Your education is one of the best investments you can make in your business. It can take the form of reading the best books for real estate agents in 2022, going to a seminar, or learning from one of the top-rated real estate coaches.
Reading a book and investing in your education is a great thing you can do during the slow season of real estate.
Doing a search around the web will turn up no shortage of opportunities to learn about real estate and how to succeed as a real estate agent. With all of the sources and information, it can be a challenge to know where to start and what content will bring the best return on invested time and money.
So, I hand curated this list of the best books for real estate agents. Each book is one that I have personally read and has helped me in some way in my real estate career.
You will find book recommendations for agents at every stage — from agents in their first year, to those growing a real estate team, and even those thinking about retirement. Too many best real estate book lists focus only on increasing your business or investing.
Without further ado, here is a list of the top 19 books for real estate agents in 2022.
Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links.
BEST BOOKS FOR FIRST-YEAR REAL ESTATE AGENTS
Millionaire Real Estate Agent
I’m always surprised that there are agents out there who have yet to read this book or listen to it on Audible. I believe, honestly, that this book is filled with everything you would ever need to know about being a successful real estate agent. It doesn’t matter what stage of your real estate career you’re in.
This book is filled with strategy-level ideas. I even reread this book frequently to gain new ideas and apply new strategies to my business. I’m constantly amazed at the dense information in this book.
It really is a playbook to building a great real estate career. If you’re going to read one book, and one book only, it would be this one. Regardless of where you are in your career.
SHIFT
This book can be thought of as the sequel to the Millionaire Real Estate Agent. It builds on the Millionaire Real Estate Agent model and specifically focuses on how to apply the model in a shifting market.
While we aren’t seeing a decreasing market, I believe many of the ideas can be applied to the real estate market in 2022 where we are on the complete opposite end of the real estate spectrum — high prices, low inventory, and low days on market.
For example, one topic discussed is the idea of re-margining your business. Here you will learn how to cut expenses and allocate your money to profitable activities or marketing tasks.
This is a good idea to do every year, for example. It doesn’t matter what market we are in. Managing the money and the cash flow is always an important part of being in real estate. It’s a majority of the difference between those who stand the test of time by having a long career in real estate and those who fail and quit.
The Referral Engine
It’s constantly said that real estate is a game of getting people to like, know and trust you. It’s critical to get referrals and what better way than to learn from a book all about building a referral engine.
Most people are too casual when it comes to getting referrals. They don’t ask and they don’t have a marketing system to encourage referrals. After I read this book, I implemented a series of marketing systems, like a referral kit.
Somebody could request from me a real estate referral kit that I would send to their friend or family. It would have some sales material, but a majority of it was great information about how to buy a home, getting a mortgage, and more. All questions people likely had about their home.
Profit First
I believe that fundamentally most agent failures boil down to money. Specifically, cash flow management issues with profitability playing a role in that.
Profit First is a book that encourages you to take your profit and salary out first. Before you pay any of the expenses. It encourages you to build a career or real estate business that is able to operate on the desired margins.
The problem is that too many real estate agents keep poor financial records. At the end of the year when they get their P&L from their accountant, I usually hear “yeah, I guess that’s how much I made. I wasn’t aware it was so low”.
This book will show you how to set up a system to make sure that you are getting paid the wage you need in order to live and continue to work in real estate.
The Conversion Code
Written by a top-performing salesperson that use to work for QuickenLoans, known now as Rocket Mortgage, breaks down important lessons in building a funnel that takes a lead to a closing. The author shows you the breakdown of how you can build and track your sales funnel.
What I love most about this book is its relation to real estate. While the products are different, there are a lot of similarities between mortgage lenders and real estate agents when it comes to finding and converting leads.
No B.S. Sales Success in The New Economy
I’m a HUGE Dan Kennedy fan. Prior to real estate, I got started in business through direct-marketing and copywriting. I’m talking about sales letters, sales pages, and other direct forms of marketing. I learned all of these strategies before I ever broke out into indirect marketing, like SEO or content marketing.
I love this book because it gives you ideas for thinking differently about your role as a sales person and how you can improve your sales results.
Being a real estate agent is a commodity business. This book will show you how to re-position and escape commoditization. It can help safeguard against the constant pressure to cut and slash prices.
One of the biggest things I implemented in my business is a binder full of case studies. I have over 100 case studies in my binder.
They are much more than simple testimonials and are entire stories. They include pictures of the clients, their situations and more.
Eventually, I expanded this to video format. I use these tools to win at listing presentations.
Real Estate Books For Building A Business
Traction By Gino Wickman
Hands down, Traction and another book, ScalingUp, are the most influential books in my business. Gino Wickman breaks down a process he calls his Entrepreneurial Operating System that will help you properly set goals, discover and solve the issues in your business, rather than experiencing the same problems over and over.
For me, the most important part was building a scorecard. I have a simple one that Gino recommends but I have also built it out over the years to show me information about important metrics.
ScalingUp
Okay, this book is dense. At times, the concepts are rather advanced. I recommend reading this book only after you have read books like Traction and have some understanding of operating a business.
It’s full high-level strategies, that when implemented, can change the direction of your business. The book focuses on 4 important parts to scaling a company: people, cash, strategy, and execution.
Simple Numbers Straight Talk Big Profits
This book goes further than Profit First and is an appropriate book to read after you have read Profit First. In this book, you will learn a new way of thinking about your financial statements, mostly your profit and loss statement. It will also share a new way to think about taxes that is very contradictory to the advice that most tax accountants push out to their real estate clients.
If you plan to build a team around you, it will also share with you a metric for tracking and measuring labor productivity. It will give you an insight on when to hire, how much to pay, and if people are meeting metrics on your team or should be let go.
E-Myth
Here is another great book for building systems in your company. The most insightful lesson in this book is centered around building an organizational or people chart.
Most real estate agents who are seeking to build teams or are hiring administrative staff don’t have clearly defined seats in their company.
That leads to the ball getting dropped or employees competing over the same tasks. You can simplify your business by reading this book.
Recruit Rockstars
If you are looking to grow this year, you need to take the time to read a book about hiring and recruiting top talent. It’s an absolute must in this current climate.
Look around… organizations everywhere are struggling to find great people. You’re likely going to face this problem, too.
While the book focuses a lot on hiring c-suite staff positions, most of the information can be applied to a real estate agent looking for an administrator. There are several ideas that will easily translate into your business.
Regardless of the position, it should always be your goal to hire the best. Hire the top talent for the position.
Clockwork
From the same author as Profit First, Mike Michalowecz teaches you how to build a company that can operate without you.
Just like he recommends that you take your profit first, he recommends that you take your vacations first. It will show you problems in your business that need to be solved. It will reveal dependencies and areas of risk.
Too many agents work and work and hope they can find time for a vacation. If they do go on vacation, they’re often working from their vacation and not really enjoying their time.
For Agents Interested In Digital Marketing
Everyone says that buyers are looking for homes online, but very few agents and brokers know how to tap into these potential markets. How do you get in front of these buyers that are online? If you can figure it out, you have an unfair advantage as most agents have no clue how to do it.
Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising – Perry Marshall
I read the older edition of this book, the one prior to 2020 when Facebook was a little different. That book taught me a lot about Facebook marketing and showed me how to acquire seller leads for less than $1.
I also use these strategies to run retargeting ads to my database. Let’s be real. Some people just don’t want to read my emails or answer my phone calls, but they will watch a quick Q&A real estate video.
This book will show you the ins and outs of Facebook Ads and is a great place to get started if you’re new to digital marketing and want to spend some of your budget on marketing.
Real Estate Investing Books
Millionaire Real Estate Investor
This book follows a similar framework and model for the Millionaire Real Estate Agent. It’s a great book for learning the entire system for getting started in real estate investing.
You won’t exactly find tactical tips like how to send real estate investing letters to probate clients. Instead, you will learn a high-level framework that will provide a solid foundation for diving deeper into specific areas of real estate investing, like marketing, fix and flip, wholesaling, and more.
LoopHoles of Real Estate
If you plan to do any investing, you need to read this book. You will learn how to protect your assets and take advantage of the tax loopholes that exist so that you can net and cash flow the most amount of money.
This book is worth the read even if you don’t plan to be an investor yourself. I would recommend it to anyone that finds themselves working with investor clients or has a desire to work with investor clients.
This can be a great value add to your clients if you have this information. You can become an excellent resource to helping your clients become successful real estate investors. All of that will mean more business for you.
Skip The Flip
Skip The Flip challenges that status quo of getting into real estate investing through flipping. Too many shows like those on HGTV have created a strong desire to get into flipping. This book breaks down how you can get into real estate investing and holding properties that return a net cash flow. A position that is better than the instant cash injection from flipping a property.
Agents Approaching Retirement
Built To Sell
Technically, I could have thrown this book under the section of real estate agents that are looking to build a business. I placed it here because I think it’s important for agents who are near to retirement to think about how to create value in their company so that they can sell it.
To me, it’s a shame to work for decades in real estate, building a client list and not being able to pass that off to someone and sell it.
This book will show you how to create a business that you can sell and pass off to someone. It shows you how to create a valuable business that doesn’t rely on you.
The Art Of Selling Your Business
This book is the sequel to Built to Sell and gets into more of the nuts and bolts of selling your company. Selling a real estate company or client list can be confusing and a wrong step can cost you.
The Art of Selling Your Business will show you how to value your business, how to decide when it’s time to sell and how to position yourself to sell your company.
For the average real estate agent looking to sell a client list, a lot of the information will seem irrelevant. But you will find some little nuggets that might help you sell a part of your client list or business. A much better way to step into retirement.
