Hi There,

Recently, I have been speaking a lot about the benefit of using property managers to manage your rental property.  In this post, I will continue with the same.  In my new PODCAST I talk about how a Property Manager can specifically save you both:

TIME

and…

MONEY

Listen to this PODCAST if you are interested in saving time and money and you want to buy your first rental property.  The PODCAST is called:

How Much Money Can A Property Manager Save You?    < —–  (click on the link to listen)

Happy Investing!

-Neil Uttamsingh

ps: please share this post with any friends, family or co-workers who you think will benefit from this information.  Thank you!

pps: If you are serious about buying your first rental property, read the most popular article on the blog called: How To Buy Your First Rental Property

Hi There,

Many new real estate investors get confused on what type of property they should buy.  When I first started as a real estate investor, it took me one full year to determine what type of property I was going to buy.

When I look back, I see that as wasted time.  If I was able to buy my first rental property faster, I would have made more cash flow and benefited from more LONG term appreciation.

If you are a new real estate investor and you are struggling with what property type you should buy, you need to listen to my new PODCAST.

In my PODCAST I talk about what the different property types are and which property type is the best one for the new real estate investor.

Listen by clicking the link below:

What Is The Best Property Type To Buy?

Happy Investing!

Neil Uttamsingh

ps: Please share this post with any family, friends or co-workers who you think will benefit from this information.

pps: If you are serious about buying your first rental property, read the most popular article on this blog called,  How To Buy Your First Rental Property

Hi There,

I recently recorded another PODCAST on Property Management.  I will admit, this new PODCAST is better than my previous one.

My previous PODCAST on Property Management can be listened to here:

Property Management PODCAST

My “NEW” and “BETTER” PODCAST on property management can be listened to here:

The Importance of Property Management

In the PODCAST, I address the question:

Is Property Management Necessary

If you are new to real estate investing and you are looking to buy your first rental property, I highly recommend that you listen to this PODCAST.

Happy Investing!

Neil Uttamsingh

ps: please share this post with any friends, co-workers, or family that you think would benefit from this information!

Hi There,

I recently wrote an article on the pros and cons of property management.

The article was called:

Property Management Versus Self Management of Rental Property

New real estate investors always struggle with whether they should hire a property manager or self manage their first rental property.

You can now listen to this entire article in a PODCAST.

To listen to the PODCAST, click on the link below:

Property Management Versus Self Management of Rental Property

If you are new to real estate investing, I highly recommend that you listen to the PODCAST.

Happy Investing!

Neil Uttamsingh

Hello Everyone,

A long time ago, I wrote an article series called:

How To Buy Your First Rental Property

It quickly became the most popular article series on my blog.

The entire article series is now available in a PODCAST.

By clicking the link below, you can listen to Part 2 of the podcast called:

How To Buy A Rental Property Audio PODCAST Step Two

If you are new to real estate investing and are interested in buying a rental property, I highly recommend that you listen to the PODCAST.

Happy Investing!

Best Regards,

Neil Uttamsingh.

Hi There,

One of the most popular posts on First Rental Property  was a post in which I outlined step by step How To Buy Your First Rental Property.

This post was called:

How To Buy Your First Rental Property

Now, this entire post can be heard in a PODCAST.

The name of this PODCAST is:

How To Buy Your First Rental Property Step One

If you are new to real estate investing, I highly recommend that you listen to this PODCAST.

Happy Investing!

Neil Uttamsingh

Hi There,

A lot of people want to make BIG money from investing in real estate.

I recently received a question from a young, aspiring real estate investor.  In his email, the young man asked me for advice on how to get started as a new real estate investor.

I am going to share the email that he sent me along with my response to his email.  The answer that I provide to his email will be very helpful to those of you who are interested in buying your first rental property.

Here is the email that he sent me:

Neil,

I hope you are doing well.

One of the big questions new real estate investors always ask me is this:

“Should I manage my rental property myself or should I hire a property manager?”

My answer to this question used to always be…

“You should manage the property yourself”

After 10 years of buying rental properties, my answer to this question has changed, my answer is now…

“You should do both”

This is what I mean by, “You should do both”.

As a real estate investor, you are a landlord. As such, you need to learn how to be a good landlord. The only way you can effectively learn how to do something properly (in my opinion), is by doing it yourself.

I speak to many new real estate investors who want to buy a rental property and then outsource the management to a property manager without first managing  the property themselves. I used to think this was a terrible idea. Now I don’t think this is that bad of an idea. Here is why:

A lot of people SUCK as landlords.

To be a landlord you have to wear many hats.

You have to be a:

• Relationship Manager
• Collections Specialist
• Book Keeper
• Business minded individual
• An extremely tactful person

…just to name a few.

Not everybody is good at everything. If you naturally do not have the proper skill set of being a good landlord, you should not be one.

If you are a bad landlord, you rental property will suffer.  It may suffer in the following ways:

• You are not good at building relationships with your tenants
• You are not effectively collecting the rent rolex datejust 116244bkmdo herren 36mm perlmutt that it owed to you, and the tenant is falling behind in payments more and more…
• You do not keep track of your expenses properly and you do not keep track of the partial payments of rent that your tenants are paying you, as they are behind and are trying to get paid back up
• You don’t have the vision of knowing what improvements to make to your property in order to attract a better tenant profile
• You are moderately offensive and rub your tenants the wrong way, which reduces the amount of respect your tenants have for you and in turn reduces the amount of respect that they have for your rental property.

If you know that you will not be a good landlord, don’t become one. Hire a professional property manager who is an expert in dealing with all facets of property management.

If you are a new real estate investor and you are choosing to not manage your rental property because you are lazy or you are too afraid of doing it yourself, that is not the right decision.  If you have the skill set, and if you live close enough to loewe 4455 fashionable unisex pants your property to manage it, at the beginning, you should manage it.

You should manage it so that you learn the ins and outs of management.  One day if you become too tired of managing your properties or if your skill set changes and you become deficient in some areas, you should hire a professional property manager.

Investing in real estate is not easy.  It is a long term game that you have to stick with.  If you would like to receive tips from experienced real estate investors for free, sign up for the First Rental Property Newsletter.

Happy Investing!

-Neil

Hi Friend,

I hope you are doing well.

If you are looking to buy your first rental property, you will benefit by reading this post.

Many experienced real estate investors will tell you that you need to manage your rental property like a “business”.

This is great advice because owning and managing one or more rental properties is indeed a business.

According to Wikipedia, a business is:

“…an organization involved in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers.  Business plan and Business model determine the outcome of an active business operation. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to provide service to its customers.”

As per the definition above, ‘providing services’ to customers is what businesses do.

Many businesses have ‘service agreements’ that they abide by when dealing with their customers.

As an example, let’s look at the service agreements that some major banks have with their customers.

Personal and Commercial Account Managers are often mandated to respond to their customers within 2 hours of being contacted.  This is a service model that some banks have adopted  because ‘customer service’ is very important to these organizations.  These banks understand that by responding to their customers in a timely manner, they are providing them with great customer service.

As a real estate investor and landlord, you need to adopt a model similar to the bank’s  ‘service agreements’.

You may chose not to share your service agreement with your tenant, however, the service agreement is something that you need to understand fully and be committed to.

Here is an example…

A tenant calls you on a Friday morning in the middle of the Summer.  They leave you a voicemail message letting you know that the Air Conditioner unit in their house has stopped working, and they have asked that you give them a call back when you can.

It is my firm belief that as a proactive real estate investor and landlord, you should be responding to your tenant the same day in which they have contacted you, no matter what the matter is.

As such in this example above, you should be getting back to them on Friday as well.

The important thing to note is that you may not have any answer for them nor a solution for their problem when you call them back.  That does not matter.  What does matter is that you are calling them back promptly.

In the example above, you may have no contacts for repair men that you could call to fix or replace the air conditioner.  That is okay.  As long as you communicate with your tenant and let them know that you are looking after their concern, that is what matters.

Naturally when new landlords do not know how to fix something, or when they don’t know who they can call to come and fix something, they delay  responding to their tenant. This should never be done…

So in summary, when your tenant calls you any issue at all, you need to respond to them in a timely manner.

Having a ‘service agreement‘ and responding to your tenant the same day is my advice to you.

If you stay committed to doing this, you will differentiate yourself in your tenant’s mind from all of their past, sub-par landlords.

Happy Investing!

Regards,

Neil Uttamsingh

ps: If you are looking to buy your first rental property, sign up for the First Rental Property Newsletter by entering your email address and name into the top right hand corner of the blog.  If you do this, you will receive tips and tricks from experienced real estate investors on how to buy your first rental property!

Hi Friend,

I hope you are doing well.

Over the past several years I have helped many people buy their first rental property.

During this time, I have also noticed that there are a series of common questions that are asked by new real estate investors.

One of the common questions that always comes up by new real estate investors is:

Do I need to check the tenant’s credit?

The answer to this my friend is, yes.

Any experienced real estate investor will tell you that if you are not careful with determining a tenant’s credit history, you can find yourself in a world of trouble.

In the early days, I made the mistake of not checking a tenant’s credit once, and it did not result in good things.  The tenant did not pay rent, was troublesome, threw parties at night, smoked weed, disturbed neighbours, piled up garbage in the yard, and swore at me.  Needless to say, I ended up evicting the tenant.

All of this could have been avoided had I simply checked the tenant’s credit before hand, as this would have given me a further insight into the tenant’s previous habits.

Beginners make mistakes.  I have made mistakes myself and I know countless experienced real estate investors who have made these same mistakes.

I run a lot of workshops for new real estate investors and I have found that the question regarding ‘checking a tenant’s credit’ always comes up at these workshops.

A while back, I had to take a step back and ask myself why this question kept on coming up.

After some careful thought, I concluded that this question came up time and time again by new real estate investors simply because:

They did not KNOW HOW TO check a prospective tenant’s credit.

The fact that they did not know how to check credit, prevented them from even attempting to check credit.

The bottom line here is that people are generally lazy.  If there is an easy way out of doing something, people will take that easy route.

The easy way out for a new real estate investor to NOT check the credit of their tenant is by NOT CHECKING IT!  Simply put.

The good news here my friend is that checking a tenant’s credit is not difficult.

Now, there are countless Credit Check companies that you can search online via Google.

You can try finding credit check companies by typing in things into the Google Search bar like:

• credit check companies for tenants
• credit check companies in {your country}
• how to check a tenant’s credit