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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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.

Popularity: 6% [?]

#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.”

Popularity: 6% [?]

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.

Popularity: 29% [?]

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.

Popularity: 14% [?]

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.

Popularity: 13% [?]

One of the things we’re going to focus on is what is professional management versus mom and pop management. Now many of you may have a couple properties. Maybe you’ve read a book on property management, I don’t know, but if you ultimately want to make a business and to grow wealth and to be a serious real estate investor, you need to become a professional property manager.

That is you’re better at it than most people. You’re better at it than nine out of 10 investors. You take it seriously because you’re investing a lot of your own money in these properties, a lot of your time and a lot of your energy, and you want to get the most you can out of it.

That’s where the money is, because if you don’t manage it properly, the value of that asset declines rapidly. I guarantee you, if you’ve bought a property, put a bad tenant in there and they destroyed your property, you’re looking at $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 of damage. Not that property management can totally eliminate that possibility, but certainly professional management versus mom and pop management makes a huge difference.

Advantages of Property Management

We’re going to go through that and understand that process. We’re going to go through the advantages of property management. Why is it worth you getting on this call for two hours for a series of four calls? What are the monetary advantages of doing it? Are there monetary advantages to it? Why not just read a $12 book?

Sure, you can do that, but everybody knows reading a book is a hard way to learn. It’s not interactive. You won’t have the ability to fire questions at me. Maybe you’re pretty good at property management and you have a couple areas you’re weak at. You won’t have the ability to fire questions at me.

Again, filling a rental. Let’s say we had a $900 a month rental. Filling it 30 days earlier than you would otherwise puts $900 in your pocket. So the monetary issues here are tremendous. Keeping a tenant a second year as opposed to losing them because you didn’t treat them right or you didn’t fix the property right or whatever, reselling a vacancy is tremendously expensive.

You could be looking at two months vacancy, $900 per month, and costs you have to pay to maybe carpet in between tenants, so maintaining a tenant is again a huge monetary issue. So there are clearly some monetary issues here that can be quite overwhelming in terms of cost savings.

We’re going to talk about the importance of education, these kinds of calls tonight, the importance of doing it on a continuous basis, meaning joining your real estate clubs, looking for other resources, maybe join my coaching program at some point down the road, but continue to educate yourself further and more completely as time goes by.

Again, a professional real estate investor continues the education process and never stops. A mom and pop learns a couple things and then stops. We’re going to talk about the difference between the two. How to do things like develop contacts and network, how to work with contractors.

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.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Once you realize that real estate investing is not risky, you ll see all the ways that you can make money from owning properties and letting someone else pay for them. Many novice investors just think about rental income but true investors learn early that their rental properties go far and beyond monthly rent checks.

1. Cash Flow Again, most people only think about this because it is easy to see that owning rental properties will produce monthly income. Not every rental will produce income and some investors will go after properties that have a negative cash flow and bet on future appreciation. Real estate investing is considered low risk when you follow tried and true investing principles. Owning rental properties with a negative cash flow is not a good way to invest and is super risky. Do not invest based on speculation. Before you search for rental properties make sure you set your real estate investing criteria.
2. Equity Build Up Every time you make a payment to the bank for your property, you own a little bit more of that property. Of course the first few years, the amount of the mortgage payment that actually goes towards paying down the principle is very, very small. The majority of the payment goes towards interest. Remember, your rental property should be paid for by your tenants. They are making the mortgage payments if you have positive cash flow. You are building equity while they are paying for your house.
3. Appreciation Over the long term home prices go up. In the short term, they go up and down. Over a long period of time neighborhoods also change, but you should not buy rentals in areas that you THINK will improve. Remember that is speculation and speculation is risky. Find nice rentals in a good area that has a good proven track record for rents and home prices. The home will probably appreciate at 4-6% over the next 30 years (life of the mortgage).
4. Tax Shelter Very rarely do you find a novice investor talking about tax shelters on investment properties. the professional investors think about taxes all the time. As the saying goes, its not what you make its what you keep! When talking about tax shelters, youre really talking about the depreciation of the property. The government lets you depreciate many big ticket items that wear out over time and are used in your business. Real estate investors know how to use depreciation to eliminate taxes on monthly rental income. My advice get a good accountant! They will pay for themselves with the tax benefits they can find on your rental homes.

Popularity: 13% [?]