7 Ways to Rent Faster & for More Money in 7 Days

Slash your time to rent and rent for more with these quick fixes…
1. Accept Credit Cards
Start accepting credit cards and online payments for rent and move in costs. It will boost your profits by reducing fraud, making it easier for tenants to pay on time and reduce management time. Of course it will make your properties more attractive and mean tenants can move in faster.
2. No Credit Checks!
Of course this can be dangerous but if all you are getting is tenants applying with weak credit anyway and you can offset the risk then why not? You can still rely on references and do background checks online. Plus you can ask for more rent in advance. Depending on your state laws more deposit money may not help because you can’t spend it but advance rent you can. Often tenants are willing to pay 6 months rent in advance for no credit checks.
3. Staging
Staging can do miracles for the appeal of your rental properties. You can then move your items to the next property or if it makes financial sense offer a furnished option for more. Think appliances, furniture, electronics and even kitchenware.
4. Offer Security
On of the biggest fears of prospective tenants, especially if you are offering any form of owner financing or lease option is if the landlord is financially stable. They don’t want to hand over thousands only to lose it and be back on the street. Make it clear in your ads that you are ‘not in foreclosure’.
5. Rent-to-Own
Offer a rent-to-own option. Just be realistic about how much rent you need for it to be viable and how much down payment you can really expect.
6. Keyless Entry Locks
Keyless entry locks not only give your curb appeal a boost but can also make it a lot easier to enable showings, especially from mobile enquiries, increasing the chances your home gets rented first.
7. Reduce Response Times
Realtors are notoriously bad at returning emails and calls. Claim the business by being the first to respond to rental inquiries.

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Investors Beware of How You Scale Your Business
by Fortune Builders 

The way you are scaling your real estate investing business could be killing your chances of success…
Beginning with the right strategy for scaling and growing your real estate investing business is critical if you want to build up any kind of momentum or manage to stay around. There are 3 factors which catch out a huge number of investors. Are you making these fatal mistakes?
Too Cheap
Many of those new to real estate investing aren’t kicking off with big budgets. Even if you were it is wise to be cautious with your capital and let profits pay for expansion. However, this doesn’t mean going too cheap on your online marketing and branding. If you are tempted to put up junk just to get something up, just don’t. Arguing that you will increase quality as you make money doesn’t work in this medium. You only have one chance at a first impression. It is far better to put up less but make it look and read great than to destroy your image before getting a chance to prove yourself.
Not Diversifying Marketing
You should absolutely have a plan to branch out and add new advertising channels for your real estate investing enterprise as you grow but it is also important not to throw all of your eggs in one basket right away either. It doesn’t matter how great your marketing is, if you are only using one medium you are asking for trouble. What happen if your mail campaign is messed up and lands on a holiday, what if there is an Internet ‘black out’, what if you put all of your money into one telemarketing list and it is complete junk?
Too Fast
It may be true that there are more great real estate investing deals out there today than you can handle and it can be very tempting to charge full speed ahead to lock down as many as possible. However, it is essential to limit the amount of overhead you take on. Expanding too fast can weigh you down with debt and mean a lot of work going into management versus flipping houses. Outsourcing can be a great move and help real estate investing scale in an affordable way though always remember to distinguish between real bottom line profits and quantity. They don’t always go hand in hand.

9 remodeling tips to make your home feel bigger

You don't have to be underwater on your mortgage to feel trapped in your home.

Now may be a less than ideal time to put a house on the market or to take on big debt -- icing your plans to trade up or build an addition anytime soon. But that doesn't mean you're stuck living in an uncomfortable home.

For a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, you can make your place "live" bigger without actually making it bigger, says architect Sarah Susanka, a small-space specialist and author of "Not So Big Remodeling."
Call it thinking inside the box; here are nine creative solutions for cramped homes.
1. Multitask the dining room ...
Cost: $500 to $2,000
If you have an eat-in kitchen, your dining room is probably used for special occasions only.
"Why have a prime spot sit vacant except for two or three holidays a year?" says Susanka.

Housing: The one bailout America could really use

Use it every day as an office or homework room without giving up dinner-party capabilities. Install doors ($300 to $500 each, with labor); add shelves or a cabinet for supplies; and invest in fitted pads to protect the tabletop.
For more flexibility, try a table like homedecorator.com's $629 Mission Table Cabinet, a sideboard that -- amazingly -- telescopes into a full-size dining table.
2. ... and the guest room
Cost: $100 to $3,000
Stop dedicating a whole room to infrequent out-of-town visitors.
With a decent air mattress, futon, or pull-out couch, you can lose the spare bed and use the room for day-to-day needs. (If you go with an air mattress, make sure to choose one with a built-in reversible motor to simplify the inflating and deflating.)
Add furniture, and what was only a guest room can double as a media or game room or home office.
3. Add a powder room
Cost: $3,000 to $6,000
Adding a first-floor powder room is simple if you have an unfinished basement or crawlspace for running the new pipes. Look for an existing room -- a coat closet, say -- and you won't have to build walls.
To save more, forgo the tile. The minimum space required by code is typically 2½ by 4½ feet, but you can often get an exemption to go even smaller.
4. Build a home office closet
Cost: $100 to $3,000
If your family is already bursting the seams of your abode, a home office might seem out of the question. But every household needs at least a small desk for paying bills and to anchor a wireless Internet system -- and you can often fit it all in a closet or armoire.
At its simplest, all you need are five or six deep, sturdy shelves made from wood or a composite product, which can total less than $40 at a home center. In a closet, set the lowest shelf at 30 inches high so you can wheel up a chair.
5. Bring the laundry upstairs
Cost: $5,000 to $7,000
Hiking up and down the stairs with laundry is enough to make anyone wish she could trade up. Instead, just move the machines.
Today's full-size high-efficiency washers and dryers are all designed to stack. You can steal the space -- a little more than four square feet -- from a closet, hallway, or nook.
You'll need to run new pipes and wiring, so being near an existing bathroom helps keep costs down, says Raleigh, N.C., architect Tina Govan. Make sure to include a drain pan to collect overflows or spills.
6. Open the floor plan
Cost: $2,000 to $4,000
A choppy layout of undersize rooms can make any house feel claustrophobic.
"People like the look of older homes, but not the way they function," says Seattle architect Thomas Lawrence.
To open your floor plan without major expense, remove doors from rooms that don't need them. Interior walls can come out for $2,000 to $4,000, unless they support the building or contain pipes -- in which case a window or pass-through may be a more feasible solution.
7. Use built-ins to replace a closet
Cost: $4,500 to $6,000
If you choose to eliminate a closet to expand or enhance your living space, create some built-ins to get back the lost storage. A run of four- to 10-inch-deep shelving along a wall has almost no effect on the size of a room, says Corvalis, Ore., architect Lori Stephens.
And it can handle many times the capacity of a closet. You might spend $4,000 removing the closet and another $2,000 on new built-in cabinetry, or just $500 if you use assemble-it-yourself home-center cabinetry, such as the Billy collection from Ikea.
8. Build a bump-out
Cost: $6,000 to $12,000
Another trick to expand a home without a full-blown addition is called a bump-out. You hang extra space off the side of the house, sort of like an oversize bay window.
Structurally, it can't extend more than about three feet from the existing exterior wall, but it can run nearly the whole length of the building -- enough space to add an eating area to your kitchen or a closet to your master bedroom suite.
Because there's no foundation work, a bump-out costs about $150 a square foot -- or just $100 if you can tuck it under an existing roof overhang.
9. Finish non-living spaces
Cost: $15,000 to $30,000

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Converting a full-height basement or garage into living space gets you an addition at half price. You'll need a floor, ceiling, walls and more, but no structural work, no foundation, and no roof, so it'll cost $50 to $100 a square foot -- vs. about $200 for a true addition.
Attics are fair game, too, but more complicated because you may need to add a stairway and probably extend the plumbing, heating, and cooling systems a flight up. Doing all that brings the cost to around $150 a square foot.  

 

Home Sales Continue to Improve


Home sales ended a difficult year on a high note, resulting in a gain in full-year sales volume.
The National Association of Realtors reported that the annual sales pace in December reached 4.6 million homes, up 5% from November's pace and 3.6% from a year ago.

It was the third straight month of improvement in the pace of sales. The fourth-quarter sales volume lifted full-year sales to 4.26 million homes, up 1.7% from 2010 levels.
"The pattern of home sales in recent months demonstrates a market in recovery," said Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist. "Record low mortgage interest rates, job growth and bargain home prices are giving more consumers the confidence they need to enter the market."
Home prices, however, remained depressed, largely because distressed sales continue to make up a significant part of the market.
The median price was $164,500 in December, down 2.5% from a year ago. For the full year, the median price of $166,100 was off 3.9% from 2010 levels.
Realtors said foreclosed homes sold for an average discount of 22% below market value in December, compared to a 20% discount a year ago. Meanwhile, short sales, which are homes sold for less than the amount owed on a mortgage, sold for a 13% discount, compared to a 16% discount in December 2010.
Foreclosures made up 21% of all sales, while short sales were 12%. Both figures were comparable to 2010.

Homebuyers find a windfall of falling prices

Homebuyers find a windfall of falling prices: The recession took a whack at housing prices, making it great market for homebuyers today.

Foreclosure nightmares

Foreclosure nightmares: With more than 200,000 households receiving foreclosure notices each month, there are bound to be a few mistakes. But for some unlucky homeowners, these blunders carry some serious consequences.

O.J. Simpson faces foreclosure on Florida home

O.J. Simpson faces foreclosure on Florida home: As if being in prison wasn't bad enough. O.J. Simpson's life has taken another sour turn: He's now facing foreclosure on his Kendall, Fla. home.