The Real Estate Coach

Author: Bradley Sugars

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Reviewer: Goke Ilesanmi

The book “The Real Estate Coach” with the subtitle “A Story of Real Estate Investment Success”, is written by Bradley Sugars, a renowned entrepreneur, author and business coach who has helped nearly a million clients around the world to achieve business success. Sugars is the founder of Action International, a global network of business coaches with nearly 1000 offices worldwide.

He says you should stop working for someone else and start living the dream of working for yourself. This author stresses that it is a fact that you will never get rich by just working for a living. The only sure way to achieve real wealth and the attendant freedom is by letting your investments work for you, asserts Sugars. He adds that as a self-made multi-millionaire, the quickest and safest route to the kind of “passive” income it takes to live your dream is real estate investment.

Sugars says when it comes to your financial future, it is no longer as simple as work hard, put some money away and hope for the best in your retirement years. He adds that retirement is no longer about your age or how long you have worked, but about your ability to make and manage your own money. Sugars says it is how you spend, or preferably invest, that determines your wealth and obviously your retirement age.

Sugars educates that having a good job, or even great income is of no benefit at all, if all you do is spend or borrow more. He adds that building wealth is about investing at least some of what you make in your future. And when it comes to investing your money, most people are too scared to make a decision, so they either make no investments or put theirs in the hands of a professional broker, submits this expert. Sugars says this text is about your learning how to make some of these decisions yourself, gaining knowledge so that you can be financially literate, etc.

Structurally, this text is divided into 12 parts. Part one is entitled “Follow the rules”. Here, this author adds that it always amazes him how many people just dive straight in and buy their first investment property before they stop to think about the big picture. He restates that most people seem to just want to get a foot in the market before they even have a half reasonable idea of what they ultimately want to achieve, how they are going to achieve it, what structures they need to set up and what principles they will use to guide them. This expert says you should never fall into this trap and make the same mistakes like the vast majority of so-called investors.

According to Sugars, the basic idea of becoming wealthy is to first develop your cash flow through your job or your own business and then turn it into physical assets that in turn produce cash flow all of their own. He says real investment must produce an income stream while it is increasing in value.

He illuminates that most people who regard themselves as fairly familiar with investing also make the mistake of believing that it is just about the return on investment. He says his own definition of an investment is that an investment is an asset that both grows in capital value and gives off passive cash flow.

According to Sugars, the investing rules for buying a new inner city unit are quite different from those that apply when buying an existing house in an outer city suburb. He adds that there are rules for property you intend living in yourself; property you intend renting out; property you want to buy and sell again quickly; property you intend holding onto long term; property you aim to get capital gain from, etc.

Part two is based on the subject matter of balancing your portfolio. According to this author here, most people understand only two basic philosophies for investing in real estate. That is, you buy a property item for the cash flow it will give you or you buy it for the capital growth it will give you. He educates that rental income is a great reason for investing in real estate. Sugars says statistics for the last three decades show that around 60 to 70 per cent of the population of most western countries own their own homes, while over the same period, the number of renters has grown from around 20 per cent to now around 30 per cent. Sugars stresses  that a property item that has relatively low capital growth usually has a higher rental flow, while investment property items that generate a greater cash flow can usually be found in lower socio-economic areas, outer suburbs, country towns and in some high-density housing areas.

In parts three to eight, Sugars discusses concepts such as buying land value, not houses; buying residential real estate; buying, renovation and redrawing; profit at purchase; buying on the numbers; and cosmetic only, not structural.

Part nine is entitled “Buy where you are an expert”. According to this author here, when you get out there to start looking for your first property and the others that will follow, there is really no substitute for hard work. It really takes a lot of effort to become successful at this game, because if it were not so, everyone would be doing it, says this expert. He adds that most of the work he is talking about here is physically getting out and about and inspecting property, talking to agents and other knowledgeable people and gathering information.

In parts 10 to 12, this author beams his intellectual searchlight on concepts such as building a great team; four green houses becoming one red hotel and catching up.

Conceptually, this text is rich. As regards style, this text has recorded a huge success. The language is simple while the presentation is unique, logical and didactic. Sugars lends credibility to this work by using dramatic instrument of conversation technically called “dialogue” to convey his message. He uses Coach, the major character, as his mouthpiece to pass his message across to readers who are contextually represented by Brian and Sarah. With the presentation mode and simplicity of language, Sugars really proves that he is a coach and also reinforces the title of the text. What’s more, this author employs a lot of illuminating illustrations and precise quotes to achieve analytical reinforcement and ensure easy understanding on readers’ part. He uses graphic embroidery to achieve visual amplification of the readers’ understanding of the text.

However, the text should have been segmented into chapters not parts, more so that it is not very voluminous.

Finally, this text is a treasury of real estate ideas. It is highly recommended to anybody that wants to achieve success in the real estate business.

GOKE ILESANMI (FIIM, FIMC, CMC), CEO of Gokmar Communication Consulting, is an International Platinum Columnist, Professional Public Speaker, Career Mgt Coach and Certified Mgt Consultant. He is also a Book Reviewer, Biographer and Editorial Consultant.

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