How to Analyze a Real Estate Deal
A Field-Tested System for Crunching the Numbers on Any Property, in Any Market, Before You Commit a Dollar
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
Stop trusting rules of thumb. This book gives you a clear, step-by-step system to run the real numbers, identify hidden costs, and buy with confidence.
About this book
You've read the forums, scrolled the blog posts, and maybe you've even tried to run the numbers on a deal or two. They all tell you to check the cap rate and the 1% rule. But when you actually got serious, you found that the 'guaranteed' cash flow vanished after the first turnover, the roof repair estimate was off by 50%, and your 'conservative' vacancy forecast was a fantasy. The obvious approaches don't work because they're built on oversimplified averages that have zero margin for the reality of a specific piece of property.
This book is different. It’s not a collection of tips or a list of hacks; it’s a complete system designed to show you precisely what to do with the numbers. It walks you through a proven framework that starts with a simple question—what is the total cost of ownership, not just the listing price and the mortgage?—and takes you through the exact steps to find that answer. You’ll learn how to analyze tenant quality, calculate true capital expenditure reserves, and stress-test your investment against the specific risks of its location and type.
Forget the hype. This is a field manual for the analytical investor. It replaces guesswork with a clear path to understanding risk and reward. It's for you if you're ready to stop making offers based on hopes and start making them based on a rock-solid, understandable financial reality.
Reader Reviews
Sarah Mitchell
★★★★★This definitely helped me get more organized, but I felt the author could have gone deeper into some of the financial formulas. The first chapter's claim about rules of thumb being dangerous is spot-on; it's exactly what the 1% rule did to my last duplex. I'm glad I read it, but I was hoping for a few more advanced templates to use.
Jonathan Lee
★★★★★As someone who had a previous portfolio nearly sunk by unexpected capital expenditure, the opening chapter of this book hit me like a brick. It immediately exposed why my old analysis failed—I never truly computed the total cost of ownership. The process isn't just a bunch of tips; it's a real method, and the seven-day action plan pushed me to look at a property I'd been holding off on. It feels like having a patient analyst walk you through the actual work, not just explaining the concepts.
Nicholas Hall
★★★★★What I appreciated most is that it's not another motivational 'you can do it' book on real estate. It's a non-romanticized, direct manual. The breakdown of why the classic 'cash flow positive by 100 bucks' analysis is dangerous, especially considering a California market's unique tax and insurance issues, was worth the price alone. It's clear the author has run the tedious numbers on real property, not just fluff. Reading it felt like hiring a pro to review your own lost deals and see exactly where you went wrong.