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Best Books For Learning To Invest in Real Estate

6 days ago
11 min read

Real estate is one of the most common non medical side gigs that comes up in our physician communities, and one of the most common places physicians get stuck. Obviously, nothing in medical school or training teaches us how to analyze a deal, finance a property, vet a syndication sponsor, or understand what real estate does to our tax bill. And yet, there are many reasons why real estate is a great side gig for many physicians. The good news is that there's a deep bench of resources to learn about real estate, including courses, podcasts, YouTube Channels, and books on all of it. The challenge is that there are so many that it's hard to know where to start, especially when your reading time is limited.


For this article, we pulled together our community’s favorite real estate books, and grouped them by the question each one answers. Start with whatever you’re the most interested in at the moment. It’s a steep learning curve, but a journey that can be very gratifying for those physicians who are interested in owning rental properties or commercial real estate.


Disclaimer/Disclosure: This page contains information about our sponsors and/or affiliate links, including Amazon affiliate links, which support us monetarily at no cost to you. These should be viewed as introductions rather than formal recommendations. Please do your own due diligence before making decisions based on this page. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. To learn more, visit our disclaimers and disclosures. 


The best real estate investing books by category for physicians


Can you really learn how to invest in real estate from books?


The fact is that while some lessons can only be learned through experience, the heart of being a good real estate investor is following a disciplined approach. Books (or organized courses) can be a really great way of establishing a solid foundation before the real world experience, networks, and other great sources with more niche topics can kick in. We are always reminding physicians on our communities that you don’t want to blindly trust anybody in this space - there are lots of middlemen and people that may have incentives to get you to invest in a particular property, fund, or syndication. You want to make sure you have the skills required to underwrite deals or opportunities on your own, as well as understand what you’re getting into by investing in them, so that you can confidently take a step forward. That doesn’t mean the pathway will always be smooth, but you’ll have the skills necessary to identify risks, red flags, and hidden value or opportunity.


Real estate is a big, illiquid purchase, often financed with debt, and mistakes can be expensive and slow to undo. Reading before you act is one of the cheapest ways to avoid the most common ones, like overpaying for properties, underestimating expenses and the cost of debt, or choosing a strategy that doesn't fit your schedule or lifestyle.


The books below are consistently recommended on our communities. We’re big believers that a few evenings of reading can help you ask much better questions of the agents, lenders, accountants, and operators you'll eventually work with. Additionally, knowing the lingo will make them much more honest with their answers, because they’ll assume you know what you’re talking about.



Which real estate books should physicians read first to get a picture of the why behind real estate investing, and figure out what type of real estate they want to invest in?


These three are good foundations before you get into the details of any one strategy.



The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, by Gary Keller, Dave Jenks, and Jay Papasan


This is a big-picture book on how successful investors think about building wealth with real estate, drawn from the experiences of established investors. It's a useful read early on because it helps you define what you're actually trying to build and maximize for, whether that's cash flow, tax advantages, long-term appreciation, or buy and hold vs. flip or sell, before you get lost in the nitty gritty of tactics.



Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki


You've probably heard of this one if you've started exploring real estate books. It's often cited as a mindset book on why real estate and other assets matter for building wealth in a way that scales, and which allows you to stop trading time for money. Note that this is not a how-to guide, and is very light on mechanics. Think of it as motivation to start learning rather than a manual, and pair it with something more tactical from the ones below.



How to Invest in Real Estate, by Joshua Dorkin and Brandon Turner


This is a great option for understanding what options are available to you before you choose a particular strategy. Think of it as a bridge between the big picture financial thinking and the practical world of what owning each asset type is and pros and cons of each. There are so many options within real estate investing, from things like short term rentals to mid term rentals to long term rentals to medical office buildings to commercial properties like multifamily apartment buildings, to niche areas like senior living. Different strategies offer different advantages, with each shaking out differently on how they prioritize monthly income, others long-term appreciation, control, or lower day-to-day involvement. If you read this book, you’ll learn the major investing strategies, how to get started, and how to match an approach to your resources and goal.



Books that teach real estate fundamentals that apply across real estate classes, such as cash flow and financing



The first question you’ll get from an experienced real estate investor when evaluating a property is, “does it cash flow?” This book digs into the fundamental understanding of why a deal is actually good or bad. You want to buy assets, not liabilities. The goal is not to have as many properties as possible, to have the most impressive houses in the best neighborhoods, or own the largest buildings. It’s also not necessarily to buy the property that will appreciate the most over time, because you can’t control that. You have to understand how to look at the numbers and understand if the property put money in your pocket every month, and if the amount of return justifies the price you paid for it, the operating costs, the financing costs, and the risk you took on. In this book, you’ll learn terms like net operating income, capitalization rates, and cash flow, and learn how to cash on cash return calculations as well as understand valuations. This is a much more comprehensive account than our article on assessing real estate property investment opportunities for cash flow.




The way you structure financing for a property shapes your overall risk profile and potential returns just as heavily as the specific deal you acquire. This book outlines creative mechanisms for leveraging capital from alternative sources when you're getting started. Like any financial method, you’ll want to review these concepts thoughtfully and align them with your personal risk tolerance, as increased leverage amplifies both upside and potential downside. If you’re actively shopping for financing options, be sure to check out our physician mortgage lender resources as well.



What books specifically teach about investing in short term or long term rental properties that you personally buy and manage?


Direct ownership is the most hands-on route, but also the route that gives you the most ownership and control. Most real estate books are written about active real estate investing, rather than passive real estate investing, and these books cover the full lifecycle, from finding a property to managing it.




If you read only one book on buy-and-hold rentals, you’ll probably get the most bang for your buck (and time) with this one.  It walks through the buy-and-hold approach from finding and analyzing deals through financing and building a portfolio, in plain language that works for beginners. It's a strong foundation for nearly any rental strategy.




BRRRR is a strategy where you buy a property that needs work, improve it, rent it, refinance, and reuse your capital on the next deal. This strategy is key to scaling your real estate side gig fast, and in a way that allows you to not require an unlimited amount of money to purchase deals. Greene lays out how the process works and where it can go wrong. Note - this strategy only works for investors that are willing to get comfortable with renovation and project management, or, in the case of most doctors, willing to build a team that is.



The Book on Managing Rental Properties, by Brandon and Heather Turner


Many physicians underestimate the operations side of owning rentals, but realistically this will be what either makes or breaks your willingness to engage in active real estate investing. For many physicians, this turns out to be the dealbreaker on active real estate investing, so you'll want to head it off by setting expectations and building an intentional stategy so you don't burn out with operations, bad tenants, or constant maintenance issues. This book focuses on finding and screening tenants and managing properties day to day, which is useful whether you plan to self-manage or want to know what a good property manager should be doing for you. Also, see our article on questions to ask when you're interviewing a property manager or property management company.




For many, if not most, physicians, the best market for your numbers may not be the one you live in, and your clinical schedule may not leave room for driving to properties. The fact is that many of the best properties from an investment perspective rely on competitive pricing that lower barrier to entry as well as owner friendly real estate laws. This book covers buying, rehabbing, and managing out-of-state rentals, so it's worth a look if your local market doesn't pencil out with attractive returns or for other reasons.




Short-term and vacation rentals work very differently from traditional long-term rentals, with different economics, regulations, and day-to-day demands. Owning a short term rental property is really like owning a business that will be on your radar on a daily basis. This book covers analyzing, buying, and managing vacation properties, so it's a good read before you decide whether the strategy fits you. It’s not for everybody, but does offer the popular short term rental tax loophole. This tax strategy is attractive for many physicians who are working too many clinical hours to qualify for real estate professional status. 




Flipping houses maybe deserves its own category because it’s closer to running a small business than investing in real estate conventionally, but piggy backs off of the other sections in this space.  You're buying, renovating, and reselling just like the first few steps of the BRRRR method - you’re just doing it on a faster timeline with the intention to find properties that you don’t ever intend on keeping (whereas in BRRRR you take the money out but keep the property). This book covers how to buy, rehab, and resell residential properties. Note that you do have to have the bandwidth and appetite for an active, project-driven approach, so this isn’t for everyone. 



Which real estate books cover investing in multifamily real estate apartment buildings and syndications?


The Hands-Off Investor, by Brian Burke


Many physicians like the idea of real estate but don't have the time to be landlords. This is the book to read if you want to invest in real estate passively. So many physicians get pitched syndications without really understanding them, and they make decisions based on who introduces them, who has the flashiest advertising, or who they like. As we often remind doctors on our communities, you should be independently vetting these investments. This book teaches you how to do that. It’s a dense read, but it covers the important topics of how to evaluate deals and the people running them. Even if you decide syndications aren't for you, understanding how they work makes you a more informed investor. Read it to supplement our guide to syndications, which provides a more cursory review.



The Multifamily Millionaire, Volume I and Volume II, by Brandon Turner and Brian Murray


These books are great for learning how to invest in multifamily properties, all the way from duplexes to apartment complexes. Volume I focuses on small multifamily properties (2-20 units), which can be a natural next step once you're comfortable with single-family rentals. Volume II moves into large multifamily, like commercial apartment buildings. Together they give you a roadmap for scaling, and they're helpful even if you'll ultimately invest passively in larger deals, because they show you what operators are doing.



Which books explain real estate taxes?


Real estate taxes are very complicated - but it’s important to understand them because tax treatment is a big reason many physicians are drawn to real estate. It’s also one of the easiest places to make costly assumptions. While we always recommend talking to an accountant familiar with real estate taxes so that you can assess things specific to your situation, these books can help you get started with understanding the basis of the tax benefits and strategies. Note that both of these are written by the same authors and are meant to be read in order.




Start here to understand the basics of how real estate is taxed and which strategies investors commonly use. It will help you ask better questions of your accountant before you buy, not after.



The Book on Advanced Tax Strategies, by Amanda Han and Matthew MacFarland


The follow-up goes deeper for investors with more experience or more complex situations. 


A word of caution for both books: Tax rules change and physician situations vary widely, especially for high earners, so check the edition you're reading and confirm anything you plan to act on with a qualified CPA. You can assume some things have changed since these books are older, so the point is to understand the concepts, rather than follow them to the letter. You can find one through our directory of accountants for physicians.


The best books for real estate for 9 different topics (investing passively, scaling up, etc.)


Conclusion


You certainly don't need to read every book on this list to get started, and you shouldn't let reading become a reason to delay dipping into real estate forever. We really are just trying to give you some solid options based on the recommendations from our community. Pick the book that matches the stage you're at, read it with a pen or highlighter in hand, and then take one step, whether that's running numbers on a property, talking to a lender, or asking an accountant about the tax side. It’s quite possible that you may even come back to the same book at a different stage and notice different things.


For even more recommendations across business, leadership, personal finance, and member-authored titles, visit our full recommended books for physicians page.



Related resources for physician real estate investors


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