Book Recommendations for a College Course

[Adam Hoffer]

I hope to tap into the hive mind of the BP community to get recommendations for specific real estate books. I am an economics professor and I am developing an upper-level college course on Real Estate Economics. The existing textbooks on the subject are terrible, quite frankly. I've decided to pick a series of books for my students to read in lieu of buying a single textbook. Please share your recommendations.

I will give a little more background on the topic for those who want to know more. First, as I mentioned, I am an economics professor. I can put together the formal economics 'meat' of the course using my own notes (I haven't ruled out writing my own textbook, but I have time constraints for when I have to have all materials ready for my course, plus writing a book is a lot of work and this audience is rather narrow). I can whip up supply and demand models, pull aggregate data from government websites, and summarize appropriate economic policy. I literally do that stuff for fun. I will also supplement course material with published academic research in academic journals.

What I am looking for are books my students can read outside of the classroom. The best books would be easy reads and actually enjoyable to read so that they actually read them. 

I am aware of Brandon Turner's List of his top 20 real estate books. A BP user also scraped aggregate counts of book references from the first 223 episodes. I posted links to those below. I also know that BP publishes several of their own books. I own and have read several. Most BP books, however, tend to be more niche and written for investors who are a bit more advanced. I can't get all the way down into the weeds to the point where I assign a book on note investing, for example. 

I've already decided I am going to assign Rich Dad Poor Dad. It is a quick, easy read. From there, I don't know.  I am going to tag @Mindy Jensen and @Katie Miller because they seem like the go-to for book recommendations. Thanks in advance for any help and recommendations.

Links

Brandon Turner's List: (https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Best-Real-Estate-Books-Ever.pdf)

Jorge Garifuna's List (updated as of podcast #223 in 2017): http://garifunainstitute.com/math/bpbooks.php