Book Review: Making Big Money Investing in Foreclosures

I recently read the book "Making Big Money Investing in Foreclosures Without Cash or Credit" by Peter Conti.  I read the 2nd Edition which was published in 2007.

I really wanted to like this book.  After all, I had read Brandon Turner's book "The Book on Investing in Real Estate with Low (and No) Money Down".  So I figured that this book would be much the same.

The first thing I didn't like about the book is that it talked a lot about the "Mentorship students".  So it made me realize that the author runs a guru course, and sure enough after searching the forums at Bigger Pockets I found a bunch of posts on this guru.

The second thing I didn't like is trying to teach someone a little bit about using specific "language" and tone of voice to convince people to do what you want.  For example, tactics like if someone says $30k is the least they will take, you say, "Okay, $25k - $30k is the least you'll take" then later using "$25k" even though that's not what the person said (called the "range technique").  There are example conversations in the book.  It just made me feel slimy reading some of them.  I'm all about helping people out of a difficult situation but these techniques just did not appeal to me.

There are some good points to the book, such as talking about different laws in different states (chapter 6) and what the foreclosure process is like.

So, unless you really want to learn how to "smooth talk" a homeowner in a desperate situation, I would avoid this book.