Books about Housing from Amazon.com

This may be the best comprehensive guide for home buyers. Home Buying for Dummies is coauthored by Eric Tyson, author of several other books in the For Dummies series, and Ray Brown, a long-time real estate professional Like other books in the series, this one is an easy and even entertaining read. But it does not gloss over details in pursuit of simplicity. Home Buying for Dummies covers all the bases, providing clear explanations and reasonable judgments on how to select a mortgage, hire a real estate agent, find the right house, and negotiate a good deal. The book goes further than most in providing helpful, specific information. For example, in discussing ways to save money for a future down payment, Home Buying for Dummies even includes the phone numbers for various mutual funds appropriate to different investment time frames. --Barry Mitzman.
Price: $7.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

You'll need to wear many hats in the business of property management: advertiser/promoter (in seeking tenants), host (in showing your property), handyman (in keeping up with and arranging repairs), bookkeeper (in maintaining records), and even counselor (in dealing with tenants and their problems). But Property Management For Dummies will help you maintain your sense of humor – and your sanity – as you deal with these challenges and more.

You may become an unintentional property owner – someone who inherited a house from a relative and didn't want it to sit idle, or someone who transferred to a job in another city and decided to rent your home rather than sell it – or you may have entered the world of property ownership intentionally. Either way, real estate offers one of the best opportunities to develop a steady stream of residual income.

Property Management For Dummies is organized by specific topic areas, so you can easily and quickly scan a topic that interests you, or you can troubleshoot the source of your latest major headache. You'll discover how to

• Evaluate your skills and personality to see whether you have what it takes to be a landlord
• Keep your units occupied with paying tenants who don't destroy your property
• Move in your new tenants and move them out – and everything in between
• Assemble the right team of professionals to help you, from employees to contractors
• Insure your property and understand the taxes that go with it
• Look for additional sources of income beyond rent, including the opportunities and pitfalls of lease options

While many of life's lessons can be uncovered by trial and error, property management shouldn't be one of them – the mistakes are too costly and the legal ramifications too severe. In this book, you'll find proven strategies to make rental property ownership and management not only profitable but pleasant as well..
Price: $9.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Leading medical experts and scientists team up with celebrity activists to help parents detoxify and green their households

Nothing makes one more keenly aware of health risks lurking in the everyday world than becoming a parent. Most know the importance of using cabinet locks and child gates, but research is showing many more ways we need to be childproofing our homes. Tens of millions of American children now face chronic diseases and illnesses including cancer, autism, asthma, birth defects, ADD/ADHD, allergies, learning and developmental disabilities, as well as a host of lesser but disruptive ailments. And the growing research points to much of the increases on unseen threats wrought by exposure to chemicals in everyday products like cleaning supplies, beauty care and cosmetics, home furnishings, plastics, some foods and toys as contributing to these ailments. With that in mind, the non-profit organization Healthy Child Healthy World offers parents a definitive guide to creating a healthy, nontoxic, and environmentally sound home.

Filled with easy steps and simple solutions to improve family living without wreaking havoc on schedules or budgets, this book includes inspiring ideas for safe, eco-friendly cleaning methods, choosing healthier food, pet and garden care, nursery and home building materials, plus extensive tips for energy saving and family fun. With contributions from environmental science and public-health experts such as Dr. Phil Landrigan, Dr. Harvey Karp and Dr. Alan Greene, as well as many celebrity supporters (including Gwyneth Paltrow, Brooke Shields, Tobey Maguire, Sheryl Crow, Vanessa Williams, and Tom Hanks), Healthy Child Healthy World is the essential guidebook for parents wanting to go green..
Price: $14.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bring your chickens home to roost in comfort and style! Whether you're keeping one hen in a small backyard or 1,000 hens in a large free-range pasture, you will find the perfect housing plan in this comprehensive handbook.

Author and farmer Judy Pangman combed the country to select these 45 plans for housing both laying hens and meat birds (chickens or turkeys). The coops range from fashionable backyard structures featured in the annual Seattle Tilth City Chickens Tour and the Mad City Chickens Tour in Madison, Wisconsin, to the large-scale, moveable structures Joel Salatin has fashioned for Polyface Farm in Virginia.

You'll also find plans for converting trailer frames, greenhouses, and backyard sheds; low-budget alternatives for working with found and recycled materials; and simple ways to make waterers, feeders, and nestboxes. A gallery of color photographs provides other creative ideas to get you going. With basic building skills, a little elbow grease, and this book of plans, you've got all you need to shelter your flock..
Price: $11.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A do-it-yourself guide to designing, building, and maintaining water tanks, cisterns and ponds, and sustainably managing groundwater storage. It will help you with your independent water system, fire protection, and disaster preparedness, at low cost and using principles of ecological design. Includes building instructions for several styles of ferro cement water tanks..
Price: $12.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This bestseller is the only book on tax deductions specifically for residential landlords!

Named a "Top 10 Real Estate Book" by Robert Bruss, syndicated real estate columnist

If you own rental property, you should be taking advantage of the many tax write-offs available. Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide gives residential landlords the plain-English guide they need to save money on taxes -- without the services of a high-priced accounting firm.

This book explains how to maximize your deductions. Find out how to:

fill out IRS Schedule E

take real estate tax credits

figure out if an expense is a repair (deductible) or an improvement (depreciable)

maximize your depreciation deductions

deduct losses arising from real estate ownership

keep proper tax records

deduct home office, travel, casualty losses and much more


Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide is comprehensive yet easy to read, jam packed with interesting and relevant examples. The 4th edition is completely updated for 2008 and reflects the latest tax information and numbers..
Price: $21.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Passive solar heating and passive cooling--approaches known as natural conditioning--provide comfort throughout the year by reducing, or eliminating, the need for fossil fuel. Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved. Now Dan Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date for a new generation of solar enthusiasts. The techniques required to heat and cool a building passively have been used for thousands of years. Early societies such as the Native American Anasazis and the ancient Greeks perfected designs that effectively exploited these natural processes. The Greeks considered anyone who didn't use passive solar to heat a home to be a barbarian! In the United States, passive solar architecture experienced a major resurgence of interest in the 1970s in response to crippling oil embargoes. With grand enthusiasm but with scant knowledge (and sometimes little common sense), architects and builders created a wide variety of solar homes. Some worked pretty well, but looked more like laboratories than houses. Others performed poorly, overheating in the summer because of excessive or misplaced windows and skylights, and growing chilly in the colder months because of insufficient thermal mass and insulation and poor siting. In The Solar House, Dan Chiras sets the record straight on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, he highlights certain egregious--and entirely avoidable--errors. More importantly, Chiras explains in methodical detail how today's home builders can succeed with solar designs. Now that energy efficiency measures including higher levels of insulation and multi-layered glazing have become standard, it is easier than ever before to create a comfortable and affordable passive solar house that will provide year-round comfort in any climate. Moreover, since modern building materials and airtight construction methods sometimes result in air-quality and even toxicity problems, Chiras explains state-of-the-art ventilation and filtering techniques that complement the ancient solar strategies of thermal mass and daylighting. Chiras also explains the new diagnostic aids available in printed worksheet or software formats, allowing readers to generate their own design schemes..
Price: $17.78 [Notify me when price goes down.]