How to Buy & Sell Your Home Without Getting Ripped Off

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Summary: a tutorial about buying and selling your home
Review: a very tutorial about buying and selling your home. very well written in laymen's terms so that anyone can read it with interest

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Summary: Book Pioneers New Philosophy: Real Estate Consumer Advocacy
Review: Books on buying and selling real estate abound, but it is truly rare to read a real estate book that breaks new ground -- or indeed, pioneers a new philosophy and launches a new movement: real estate as consumer advocacy. This seminal work, authored by real estate sales and financing experts Patricia Boyd and Lonny Coffey, sounds the clarion call to buyers and sellers -- as well as to real estate brokers, mortgage lenders and other service providers --for a new consumer orientation in real estate transactions. As the authors note, real estate transactions have heretofore been treated as the selling of a product, whether the product be the property itself or the mortgage loan that finances it. The historical focus has, therefore, been on salesmanship: getting the property sold or the loan made. Lacking in this focus has been the interests of the real estate consumer -- the buyer or the seller. This book introduces something new and something revoluntionary into the world of real estate transactions: a view of the buying or selling of real estate as a "consumer-driven" process, of buyers and sellers as informed consumers, and of real estate brokers and mortgage lenders as consumer advocates. The book serves as a road map for buyers and sellers who want to participate actively and intelligently in their realty transactions... and who want to stop getting "ripped off" by brokers, lenders and other service providers who put their own interests ahead of the consumer's interests. Just as importantly, the book shows real estate brokers and mortgage lenders how to work with this dawning new world of informed consumers -- not in the old way as salesmen, but rather as professional consumer advocates. It is the twin goal of the book, one it certainly attains, of educating real estate buyers and sellers how to be informed consumers and also training brokers, lenders and service providers as to how to be their advocates. Patricia Boyd brings vast experience as a top-producing real estate broker, real estate trainer and instructor and Certified Finance Specialist, to produce a practical, well-written and inspiring book that may well launch a new way of buying and selling real estate. As a former real estate broker with a number of professional Realtor designations (ABR, CIPS, CRB, CRS, and GRI), and now as a real estate attorney actively advocating the interests of buyer and seller clients, I applaud this book as the herald of a new real estate consumer revolution.

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Summary: I LOVE THIS BOOK!
Review: The mortgage maze can rapidly become confusing, especially if you are a first time buyer. This clearly written and informative book walks you through every step of the process, providing detailed information on the dizzying aray of loans that most lenders offer; more importantly, it tells you how to appraise each lender so that you reallly do get the best deal. In real estate and lending today, "caveat emptor"--let the buyer beware--is truer than ever, and books like this one are more needed than ever. Katherine Salant, Nationally syndicated real estate columnist for Inman News Features