Archive for October, 2008

Learning to Invest in Real Estate with a Real Estate Coach

Friday, October 31st, 2008

You don’t have to be a massive sports fan to notice the effect that the best coaching has on teams: the best coaches get the best results possible from their players. This often tends to result in wins and championship. If a team performs poorly, it will to replace the coach rather than replace the players.

Like anything that has the potential to be greatly rewarding, real estate investing is risky. You need to learn the ropes you so can minimize that risk. Real estate investing is a business where mistakes can be massively expensive. You can’t afford to make the same mistakes over and over; you have start out with good strategies, apply them well, and learn from any mistakes you do make.

Sound, sensible real estate investment practices must become your habits quickly if you are to succeed at investing in real estate. A good real estate coach can help with that process. For one thing, the instant, objective expert feedback you will get from a real estate coach brings accountability into your process. You will understand the consequences of your actions, and cannot rationalize away your mistakes and missteps, pass the buck or pass on the blame.

According to Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest football coaches of all time, winning is a habit, but so is losing. Which habit would you rather have, winning or losing? That’s not a question you had to think over very long, is it. A good real estate coach can do what even the best book or class cannot help you form winning habits.

A real estate coach can also help you put together a business plan, and give you specific ideas as to what you need to do in order for your venture to be a success. Like a sports team, you will only reap the benefits of a good game plan if you carry out the game plan successfully. A good coach will keep your nose to the grindstone and put your feet to the fire. A good real estate coach can keep you moving forward, and help you through rough times and answer questions. A good real estate coach can also provide support, motivation, knowledge, and help you keep your focus.

When you choose your real estate coach, you should choose someone who is actually active and successful as a real estate investor, and not someone merely trained in real estate who skipped the whole important middle step of being successful and went straightaway into training others. They should have many verifiable properties, and local properties are always better local properties are indicative that the real estate coach works locally, and will be available for training and answers. If you hire someone as a consultant, they should genuinely care about your future. Make them demonstrate this. If they don’t care about you before they take your money, they won’t suddenly start to care after they take your money.

Peter Vekselman has been successfully investing in real estate since 1996. He has completed over 1000 real estate deals, owned a construction company, been a private lender, and owned a property management
company. To learn more about Peter please visit
http://www.coachingbypeter.com.

When is the Right Time to Hire a Real Estate Coach?

Friday, October 31st, 2008

When should you hire a real estate coach? If you’re committed to investing in real estate, there are a lot of reasons to hire a coach. The main reason is to produce better results in your real estate business and make more money than you currently are. You may feel that you should be operating your business entirely by yourself. After all, real estate naturally attracts the sort of people who like to work independently, and succeed based on their own mettle. Pride is fine, but you’re in this to make money, aren’t you? Wouldn’t it make sense to set your pride aside and do whatever makes sense for your career?

No doubt, you are enthusiastic about real estate investing. If you’re just starting out, though, you’ll no doubt admit you’ve got a lot to learn. Wouldn’t it make sense to find a mentor who knows the ropes, and can help you achieve greater success than you would on your own? If you’ve worked in the corporate world, you know how effective a good mentor can be in furthering your knowledge and improving your skill set. Coaching is different from teaching per se in that it is more focused on setting and pursuing goals. It’s not that different from sports coaching, except that it is focused on real estate investment. Even if you are goal-oriented already, a real estate coach can help you set better, more realistic, more achievable goals without sacrificing ambition.

Even if you are already successful at buying and selling real estate, you might benefit from the services of a real estate coach. A real estate coach can focus your business and your goals, and give you an informed second opinion on your real estate practice. In fact, coaching is a better option for experienced real estate professional than for absolute beginners. Once you know the basics, you can hire a real estate coach to help you close the gap between where you are now and where you really want to be.

You are probably, at this point, wondering how real estate coaching proceeds. Real estate coaching usually moves forward through a series of structured conversations revolving around your approach to your real estate investment business. These conversations are designed to help you set and pursue clearer, more achievable goals, think more clearly about your business, and gain better perspective. Real estate coaching is designed to provide the tools to enhance the process of building a successful business, and helps you approach becoming more accountable to yourself for achieving your goals.

Real estate coaching is often done by telephone. It doesn’t have to be; it can be done in person as well. A good real estate coach will tailor his or her approach to your needs. Before you hire a real estate coach, make they are able to adapt to your unique needs and your approach to the working relationship. If you choose the right real estate coach, you can expect them to give you objective feedback on your business and your approach to real estate investing, thus putting you in a better position to attain your real estate investment goals.

Peter Vekselman has been successfully investing in real estate since 1996. He has completed over 1000 real estate deals, owned a construction company, been a private lender, and owned a property management
company. To learn more about Peter please visit
http://www.coachingbypeter.com.

The Benefits of Hiring a Real Estate Consultant

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Do you invest in real estate? Is your business as successful as you feel it should be? You might consider hiring a real estate consultant. Real estate consultants can focus on a number of different aspects of your business. Real estate consultants can specialize in many different aspects of the real estate business, or they can provide comprehensive consulting services.

One approach to real estate consulting is through management consulting. This would entail the consultant taking a close look at your business practices and determining what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and what you are doing right but could be doing better. For example, have you set measurable, testable performance benchmarks? Do you have a sound, practical business plan? A good real estate consultant can help you structure your business practice in ways that will help ensure success. They can provide support, , motivation, knowledge, and help you know where to focus and learn to keep our focus there.

Another type of real estate consultant is the type of consultant that performs research. This research may consist of market research. Market research will help you determine which types of properties best suit which type of customer, as well as who is buying.

Market research can also highlight demographic trends that will impact your business. Wouldn’t it be great to buy up the next hot, trendy neighborhood well before everyone else gets there? There is some luck involved, but you don’t need to read the tea leaves or consult oracle bones. Most of what you will need to know is present in what’s happening on the ground right now. A consultant can mine the vast reams of data present in any market and help you spot these trends.

Real estate consultants often offer other types of research as well. For example, if you are thinking of taking your real estate investing into another market, and thereby diversifying geographically, real estate consultants can advise you on local real estate law and zoning practice. They can also advise you on tax planning for your real estate investments. Real estate consulting firms can also do boots-on-the-ground research, such as locating properties that you can potentially invest in. This would give you a leg up on competitors not employing such research as you may find properties well before everyone else is aware of the opportunity.

These are just some of the many potential benefits of partnering with a real estate consultant for your real estate investment business. The right real estate consultant can help you firm up your business practice in exactly the areas where you need help, whether it be managing your business, performing market research and anticipating investment trends, or advising legal, zoning and tax planning aspects of your business. Real estate consultants can give you a clearer picture of what you need to do for your real estate investment business to thrive, and help you plan the roadmap to get where you want to go, as well as set achievable benchmarks-and achieve them.

Peter Vekselman has been successfully investing in real estate since 1996. He has completed over 1000 real estate deals, owned a construction company, been a private lender, and owned a property management
company. To learn more about Peter please visit
http://www.coachingbypeter.com.

The Benefits of Working with a Real Estate Mentor Before Investing

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Working with a real estate mentor can benefit you in many ways. For starters, you will get a clear picture of where you are now in your real estate business, as well as where you want to go and why. You will also get a clear idea of what you need to do in order to make it happen.

A mentor can help you understand the basics of real estate investing strategy and develop the approach to real estate investing that suits you best and will generate the most profit for you. The key to real estate investing is to understand what areas to invest in. For example, if you want to make money on rental properties, you need to know what features to look for. Many beginning real estate investors fail because they don’t understand the basics. Mentoring can solve that.

One of the things a real estate mentor can do is help you figure out exactly what you need to understand, what skills you need to acquire, and how to apply what you learn from your real estate mentor. All of this will help you develop self-confidence and self-trust and thereby enable you to do whatever is necessary in order for you to succeed. After working with a mentor, you will have more control over the speed and direction of your growth, your business will be stronger, and you will be stronger. It is a great way to take your business to the next level.

A good real estate mentor not only gives you advice on what to do, they can give you advice on how to manage your time effectively in order to get it all done. If you manage your time properly, you can achieve more than you ever thought you could. Your mentor can also help you create a business plan, projecting anywhere from one to five or more years into the future, so that you can plan for success.

A mentor can guide your business practice in subtle and not so subtle ways. If you have a good mentor, they will give you realistic suggestions to help you, not suggestions that are unfeasible given your situation. The suggestions must be within your means to actually carry out. The suggestions they give must also have an impact on your bottom line within a reasonable amount of time. These suggestions must also be within the range of your technical expertise to actually carry out. If these criteria are not met, perhaps your real estate mentor gives basically the same advice to everyone without considering their unique situation.

Chances are, you could learn the ropes of real estate investment yourself, without a real estate mentor. However, a real estate mentor can help you avoid the kind of mistakes that will needlessly cost you both time and money on your way to success. It is far less painful to learn from other people’s mistakes, where possible, than to learn by making your own mistakes.

Peter Vekselman has been successfully investing in real estate since 1996. He has completed over 1000 real estate deals, owned a construction company, been a private lender, and owned a property management
company. To learn more about Peter please visit
http://www.coachingbypeter.com.

What Does a Real Estate Consultant Do?

Friday, October 31st, 2008

You may be wondering if the title of real estate consultant is a meaningful one, and if it indicates anything different from the same old licensed real estate brokers with a vested interest in the fate of a property. While it is true that anyone can call himself or herself a consultant, the term is not meaningless window dressing. For those who take their real estate consulting business seriously, it represents a different model, a different approach to real estate practice.

The first and most important difference is objectivity. Whereas a real estate broker typically is paid contingent on an outcome: in other words, they receive a commission; a real estate consultant is paid solely for their expertise. They have no stake in the outcome. Salespeople are paid only for getting a result sale. Real estate consultants are paid for their expert advice only, and by design have no stake in achieving a particular outcome to a particular transaction. This gives them the capacity to be more objective and inherently more trustworthy than a traditional real estate salesperson. Think about it-even the most honest salesperson will unconsciously try to steer you toward a sale. After all, that’s where their pay comes from-from selling! The consultant is paid the way other professional advisors or service professionals like CPAs are, with a retainer regardless of outcome.

Consulting can involve a variety of skills and areas of expertise. You can hire a consultant for legal advice, market research, or to locate possible properties to invest in, among other things. Since they are paid as much for their time if they advise you that there are no properties in an area worth investing in as if they advise you of dozens of viable properties, they have no stake in anything except giving you the best advice possible. After all, their future business depends on word-of-mouth endorsements from investors like you.

If you are looking for properties to invest in, a real estate consultant can tip you off to developer closeouts and bulk opportunities, equity partnerships, joint ventures, and possibly even some very unique and profitable turnkey investment opportunities. The consultant is selling information and expertise, and therefore can provide you with a layer of insulation between you and the people selling the properties.

They can work out a lot of the details and business prospects of a property before you have to talk to a salesperson. Once you face the salesperson, you can approach the negotiation fully armed with an array of appropriate information, and thus avoid being bamboozled and negotiate from a position of strength.

If, on the other hand, you are selling properties, especially if you have a lot of properties to sell, a real estate consultant can help you create a strategy to sell the units before you get involved with actual salespeople, which can have many advantages. For example, you can sell a lot of properties in a relatively short time without creating the appearance of a bulk sale by having a real estate consultant distribute the properties among several different sellers.

Peter Vekselman has been successfully investing in real estate since 1996. He has completed over 1000 real estate deals, owned a construction company, been a private lender, and owned a property management
company. To learn more about Peter please visit
http://www.coachingbypeter.com.

How Real Estate Training Works

Friday, October 31st, 2008

If you intend to invest in real estate, especially if you intend to make it your full-time business, you may benefit from real estate training. Even if you feel like you have a reasonable command of the real estate business, you may find that you would still benefit from real estate training. Expert training can help you hone successful, time-tested habits, ramp up your knowledge of the real estate world, and improve your understanding of the intangible aspects of real estate investing. Perhaps most important of all, some types of training involve objective, expert evaluation of your working process.

You can attain knowledge of real estate investing a number of different ways. For example, you can adopt the do-it-yourself approach and read books and websites, and progress in your real estate investing through trial and error. If you are determined, diligent, and learn from your mistakes, you’ll eventually get to where you want to be, but this isn’t the easiest way to get there for a number of reasons.

For one thing, you are on your own in terms of evaluating the quality of what you read. If you are inexperienced, you won’t be able to tell good advice from bad until you have gained enough experience to know the difference. Another disadvantageous aspect is that you won’t have any direct, expert feedback on what you’re doing. You may think you’re doing things the right way-and without the feedback of a neutral, expert observer, you may never know if you’re right.

Another approach to learning about real estate investing is taking classes. You could take a study-at-home course; there are many excellent study-at-home courses including some offered by accredited universities. This, however, has the some of the same disadvantages as learning on your own primarily, you get no direct feedback, no real mentoring, Your real estate investment practice will still be mostly trial and error, mostly learning from your own experience, albeit within a well-informed framework.

A somewhat more personal approach is to take a class in person. This has the advantage of giving you at least some objective, expert direct feedback. Classes can be very effective, especially for grounding you in the basics. Classes offer less return on investment the more advanced your knowledge is. As you progress as a real estate investor, classes become less useful because what you really need is more hands-on, one-on-one time. if you intend to take a class, you should find out how much hands-on, one-on-one contact you will have with your instructor, and find out the class size. Large classes, not surprisingly, lead to very little hands-on attention for you.

The most personal approach is to hire a coach or mentor to teach you the ropes on a one-on-one basis. A coach or mentor can be the best option if you are fairly advanced and have already achieved a degree of success in real estate investing, A good mentor will also give you direct feedback on your business practice and goals, in case you’re not actually doing what you think you’re doing.

Peter Vekselman has been successfully investing in real estate since 1996. He has completed over 1000 real estate deals, owned a construction company, been a private lender, and owned a property management
company. To learn more about Peter please visit
http://www.coachingbypeter.com.

Selling at Craft Fairs: Extending Your Business Beyond the Show

Friday, October 31st, 2008

You have put hours and hours of time into your craft show. You hope that it will all be worth it. But make sure you do not judge your outcome solely on sales at the end of the day. In order to be successful at the show, you must also put some time into planning ways in which you can continue to reach the customers in front of you. This is how your business will grow in the future.

Many ideas seem commonplace, but are important enough that they deserve a refresher. The first is to always have business cards on hand. In fact, it would be a good idea to place them in several different areas of your booth. Be sure to include your business name, your name, your email address and a website, if applicable. A picture is not necessarily vital, but may serve you well if it immediately identifies the products you carry. You may want to include some kind of discount code so customers look forward to making that first or next purchase with you in the future.

Brochures can also be utilized at the craft show. Most word processing programs include templates for putting these together. Or, venture out on your own to come up with a brochure style that works for you. Oftentimes, customers will pick these up for when they have more time to evaluate your products. You may also want to include the story behind your business as a way to personalize what you do and to connect with the customer. Do not forget to make sure your contact information is provided!

The third strategy to build your business from the craft fair is to keep a guest book in your booth. Customers can sign their name and provide an email address if they are interested in receiving more information from you. This is valuable way to get out the news on new products you will carry in the future, sales and promotions, or other shows you will be attending. This gives you a good base of potential buyers who are interested in what you have to offer. You could also have a drawing to win some prizes for those who enter their name and contact information.

Listen to what customers are saying when they enter and leave your booth. Take mental note and jot things down to help you remember afterwards. It is key to find out what people are looking for, their reactions to prices, and what motivates them to make the final purchase.

Keep a portfolio of your past work in your booth. Up-close photographs of not only the products themselves, but different ideas of how to use them can really encourage the customer to really see the possibilities of what you are offering. You may also consider taking special orders from customers.

As funny as it may sound, try to step outside of your comfort zone and meet other vendors who are there with you! Exchange information and talk together about upcoming shows. You might be surprised how much you can learn from someone who is in the same boat as you!

In the end, it is helpful for you to evaluate your experience at the show you just finished. Take the time to list the pros and cons of what occurred at the show. What items sold? Which items did not? Take note of all of your expenses. Do not underestimate the importance of really debriefing your experience and taking note of these things on paper. After it is all said and done, you will look back and be grateful that you took the time to write these things down, as it will help you think about future shows you may or may not be interested in.

We hope you enjoy your craft show experience! Know that there are many people behind the scenes who are cheering you on and want to see you succeed! Preparing for and selling at a craft fair CAN be worthy of your time and your talents. Maintain a positive attitude, knowing that each and every show you attend is a new opportunity to learn more about your business and yourself.

Kim Christopherson is the owner and creator of www.YouCanMakeThis.com. Find hundreds of downloadable patterns and “how-to” eBooks for your home and family. Sign up for the YCMT newsletter and receive a $75 ebook bundle package for FREE!

Domain Parking; The New Work At Home Opportunity?

Friday, October 31st, 2008

To be fair, domain parking has been around for quite some time now but it still seems like very few people even know what it is. Sometimes when speaking about domain parking they think its the domain parking where you park your domain name at your registrar in a sort of “garage, while its not in use! This is most definitely not the type of domain parking program I am speaking of! Parking domains is something I have tried in the past and became incredibly successful at, which was one of the reasons I have so much money saved up now that were in a time of financial crisis in the real world!

So far I have yet to see any large expenditure on my full-time business in the online world, so I’m assuming that everyone else is doing well with their programs, processes, services and businesses as well! Either way, if your feeling the financial burden or not when it comes to your future domain parking could just be the dream you have been wanting!

Not only is this type of program incredibly easy to get started but there really isn’t any hard work in your down time. Sure you need to get people to your site, you need to advertise and promote and market, but making money with domain parking is a lot less time consuming than say, owning your own business, or running a full-time business offline.

Whats even better is that you really don’t have anything to lose, just everything to gain. You can popularize your domain name, get organic or natural traffic going to it, make some good money from it, and never even have to invest a dime in the actual program. There are thousands of people out there right now making more money than you and they get to do it from home, on their own time and they can climb the ladder, whereas you Mister Office are stuck in the same place you have always been stuck, on the ground floor! Are you seriously going to keep staying where you are, or are you going to change it!

A few quick steps, a couple of skip hops and jumps and its as easy as pie. Lets go through this really quick:

Buy a quality domain or use your own
Find a parking program with a high revshare that gets ongoing positive reviews
Sign up, point your DNS to the site, upload the domains, customize the domain page
Send people
Make $Money$

It really is that easy, I mean I could sit here and explain all the inner workings to you, but really the steps listed above is all you need to know in order to earn money from these programs! Last little tiny small suggestion I can make to you; always follow guidelines and TOS or your account could be terminated and it doesn’t matter if you have 35cents or $35,000 owed to you.

Break the rules and your done. No second chances here! Arbitrage is no longer allowed, this process allowed you to buy traffic, have them visit your site and do searches. Now that arb is no longer allowed if you are found breaking this rule you will be “retired” from the site!

This author is a HUGE fan ofwhat is domain parking?

Increasing Advertising During a Recession: A Timely Move or an Easy Way to Go Bankrupt

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Over the last year the US, once flying high, has fallen and face planted into a somewhat ugly recession. For people with steady jobs the fear is of course the dreaded pink slip. But as long as they can keep their jobs their paychecks in most cases will remain the same. For small business owners a recession is often felt in the pocketbook. With less people buying their goods and services their revenues and profit margins can start to sink. And it can be painful for a number of reasons.

First many business owners have an emotional attachment to their business. When the business starts to flat line its hard to readjust to the new realities of your surroundings. If you are a restaurateur it might be hard to scrap plans for opening a new location across town even if the economic realties of the market make it clear that continuing ahead with previous plans is illogical. The second difficulty is that it’s hard to readjust ones life to deal with a lower take home pay. So while a small business might see a 20% drop in revenue that could translate to a 40-50% drop in profits. And while you might have lived on a smaller revenue 10 years ago it’s hard to go back to that. Living without regular out of states vacations is one thing going back to that point is even more difficult. And these somewhat harsh realties are what drive people to look for something, anything that can restore their business to its previous health and prosperity.

First I want to point out that in some cases advertising in a recession can be a wise move to increase market share and take advantage of a bad market. But more often what I see is this.

“Our revenues are way down”
“That’s horrible”
“Let’s spend a ton of money on advertising and hope we can put this behind us”

The problem is that the difficulty for this business is not that they didn’t spend enough on advertising last quarter. The problem is that we are in a world wide economic depression caused by billions of crappy loans real estate loans given out over the last few years. And yes everything is interconnected but putting out more ads for a local restaurant is probably not going to change this.

Simply put sometimes business owners make asset allocation decisions based on emotion instead of their current economic realty their business exists in. A few reasons that increased advertising might be a bad idea for your business.

1) The number of potential customers is decreasing
2) In many industries your competitors are increasing advertising to “spend their way out of a recession”
3) Increased advertising and decreased customers is a bad market to ramp up your advertising budget
4) Spending more on advertising can mean advertising in new venues. Often when testing new venues you can wasn’t a lot of money discovering mediums that simply don’t work for your business.
5) You can increase your expenditures and your cash burn rate. So basically the economy might eventually turn around but your business might not be there to see it.

Ok so if the answer is not doubling or tripling your advertising what is the answer? Here is my advice

1) Cut Expenses that are not needed. Comb through your budgets for extras you added during better times but are not needed.
2) Keep current advertising that is working. Whatever is currently providing you business I would stick with.
3) Cut advertising that is not working.
4) Adjust

Number 4 is probably the most difficult but important. If ones business is affected by the recession (and most are) it might be a good idea to simply accept the possibility of a reduced monthly income for awhile. I am not saying people should give up on their business or not attempt to increase profits. But during a recession it might be a good idea to keep working to achieve higher goals but at the same time when you are doing your monthly personal budget accept the possibility that a weakened economy often results in less customers and lower revenue. This means if you planned on buying a new car or taking an extra vacation it might be a good idea to change those plans.

In the end by operating in a logical manner a business can survive a recession and hopefully be in a position to flourish once the economy recovers.

Ki lives in central Texas. His website provides a guide to Austin Real Estate it also contains a search of the Austin MLS and updated information on Mortgage Rates.

Is Cash Generating Really A Type Of Scam?

Friday, October 31st, 2008

For the most part no! Just like with every other service, website, business and person out there, there are ones you can trust and ones you can’t. Now you can easily follow up and see if a site is legit or not, you just need to figure out how to go about this! One of the simplest ways to find out if ANY site is a scam or not is to do a quick visit to Google, if you spell out the phrase in question along with the word review at the end of the phrase you can easily find out if a site is or isn’t a scam.

Remember to keep your wits about this and remember to use common sense. For example, if you check a site out, and there are 1500 people saying Site 123 works and its legit, and you find 5 people that say it’s a scam and it doesn’t work, or that they don’t pay, who do you think you should put more faith into? Usually it’s the larger amount. Let’s face it, there are a lot of cheaters online, they do their own thing even when they are supposed to be following rules, these people often get deleted and get their payment taken back.

These are the people that like to go online and bad mouth a site simply because they are mad they got caught! Just try to be open-minded and not make an assumption, get the whole picture first!

Some tell-tale signs that a cash generating program might me a scam is if they make promises that sound too good to be true. Like “spend $1 make 1 million dollars.” That’s too far-fetched! If this was true, everyone in the entire world would invest $1! Again, use common sense! Secondly, as with any site, make sure the cash generating site has contact info. This information can either be on the main site or it can be on the “inside” after you sign up for FREE information!

Lastly, make sure you really sit down and do some searches for reviews on these sites. Reviews can be found on review sites, forums, message boards, in articles, on blogs, on other people’s sites, etc. Take the time to look! I’m not standing up for scammers but in a lot of cases if the person would have just checked the site out, they wouldn’t have gotten scammed because they would be able to see okay ya know what Site 123 does have a lot of interesting positive reviews! Then, you will know, okay it’s safe to join!

All in all you just need to make sure they have good business practices and haven’t pissed too many people off. I know it’s really easy to become paranoid and not trust anyone, but just think, you could be missing out on a really legit cash generating site, and in turn you could be missing out on some good money! Just trust your gut, read reviews, and allow yourself to be open-minded. Those are three main obstacles you need to get through!

This author is a HUGE fan of http://www.generatemoneynow.info