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 

Corporate Housing

Corporate Housing: Monetizing the 30-Day Stay

The days when the American Dream meant simply owning your own home are long past. These days, the American middle class is spending billions of dollars on renting, not buying, each year. To take control of your American Dream, you need to understand the true income potential of your residential ...
Increase ROI with an ENERGY STAR Certification

Increase ROI with an ENERGY STAR Certification

The ENERGY STAR certified home label might appear small, a mere three by five inches, but it stands for something really big. That little label means a home has undergone a rigorous process of independent inspections and testing to ensure it meets strict U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. Some ...
ENERGY STAR

Shining Bright with ENERGY STAR

You’ve seen the sticker thousands of times on your own appliances and on those for sale in retail stores. Among the aisles and aisles of appliances there is one universal name, ENERGY STAR. You probably already know that the ENERGY STAR sticker displayed on appliances shows you how much you ...
Winterize Your Properties Before It's Too Late

Winterize Your Properties Before It’s Too Late

With the winter season approaching, property owners and managers should make sure their rentals and properties are ready for some bad weather. Freezing temperatures along with cold rain and snow can create a lot of trouble if you’re not prepared. It’s also a great time to check in with tenants ...
Don’t Let an End-Date End Your Dreams

Don’t Let an End-Date End Your Dreams

It was a hot and steamy south Miami afternoon in 2004, and I was working as a driving instructor for the Richard Petty Driving Experience. It was tough. We worked 12-hour days, turning countless laps at a fast but “safe” speed (i.e. boring to a race car driver - we’re ...
3 Unique Ways to Find Your Next Investment Property

3 Unique Ways to Find Your Next Investment Property

The MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is a great tool for those shopping in the real estate market. It was designed to simplify the process. It places all of the listings from multiple agencies in one convenient location for buyers and agents to browse without having to visit multiple different websites ...
Farmland

Get in on the Farmland Phenomenon

Over the past decade, international investors have doubled down on a certain type of real estate. In fact, they have purchased so much of this particular type of land just since 2004 that cross-border ownership in this sector accounts for an area roughly the size of the state of Tennessee ...
Tax Changes Could Hurt Second-Home Market

Tax Changes Could Hurt Second-Home Market

How would it affect your real estate investing if you could not deduct the mortgage interest on the property loan off your taxes each year? If you purchased one or more of your investment properties using a traditional mortgage loan, then keep reading. Looming changes to the U.S. tax code ...
Tenant Chefs & Holiday Feasts: Fire Safety

Tenant Chefs & Holiday Feasts: Fire Safety

There’s a lot of preparation that goes into having people over for a meal. Especially holiday meals. But how many people are aware of the increased fire risk on these feast days? And even if they are aware, what are they most focused on? Having everything ready by the time ...
4 Tips to Take Your First REI Step

4 Tips to Take Your First REI Step

Taking the first step is one of the most significant and common obstacles for a new or part-time investor who is looking to get started. Most people struggle to take the first step. I’ll admit, it is the most difficult step and probably the least rewarding one. Taking the First ...
10 Holiday Cooking Safety Tips for Your Tenants

10 Holiday Cooking Safety Tips for Your Tenants

The peak day for cooking fires each year is Thanksgiving Day. For this reason, it’s important that your tenant chefs are in a “state of readiness” for the holidays. Here are 10 tips to share with your tenants so they can enjoy a turkey-licious fire-free feast. Top Tips 1| TEST ...
Underwater Properties Decrease from Year Ago

Underwater Properties Decrease from Year Ago

ATTOM Data Solutions, released its Q3 2017 U.S. Home Equity & Underwater Report, showing that at the end of the third quarter of 2017 there were 4.6 million (4,628,408) U.S. properties that were seriously underwater (where the combined loan amount secured by the property was at least 25 percent higher than the property’s ...
Solutions

Tap Your Holiday Spirit, Offer Solutions

Successful real estate investors tend to focus on offering solutions. Sometimes, those solutions are straightforward, such as buying a home from a distressed homeowner or helping a burned-out landlord exit ownership of a chronically troublesome rental property. If you can clearly convey to any potential lead, business partner, buyer, or ...
Secure

How to Keep a Rental Property Secure

Investing in real estate is a rewarding experience, often quite profitable. It gives you the ability to reap a monthly cash revenue with little to no action on your part. And gives you the keys to a future financial freedom. However, rental property investing comes with its fair share of ...
Fed

Fed’s Changing of the Guards Could Effect REIs

When President Trump announced he would break with precedent and nominate Federal Reserve Governor Jerome “Jay” Powell to replace current Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen in early 2018, he was keeping a much-publicized campaign promise to “fire” Yellen. During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized the Federal Reserve for keeping ...
Vintage “Kit Homes” Back in Style

Vintage “Kit Homes” Back in Style

| Kathy Fettke | Article | Operations
If you were around a hundred years ago, the idea of ordering a “kit home” was common. You could pick out the style you want from a catalogue and have all the materials delivered to your future doorstep. They were cheap back then, but today, those homes are commanding high ...
Staging

3 Simple Seasonal Staging Tips

As the leaves change from green to orange, red, and gold and the words “pumpkin spice” begin appearing on packaging of everything from lattes to pop tarts, we know that fall is in the air. In our own homes, we may crack out the cinnamon brooms, the football-themed front-door decor, and start ...
Tenant

10 Ways to Give Thanks to Your Tenants

For most landlords –it’s easy to focus on the tenants that went wrong. Experiences with destroyed carpet, and unpaid rent tend to stick in our minds a lot better than the tenants who pay their rent on time, and without incident. But the fact is, though, that for every bad tenant out ...
Proposed Tax Reform Could Impact REIs

Proposed Tax Reform Could Impact REIs

The proposed tax reform hit the internet last week. Though there are likely to be many changes and revisions, in its current form, there are many impacts to those who invest in real estate. Let’s explore these. Changes in Deductions The proposed tax reform has changed, reduced, and eliminated many ...
Investor

Which Investor Type are You?

There’s no doubt about it, real estate is an inefficient investment by nature. Each investment and investor has its own unique characteristics and requires our most valuable resource…time! Time is Valuable Your time commitment is perhaps the most significant problem investors face when growing their portfolio. Real estate investing can ...
Big Boom in Baby Boomer Renters

Big Boom in Baby Boomer Renters

Baby boomers set the housing market on fire when they came of age, but times have changed. Now, they are flocking in droves to an easier lifestyle than one of homeownership. RentCafé looked at Census figures to come up with a snapshot of the renting world. It found that people ...
7 Ways to Retain Your Existing Tenants

7 Ways to Retain Your Existing Tenants

When your tenants move out, it can cost thousands of dollars in lost revenue, repairs, renovations, and marketing to get your property re-rented. A hallmark 1987 study by Walker Research identified the cost of finding a new customer versus keeping an existing customer was five times the effort and cost ...
How Recent Tax Proposals May Affect Marketplace Investors Part 2 of 2

How Recent Tax Proposals May Affect Marketplace Investors Part 2 of 2

In part one, Lawrence Fassler discusses proposed changes to the tax code, including limitations on sponsored business interest deductions, changes to 1031 Exchange program and carried interest taxation. To read part one click here. Lowered Business Income Rates for Investors in Pass-Through Entities The change that might affect investors and ...
Driverless Cars to Transform Real Estate Landscape

Driverless Cars to Transform Real Estate Landscape

Driverless cars may seem like a novelty to many of us, but almost two dozen companies are racing to get them on the road in the next few years. It’s still a stretch of the imagination to visualize them as a common mode of transportation but if and when that ...
How Recent Tax Proposals May Affect Marketplace Investors Part 1 of 2 Part Series

How Recent Tax Proposals May Affect Marketplace Investors Part 1 of 2 Part Series

The commercial real estate industry, in which many online marketplace investors participate, remained largely unscathed by the recent House proposal of changes to the Internal Revenue Code. Investors may actually benefit from some of the proposals, and changes to the individual mortgage interest deduction and other changes may end up ...