Operations

Your operations define your long-term success in real estate investing. Fine-tune your process with: Asset Management | Asset Protection | Deal Analysis | Fundamentals | Growth | Lead Generation | Risk Management

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Operations

Your operations define your long-term success in real estate investing. Fine-tune your process with: Asset Management | Asset Protection | Deal Analysis | Fundamentals | Growth | Lead Generation | Risk Management

Back To: All Topics 

foreclosure

Foreclosure Rates Lower in Highest-Risk ZIP Codes

ATTOM Data Solutions, released its 2017 Environmental Hazards Housing Risk Index, which shows median home prices in U.S. ZIP codes in the highest 20 percent for environmental hazard risk appreciated at a faster pace than the overall U.S housing market over the past year, past five years and past 10 ...
credit

Credit, Using it Creatively & Responsibly

I once used a promotional “zero-percent-interest-and-zero-points" cash advance feature on my $25,000-limit credit card to buy a $25,000 property. Then, I refinanced it with a local community bank at 100 percent loan-to-cost (75 percent loan-to-appraised- value) within six months, right before the initial interest free period expired. That credit card ...
legacy

Redefining Legacy: It’s Not Just Financial Wealth

Many years ago, I was asked to give a speech in Charleston, South Carolina, to an audience of extremely wealthy men who were nearing early retirement. At that point in my life, I had already spoken on behalf of dozens of great corporations, albeit mostly about setting and achieving big ...
The Bridge to Productivity

The Bridge to Productivity

Dallas, Texas – “We are all in different phases of stuck, and we need a bridge to productivity.” Robert Nickell, founder of REIVA, summed up his personal experience in real estate with these words. Nickell’s company offers the services of trained, dedicated virtual assistants (VAs) to real estate investors to ...
5 Economic Indicators Every Real Estate Investor Must Know

5 Economic Indicators Every Real Estate Investor Must Know

Dallas, Texas – When Carrie Cook, president of Ignite Funding, thinks about the roughly $460 million her real estate investment company is managing right before she goes to sleep at night, she sleeps just fine. While some investors might find numbers like that to be a bit intimidating even when ...
Why a Studio Apartment Could be Better than a McMansion for Your Real Estate Business

Why a Studio Apartment Could be Better than a McMansion for Your Real Estate Business

Dallas, Texas – “If you have a big, beautiful ‘McMansion’ that you’re trying to rent out right now, I’m betting you’re finding that market isn’t too hot. In fact, I’m betting a one-bedroom apartment or a studio might be much hotter, and I’ll tell you why.” That’s how Gene Guarino, ...
roth

Roth IRAs: The Best Legacy-Building Tool

If you leave nothing else for your loved ones, be sure that they inherit a Roth IRA from you. Even if the account has a tiny balance, leaving behind a Roth IRA provides a legacy benefit of overwhelming value: a lifetime of tax-free investment profits. In short, an inherited IRA ...
real estate

3 Things Not to do at a Real Estate Conference

We’ve talked to countless meeting hosts, presenters, and power-networkers to come up with a list of the three worst things you can do at a real estate conference. Take a hard look at this list and then, yourself. If you’ve made these mistakes in the past, be sure to avoid ...
housing markets

Housing Markets Most Impacted by Tax Plan

The Republican tax proposal unveiled in late October and passed in December, included at least two changes to the income tax structure that could potentially have significant impacts on homeowners, and by extension the housing market. We’ve created two heat maps to illustrate which local housing markets could have the ...
honesty

Rigorous Honesty, Make it a Habit

Several years ago, I was asked by one of my mentors if I was rigorously honest. I thought I was honest and said as much. More recently, I was given a challenge by Michael J. Maher, the author of 7L: The Seven Levels of Communication. It was the same challenge ...
housing

Housing Affordability Impacts Investor Strategy

| Abhi Golhar | Article | Operations
The Atlanta skyline has a lot of visible cranes right now making it easy to understand that we are in an interesting growth cycle. Everybody is giddy and excited about where the real estate market is headed, and we've had, what I think, is one of the longest run-ups in ...
bookkeeping

5 Must Avoid Bookkeeping Errors

| David Rice | Article | Operations
Real estate investors tend to be extremely independent. That independence is one of the best things about these entrepreneurs, but that “go-it-alone” streak can lead to serious bookkeeping oversights that will create big problems in your real estate business. While most investors acknowledge they have neither the time nor the ...
Markets that Will “Double Up” in 2018

Markets that Will “Double Up” in 2018

Although home prices have been rising briskly in many markets across the country, the prospects for investors in these markets can be quite different from market to market. This is especially true for investors in rental properties who need a longer-term perspective than those rehabbing and reselling. Jobs are the ...
stock market

The Stock Market: What You Need to Know

Last week, Wall Street went a little crazy. After more than a year of steady growth, the time was certainly ripe for a correction in the market, and that is what the market gave investors last week. February started off with some turbulence, with the Dow closing on February 2, ...
guidelines

3 Guidelines for Effective Real Estate Advertising

| Rodney Halford | Article | Operations
Before you spend a dime on advertising your real estate business, you must absorb and incorporate one vital, foundational principle: Advertising is an investment, not an expense. If you like, you can add an additional descriptive word, such as “strategic” or “responsible” or “wise” to the description of this principle, ...
renovation

Renovation Rock Stars: Portugal

| Lorraine Beato | Article | Operations
When Lorraine Beato, an Atlanta, Georgia, realtor specializing in single-family residential homes, investment acquisitions, and upscale renovations, updates a property, she usually does so for one of her investor buyers or a retail client. Also, she usually works in the continental United States! Last summer, however, she found herself in ...
project management

Project Management for Better Productivity

Real estate investors often find themselves overwhelmed, which is one of the main sources of disappointment in this popular industry for new investors. Ask any active investor at a local real estate investors’ association (REIA) meeting what surprised them when they started investing full-time, and most will mention that they ...
kitchen

3 Kitchen Secrets that Affect Your Bottom Line

| Mark Reginelli | Article | Operations
Kitchen remodels are among the highest-returning upgrades you can do in a home - if they are handled correctly. Unfortunately, many real estate investors tend to get a bit carried away when they upgrade the kitchen in their investment properties and sometimes make mistakes that cost them serious cash flow ...
mortgage

Mortgage Lending: Buyers Simply Do Not Understand

While most Americans state they believe owning a home is part of the American Dream, only about eight percent of the population reports having the basic knowledge to figure out if they can afford a home and obtain conventional financing in order to make the purchase. Ally Financial recently surveyed ...
texas

State Spotlight: Texas

The state of Texas has 10 distinct climatic regions and 11 distinct ecological regions, so it’s hardly surprising that the second-largest state in the union boasts hundreds of distinct housing markets. In fact, it’s far more common to find regional analyses than a statewide real estate analysis of Texas simply ...
staging

4 Fast Sale Staging & Design Decisions

| Aimee Breeden | Article | Operations
Owning real estate is a great investment, as any agent will tell you. Terms like “appreciating asset” and “equity” can convert almost any potential buyer to a homeowner. However, the excitement of purchasing a new home might feel like a distant memory when it comes time to cash in on ...
mortgage

Mortgage Industry’s Bad News, Good News for Investors

When LoanLogic’s senior vice president of industry relations and consulting, Les Parker, starts blogging about volatility, it pays off for real estate investors to listen. “This year is shaping up as a year of volatility,” he observed, going on to predict that loan originations would plunge “as interest rates rise ...
hq2

WSJ Stacks up HQ2 Cities with Some Disappointments

Last month, Amazon released its “short list” of 20 cities still in the running to host the web behemoth’s second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, which many analysts predict will revolutionize the winner’s local economy and turn an already thriving economy into a super-engine for growth. While all of the cities on ...
las vegas

Las Vegas Lagging Behind in Home Appreciation

When Black Knight, Inc., released its most recent Home Price Index (HPI) Report, analysts immediately noted that 12 of the 40 largest U.S. metros hit new highs in home values by the end of 2017. That list included Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas. Notably, it did not ...
productivity

3 Ways to Maximize Your Team’s Productivity

It is hard to argue with the idea that the key to success in any business, including real estate investing, is getting the right people in the right seats. Best-selling authors from Jim Collins to Gino Wickman teach this in business books. Posters with expressions like “Teamwork Makes the Dream ...