Real Estate Books Aid Charleston Buyers, Sellers, Investors

When it comes to making the most of Charleston real estate, knowledge is power. The schools didn’t teach us anything about selling a home or how to decide which home to buy, yet those are subjects that have lasting impacts on our lives. When such key decisions are in our immediate future, we come face-to-face with the importance of making the right choices, asking the right questions—and engineering the best deal.  

Whether or not you’re about to head a foray into Charleston area real estate, here are a number of excellent recent books that will help arm you with actionable knowledge:

100 Questions Every First Time Home Buyer Should Ask

This book is a general go-to reference for buyers (and I think for sellers as well: being able to put yourself in the shoes of potential buyers is essential for intelligent marketing). Answers to the “100 Questions” are provided by top brokers from around the country, so every detail won’t necessarily answer our local real estate specifics; but on the whole, this book is concise and informative. The questions are arranged in an easy-to-read format, separated into chapters like “Putting Together the Deal” and “How Do I Know What I Can Afford to Spend.” Readers rate it very highly.

Smart Essentials for Selling Your Home

Solid, practical information that can be invaluable for homeowners about to enter the Charleston area real estate market. In the same way that 100 Questions book is also useful to sellers, this one would make excellent reading for itinerant home buyers who’d like to know what’s important to sellers…thus being one step ahead when it comes to striking a win/win deal. Smart Essentials is mercifully short: just under 100 pages.

Buying a Home: Don’t Let Them Make a Monkey Out of You

Newly updated and with the highest reader reviews, this one is most appropriate for potential buyers with little or no previous real estate experience. As author Musgrave puts it, the object here is “to convey to the reader only the necessary information—and not one word more.” The extremely easy-to-read, informal approach is a welcome departure for first-timers: no wonder readers are almost unanimous in agreeing that if first-time home buyers read just one book, this is a worthy choice.

Investing in Real Estate

A newly written follow-up to the 2008 best seller, this is an accessible starter book that addresses most of the key issues that successful real estate investors learn to evaluate. The index is especially useful for locating individual topics quickly (something eBook readers don’t need to worry about: they just highlight a search term).

Interested in selling your Charleston area home? Visit: www.jeffcookrealestate.com

Interested in buying a Charleston area home? Visit: www.discovercharlestonareahomes.com

-Jeff Cook

Jeff Cook Real Estate

Charleston, SC