Archive for December, 2009
Welcome back to the world of RentPost. Hopefully, you won’t mind an existential moment from the Rent Lobster, but our aim here is to simplify rent and all the issues surrounding rent. As we expand, the goal will become apparent to all those familiar with RentPost whether you are a landlord, property manager, or tenant. For these reasons (and many more!), a series of informational articles will follow this heartfelt moment intended to mutually benefit both landlords and tenants. As landlords learn to be better landlords and tenants learn to be better tenants, frustrations, costs, unnecessary complexity, and animosity wane from the historically bitter tenant/landlord relationship, breaking new ground in the way rent is approached. Let’s begin making this world a better place, one renter and one landlord at a time with the fundamentals – basic tenant rights.
Ready to retire? Curious as to how the money you’ve saved over the years will last forever? Depending on your situation, rental property may be your answer. It starts with identifying goals; from a broad perspective, most retirees seek to 1.) protect the money from inflation, 2.) use the money to generate an income with little risk, and potentially 3.) leave money to heirs. Now, it’s up to you to decide if this is an appropriate retirement approach for you; if so, the following fundamentals can help to make your retirement years truly golden.
When recession seems imminent and your livelihood as a landlord is in an apparent state of limbo, it is unwise to lethargically stand by and wait for for disaster to strike, armed only with crossed fingers of hope – be proactive! Do not let your fear of worsening the situation prevent you from improving it; prepare for action, and turn the change in economic climate into opportunity. It’s simple, yet overlooked – your tools for tackling the recession are of preparation and treatment.
What are the problems?
1. Old tenants leave
2. It becomes difficult to find new tenants
3. It becomes difficult to collect rent
Solving any of the three starts with the fundamentals, and intimately knowing your operating expenses provides you with many avenues of attack. Meticulously breaking down your expected costs into category, organized by appropriate time segments (monthly) gives you an accurate idea of what expenses you can expect to incur in a given month.
Classic business philosophy teaches that a great part of survival and subsequent success lies in an operation’s ability to reduce mistakes. The cost of repairing the mistakes is inversely proportional to the amount of profit potential of the operation. In other words…”Mistakes Kill the Profit Margin!!!!!”
As landlord’s, we don’t want to do damage to the precious profit margin we fought so hard to nurture. A landlord’s profit margin struggles every day to survive, grow and flourish in a sea of predators, competitors and government regulators. Below are the top 10 threats to you thriving profit margin.
Apartment Complex FAIL
OK, so I figured we would start this off a bit lighthearted with an excellent snapshot posted up at one of our favorite sites, failblog.org. So, I think this should be pretty self-explanatory, but apparently someone at this apartment complex has confused HI-FI with WI-FI/Wifi/wifi/WIFI. While we have definitely seen our fair share of apartment complex fails over the years, this one always makes me wonder, this one just reeks of stupidity or poor delegation. If for nothing else, this should serve as a reminder to check over things getting printed for public display, or be sure not to hire incompetent employees.
What do you guys think?
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