Post about "Investing"

6 Real Estate Marketing Things You Must Do to Rent Or Sell Your Property Quickly

Real estate investment can be a highly profitable activity for the savvy investor. However, when the time comes to either rent or sell the property, delays can cause real damage to the overall investment return. Mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities continue to march along and you need to offset those with income from rent or sale proceeds in order to avoid serious cash flow problems. Properly approaching the marketing of your real estate is as important as deciding where to buy and how much to pay. Yet, there seems to be a general apathy towards marketing real estate outside the box. By approaching real estate marketing in a disciplined fashion with specific goals in mind, you are likely to out-compete other landlords and enjoy higher performing real estate returns.There are six things that the real estate owner needs to take into consideration when mounting a campaign to rent or sell real estate.1)      Gain Control of Your Own Marketing – Real estate marketing has previously been thought of as a relationship between the Owner and a professional service provider. Generally either a real estate agent or a property manager competes for the opportunity to represent the owner in renting or selling the property. We believe the owner should take back control of this process and act as the quarterback of the process. The Owner knows the property the best and can generally present it in the best light. The Owner is motivated and his focus is not diverted to other properties representing other owners.2)      Get the Prospect To Your Presentation – The goal of a properly organized marketing campaign is to persuade the Prospect to come to your presentation and listen to it. The Owner needs to present the property in an interesting enough light that the Prospect is intrigued. When you can get your Prospect to move away from the noise and confusion of the selling marketplace and come to your private presentation, you have the best chance to get a truly interested buyer or renter. Also, when you can get someone to come and see your pre-prepared presentation, you insure you are always presenting when you are at your best and the property is always being presented in the best possible light.3)     Out Compete Your Competition – This generally means you have the opportunity to market in a way very different from your competitors and can stand above them. By marketing persuasively using sight and sound as the basis for your presentation, you can compete on something other than price. Prospects will be willing to pay a bit more is they are convinced you have a unique property that demands a higher price. Your competition will be stuck in the old ways of marketing and will generally compete on price by default.4)      Present Your Product Correctly – This means you carefully consider what the benefits to your Prospect are going to be. It does not mean listing all of the features of your property, but rather, how those features are going to benefit your Prospect. No one cares how great you think your property is. They only care what it is going to do for them. By focusing in on the various benefits and then presenting them in an entertaining format, you capture the attention of your Prospect and get them to focus on just your property.5)      Avoid Wasting Time with Bad Prospects – This is the bane of real estate owners. When you can figure out how to avoid wasting time with these people, you become much more productive. Pre-filtering techniques include the use of pre-recorded 800 telephone numbers and information flyers that serve to educate your Prospect before they waste your valuable time. Your goal is to answer all of your Prospects’ questions well before they actually spend any time with you. At that point, you have an educated and motivated Prospect willing to shell out money to either rent or buy your property.6)      Get Your Presentation to the Right Market – You could prepare the most compelling presentation of your property, but fail because you didn’t get to the right Prospects. It is critical to understand where your best prospects are and then reach out to them and yank them to your private site. Performing a little due diligence on your marketplace to understand where your Prospects “hang out’ will do wonders for your effort. Most Prospects start out their search online. You need to determine where the “HUBS” are and get your hooks into those places. Then you can start to work your marketing magic on your target Prospects.Real estate marketing can be and should be no different than marketing consumer products, high tech products or any other highly competed product. A game plan needs to be established that plots a path to your private marketing area. At that point you can present the best of your property in a compelling fashion that allows your best Prospects to make their own decision to beat a pathway to your property. 

Investing Smart

Successful investing is smart investing. Investment is all about making the right choices, so that not only are you able to satisfy your immediate needs and requirements, but are also able to ensure the same for the medium and long term future. Just as no two individuals can be exactly the same, the financial needs and investment patterns vary from person to person. However one can follow certain definite markers to ensure that the path taken is the right one.Understand Your Needs: Investment goals come with different time frames and different objectives. One may invest for a short term goal like buying a car or even a holiday abroad. On the other hand, one could consider a long term investment plan to cater for the period when one has retired from work. How much one is able to commit to investment is dependent entirely upon one’s risk taking ability.When it comes to risk taking there is some truth in the adage that greater the risk, more the reward. That does not however mean that one should be reckless. Everyone possesses a risk threshold that they will not consider crossing. Factors like the level of a person’s income, one’s net worth, one’s ability to understand the investment scenario and the objectives behind investing drive how and how much a person invests.Early Bird Catches The Worm: The younger that one embarks on one’s investment journey, the better are the gains. The compound interest that you will make as a young man would fetch quite impressive gains by the time you started getting along in years. For instance if one started investing $93 every two weeks starting age 25 one would reach an amount of $500,000 when one hits sixty.This is a painless and easy way of building up a fine retirement fund. At age 25 if you are not married; you would hardly have any major expenses to worry about, and could afford to put away some money. As the years go by your responsibilities and expenses will increase, but so will your income, and you will not feel the pinch of the regular installment you committed to paying when you were so much younger.Invest Regularly: This definitely makes a lot of sense for most people considering that it is far easier to invest small sums regularly than investing a large sum at one go. Firstly one might not be able to afford the latter and secondly one does need money for things other than investment, which will get tied up in large investments. Also it gets you used to the idea of setting aside a certain sum of money regularly. Monthly and quarterly investment options, where a certain fixed sum gets debited from one’s account regularly is a fine approach to take.Spread your investment: That you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, applies to investment more than it applies anywhere else. Taking care to spread one’s investments over a diverse range of options will both reduce your exposure to risks and optimize your long term returns. You will be better inured against downturns in any specific sectors. So even if a part of your investments takes a temporary hit, there will be the other part still working well for you.Track your investments: Your investments come out of your hard earned money, and you should therefore track them with a hawk’s eye. An annual appraisal, either with the help of a finance industry professional or on one’s own is very much in order to see that one’s investment objectives remain on track. There is nothing that stops you from recasting your goals in light of the changes one goes through in life over a period of time. These may be on account of personal milestones like marriage, children’s education, impending retirements or even the prevailing market situation. The idea is to guard one’s money zealously and make every penny count.Make the right kind of investment: One needs to make different kinds of investments for the short term and the long term. Short term investments need to be less risk averse and easily encashable. The latter type of investment on the other hand need be of the late maturing growth oriented type.Sound investment may not be rocket science, but one would be amazed at how often people, who should know better make a hash of things. The above steps can be used as basic template for sound investment. As one goes along the path of planned and systematic investment one is better able to understand the finer nuances and nitty gritty of the process and obtain optimal results.