Investing in Retail Properties Third Edition Gary D. Rappaport

2024 Axiom Award Bronze Medalist in Real Estate

Growing up in a modest house located in a small lot on New York’s Long Island didn’t exactly make author Gary D. Rappaport a likely candidate to become a successful entrepreneurial owner of multimillion dollar shopping centers and mixed-use properties. But this self-made man attributes his success to a handful of qualities he picked up from his father, among which were his entrepreneurial spirit, optimism, problem-solving, integrity, people skills, and in no small way, to his numbers skills.

From delivering newspapers door-to-door as a boy to building single-family homes to sell to baby boomers while right out of college to just a few years later starting his own company to purchase shopping centers and redevelop them, Mr. Rappaport’s career has been extremely financially rewarding for him as well as for the investors he handpicked along the way, mostly friends and family members.

Using images, tables, and figures, the third edition of Investing in Retail Properties explains in great detail and with frank transparency how Mr. Rappaport did it, and suggests that anyone can learn to do the same while building exceptional wealth in the process. He lays out a roadmap that is not available in any other book for would-be entrepreneurs to follow in his footsteps. He even shares stories of his students who have evolved and adapted his model to achieve incredible success.

However, Mr. Rappaport says that being an acquirer and developer of commercial real estate properties is not for the faint of heart. It comes with stress in personally guaranteeing loans and dealing with the ups and downs of commercial real estate that inevitably fluctuates with macroeconomic cycles. According to Mr. Rappaport, anyone can do what he did, but the individual must have the stomach for high risks, the thirst for exceptional rewards, and the patience to withstand the time horizon that is inherent in the direct ownership of commercial real estate.