Category: Real Estate

Building or remodeling a house requires considerable investment of money, time and efforts. But apart from this, what shapes your dream for a perfect home is how well do you communicate with your contractor. After all, things won’t work out if one is talking red and other blue.

It is always better to ensure that you and your contractor are on the same page to avoid any sorts of misunderstandings later. On the first place, it is advisable to find a contractor who has worked on similar projects and always verify their work history through references. Few things that you must discuss with your contractor in advance are timeline for completion of the project, schedule for regular meetings, insurance for any damages caused during renovation or construction, about their labour insurance policy, etc.

Here are a few tips for improving communication between your contractor and you:

1. Provide reference pictures to clearly communicate what you need. Don’t just rely on verbal communication. Gather hints from magazines, brochures, websites, etc. You can also show videos for better articulation.
2. Set achievable completion dates.
3. Pre-schedule days for regular meetings with your contractor and keep a journal to record all the changes discussed in meetings. Note down all the ideas and the questions you need to ask the contractor.
4. Keep a check on the progress update by daily visiting the site and note down any quality concerns. Also, tally the receipts and invoices for the material or fixtures against their model numbers on a regular basis.
5. You are as accountable for the project to complete on time as your contractor. Make sure that you religiously follow and execute your part of the deal.

Besides the above tips, it is always beneficial to do your homework thoroughly and not blindly rely on the contractor. Always be available on call in the construction hours and discuss everything beforehand to avoid crisis.

Have a happy home!

Ever imagined what will the world look like without water? With no water for our plants and no water to drink?

Unimaginable, right?

We all are aware of terms like water scarcity and water pollution. We also must have read on ways to reduce water consumption by changing our habits. Easier said than done. A conscious effort to do so is the need of the hour, but given our lifestyles and hectic schedules, it is difficult.

So what if we say that with simple permanent steps you can reduce your water footprint? Sounds doable? Rest assured, it is indeed doable too. By bringing in few changes in the way we construct our homes and offices, we can make significant changes over a period of time in our environment. And with technological advancements, it is possible to alter our already constructed homes and offices too. Let’s read on…

Rainwater harvesting is another way of capturing natural water and reusing it after treatment. With technological advancements, these techniques are available at low cost making them an ideal option. You will not only save water and reduce your carbon and water footprint with them but can do so without staying conscious all the time.

As the eminent poet W H Auden noted, “Thousands have lived without love, but not one without water.”Water footprint can be defined as the total volume of freshwater used to produce goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.

If you are selling your home, you have the option to go through the process by yourself or hire a real estate agent to help you. Hiring an agent is the best option you have in order to ensure that you get the best price for your home within the shortest time possible. This article offers you some of the reasons why you need to use a real estate agent to sell your home.

Help list the home at the appropriate place

Real estate agents have knowledge on the market, thus they will help you to market your home in the right place at the right price. Therefore, your home will find potential buyers who are willing to buy it at a higher price. This offers you an advantage compared to when you do the listing by yourself.

Better home presentations

The way your home or flats are presented to the buyers in the market matters a lot. Realtors ensure that your home is presented in a professional manner that will attract a lot of potential buyers. They have ample experience in staging homes in the market. This makes your home outstanding compared to other similar ones, making it have a competitive edge.

Get more exposure

When buyers want to purchase flats or homes, they contact the real estate agents. The buyers understand that the realtors have knowledge on all the homes that are listed for sale in the market. This means that there are many buyers who will be looking for homes listed by your real estate agent. In addition, the agent has contacts with other agents, so your home will get better exposure than when you do it by yourself.

Receive higher offers

Real estate agents have negotiation skills that ensure that they will sell your home at a higher price than when you do it by yourself. In addition, they make sure that the purchasing process is handled in a professional manner.

Real estate poses a number of potential ways to earn; a real estate company can thrive and earn a decent amount of income and sales if they know how to come up with a number of strategies that can help improve their real estate investment.

How to become a successful real estate agent?

1. Focus on a particular market niche
In the world of real estate, being able to determine the type of clients you have is needed.Determining the market niche will be the one to direct the marketing plan, when selling condominiums and flats it is important to know what kind of clients you have, for this is where the marketing techniques will revolve. Focusing on one target market, allows the real estate company to start thinking of ways to expand their territory.

Real estate is about gaining space; a bigger territory means a higher gain and potential ways to invest. If focused on a single target market, a number of things will occur, the marketing strategy become simpler because there is already a target market.

2. Real estate market domination
A real estate company has to learn to dominate, they should be able to get dominate the market system, a real estate company has to think big. They need to have clear vision and mission that will help them assess if they are already in the right path.

3. Find a way for clients to contact you, improve communication lines
In order to grow the business and to maximize the potential of the company, a real estate agent who is looking into selling condominiums, flats and plot of land need to stop with their cold prospecting.

A more leveraged way of dealing with things is the way to go, create a system that would best improve the communication between prospective clients and potential buyers.

Do you own property that you rent out or live? If that is the case, then are you aware that every year, millions of property owners end up paying more taxes on their rental income than they are supposed to? Why, because they fail to take advantage of those tax benefits. But, first, there is need to acknowledge the fact that the rental property has more tax benefits than any other investment you would think of.

To begin with, you need to participate in commercial real estate syndication, which will enable you to take full advantage of the investment tax benefit. There are numerous tax deductions available for owners of rental properties. However, for you to enjoy all the benefits it is important to ensure that you are an investor who has all the tax features related with the authentic ownership of the property. For that reason, a limited liability company (LLC) structure is more attractive when compared to other real estate investment trusts. This is because investment trusts such as (REITs) are incapable of taking the full advantage of a number of tax shelter benefits that are offered through the LP or LLC structure. For instance, depreciation deduction and associated interest expense.

By now, you must have known that you can deduct mortgage interest and taxes on rental properties. LPs or LLCs structures are appealing in the essence that the main feature for investing in rental estates is the depreciation deduction. It creates a tax shelter for a rental property that is well located and has a good maintenance services because it tends to have an advantageous life, which is usually longer when compared to the depreciation recovery duration permitted by law. Then again, another advantage of using LPs or LLCs structures is the provision for deducting associated interest expense of rental properties that were acquired using mortgage services or other financing, from the rental income of the property in question in order to calculate the applicable entity’s taxable income. Take advantages of these structures and make your property more profitable.