Click Here To Purchase Gringos in Real Estate

Author: Robert G. Baglio
ISBN: 1432719270

It is a pretty safe bet that if there really is a simple way to make money, then people will not be writing books about it. They will instead be out making that money and keeping it quiet to prevent increased competition queering the whole pitch.

Making money at real estate speculation (or investment if you prefer) is clearly not going to be an option, irrespective of the number of books written about the possibility, since if it were possible banks would stop lending money to other people to buy property and just buy it themselves. There is very little if any money to be made from these ‘make it rich quick’ books. If author Robert G Baglio had thought about this, perhaps he would not have leapt into the market, together with his wife, buying four houses for ‘investment’ purposes and trying to rent three of them out, despite taking somewhat exorbitant mortgages to finance the transactions.

As the prices of these houses have begun to slide and the payments to banks mounted, Baglio and his wife began to speak of writing a book about their experiences, based on the concept that they were gringos in the real estate market, that is, na?ve and bumbling newcomers. This, after a while of hemming and hawing, is what they have now done.

This slim book details just exactly how the author got it all wrong and also provides details of a website at which other sufferers of the housing price bubble might interact, submit their own stories and, surely a futile hope this, try to rent out the houses they rashly purchased at the top of the market.

Baglio speaks of Greenspan’s formulation of ‘irrational exuberance,’ through which otherwise rational specimens of homo economicus suddenly lose their faculties and pursue herd-like activities. Of course, this phenomenon is the norm rather than the exception, as even a cursory examination of the world’s commodity markets and stock exchanges would surely reveal. As Paul Krugman among others has pointed out, the reason for the collapse of an asset bubble is the same as that for an economic recession or depression or whatever word might be used to describe the event: a loss of confidence causing a group panic event.

Rationally, loss of confidence on behalf of one party need not spread like a contagion among all the other market players but it does and then everybody loses their stake. It makes asset speculation a fundamentally risky proposition and, as the author points out, a little after the event of course, one in which it is better to use other people’s money and to cash out whenever a good position is available. In the USA things may be different but in Britain and a number of other countries, it is real market speculation which is driving the cost of housing beyond the means of working people such as nurses and teachers and contributing to a significant extent to working class poverty.

Readers are advised to check out the website (named after the book’s title or vice versa) to see if this is the kind of book from which they would benefit. The author looks like he could do with the money after all and, perhaps if he does make money from this project he will consider hiring an editor for any subsequent versions.

Click Here To Purchase Gringos in Real Estate

The above review was contributed by: John Walsh PhD:  Professor at Shinawatra International University CLICK TO VIEW John Walsh's Reviews