Real Estate and Property Blog

This is a question regarding a startup of senior housing in italy. SO if i wanted to excecute this venture, what makes it successful. Thanks

1. Strong cash flow. The venture must be able to pay its operating expenses and any debt incurred. Your projections should also be conservative…..

2. Market research. The business has to understand its target market and demand for its products, otherwise it will fail. Also important to understand how referrals are made in this market i.e. do you need to do presentations to hospitals/.doctors to refer patients needing long-term care? Best to talk to people in the field.

3. Competition. You need to know who is your competitor and how they measure up agst what you are offering. If there are none, then you need to understand why? Is it that there is no market or is the market merely untapped?

4. Cash reserves. The 24-36 months of a business are the hardest. It helps if you can tap into a cash reserve to help fund any unexpected changes…savings, investor money, small line of credit from a bank….are all great resources. If reserve money is also debt, you would need to factor hwo much you could pay personally if it come to that……

if you answer this question I expect your answer has some #'s in it..
Please dont answer by saying it all depends on how much you sell, this question is for real estate agents that can tell me how much they made in there past years.

The money is good in a good market 100k+ per year easy. In a market that we are in now and going to be in for many years, you will starve. Unless you have another source of income and do not need a paycheck for many months, forget about it.

ALLEGHENY COUNTY COUNCIL
SPECIAL MEETING
NOTICE
Notice is hereby given that Allegheny County Council President Rich Fitzgerald has called a Special Meeting of Allegheny County Council scheduled for 5:00 PM Tuesday, July 29, 2008 in the Gold Room, 4th Floor of the Allegheny County Courthouse, 436 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219.
The purpose of the Meeting will be to discuss Bill No. 4208-08, entitled “An Ordinance of the County of Allegheny, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania directing that an Ordinance be submitted by referendum question to the registered voters of the County on the November 2008 General Election ballot.”
The Bill directs the Allegheny County Board of Elections to place the following question on the November, 2008 Ballot:
“Shall the County enact an Ordinance to increase real estate taxes in order to repeal the alcoholic drink tax?”
Copies of the proposed Ordinance can be viewed or obtained from the Chief Clerk, Office of County Council, Room 119 Courthouse, 436 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, or on Council’s web site :www.county.allegheny.pa.us/council
John Mascio
Chief Clerk
Allegheny County Council

Appeared in: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday, 07/27/2008

Duration : 0:10:1

Read more…

Technorati Tags: ALLEGHENY, analysis, commentary, commercial, COUNCIL, COUNTY, documentary, Freedom, gotcha!, grassroots, lost, moreTaxes, news, outreach, political

ALLEGHENY COUNTY COUNCIL
SPECIAL MEETING
NOTICE
Notice is hereby given that Allegheny County Council President Rich Fitzgerald has called a Special Meeting of Allegheny County Council scheduled for 5:00 PM Tuesday, July 29, 2008 in the Gold Room, 4th Floor of the Allegheny County Courthouse, 436 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219.
The purpose of the Meeting will be to discuss Bill No. 4208-08, entitled “An Ordinance of the County of Allegheny, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania directing that an Ordinance be submitted by referendum question to the registered voters of the County on the November 2008 General Election ballot.”
The Bill directs the Allegheny County Board of Elections to place the following question on the November, 2008 Ballot:
“Shall the County enact an Ordinance to increase real estate taxes in order to repeal the alcoholic drink tax?”
Copies of the proposed Ordinance can be viewed or obtained from the Chief Clerk, Office of County Council, Room 119 Courthouse, 436 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, or on Council’s web site :www.county.allegheny.pa.us/council
John Mascio
Chief Clerk
Allegheny County Council

Appeared in: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday, 07/27/2008

Duration : 0:10:1

Read more…

Technorati Tags: 7-29-08, ALLEGHENY, analysis, commentary, commercial, COUNCIL, COUNTY, documentary, Freedom, gotcha!, grassroots, lost, more, news, outreach, political, taxes

It is imperative to find a good real estate agent in order to make the transaction process smooth and hassle free. It is not necessary that the largest amount of brokerage fee would necessarily fetch you the best real estate agent. Rather, the best real estate agent would be an experienced professional who would understand your needs, maintain an ethical behavior throughout the transaction process and know the market well enough to help you get the best deal. Selection criteria is unique to the investor as it depends on the types of real estate being purchased and the location of the investment, however it is important that the investor is comfortable with the agent representing their interests. Once you have identified a list of qualified agents, the final and most important step would involve interviewing the agent. Similarly, you may also know that the agent is good through the questions asked by the agent, which can further qualify the agent. Selecting the first agent you meet is a mistake that many real estate investors make and its one that can easily be avoided.

One of the key reasons that a real estate agent stays in the business is because of referrals. Satisfied clients often refer these agents to their families, friends, co-workers and neighbors. Therefore you may ask your colleague or friend to suggest the name of a good agent whom they have worked with and been happy with the entire procedure. Customer satisfaction is one of the primary aspects to judge the quality of the agent. The greater the number of satisfied clients, the more successful and reputed an agent would be.

You may also take the help of the Internet to browse through a number of agents enlisted on different websites according to their reputation and success factors. However, there is no guarantee that whatever is stated in the websites is essentially true or complete. You may still try the reputed search engines and go through the individual profiles before selecting interviewing the agents you identify.

Attending open houses can be a good way to meet real estate agents. You may also collect their business cards and make notes on them about their ways and methods of selling and promoting properties.

Keep a track of your neighborhood signs and keep records of the day they are sold. The agent who sells the property in the shortest time would definitely be a better agent and may have enough connections to find you the right deal. Ultimately, it is the end results that actually matter.

Printed advertisements can also be one of the ways to find a good agent. Advertisements by these agents are aimed to serve the dual purpose of selling the property as well as promoting themselves. Check out the Sunday newspaper and contact some of them to find out more about them and their experiences.

Another way to find out the best agent can be through professional recommendations. In most cases, agents are happy to refer sellers and buyers to their friends and fellow associates, especially if the service required by you is not an area of their specialization. While some agents may deal only in residential resale, others may work only with new property builders. Experience is a valuable time saver and therefore important to most investors.

Finally, before hiring the agent you need to ask some essential questions, the answers to which can help you in making the final decision. Enquire about the time period the agent has spent in this business, the average ratio of sales price to list price, the marketing strategy that the agent would employ to meet your needs and the top three things that distinguishes the agent from the others in the market. You may also ask the agent to provide some references and whether you can have an attorney review the documents before you sign them. Do enquire about his fees and about the kinds of guarantee that he has to offer. Find out whether he can help you in finding other professionals like accountants and lawyers and finally ask him whether you missed out on anything that you need to know.

Any real estate course or seminar is not a substitute for a good attorney. Finding a high-quality real estate attorney might be quite difficult, since most attorneys are not themselves investors or very familiar with new creative transactions. Most attorneys would give you just necessary advice to keep them from getting sued up, but do not give enough advice for you to make more money out of any real estate deal.

A good real estate attorney is one who actually advises you of the risks suggested by alternative ways of doing a transaction and also to charges a reasonable fee for doing so. A bad real estate attorney will either says nothing or points out problems without giving solutions or will systematically kills deals. That is why attorneys are normally referred to as “deal killers”.

Ask other investors in your local area who are using an attorney. You may also join a home real estate investors association and then ask for few referrals. Ask your local real estate agents and title companies for further referrals. Do not open up the Yellow Pages and pick up someone who simply CLAIMS to be a real estate attorney expert.

When interviewing a real estate potential attorney, ask the following questions:

* Does he own rental property?
* How many closings he does per year?
* What kind of unusual transactions have he done of late?
* Has he done any evictions? Foreclosures? Zoning board appeals? Or any Condo conversions?
* Can he explain to you the following concepts: lease/option, wraparound mortgage, installment land contract?

Get a feel for the good experience and personality of the attorney. A good attorney on your side is worth his weight in gold, particularly if he is capable to do creative closings.

What features do you want or need that will make you select using one real estate web portal over another? Being free does not answer the question because if the site is free, no money can be spent promoting the site to make it popular. So what else do you want? There are many real estate web sites to select from but I presume you have preferences based on the ease of useability or content that most conforms to your needs. Have a look at this site - http://www.findrealty.com.au and please let me know what it is lacking. First thing you will say is content but there is the slight problem, which comes first, the chook or the egg? How does one get content if nobody is advertising their properties? What does this site require that will make it a preferred portal, what do you the user or surfer want to see and what features should we add to improve our site?

Please provide feedback…….

Technorati Tags: Real Estate Web Sites

I work for a realtor in Kansas City. I'm setting up a blog for her and she wants to know what questions people have about the current real estate market or real estate in general. Then we will answer them. We will post both question and answer on her blog to make it more interactive and informative. No question too complicated.
You come to a real estate board where people are asking real estate questions and ask what are your real estate questions?

My question would be a 2fer.

Why don't you go pay for an ad?
Do we really need another spammer here?

When I first got licensed to sell real estate I was about as clueless as they come, but what I lacked in knowledge and ability I made up for in desire to learn and willingness to learn. So, I went to school after finishing real estate school.

No, not a school with a sit down classroom, but school in the sense that I started asking questions of veteran agents and watching what they did and said. I turned off my mouth after a while and opened up my eyes and ears and learned more doing that than I did while getting licensed.

For example, I learned that Real Estate Lead Generators abound, and everyday I was presented with opportunities that had I not been tuned in to pay attention to would have gone overlooked.

Here’s a case in point with respect to business cards. I don’t remember exactly how many business cards came with my first order, but I vaguely remember it being 500-1,000 cards. A year later I still had most of them. It was the craziest thing that I could have done!

Think about it! Instead of making it a point to give them away as fast as I could I was actually rationing them out like I didn’t want to unload them.

Don’t make that mistake! Business cards are great real estate lead generators and should be given out as freely as you would a glass of water to a thirsty person. And that’s just what real estate prospects are. Thirsty to make real estate transactions with real estate agents sharp enough to recognize the opportunities.

Admittedly, I wasn’t too sharp back then, but as I got smarter I realized the value of handing 3-4 business cards to everybody I came in contact with-and I mean everybody; my kids teachers, my doctor, your doctor, the school crossing card, my mechanic, dentist, etc.

And then there were the scores of counter tops that I encountered everyday. Grocery store counters, dry laundry counters, fast food pickup counters, counters where I paid the cable bill, bought computer stuff, book counters, etc.

Oh, and less I forget I must have passed by hundreds of billboards without placing one business card, real estate flyer or anything else on it. My stomach still knots up when I think of all the money those wasted opportunities cost me.

But like I said, I’m a lot smarter now (okay, so maybe I’m just older) and can pass on some pearls of wisdom to you so that you can avoid some of the mistakes I made. For example, some other real estate generating ideas include:

Real Estate Leads from Contractor and Home Builder Shows.
Real Estate Contractor and Home Building shows are becoming extremely popular among folks who are looking to build their home or are considering having one custom-built themselves. Getting Real Estate Leads from them is a great a strategy that’s easy to implement.

Real Estate Closing Gifts; Small Gifts That Lead To More Referrals and Sales.
Many Real Estate Agents think of real estate closing gifts as something that should be given to the home buyer by his or her close family and friends. The gift serves as an accolade for the person’s accomplishment. You can design them yourself if you’re the creative type, or simply go out and buy one from your local shopping mall.

Free Website Content; Using Free Content To Generate Leads.
Everything you need to know to build a realtor web site and generate leads is available on the Internet, much of it free to little cost-including website content! In fact, some of the best real estate information I’ve read has been free, and although locating quality free content for publication and turning them into HTML to publish on your web site each week involves a great deal of time and effort it can be worth the effort.

I could go on and on, but it all comes back to the notion that real estate lead generating ideas are around us all day, everyday. If you pay attention to them you can work them to your advantage, but if you impose your will with them you can dominate your market like no other agent in your community.

Do you need a Realtor website that manages all your leads? One that streamlines your work for efficiency, and has the automated real estate marketing solutions you can rely on while you’re busy working all your leads and clients?

Let me answer for you. Yes, you do!

Whether you’re starting a new real estate agency or are looking for a new design for your real estate agent web site, some other things to consider when designing a web site include the level of support you’ll receive from your site builder, the resources that a web designer offers and the search engine friendliness of your web site package.

Well designed sites allow agents to receive vital information about their visitors and facilitate immediate follow up! A few Agent and Realtor tools offered by the better sites included the following

Lead Generating Guest Book Package
VIP Home Buyer Program
Community Subdivisions
Online Home Loan Prequalification
Virtual Tours
And Much, Much More!

Many companies also offer automated email follow up systems, aka drip systems, for sales agents who wish to augment their lead follow up process with a tool that automatically stays in touch with potential customers. This is a pretty cool feature, as once you set up the email messages you can put it on automatic and it’ll automatically follow-up on every lead that emails for information.

Content Is King!
Your web site should include lots of relevant content to increase your chances of being found in the search engines. You should also be able to customize titles, descriptions and keywords. And the ability to generate reports and perform FREE Auto/Manual submissions to select search engines is a must. If not you’ll end up having to extra for what some web site building programs provide as a free service.

Don’t have time to create content for your site? Join the club, as many other real estate agents are in the same predicament. They need web content to increase site visits and boost search engine rankings, but don’t have the time to devote to everything else that they need to be doing. So, they use pre-written content, which I highly recommend!

Good Web Site Design
Good web site design is a critical element of designing a user friendly web site. The design and layout are important features that actually bring users to your site and keep them there.

A major aspect of your web site design is the web site navigation. If the navigation of your site is poor the user will leave the web site quickly, without taking the time to look at your content. If your web site is difficult to read, or has unappealing font size and colors and is otherwise unappealing the visitors may leave because of it, too. Consequently, a good, clean, simple and easily navigated web site is the best type of site to create.

Some people like to use side navigation bars to guide visitors through their sites, while others like to use navigation bars found at the top of the web site pages. But placement is not as important as consistency, so that whichever you use it is consistent and visitors will always know where to go to move to another page. I don’t have a personal preference, and am usually guided by the look and feel that I want to project.

The most successful real estate agents and brokers realize the value of agency websites and are constantly working to improve them. Still, many have web sites that are difficult and costly to maintain. Some of the questions to ask are:

Should your agents have access only to certain parts of your administration panel, and not others? How will you manage listings? Are you using a Multiple Listing Service (MLS)? How Can A Real Estate Web Site Boost Your Business? These are just a few of the questions you’ll have to answer as you move forward with building or improving your web site.

Summarily, the most successful real estate agents usually have lots of leads, buyers and sellers. And one lead generating system that works well is online marketing with Real Estate Agent Web Sites. They’re relatively inexpensive these days, but can give a serious boost to your real estate marketing result