Real Estate Investing Tools & Tips

Real Estate Investing is a tough business right now. While the business of buying and holding real estate as a long term investment remains a legitimate and viable strategy for wealth building, profit is no longer guaranteed as it once appeared to be.

With that in mind, the astute real estate investor will consider some specific real estate investment concepts to complement the “tried and true” strategy of long-term buy-and-hold investment houses:

* Internet Marketing – The internet continues to grow at an astounding rate and its value as a marketing medium grows even faster. With the expanding influence of social networking and the ability of “normal” internet users to directly interact with each other, the internet has become a center of social persuasion and an extremely viable medium for “getting the word out” about products and services available to average people. The benefits aren’t reserved for large businesses, either. While the internet has become increasingly competitive in recent years, it’s still imminently accessible as a marketing medium even for solo entrepreneurs with a modicum of determination and education.

* Bulk REO – the prevalence of foreclosures in our economy has put mortgage lenders into a difficult position. With large pools of foreclosed properties on their books, it is no longer efficient for these lenders to sell their foreclosed properties one-by-one through real estate brokers. As such, mortgage lenders are increasingly opting to sell their foreclosures in “packages” to well-funded investors, at steeply discounted prices. Bulk REO investing is a rapidly emerging trend and will continue to be a significant tool for real estate acquisition and disposition until such time as the current foreclosure crisis abates and the foreclosure rate regresses to more normal historical levels.

It’s a different world in the real estate investment business. It would be very, very simple to think that the foreclosure crisis has caused the door of opportunity to be slammed entirely shut. Yet that’s simply not the case. When one observes the state of the real estate market, it is undeniable that fundamentals matter more than ever. For example, the selection of the local real estate market is of greater importance than ever, considering the huge disparity that exists among the thousands of real estate markets across the United States. Additionally, the role of regulatory compliance is greater than ever given the activist nature of the current presidential administration.

Without a doubt, there are very major challenges in today’s real estate investing market. But with some persistence, determination and creativity, there is still plenty of opportunity.

Real Estate Investing Tips For Today’s Market

A number of things likely come to mind when you think of virtual real estate investing. Depending on how familiar you are with real estate investing already, you might think of hard money lenders or real estate portfolios and real estate retirement plans, or you might focus on short sales, bulk reo investing and virtual real estate investing. You may also wonder what type of role these things can play in your life as a real estate investor in different types of economy.

You can learn a lot about real estate investing. The best way to optimize your real estate investing education is to know the basics ahead of time. Whether you are interested in short sales, bulk reo sales, virtual real estate or just improving your abilities as a real estate investor, you need to know some real estate investing basics in order to succeed. Here are three real estate investing basics that even some experts do not really know:

1. You will always get a positive yield with real estate investing education. Every real estate deal has the potential to create thousands of dollars in potential wealth. Knowing how to get that wealth is the key to success. Learning about real estate increases your chances of success when you do a real estate deal. A small investment in education has the ability to yield big results when it is implemented.

2. Any economy allows for success in real estate investing. Lots of people believe that real estate success is only possible in a booming economy. You should remember that a bad economic situation is not usually bad for real estate investors. You will likely find properties that you can buy at deep discounts. Also, you might find deals that simply could not exist in a booming economy. Poor economies can turn based on active real estate investing. Short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate all thrive when the economy is less than thriving. Knowing how to do these deals can create wealth for you and save others from major financial difficulties.

3. You do not need to have a great deal of money if you want to be a successful real estate investor. You can succeed in the real estate investing arena no matter how much money you are working with. There are lots of types of deals that you can perform with the money of other people. If you appear to be a solid investment you may be able to use a private lender’s money. A good investment will know as much as they can about real estate investing. This will help you show people that you are a good investment if they have the money to help you with real estate investing but they do not know how to use it.

Real estate investing is a great way to create a good amount of wealth. You will have the ability to create income in any economy. You can create success for yourself using knowledge of real estate investing, short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate. Knowing the basics of real estate investing will help you succeed as a real estate investor. Knowing some real estate investing basics (beyond what older gurus like Robert Allen teach) and applying them will help you succeed as a real estate investor.

Great real estate investing resources are available at RealEstate.BryanEllis.com.

Easy Organization Tips Help You Stay Focused On Business

There are really essentially two kinds of people.  Those who are genetically organized, and those who are not.  Do you feel you are in the second category?  It’s okay!  There are ways to stay organized in your small business. 

There are a lot of great reasons to stay organized.  An organized business person is able to get more work done in less amount of time.  The remember key meetings and events more often.  They don’t have anxious moments or feel as though they have lost control as often as someone who is disorganized.  Below are some functional tips to keep your business organized for those of us that are organizationally challenged:

Don’t Turn Your Back on a Mess at Night

Don’t head out the door in the evening without taking a short amount of time to straighten your desk.  Gather your office supplies up and place them together on your desktop so they are ready to go when you return.  Throw out the trash and get rid of any used cups or other things that don’t belong. 

Most important, quickly go through the papers cluttering up the desk and stack them somewhat in the order they need to be tackled in the morning.  While you’re at it, start a to-do list for the next day, and label each item “A” “B” or “C” depending on how important it is to complete. 

The ten minutes these simple tasks take each night will be rewarded by your ability to jump in and start the day running each morning. 

Organize Work Product Using the Rule of 3

There are those people with organization stamped on their forehead who never waste time looking for what they need to complete a task.  The rest of us make up the bigger population.  The rule of 3 is a helpful technique that has worked for me in finding work betters when I need them. 

The idea is simple.  Never have more than 3 stacks going at a time.  Stack number 1 contains your most pressing things – those you want to accomplish today.  Next, are those items to accomplish sometime during the week, and the final stack contains those less pressing items to get to within the month.  You may need to dedicate some time up front to get these three stacks organized, but the time will be ultimately saved as you are able to find needed paperwork much more quickly without digging through everything on your desk. 

Don’t Wait

Ultimately, the longer you wait to find an organization system that works for you and your small business, the more opportunities you miss for your small business.  When you are organized, a bigger part of your day can be spent on the success of your business.  And remember, one person’s organization is another person’s nightmare.  So take the time to find what works for you so that you can commit to it every day.     

Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year”  to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to organize your accounting and finance.

Is an Efficient Restaurant POS System In Your Future?

There are a lot more things a Point of Sale system can do for your business other than automating sales transactions. Let our POS professionals teach you how you can take control of your business and increase your profits.

Having A Control Over Your Business

A right POS system will lift you up to a new level of control over your operations, it helps fine-tune your business model, boost your profits, as well as your efficiency. The wrong choice of system, however, can be a waste of money and a source of ongoing frustration.

In a sense, your POS system is a glorified cash register! The most basic POS system that consists of a computer, a cash drawer, receipt printer, a monitor, and an input device such as a keyboard or scanner. However, in addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems are able to create detailed reports which can help you in making decisions.

A POS system saves money, provide productivity gains, and can cut down the amount of time you spend away from the primary focus of your business.

Saving more money, gain more control over your business, and being more productive; sounds like a great combination, right? Well here are some of the best ways a modern point of sale (POS) system can help your business.

Getting rid of shrinkage

A computerized POS system can drastically cut down on shrinkage, the inventory missing from your store or restaurant due to theft, waste and employee misuse. Because employees will know inventory is being carefully tracked, internal shrinkage will dwindle.

Accuracy

Whether you use barcode scanning or not, using a POS system can ensure that every item in your store or on your menu is sold for the right price. Your staff will no longer have to guess the price of an item, and you can change prices with just one click of the mouse.

Get better margins

You can get better magins by having a detailed sales report, focusing on higher-margin items would be cinch. By moving items within a retail location, or promoting poor-performing items in a restaurant, you can help boost sales of well performing items.

Knowing your stats

You can easily know which of your items have been sold today, yesterday, last week or months ago, with the help of a POS systems. It can even tell how much money is in the cash drawer as well as how much of that money is profit.

Manage inventory better

Knowing what stocks you need to keep on hand can easily be tracked using a detailed sales report. Track your remaining inventory, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. Your POS software can be set to alert you when when stocks run low so you can reorder for them. There are many store owners who are caught by surprises when they have this data, because they think that they know exactly what trends affect them.

Build a customer list

Collect the names and addresses of your regular customers as part of standard transactions. Then use the list for targeted advertising or incentive programs.

Reduce paperwork

Reducing the time you spend on doing inventory, sales figures, and other repetitive but important paperworks can be lessen if you use a POS system to help you out. It doesn’t only reduce the time but save more for you as well as give you a peace of mind.

Efficiency in transactions

In retail settings, you can make checkouts quicker by using a barcode scanner and other POS features. Restaurants will find their order process greatly streamlined as orders are relayed automatically to the kitchen from the dining room. In both cases, your customers can get a much faster and more accurate service.

You have to keep in mind that these benefits requires a commitment to utilizing the POS system capabilities to their fullest. Without proper training and analysis, even the most sophisticated POS system will be nothing more than a simple cash register.

Retail needs vs. Hospitality needs

The POS market is divided into two segments with very different needs: restaurants, bars, and hotels and other retail operations and hospitality businesses.

Retail

Of the two groups, retailers have simpler POS needs. They process transaction all at once and often use less variation in the items they sell. Because there are some POS features retailers that specifically want to include the ability to support kits (3 for deals), support for digital scales and returns/exchanges. Your POS system will have to support matrixes if you sell items that come in a variety of styles, like clothing or shoes. For example, matrixes let you create one inventory and price entry for a particular sweater, but still track sales according to size and color.

Hospitality

Restaurants and other hospitality businesses differ in requirements.

Efficiency is the key focus for casual restaurants. For retail-style restaurants like sub shops, a POS system can greatly increase accuracy and cut down on time-per-transaction unlike with hastily-scrawled order tabs sent to the kitchen. And for quick-service style restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: a customers’ order is entered on the terminal at the front which sends the order and displays them on a monitor at the food preparation area where the order is assembled and delivered to the appropriate customer.

For fine dining restaurants, point of sale requires a bit different. They need a POS system that gives them the ability to create and store open checks, as parties order more over time, as well as track which waiter is responsible for which table. The efficiency gains from better management can be impressive. If your restaurant has 20 tables and has an average check of , it can increase turnover by one party per table, that would be an extra 0 on one busy night.

Return of Investment (ROI)

Migrating from your old system to a computers POS system isn’t that easy. There are several factors that needs to be considered and pitfalls to avoid. But the return of investment (ROI) can really make it worth all the effort you put into it.

Need more information or an online resource?

Go to POS-For-Restaurants.com

The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience serving restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.

Cost Reduction Strategies For 2009

So how has 2009 been for your company thus far? Have you been hitting your sales targets this year? I hope, for the sake of your business, that you have answered both of these questions in the positive; I am however fully aware that the majority of the readers of this article will in fact be struggling. During the course of my week I meet a lot of business owners and from what I am hearing things are very tough out there.

So what can a business do in order to survive this recession? Well a number of the company directors that I have spoken with have contracted a cost reduction service to enable them to reduce their business overheads. This, they say, has massively helped them as it leaves them with additional money to spend on “the things that matter”.

Just a quick point before I continue; I am not a cost cutting expert therefore please do not think that I am trying to sell you something here. I am in fact a person who offers various forms of stuttering aimed at helping people to achieve fluency.

In which areas could a business potentially reduce their costs? Well there are many but the more obvious ones would be with the utility bills such as the gas and the electric. Then there are the telephone charges; there are many company’s now offering a “cheap calls to mobile phone service”. There is also computer services, window cleaning, general maintanence, I.T, to name but a few. There are, as previously stated, many many more.

There has never been a better time to think about ways in which your business could cut costs. This has been some what of a painful recession and business owners, chairman and company directors need to take the necessary steps to ensure that their business survives.