About the Book
Meet “The Real Estate’s,” a children’s picture book written by Florida-based children’s book author and entrepreneur, Ivan Nemorin, MBA, BS, RRT.
The very first thing that struck me was the title with the picture. “The Real Estate’s” is about a fictional Black family; their last name is important because it immediately sets the tone for what this book is about – real estate concepts for children. Nemorin wrote this book using short, easily digestible sentences and engaged a narrator to describe the action. His real-life son, Maddox, inspired him to create dialogue for the little boy in the book, also named Maddox.
In the book, Maddox asks a lot of questions and wonders out loud why his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Real Estate, do certain things, such as purchase multiple homes and rent them to strangers. The narrator responds to Maddox by defining important real estate terms, such as cash flow, passive income, bank loan, loan interest and credit score.
The Real Estate family is based on Nemorin’s real-life family, including his wife and his son, who is almost 4 years old. Everything about this book is made up, yet the storyline revolves around real questions that a young boy would ask if he saw his parents buying large buildings and didn’t understand how or why they did it when they already owned a family home.
This clever intersection between a fictional story and its nonfiction terminology is “The Real Estate’s” biggest claim to fame. The colorful full-page illustrations are accompanied by a young boy’s thoughts about what he sees his parents do. By writing his book in such a way as to offer children just enough pictures and information to whet their appetite and get them excited to want to learn more, Nemorin accomplishes his mission to teach children about entrepreneurship in a unique way.
About the Author
In early 2019, Nemorin got the book-writing bug and set to work on “The Real Estate’s,” his first book in a planned series of entrepreneurship books for children. Nemorin, who is Black, had a strong vision of why he wanted to write this book. Besides teaching children important facts about real estate and investments, he felt it was critical to “show kids at an early age a family that looks like them, [one that they] can relate to, [and one that can] be property owners and entrepreneurs.”
Nemorin grew up in a family of hard-working immigrant parents who often worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, and lived in homes located in undesirable areas. Despite the difficulties, his parents started making it a practice to purchase dilapidated single-family homes, fix them and rent them. None of this fazed a young Nemorin, because it was the way he grew up. His family life was immersed in entrepreneurship for a long time, and he saw how his parents purchased real estate and gained income from those transactions. The entrepreneurial lifestyle became second nature to him as he got older.
Nemorin purchased his first single-family home, a duplex in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2006. He obtained an FHA loan from the bank to purchase the house and paid a contractor to fix the home before renting it to tenants. Every year since then, Nemorin has repeated this process on average two times per year, sometimes keeping and renting out his properties, other times purchasing and then flipping, or selling the homes outright for a profit.
At the same time that he purchased his first home in 2006, Nemorin became a respiratory therapist, making that his full-time job, while moonlighting as a real estate entrepreneur in the evenings and weekends. For the last 14 years, Nemorin has maintained this same hectic schedule.
In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, Nemorin stopped working on real estate, because he knew his day job required more of his time. With the growing uncertainties surrounding the spread of COVID-19, Nemorin’s work with respiratory patients more than doubled. He began traveling to different clinics throughout the United States assisting with respiratory care as needed, and spoke to me from his temporary location in Texas for this story.
The Future
In April 2019, Nemorin self-published his book and purchased 5,000 copies, with a goal to visit schools and youth groups to spread his “you can be an entrepreneur through real estate” message to as many children as possible. He wasn’t sure what the response would be, but he ended up meeting with hundreds of children who were receptive to his message and readily accepted the challenge to learn about real estate. Slowly, the children started believing they, too, could become entrepreneurs regardless of the color of their skin, their economic background or any lack of resources.
These days, Nemorin’s schedule continues to be filled with increased work in respiratory care, but he remains excited and passionate about the future of “The Real Estate’s” in 2021. He hopes to offer virtual schoolbook tours and share his message with children across the country through online educational chats.
To purchase “The Real Estate’s” book or learn more information, visit entrepreneurbooksforkids.com.
