Where To Go For Good Information?
There is a great deal of great information here, including expertise. The information is locked up in the bulletin boards in a way that makes it hard to get, because it is disjointed and often in response to questions posed by others.
Personally, I would never invest large sums of money based upon a few posts in a forum without confirming what I read through other sources. What Books or other sources of information have those of you who are experienced discovered to be exceptionally good?
Bollocks
What are your goals? Wanting to learn more about real estate in general or a particular area? Or just get motivated?
You will get many, many varied answers to that question because all of us took slight or hugely different paths from one another to get where we are now (and where we're going tomorrow). To get some idea of the diversity, here's a link to an article here at TCI that began with "105 great reads".
http://www.thecreativeinvestor.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&articleid=484
Good question about the goals. To be as generic as possible:
I would initially like to evaluate the various ways of making money in real estate in order to determine what would best suit my situation. I.E. to decide upon a plan to maximize my long term wealth using real estate as a part of my portfolio
I am considering diversifying my assets, and would also like to diversify my income..
I have the vast amount of my wealth in the stock market, and I need to diversify. I believe that there may be a long term downtrend in the stock market in a few years due to the demographic trends (retirement of the Baby Boomers) ala the book “The Great Boom Ahead” by Harry S. Dent.
I would like to generate a positive cash flow using real estate, as well as invest for a comfortable retirement. I will manage property or fix up property if necessary, but I would prefer an asset that either generates income or appreciates passively.
Finally, I think that most investment advice is written by folks who are scammers or at least not successful in their own right. I suspect that only a small percentage of investment/real estate books are actually valuable. OR, to put it another way, I would prefer to start by reading the best of the best, in order to minimize my time invested while maximizing my gains.
Thanks for the link to the books; I will start weeding through those as a starting point.
Bollocks.
For what you are asking, you would probably enjoy the Rich Dad books. Once you decide on a certain area, you can focus on books for that area.