Each year, a plethora of property books is published, claiming to let us in on the secrets of making money from real estate. Harvey Grennan takes a look at four recent releases.

Get-rich-quick books on real estate come along with monotonous regularity. You know the story... "...bought my first house in kindy, owned 101 houses by the time I hit puberty and retired to the Riviera at 16".

Yes I exaggerate, but are these books actually of value when buying a home or investing in a rental property?

Here are four of the latest releases, each one with a different approach:
The second edition of Buying Property for Dummies (John Wiley, $29.95) is a superb guide for the first or second homebuyer. It's written by an informed source, property journalist Karin Derkley, and is full of information on choosing, negotiating, building, renovating and financing a home, with a bonus chapter on heritage houses and their architectural styles.

Melissa Opie and Stephen Zamykal co-wrote Property Rich (John Wiley, $34.95). Opie, a buyer's advocate and Zamykal, a mortgage broker and accountant, promote the 'kitty loan system', which involves taking out three loans to buy an investment property. The first for the deposit, the second, the 'kitty loan', to cover the shortfall between rent and outgoings, and the third to buy the property. Then repeat the process. "Property doubles in value every seven to 10 years... Even if you've had it for as little as a couple of years, you're not going to lose," the book states. If only...

Property & Taxation (John Wiley, $32.95), not surprisingly, explains how the tax system works in relation to property. Author Jimmy B Prince certainly knows his subject, having worked for the Australian Taxation Office and lectured in income tax law at La Trobe University. It's an excellent book for serious property investors but most homebuyers and small investors will find what they need to know in more general books such as Buying Property for Dummies or Mastering the Australian Housing Market (John Wiley, $34.95) by John Lindeman, a property market researcher.

Lindeman's approach is to get rich slowly by understanding how the property market works. He compares investment in property with gold, shares and term deposits, and describes the underlying economics and predictability of the housing market. If you've bought a few houses in your lifetime, have a grasp of the basics of conveyancing, etcetera, and want to be an educated investor this is the book for you.

Book online

Australian books on property can be found at the online real-estate bookstore, www.property books.com.au. You'll find everything from Property Millionaire: Millions Through Property, and Trump Strategies for Real Estate to drier titles on tax, asset protection, wills and self-managed super funds. Books are indexed according to topic and author, and prices are discounted.

Wait, there's more

The Effortless Empire: The Time-Poor Professionals Guide To Building Wealth From Property by Chris Gray (www.messengerpublishing.com.au, $29.95). Can also be downloaded free, for a limited time, from yourempire.com.au.

The Real Deal by Brendan Kelly and Simon Buckingham (John Wiley, $33.99) covers 14 different investment strategies.