My Real Estate Tips

Purchasing a home is one of the biggest decisions that you are ever going to make – you know that right?  Most people take the decision of buying a home very seriously, and you almost have to – in this day and age, if you buy a home and want to resell it, you can’t most of the time.  So make sure that you are ready to buy a home first and foremost before you even consider it.

After you have thought about it – the next step is to hit the streets and make sure that you start looking at the homes on the market.  This can be a time consuming thing as there are a ton of different homes available on the market right now.  Research going to become your best friend, as you want to make sure that you learn everything about the neighborhood and the house itself before you buy.

Also, engaging the real estate agent can do nothing but help you, so keep that in mind!

Pretty property is desirable property.  The better something looks, the more someone will want to have it.  With the housing industry still in its crunch, you need every advantage you can get when you are trying to sell your house.

Inside, look around you.  Are the rugs worn?  Is the paint fading or chipped?  Spruce up the interior where you can.  You can hang up new towels in the bedroom, replace the rugs, clean the carpet, touch up the paint.  You do not have to spend an arm and a leg, remember.  You just have to put a shiny veneer over everything.

Outside, make sure the lawn is mowed at the very least.  If you have landscaping, making sure it looks top notch.  Trim the hedges, water the garden, maybe try to fix craters or cracks in the driveway and the sidewalk.

In the real estate game, there are many different ways that people can scam you – truly!  It is one thing that many people do not think about and truly, if you are not doing your research, you could fall into that trap.  Recently, whenever you are flipping through some of the late-night shows with all of the infomercials, you will see all sorts of get-rich-quick real estate schemes.

Well – what I want you to know is that these are actually scams.  Personally, I have tried quite a few of them and have lost a lot of money and they are just not worth it.  Now, some of them might seem like the answer to all of your prayers, but when you truly do the research … you will see that it is nothing but a scam.

One of the most popular real estate scams that I have seen is one that boasts about how you can make millions with no credit or bad credit, no money down and certainly no investment what so ever – do your research.  It’s a scam.

With the economy being what it is, especially in terms of the housing market, a lot of real estate agents are looking for different ways to pull in business — successful business.  Ideally, the solution is the kind of marketing plan which does not take a lot of time or money but which will be surprisingly effective.

Direct marketing campaigns are a logical choice, one many companies of all different types utilize.  Just the other month, I got a personalized postcard wishing me a happy birthday from my car insurance agents.  Though I recognized it for what it was — an attempt to endear them to me, so that I stick with the company — it still made me feel special.  It was supposed to.

Doing that with people you have worked with in some capacity can make you stand out.  A personalized touch every so often will not only make people more accepting of and open to any business mail you send out, they will ultimately want to turn to you any time they are ready to buy, sell, rent, or lease.  And these days, you can save money by institution a direct mailing campaign through email.

Holding a team together, especially a real estate team is something that not a lot of people can do.  It takes a lot of skill and you truly need to know exactly how to hold the team together right – to make sure that everyone is happy and that is something that a lot of leaders simply do not understand.  The first thing you need to remember?  You are a leader, not a manager – remember that.  Leaders are not managers and that is something that you absolutely want to drill into your brain.

Next, you want to make sure that you have regular staff meetings so you can truly keep the lines of communication open.  What happens to a lot of real estate teams is that they truly can not communicate together and that is one of the main reasons why they fall apart – so make sure that you have daily or even weekly meetings to keep everything open and clear.

Being a leader is something that is not easy – remember that when you are dealing with your team.  It takes a lot to be a leader and keep everyone together.

Purchasing a home that has been foreclosed on is not an easy thing to do.  While the home itself might be cheap, getting the most out of it is something that you need to make sure that you are doing.  When buying a repossessed home or a foreclosed on home, you need to first do you research on it – you want to make sure that you are getting a good deal with no strings attached … such as the old mortgage payments getting tacked onto your credit.

Foreclosed or repossessed homes can honestly be a godsend when you are in the market for a home but can not afford a lot of money for it.  These bargain homes are basically homes that the banks are trying to get off of their dime, so they are willing to sell them fairly cheap, which is good for you.

After you have done your research on the property in question, the next step is to schedule yourself a tour of it.  This is where you really have to watch everything, as foreclosed on homes are not always in the best condition – so keep that in mind when you are doing your tour.

Being a real estate agent, there are a few things that you need to do in order to be successful and being social is one of them.  However, a lot of people actually believe that their social life is exactly the same as social networking or their social media.  That is not true at all – there is a huge difference between social networking and your social life – you never want to mix the two either as that would be mixing your business with your own personal life.

Social networking is things like BNI or any of the social gatherings that you go to whenever you are trying to gain new prospects.  That is different from just hanging out with your friends and talking.  Another social networking medium that is very popular as of late is the internet.  Using things like Twitter, Facebook and even myspace is a great way to really connect to new clients.

That is most important when you are first starting out too – gaining not only new prospects but really connecting with them.

Back in the day, it used to be that the homeowner or the landlord made all of the rules.  Nowadays, with people constantly trying to gain new commitments and tenants, it is the tenants that actually make the rules nowadays.  This is where you as a landlord really need to take some charge and certainly make sure that you give potential renters some concessions.

Concessions are keeping a lot of business afloat and if you are looking to draw up some new contracts for renters, you are going to have to come up with some concessions.

Now, concessions could be anything from your cancellation policy and being lenient on that or simply adding in some short term fixes that might save your tenants some money.  You could also reduce your rent or match some of your competitor’s rental properties.

There are a number of things you need to consider when you are ready to make a move or sell your home. There are a number of factors which can make the value of real estate either rise or fall, and it is vital that you understand these.

For example, you have to understand that some real estate markets are driven by jobs, with buyers making the decision to move to an area depending on how close it is to where they work.

You also have to realize that a lot of markets are completely unbalanced and uneven. There are many different price ranges in the same area, and they depend in large part on supply and demand.

Neighborhoods make a huge different as well. White collar neighborhoods will typically see houses with higher value. Middle class and upper class neighborhoods will have much, much higher values.

One of the major selling points that real estate agents have in their back pockets whenever they are selling a condo is the wireless internet.  Many condos nowadays, if you did not know are coming with free Wi-Fi and for most laptop users, which is a very appealing option.  Companies like Hospitality Wi-Fi, WiFiFee and Meraki are just a few of the handful of up and coming companies that are making wireless available in all sorts of condos and the condo landlords are picking up the tab in most cases.

The only bad part about this tradeoff is it is actually a tradeoff … while you might get internet for free, the rent is most likely going to be higher, so that is where the fee is going to be taken from and also who knows how the internet connection is going to be?  Personally, I have wireless in my home and sometimes it goes out … is that going to happen all of the time with the free internet?

Those are some of the questions that you need to consider whenever you are dealing with free internet.