President Obama signed a sweeping health reform bill The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23rd. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is expected to reduce the federal deficit by $124 billion.

Meanwhile its long term impact on landlords, property managers, property management companies and real estate professionals is not clear. If you fall into one of the above categories, you have to consider whether you are an independent contractor, employee or employer as it has different impact on you.

How Health Care Reform rolls out and what happens to who and when:
In 2010

1. Insurance Companies
1. Insurance companies have to remove life-time caps on illness costs, cannot drop you if you fall ill and cannot deny coverage to kids with pre-existing conditions
2. Independent Contractor Property Managers, Real Estate Professionals and Employees
1. Children up to the age of 26 can stay on their parents plan.
2. Medicare D participants receive $250 credit
3. Retirees between age 55-64 are offered re-insurance program
3. Employers Property Management Companies
1. If you own a property management company that offers health insurance, you get a 35% tax credit from premium paid
2. Small employers can get tax credit up to 50% of premium paid

In 2011

1. Insurance Companies
1. Insurers cannot raise premiums without providing justification or will be taken out of state insurance exchange pool
2. Independent Contractor Property Managers, Real Estate Professionals and Employees
1. Medicare D participants receive 50% off brand name drugs while in doughnut hole
2. Employees contributions to Flexible Spending Plans are capped at $2,500 limiting the amount that can be used to purchase health care with pre-tax dollars.
3. Penalty for non-qualified withdrawals from Health Savings Account (HSA) increases from 10 to 20 percent and 15 to 20 per cent for Archer Medical Savings Accounts (Archer MSAs)

In 2013

1. Independent Contractor Property Managers, Real Estate Professionals and Employees
1. If you are single filer and earn at least $200,000 per year or a joint filer earning at least $250,000 you will pay additional Medicare tax of nine-tenths of one percent called Hospital Insurance tax on income above these amounts.
2. Itemized deductions for unreimbursed medical expenses rises from 7.5 to 10 per cent. It has an impact on individuals who itemize deductions.
2. Employers Property Management Companies
1. New Medicare tax is to be withheld by property management companies

In 2014

1. Independent Contractor Property Managers, Real Estate Professionals and Employees
1. All individuals are required to carry health insurance or pay an IRS penalty of $750 per individual or 2% of income whichever is greater
2. Subsidies for payment of insurance cost are offered and family of four earning up to $88,000 (four times the federal poverty level) will get a subsidy.
2. Employers Property Management Companies
1. Employers or property management companies with 50 or more employees are required to provide health insurance or pay a penalty of $2000 per employee per year. State exchanges enable employers like property management companies to purchase insurance at rates similar to employees of big companies.

In 2018

1. Insurance Companies
1. All insurance plans offer preventative care with no co-pays and no deductible

This blog post for Real Estate Professionals, Investors, Landlord, Property Manager, and Property Management Companies is brought to you by SimplifyEm Pay Rent Online and Property Management Software

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In a recent survey completed by Rentbits.com of 1000 people were who were in the process of finding a rental home, people were asked a series of questions about their process of finding an apartment or house. The results will surprise you.

Apartment vs. House

One of the first surprises was that 83% of people were looking for houses versus apartments. It would seem that people’s interests has migrated away from small apartments towards houses. This change should have some major impact on apartment builders who have been increasing the number of new apartment buildings in 2008. For investors, it should highlight the need for investing in houses versus duplexes, triplexes or small apartment buildings for long term value.

Rental Advertising

Another surprise was the large impact of the internet on how people look for rental housing, with 72% of people saying they start their search on the internet. Over 93% of people visit at least 2 different rental sites during their rental search. Landlords need to understand this trend and start to use the internet to advertise your open rentals. There are free sites such as craigslist and many paid sites that offer great exposure. Pick a few sites and sign up for accounts and get your advertising onto the internet.

This is exactly what we have seen in our business as older methods of advertising, such as newspaper and locator companies, have become less effective in recent years.

We have moved heavily to the internet for advertising to be out in front of this trend.

Key Words

In these Internet searches, people are using search terms that are between 3 to 6 words with “location” and “price” as the primary key words. It is important that people understand the importance of key words in your ads including the city, the zip code, the area code and neighborhood names such as “South Philly”. Be sure to use shorter versions of city names such as “Philly” for Philadelphia. Anything that people might type should be in your ad to be sure to capture as many people as possible with your ads.

Other Terms

After the two most important elements of an advertisement including price and location are a number of additional elements such as pictures, lease terms, deposit amounts, pet friendly and appliance that are important to people. People are looking to “rule out” certain properties if they do not fit their needs. These additional elements allow them to rule out certain houses without having to waste their time or your time visiting properties they will never rent.

We have recently started filming videos of our rental properties, producing a “Virtual Tour”. This tour allows prospective tenants to see a 2 to 4 minute video of the entire property, allowing them to make a decision about renting the property, whether positive or negative, without actually having to visit it. Obviously, this is a huge time saver for both potential tenants and we are finding that everyone gains from the benefits.

Gender Gap

Another surprise was that 82% of respondents were female. Conventional wisdom says that 80% of home buying decisions are done by women. Landlords need to cater to women and make sure your kitchens and bathrooms are the highlights of your property to ensure a quick rental process.

I invite you to learn more about Real Estate Investing and become a member of our FREE weekly tele-seminar class where we teach tips and strategy on how to grow your real estate investing business and how to raise Private Money by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur, coach and mentor in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE eBook go to Real Estate Investing Blog.

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Historically, once the holidays have passed and January arrives, there is an immediate increase in people on the move, which translates to an increased demand for available rental properties. According to Google’s search analytics, web searches for rental housing in the first week of January 2010 were at their highest level since the first week of August 2009. Online rental searches on Monday, January 4, 2010 were 39% greater than on Monday, December 7, 2009 and continue to show a positive increase over December.

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A number of things likely come to mind when you think of real estate investing. You might immediately leap to real estate investing being real estate portfolios and real estate retirement plans or you may think instead of short sales, bulk reo investing and virtual real estate investing. Likely you also wonder how these things will factor into your life as a real estate investor in the current economy.

You can learn a lot about real estate investing. The best way to optimize your real estate investing education is to know the basics ahead of time. You will get the most out of anything to do with short sales, bulk reo sales, virtual real estate and just improving real estate investor abilities by knowing some real estate investing basics. Check out these three real estate investing tenets that many experts do not fully know:

1. Real estate investing education always yields positive. Every good real estate deal represents thousands of dollars in potential wealth. Getting the wealth is the key to your success. Learning as much as possible about real estate will increase your odds of success whenever you do a real estate deal. Small investments in education yield big results upon implementation.

2. You can succeed in real estate investing in any economy. Many people think (wrongly) that you can only succeed in real estate when the economy booms. You should remember that a bad economic situation is not usually bad for real estate investors. You can often buy properties at deep discounts. In addition, you can find deals that simply would not exist in a booming economy. Poor economies can turn based on active real estate investing. When an economy is less than thriving, short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate can prosper. Knowing how to do these deals can create wealth for you and save others from major financial difficulties.

3. You do not need a lot of money to be a successful real estate investor. You can be a success in real estate investing no matter how much money you have on your own. There are lots of types of deals that you can perform with the money of other people. If you appear to be a solid investment you may be able to use a private lenders money. A good investment will know as much as they can about real estate investing. This will help you show private lenders that you are a good investment if they do not know about real estate investing themselves.

Real estate investing is a great way to create a good amount of wealth. You can create income regardless of the economy. You can create your own success using your knowledge of short sales, real estate investing, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate. Knowing real estate investing basics will help you succeed as a real estate investor.

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Making money with real estate was today’s new vogue means to wealth and prosperity. Men and women across the UK are still following in the footsteps of Sarah Beeny and building their fortune in the development of real estate the window of opportunity is wide open. It’s important to realize that success in real estate doesn’t come just because you want it to. First you have to learn how to manage your property.

You Let Direct are one of the up and coming letting agents in the UK that will advertise a Landlord’s property for let nationally and also provide you with landlord advice on the legal requirements.

Before you can fill the property a landlord needs to perform a thorough safety inspection. A careful safety inspection will include the electrical and wiring systems, gas appliances,insulation, smoke detectors and the boiler.

Necessary repairs discovered during safety inspections of the property to let are the landlord’s responsibility. This is also the time to purchase a good homeowners insurance policy. Once the house or flat is ready the landlord can then begin seeking out a tenant. An ideal tenant will have a past history of rental, steady employment and reliable credit. If they don’t have sufficient income to handle their rent and their household expenses you’ll be collecting delinquent rent inside of six months.

References are an important part of deciding on a tenant. Many landlords skip this step and pay a steep price for the convenience.

One of the top let my house agencies in the UK is You Let Direct, who enable landlords to achieve national advertising coverage for just one low price.

Your tenant is going to depend on you to draw up the leasing agreement prior to their established occupancy. The leasing agreement should define all the terms of their occupancy of your property. Anything not expressly detailed in the leasing agreement will become a matter of hearsay in court. After the tenant moves into the property to let you, as the landlord, are responsible for all maintenance and repair, as well as any unexpected disasters or complaints.

If you have a property to let but don’t have time handle all the property management you may want to consider hiring a letting agent. A letting agent, if given full responsibility for the property, will handle every step of the tenant process from the first safety inspection to the last. A letting agent also works with the tenants’ needs, complaints and maintenance so you don’t have to.

When you’ve rid yourself of the daily hassles associated with property management you can sit back, relax and enjoy the benefits.

Landlords, in today’s property market, have many legal requirements including the provision of Energy Performance Certificates and Tenant Referencing Services Gas-Elec Safety certificates. Using aproperty for let Agency like You Let Direct, to market landlord’s properties in the UK for a single payment small fee, will not only give the landlord national advertising coverage, but can also helpto ensurethe landlord’s legal responsibilities are covered.

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A number of things likely come to mind when you think of real estate investing. Depending on how familiar you are with real estate investing already, you might think of real estate portfolios and real estate retirement plans, or you might focus on short sales, bulk reo investing and virtual real estate investing. You may also consider what roles these things play in your life as a real estate investor in different economies.

There is a lot of information out there on real estate investing. The best way to get the most out of your real estate investing education is to be familiar with some basic information ahead of time. Whether your target is short sales, bulk reo sales, virtual real estate or improving real estate investor abilities, you need to know some real estate investing basics. You should review these three real estate investing basics to learn things even some experts do not know:

1. You will always end up with a positive yield when you invest in real estate investing education. Every real estate deal has the potential to create thousands of dollars in potential wealth. Knowing about getting that wealth is the key in the end to your success. Learning about real estate increases your odds of success when you do a real estate deal. Implementation of your small educational investments yields big results.

2. Any economy allows for success in real estate investing. Many people are under the misconception that success is possible in real estate only when the economy is good. In reality, poor economies are great for real estate investors. You can often find properties to buy at deep discounts. You could also locate deals that would not exist in a booming economy. Real estate investing often is what turns the tide for poor economies. Short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate all can thrive when the economy is not. Knowing how to do these deals can create wealth for you and save others from major financial difficulties.

3. You do not need lots of your own cash to be a successful real estate investor. You can be a success in real estate investing no matter how much money you have on your own. There are lots of types of deals that you can perform with the money of other people. Private lenders will lend you their money if they think you are a good investment. A good investment will know as much as they can about real estate investing. This will help you show private lenders that you are a good investment if they do not know about real estate investing themselves.

You can generate lots of wealth by real estate investing. You can create a good income no matter what the state of the economy. Using a knowledge base of real estate investing, short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate you will be able to make success for yourself. Knowing real estate investing basics will help you succeed as a real estate investor.

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#10. “My work cut my hours”

#9. “May pay week is off this month”

#8. “I’ve been really sick this past week”

#7. “The bank mailed the check to the wrong address”

#6. “My daughter got married and I had to pay for the wedding”

#5. “My brother passed away”

#4. “My car was stolen”

#3. “My nephew was shot in the head and we had to pull the plug on him this past weekend”

#2. “Someone hit me across both knees with a baseball bat at work and I’ve been in the hospital”

#1. “I fell over a wheelchair at work and hit my head. I was in a coma the last few days.”

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You may be a brand new investor or a seasoned investor looking for new ways of increasing your income. Some of the real estate guru’s have made big money selling real estate investing courses touting the benefits of government programs, specifically Section 8 housing, and how you can make money hand over fist. Others take a more cautionary approach, essentially arguing just the opposite.

With two opposing views, who’s right, who’s wrong, and what’s the difference?

There are a couple of Pros to Section 8 investing. But as you will quickly see the list of Pros is much shorter than the list of Cons.

First, if you rent to Section 8 tenants, you know you’re going to get your rent money. As a general rule, it’s going to come in like clock work. You’ll have your money each and every month, conveniently deposited into the bank account of your choice.

Second, if you advertise the fact that you accept Section 8 tenants, you will have no shortage of prospective tenants lining up with a housing voucher ready to move in on a moment’s notice. When tenants are hard to come by, say in a strong housing market, it’s an excellent way of guaranteeing a steady flow of renters willing to be your tenants.

Unfortunately, this is where the list of positives ends.

Section 8 tenants can present a host of challenges and problems to you from a variety of angles.

First, as a property owner, you may be lured by the easy money that renting to Section 8 tenants can generate, but if you think the Paperwork Reduction Act applies to Section 8, you have a lot to learn.

Whenever you deal with any government bureaucracy, there are massive paperwork considerations. If every I isn’t dotted and every T crossed on every form the government throws your way, you’re in jeopardy of not being paid, having your payment delayed or even worse being declared a slumlord.

We have also seen when all the paperwork and other delays can take anywhere from 3 to 5 months to complete. During this period your property sits empty with no income.

Second, Section 8 requires property inspections. In order to participate in Section 8 you first have to qualify as a property owner, which means an inspection. If the inspector finds deficiencies of any kind, they have to be corrected on the government’s timetable. Once you’ve met the timetable, you have to repeat the inspection process. When you’ve waded through all the red tape necessary to accept tenants, you really get into the heart of the problem of the Section 8 program dealing with tenants.

Third, there are Section 8 tenants who are attentive to your rules, but there are plenty of bad apples. If you have a troublesome renter one that can’t/won’t pay their rent on time or is a constant troublemaker, your inclination is to give them their walking papers (i.e., eviction). But if the individual you’re trying to evict is a Section 8 renter, you have to follow due process rules that are stricter than any state laws anywhere.

Once you’ve begun eviction proceedings, Section 8 tenants are entitled to free or very low cost legal assistance. Once an attorney enters the picture, this turns into an expensive, time consuming process. You need to ask yourself at what point does a guaranteed rent payment become not worth the hassle, the expense and the headache?

Fourth, we generally see that Section 8 pays about 70% to 80% per month of what you might get for normal tenant. So you need to make decision as to whether this discount is offset by the consistent payment source.

Fifth, Section 8 renters aren’t famous for taking care of your property. So unless you’re willing to entertain the thought of having to make extensive repairs with little hope of recovering damages it is probably in your best interest to not involve yourself in the program to begin with.

As you can see the Cons of Section 8 investing outweigh the Pros. Our experience is the program has many problems and we rarely recommend Section 8 investing.

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Importance of Headlines

Particularly with newspapers you dont have a lot of space and its expensive, so youre going to have maybe a headline, one or two bullet points, and then a phone number or website. You dont have a lot of space so youve got to make sure that you do it the right way. Your headline has to be appealing.

Lets use Louisville as an example. You dont need to put Louisville in your headline. Everybody knows its a Louisville newspaper. Youve wasted your space. We see that mistake a lot.

Putting irrelevant words in your headlines doesnt mean too much. Make sure your headlines have relevant words. If its a particular neighborhood or section of town, if its a well-known area, make sure you put that in there, but not the town.

Be Concise

Be very concise. If you can drive them to your voice mail system or your website, thats the best way to do it. They would go there and find out if they have some interest. They would see some photos or the video and would kind of screen themselves out and save you a lot of time.

Be Careful of Fair Housing

One thing youve got to be careful of is violation of Fair Housing when you advertise. Remember people are going to look at your ad and claim somehow that youre being in violation of Fair Housing rules. This is a whole subject by itself. We can spend a whole night talking about this. You have to be careful about the words you use.

You cant use words like church even if its right next to the biggest church in town, or directly across from the biggest church in town. You cant mention that church. That is a violation.

You cant mention any sort of family Its a family neighborhood. If you say the words family neighborhood in theory you might be implying that single people arent welcome so youve got to be careful. Or vice versa, if you use apartment designed for singles, it might be construed as excluding families. Be careful about the words you use. Think about them a little bit.

One of the things Im going to do on the checklist youre going to get from me is there are a lot of things in there in terms of words to use and then alternative words to use, particularly if you want to write an ad and you want to use the word fantastic three times.

It will give you fantastic and then give you two or three alternative words to use to try and mix up your words. My template ads are on that checklist. Youre going to get those as part of this program.

Be careful of Fair Housing. If you want HUD offers, in most areas a one day course doesnt cost much, say $25, where you can take a Fair Housing course. You can learn all about the rules and regulations of Fair Housing. If youre a serious property management I would do that. Go and spend a Saturday or whatever day they offer that course, take it and learn those rules and regulations and keep yourself out of hot water.

I invite you to learn more about Property Management and get a free 60 minute audio titled Learn the 10 Success Secrets of Property Management Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Maximum Profit and Avoiding Tenant Headaches by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PMS.html.

Mike Lautensack is the owner of Del Val Property Management LLC, a FULL service residential property management company located in Philadelphia, PA.

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Collecting rent is one of those situations where I have to use some rules of thumb, some feeling, some gut to try to figure out whether it’s time to go and do the eviction or do we try to work with the tenant and see if they can get caught up. Maybe it’s a temporary problem. We can do a weekly or monthly payment plan and maybe we can get them back on paying again.

In the same token, if I don’t feel it’s going to happen, we have to go to eviction quickly. There’s no point in waiting and spending two or three months waiting around for something that’s not going to happen. That takes some gut feel and experience.

Know the Rules for Eviction

We’ll talk about the eviction process. There again, just like the rules and regulations, you’ve got to be smarter than your tenants. You’ve got to know the rules better than they do, because if you don’t, I guarantee you they will take advantage of you. They will tell you things that are not accurate and if you buy into it you’re going to end up being their whipping post.

Now every state might be slightly different and I recommend you go to Google and search for your sate and landlord regulations and study them front to back. Knowing the rules and then enforcing them is the single most important thing in terms of collecting rent.

Should you use an attorney for evictions? You guys can do it better than an attorney can. They will do almost nothing for you except the fact that they’re attorneys and they’ll charge you $250-300 an hour.

I can probably out perform any attorney in this area and I can do it for $50 an hour for my clients, probably one sixth of what they’ll pay an attorney.

How to Retain Tenants

How to work with tenants and try to encourage them to stay tenants, making sure that you’re resolving issues with them in a friendly and professional way so they say, “Hey, yeah, I want to stay another year, two years, three years whatever.”

If you are late with doing maintenance, you drag your feet, you try to find excuses why not to do it every time they call you, you don’t return their calls, they got a little drip here and there, you don’t fix it, do you think they’re going to stay that second year after that lease runs out? I don’t think so.

Again, you want to keep at it. You want to work within trying to keep the tenants as long as possible. Also, we have little things in our lease that encourage tenants to sign a new one-year lease. They can go month-to-month but there are some penalties – I wouldn’t call it that – but just some things in that lease that make it more onerous on them as opposed to coming back to me and saying, “I’d rather have a new one-year lease than go month-to-month.”

We probably have 75 to 80% of our tenants come back to us for a new one-year lease as opposed to remaining month-to-month. It’s hard for you as landlords and owners to manage if you don’t know beyond 30 days whether your tenant’s staying or going. It’s much nicer to have a one-year lease and you know that for the next 12 months at least you’re going to get rent, so we’ll talk about that.

I invite you to learn more about Property Management and get a free audio titled “Learn the 10 Success Secrets of Property Management Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Manage Your Own Investments Properties for Maximum Profit and Avoiding Tenant Headaches” by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PMS.html

Mike Lautensack is the owner of Del Val Property Management LLC, a FULL service residential property management company located in Philadelphia, PA.

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