employees. Let
Essential Lease-Option Lessons work for you—learn these lessons
the easy way, not through going through your own horror story!
*A quick reminder is
important: details contained in these books cover properties managed by Chan
and his associates. Readers must be able to digest and correctly correlate
the detailed information to the specific locale in which they work.
G. A. Bixler
For IP Book Reviewers
