Author: Joel Teo
Property managers can be a very useful to land owners as the larger property management companies have scale of operations and can run your property for the busy landowner. This would in effect free the busy landowner with more time to look for more real estate deals. This article deals with three things to take note before hiring a property management company to look after your property
Firstly, the most important thing people think about when hiring a property manager would be fees. Spend some time asking what their management fee covers, whether they will be collecting rent on your behalf and deducting their fee from the monthly rental. Also ask what their procedure is like for other expenses like insurance premiums, repair bills and other expenses that the property might incur.
Secondly, you might want to hire a property management for their expertise. Some property management companies may be good at running residential properties but they may not have any experience at managing a commercial property. Thus I would suggest that you spend time asking the manager what is their current class of properties in their stable and go down to those properties and observe the properties and then go and talk to the tenants of the building.
Thirdly, proximity of the management office is one key consideration. For commercial property, you would notice that the management office is always sited within the commercial building itself so as to respond quickly to any complaints by the tenants. For residential property, the management company that you hire should have an office located in close proximity to your property so that they can rectify problems as they arise.
June 12th, 2008
Author: Bianca Tavares
From a historical perspective, investing in real estate is almost as old as the construction of property itself. Indeed many business owners who created their wealth through companies then went on to diversify into real estate investments. In fact, over the years real estate investments have produced similar returns to those found in the stock market. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons:
First of all, and most obviously, the supply of building land around the world is limited, even when taking into account landfill opportunities. Since the world’s population is growing and the demand for housing ever increasing, then there would seem to be a never-ending and increasing requirement for real estate of all types.
Now let’s take a look at the mechanics of buying property. Here it can be seen that investing in real estate is quite different from most other traditional investments such as stocks. With real estate you can often borrow up to around 80 percent of the value of a property, sometimes even the full value and beyond under special circumstances. Thus a more modest investment of say 20 percent of the value can be used to buy and control the full value of the larger investment. Naturally, if the value of your investment increases, I.e. property prices rise, then the value of your real estate investment also increases. If so, then you are into profit, including that on the money you originally borrowed.
Naturally, there will be costs associated with real estate investing (such as legal fees and property maintenance, taxes, etc), but these are usually small in comparison with the potential gains.
Borrowing in order to invest in real estate makes real estate a type of leveraged investment. But if you know anything about leverage, you will realize that leveraged investments can also go against you. What, for example, if the property you purchased for $300,000 decreased in value to $240,000? Even though the value only dropped by 20 percent, you actually lose 100 percent of the original $60,000 investment. And if you have a mortgage on this property making up its full purchase price, you will actually need to pay money to the mortgage provider in order to cover the costs of selling the property. That’s in addition to the loss of the whole of your initial investment.
So, as you see, investing in real estate is something to be taken very seriously and should not be done with money which you might need for other things in the near future. Investment in property is more secure as a long-term investment. In the above example, if you could have held onto the property and not sold it, the loss would purely have been ‘on paper’. In all likelihood, over time the value of the property, unless grossly overpriced when you originally bought it, will rise and you will likely not only recover the full value of the initial investment, but also possibly make a nice profit when you do come to sell.
Another reason that real estate is a popular investment is that there are profits to be made from it whilst you are the owner. In addition to the tax-saving benefits (in that any tax due on the property’s increase in value doesn’t become due until it is eventually sold), you can also make additional money from renting out the property. This can often cover all your running costs of the property, plus providing a profit on top.
Unless you make a large down payment, early on during your ownership the monthly operating profit from your property business is likely to be small or non-existent. But over time this profit will increase as the amount of rent you can charge increases at a higher rate than the running costs. Naturally these profits will be subject to normal income tax rules.
A further benefit of investing in property is that you might be able to purchase cheaply a run-down or ‘distressed’ property and fix it up or develop it further. Properties like this can still be found if you look around carefully. Naturally, investing in this type of real estate can still produce large gains. This is something you certainly can’t do with traditional stock market investments.
However, returning to the initial question about whether real estate investing is still a viable option when current prices seem to be nearing their peak: yes, it can still be so, but you might need to be more creative and prepare to be in for the long haul. Property ‘flipping’ methods that worked extremely successfully yesterday, might not work at all well tomorrow.
You might also consider diversifying into overseas real estate markets. Whilst this will require greater study and analysis, and there are many more legal issues to consider, seeking out what appear to be undervalued international real estate opportunities has the potential to be highly profitable if handled correctly.
June 4th, 2008
Author: Jacques Coquerel..
As you get more immersed in real estate investing, you’ll hear it over and over - real estate investment isn’t like any other kind of investment. Yes, at the core of all investments, there’s money and risk involved. However, the major difference is that in real estate investing, you are responsible for the work required to make a return on your investment unlike investments in the stock market for example.
Your real estate investment triumph, however, depend some key points you need to learn when investing. No matter which form of investment you’re in, you need to learn few essentials to be successful.
How to Discover Properties
The backbone of your real estate investment is the properties you acquired. Your skills in discovering properties that are rock-solid investments are your number one ticket to success in real estate investing. Without these properties, your real estate investment business will soon run aground.
A shrewd investor doesn’t dive into the first for sale property he sees, however. He puts on his expert cap and inspects the house if it’s worth investing or not. For example, it’s foolish for you to invest on a property that is obviously structurally weak. Other forms of real estate investment like a tax lien certificate, of course, have different forms of consideration to invest on them.
How to Make Deals
If you’ve join the real estate investment market, it’s only foolish for you to make deals that does not result to your favor. If you fail in your deals, you might end up making meager to zero profit at all; worse comes to worst; you might even end up with losses.
If you’re not good at negotiating, take some time to read few books on the subject. But experience is still the best teacher, so make an effort to befriend seasoned investors and ask them if you could be their apprentice for some period of time or you can just ask them to bring you along one of their deals. Once you learn core negotiating skills, you’ll have the ability to go into a deal and work out the terms so everyone walks away happy, mostly yourself.
How to Invest
At the core of all investments, people spend money to earn more money. There are tons of options how you can do the core in investing in the real estate investment business. Fix-and-flips, foreclosures, distressed properties are among the favorite choices.
Before you go out and invest, be sure you have a clear idea of which investment strategy to use. Study each strategy and know the property owner, your goal on investing, and how much you can afford for each acquisition. Your investing will be much easier if you know each strategy at your disposal.
Note also that you should weave different exit strategies for each property acquisition; your exit strategy will depend on your goal of investing. When you want to receive extra monthly income from your investment for example, you can choose to rent your property. There is also a different strategy you can use if you want to build wealth for example; you can buy properties that have short turn-around so that you can buy and sell as much as you can for a given year.
June 2nd, 2008