First Rental Property

Greetings Everyone,

Today I have a special treat for you.

I am bringing to you the first guest post for my blog First Rental Property.

The post comes courtesy of Scott Ficek.  Scott is a Realtor and Investor for Re/Max Advantage Plus.

Scott is a fellow real estate blogger and came across my blog on the Everything Home Blog Carnival.

You can check out Scott’s new blog.  He specializes in Maple Grove Homes.
And now, here is the post.  Thanks again Scott for your contribution!

7 Tips to Keeping Your Tenants Happy by Scott Ficek

As frustrating as tenants can be at times, as landlords, we all need to remember that they are essentially our customers.  They are paying us money for the use of our product (property).  While I believe that you should never be a push over when it comes to rent payments and lease violations, there are some simple items that you can do to keep your tenant’s happy.  And happy tenants will typically treat your property better, pay their rent on time, and stay longer (which decreases your turnover expenses).

Here are 7 ideas that I try to keep in mind when I am managing my properties:

Number One
This is the number one rule….Be courteous and respectful to all your tenants all the time.  The tenants will reciprocate.  Then when you need to be firm, the tenants will listen and they will know you are serious.

Number Two
Answer your phone when your tenant calls or at least return their calls promptly.  Many landlords make the mistake of being annoyed by the calls.  This is the job/responsibility you have chosen.  I would rather take the call and find out about the leaking drain than to ignore the calls and then have a huge repair bill when the floor and ceiling are damaged by water.
When you get a repair request, fix it promptly and properly.  Nothing can lead to tenant unhappiness more than a problem that is not repaired.  Even a loose door knob can be frustrating eventually.  Remember that if the tenants think you don’t care about the building, they won’t care about the building.

Number Three
Stop by and check on your property occasionally.  Make sure to say hi to the tenants and chat with them.  This lets the tenants know that you are a person too.  It is harder for the tenants to not pay the rent or destroy your house when they like and respect you.

Number Four
If the tenants renew their lease, get into the property each year and do all the repairs that not only the tenants ask about, but check all the systems in the house and make repairs as needed.  These small fixes will be noticed, plus when the property does turnover, you will have less work to do.

Number Five
Everyone forgets to mail a bill once in a while.  If the tenants have always paid on time in the past, cut them a break and waive the late fee this one time.  Even credit card companies do it for their good clients.

Number Six
Depending upon the type of rental, I have even seen landlords give the tenants presents like hams or turkeys for Thanksgiving.  It may cost you $20-30 per tenant, but you are probably the only landlord that may ever do it.

Number Seven
Keeping your tenants happy is not just for their benefit.  Happy tenants will stay longer, pay their rent on time, and keep your investment (property) in better condition.

If you would like to do a guest blog post for First Rental Property, feel free to leave me a comment in the comment section, or e-mail me at neil@firstrentalproperty.com

Greetings Everyone,

I am particularly interested in the topic that I am writing about today.

Today I am going to talk about,

Financial Intelligence a.k.a. Financial IQ

It is believed that in order to be successful as a real estate investor, you have to have real estate knowledge.

This goes without saying…You definitely need knowledge.

The more knowledge you have, the better you can become as a real estate investor.

Many believe that in order to gain more knowledge with regards to real estate investing, you need to join real estate investment groups.

This is a very good strategy to take as you are able to network and learn from the experience of other real estate investors.

However, you must be aware that real estate investment groups can be a trap.

These group can be a trap for many aspiring real estate investors because they serve as a ‘crutch’. Many wannabe investors join these groups and think that just because they have joined an investment group, they are magically going to become so much smarter with respect to real estate investment, and be able to instantly make, one million dollars…

My friends, this is not true.

Being associated with a real estate investment group, does absolutely nothing for you.*

*YOU are the one who has to be in control of you destiny. As such, YOU have to be in control of increasing your  financial IQ.  No investment group will do this for you.  You have to do this yourself.

You have to take the initiative to further yourself by increasing your financial IQ independent of these investment groups.

To quote Donald Trump,

“Good investing requires financial intelligence. Billionaires are often blessed with a high financial IQ. Most of them could be considered financial geniuses. But your financial IQ is not a fixed number, and you can improve it each and every day. My financial IQ is constantly improving as I watch over my many businesses and my staff. I work hard to make sure that they remain assets, not liabilities, and you should look at your holdings in the same way”

As straight forward and common sense as this concept may seem, it is not straight forward and it is not common sense.

The reality is that many people do in fact use real estate investment groups as their real estate ‘crutch’.

Just by being a member, they think that that is sufficient action required in order to become a smarter real estate investor.

I personally came to the realization myself that I was relying too heavily upon my investment groups for Financial knowledge.  I quickly realized that I was not putting in enough of my own time in order to increase my financial intelligence.  This is a fatal error.  Once I realized this, I made a push to increase my intake of real estate related materials.

Below I have listed the two changes that I have made, in an effort to increase my financial intelligence.  I recommend that you make 2 changes as well in order to increase your financial IQ.

Here are the changes that I have made:

1) I am going to focus more of my time reading The New York Times Business and Real Estate section.  Located on this site, there is great information on what is happening both in the real estate and business world.

2) I am going to spend more time reading the blog of John Fedro, a.k.a. J-Fed. John is a fellow blogger who invests in mobile homes. This is a concept that I am interested in and want to learn more about.

In summary, I realized that I was relying too heavily on my real estate investment groups for financial intelligence.

As a result, I am making sure that I take the bulls by the horn and proactively educate myself each and everyday in order to increase my financial IQ, just like The Donald recommends.

If you are serious about increasing your financial intelligence, and you are interested in investing in real estate, I encourage you to do the same as well.

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Greetings All,

I am back with another blog post.  Sorry it has been so long.  The studying for my Canadian Securities Course is in full swing, and as predicted is taking up much of my spare time.

Regardless, I am going to keep the blog posts coming.  Once my studying is over, I will post more frequently.

Now on to business.

Today I want to talk to you about Emotional Investing and Gut Instict Investing.

My fellow real estate blogger John Fedro, a.k.a. J-Fed wrote a very good article discussing emotional investing. You can read his article here. It was posted last week on Josh Dorkin’s premiere real estate social networking site Biggerpockets.com.

Last week I was having a detailed conversation with an experienced real estate investor on this topic.  It was a good conversation as we were both in agreement on this topic.

Here is a summary of what we talked about.

Emotional Investing

As you may or may not know, emotional investing is the worst type of investing you can do. If you are emotional with real estate investing you will definitely screw up many a deal.

What does emotional investing mean?

Emotional investing essentially is when you make decisions based on your feelings, and not based on logic. When you are investing in real estate you have to ensure that you work out all of the numbers on a particular rental property, and make a decision on whether to buy the property based on these numbers.

If you find that your emotions are taking over on a particular deal, this is the time where you need to pause and take a step back. More often than not, if real estate investors make emotional decisions with regards to purchasing rental properties, they are bound to make errors.

It is commonly believed by experienced real estate investors that all emotion MUST be removed from your decision making process. I agree 100% percent with these real estate investors. This is age old advice, so I will leave the explanation at that…

However, here is where the interesting, and perhaps controversial opinion comes into play.

Sure, we all know that we need to remove our emotions from our real estate investing decisions. Fine. Done and done.

However, how many of us know that we always have to invest according to our gut feeling?

The Gut Feeling

Whenever I am making a decision, and I go against my gut feeling, I can always feel it. I always know at that particular time that I am in fact, going opposite of what my gut is telling me to do. And guess what???

My gut feeling always is correct.

I cannot recall a single time in which my gut feeling has been wrong.

With regards to real estate investment, we need to always go by our gut feeling and invest in rental properties using this strategy.

For example, you may be considering a potential rental property that you want to purchase. The numbers and your analysis may look absolutely great. The cash flow could be awesome as well. Despite all of this, you have a funny feeling, a gut feeling that you should not invest in this property.

Your gut could be telling you this for a number of reasons. Perhaps you do not feel comfortable about the location that the property is located. Also, you could be concerned about your ability to find and locate tenants. Further, you might be concerned about your reserve fund, in that you feel that you do not have sufficient cash reserves in place in order to fund the property in the event of vacancies.

If there is ‘something’ that is holding you back from moving forward on the deal, you have to pay attention to this feeling. Often times, it could be your gut instinct ‘talking’ to you.

Listen to your gut people, it is always right!

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