Book Review: Home Rich by Gerri Willis

Filed in archive Book Reviews on April 2, 2008

Almost everyone has a notion of their dream home, their personal showplace. Unfortunately, reality dictates that most of us will buy and sell a number of homes before getting there. And both the buying and selling of homes can be sheer torture. Play your cards wrong and even living in a house can be torture, as the roof starts to leak and the basement starts to flood and your lousy neighbors never mow their lawn.

To make the buying, selling, and living easy (or easier), Gerri Willis has written the new book Home Rich, which gives you all you need to know to be happy and not sad when it comes to your home choices and transactions. Willis, CNN's personal finance expert and host of the network's Open House show, preaches education and preparation as the keys to buying smart, maintaining and improving intelligently, and getting the best price in the shortest amount of time when you're ready to move on.

The central message of Home Rich is that your home is an investment and you should always be thinking about how to make that investment pay off. Obviously some people will balk at that advice, and will go ahead with installing a sauna next to the kitchen so they can grab a beer while getting steamed up, stubborn to the fact that no one else will want to buy that setup in the future. If you don't care about eventual resale value and just want to enjoy what you have, more power to you. Most of us, though, are spending fewer and fewer years in our homes than previous generations did, and keeping our minds on our exit strategy will pay dividends.

Therefore, all four sections of the book - Buying, Maintaining, Upgrading and Selling - are really about selling. When you're buying a house it makes sense to think about who might buy it 7 or 8 years down the road. Is it in a good neighborhood? Are the schools good? Is it the most expensive or least expensive house on the street? Does it have a history of flooding? While some of these things obviously will be a concern to you, you can bet they'll be a concern when you eventually sell.

Same thing with maintaining. That crumbling wall in the garage might not affect your daily life and you'd rather spend your money elsewhere, but someday you're going to wish you'd dealt with it when the problem was small. And how about upgrades? Do you go with the trendy stuff that will become dated or do you opt for improvements that will stand the test of time (and will add value, versus potential value-killers like swimming pools).

Having bought and sold a couple of homes, I can tell you that the advice on buying and selling is spot on, and the book is worthwhile if you are in either of those situations, with many tips to help you get a better deal as well as warnings on pitfalls that will cost you.

In my case, the sections on maintaining and improving were of greatest interest. The sections on improving curb appeal, working with contractors when doing renovations, which projects are most likely to get back the money you put into them - all well done and very detailed. (Sometimes the lack of detail is what kills a book like this.)

Willis uses a lot of examples of homeowners who've done well or made mistakes to illustrate various points. This makes the book more interesting and gets you thinking about your own situation, too. One quibble: these anecdotes are a bit too New York-centric. All parts of the country are represented, but still about 40% of the total are examples from Willis' backyard (so to speak).

If you're buying or selling, Home Rich could be an investment that saves or makes you a good deal of money. If you're a homeowner who's never given your house much more thought than as a place for your stuff, this book will give you ideas that make it a more enjoyable for you to live in, as well as a more valuable place to sell when you're ready to move up to the dream home.