Category: real estate

Does your house stinks?


There are certain smells that sometimes are unavoidable in an empty old house but some are so bad that they can ruin your real estate business altogether. If your house stinks it can be a big problem.

Have you ever been at a house viewing and the first thing you noticed when entering was a musty mouldy smell?

Well, it’s not very pleasant to say the least. It immediately gives a bad impression. Nobody wants to live like that. But if you see it from a business point of view it might be a different story. If a house stinks, you might be able to see what the problem is and be confident in how to remove it.

It happened to me when viewing a house in Germany.  I was visiting an old house together with my family and when that musty smell hit us at the time of entering our immediate reaction was “no way!”. After a couple of months though we had to admit, there was no other house available anywhere near our budget.

That’s why we came back to it and actually looked at the problem. It turned out that the problem was some humidity in the basement. The basement was all panelled up with wood which also didn’t help much. After a long family meeting we decided, we go for it.

It definitely paid off.

We removed the mouldy wood and did some treatment to the basement walls. The smell was gone and never came back. And best of all, we were able to get our family home within our budget.

That’s the advantage when buying, you are able to get a house with a bad smell cheaper. Of course, you have to be confident that you are able to remove the problem causing this smell.

When selling, it would be wise to spend some money in solving the problem before. Or, maybe there isn’t even a severe problem. Sometimes it just needs a bit of care, like opening the windows regularly in an empty house. Especially before a viewing.

Bad smell that is really harmful

There are certain smells though that are really harmful for your business. It’s those that can’t be solved on a low budget or maybe they can’t be solved at all. Therefore, it is advised to make some counts before jumping into a “smelly” business. One example of a smell problem that can’t be solved would be a nearby pig farm.

Bad smell that can ruin your real estate business

I recently came across a neighbourhood in Portugal located near a paper factory. On photographs all the houses look lovely and it seems to be a really nice place to live. Unfortunately, visiting and smelling the place ruled out any real estate business in this area. Unless you have clients that lost their sense of smell. ?



How real estate agents can prepare for the coronavirus

In many countries the Health Authorities held public meetings to give information about the new coronavirus as well as informing about the ongoing preparations. This is a good thing to be prepared and informed as this puts everybody at ease. There is nothing worse than public panic, when everybody runs to the shop leaving empty shelves. This can create even bigger problems.

Of course, this is not just job of the authorities, there is something everybody can do. First, stay calm and objective.

How can each of us be prepared you may wonder.

Especially if you have a real estate agency you may have to think about what actions to take. As seen in Italy maybe it is possible for some workers to do their tasks from home. Always remember, better safe than sorry. You can make sure that all of them have the necessary tools to be able to do that. Maybe a business cell phone and laptop that they can bring home, just in case.

You should start thinking about special preparation for your team, some may have to stay with their kids if schools or kindergartens close.

Avoid trips to coronavirus infected areas

Also, avoiding trips to places where the virus has spread should be carefully reconsidered. Maybe a possible buyer likes to view a house in such place. It might be better to postpone in that case. For example, you could show a virtual viewing of the house instead. You can then travel later when it is safe again.

Regardless of being a real estate agent or not …

This is the most important everybody should do: wash your hands as often as possible. Everybody should have a good cough etiquette, disinfecting surfaces that might be contaminated, keeping distance to somebody who seems sick and don’t go out if you feel ill. Those are very simple but effective things. Of course, we all know them, but as we sometimes forget it’s always good to be reminded especially now with the new coronavirus.

Stay healthy. 🙂



UK house prices rise in early 2020 despite Brexit

It seems optimism returned among buyers and sellers – house prices rise across the UK as a result.

After 10 quiet months, property prices rose in November and December 2019.

The average price for a home in December was £215,282, according to Nationwide building society, one of the UK’s largest mortgage lenders. Property prices go up by 0.1% every month.

In January they said property values were 1.9% higher than a year earlier – up from 1.4% in December and the fastest yearly growth since November 2018. The average price for a home now stands at £215,897 – up £615, or 0.5% higher than in December.

In further evidence that the housing market is picking up, inquiries from would-be buyers, agreed sales and the number of real estate coming on to the market all rose in January.

Some surveys have also suggested a price bounce in the housing market since the general election in mid-December, although much will depend on how the Brexit after effects develop.

No doubt, we’re seeing a lot of enthusiasm among buyers since the beginning of this year but we cannot yet tell how sustained this optimistic mood will be.

By the way, price growth in London has fallen to 0.6% since the referendum. This will be welcome news for many people who are interested in becoming homeowners in London. Although it still remains far from affordable for most of us.

One challenge remains though

Raising a deposit to get on the property ladder is still difficult for many. Even in the north of England and in Scotland, where property appears to be cheaper, it’ll take someone earning the average wage more than five years to save up for a 20% deposit.

Are you looking for a property bargain or – as house prices rise – you think it’s a good time now to put your real estate on the market? Visit www.propertyunder100k.com



How to get rich with real estate – or poor

Isn’t that what we all want to know? I always wanted to get rich with real estate. It seems like a simple enough equation but what appears to be a simple method in theory is very often not found in reality.

First and foremost: A property must generate cash flow

Here you can see the basic components that decide the income and therefore the regular income from a rented real estate. Generally, the property has to make profit. The income from your property has to be higher than what you spend. This is a simple and most important rule if you want to make money from renting.

Cashflow is the “key” so to say – just with this income we increase our available capital, which we can spend as we like. We have to take all costs for the property in consideration though, everything – running cost, repairs, maintenance… etc. – to be able to calculate the expected cashflow.

Our goal should also always be to invest as little, if possible, no equity at all. Because on the one hand we can maximize our return on equity and on the other hand we keep our own money with us. In other words: we are looking for bank offers that finance 100% of a real estate for us. To do this, of course, as borrowers, we have to meet the banks requirements. Those costs for a credit also have to be taken into consideration.

How to get rich with real estate – cashflow is the most important

After considering all costs our cash flow should still be positive. Some may now think: there is no such property available by any means. But they do exist! Granted, you may need some time to find them. But why not have a look at our real estate listings? Surely you will find some interesting properties.

The same of course is valid if you are trading with real estate instead of renting it. The only problem is that it will take longer time to generate cashflow as you don’t get money on a weekly/monthly basis. It might be a bit more difficult to get by until you make a sale. You can list your real estate for free on www.listproperty4free.com

Make your homework

Also, if you are buying and selling properties for a living make sure you check with your revenue office beforehand to know how much of you profit will need to be paid in tax. This is also an important figure to keep in mind, in some countries this tax is very high.

Also, you might need to register yourself as a business depending on your local laws, this is always good to investigate before you start as it can be a real game changer.

Conclusion

I did not get rich with real estate but I’m able to make a living without needing to go to a job every day. That was my goal and I’m happy that I reached it. I had to start small though and I’m glad I did as I learned a lot with my smaller projects bringing me to where I am today.



Work as a real estate agent while still in University

Is it actually possible to work as a real estate agent while still in University?

Being a realtor or even just a sub agent may be a very easy work which can be done on a part time basis while studying at the university. All you’ll need may be a realtor license or a friend with a real estate business. Sounds easy enough, right?

That’s why above question crossed my mind. It would really be a cool way to get enough money to support your busy life as a student. Here is what I found out.

I came across many agents who got their Real Estate Agent’s license while they were still in College. And it seems, if you are passionate about real estate and good with people this is definitely the way to go. Maybe you were planning to go in this direction anyway so this is a fantastic way to start getting some experience.

You are probably very limited regarding your time

That’s why the best would be to only start as a part timer. Ideally, you can set your own hours and pick up listings between classes. You can start doing open houses on weekends – that’s when most of the clients are around anyway.

Some who started doing this loved it so much that they left college all together and concentrated on their real estate business. That’s not what we like to encourage! Everybody has to make their own decision regarding their career.

If you like to try it yourself with little money – maybe you have a friend or relative who wants to sell a house – why not try some websites where you can list real estate for free. This will keep your costs down until you made your first money that you can reinvest into your little venture. Here at https://www.listproperty4free.com/ you can list your real estate ad with no strings attached. Interested buyers will contact you directly.

Even if you fail…

Even if you try to work as a real estate agent while still in University and fail, don’t see this as a waste of time. At least then you know it’s not for you and the experience you made in this time will always be helpful for you in the future – maybe when you get your own home.

Some even found out that they rather buy properties themselves, do some work or staging on it and resell it for more money. That’s what I ended up doing. It’s great because you have full control over your time and project.

Some even work their way up this way. This is called the property ladder. With the money you got from selling your first home you buy the next slightly more expensive as you have a bigger budget now. This you repeat several times until you are at the top. You might discover that this is something you really enjoy doing as it usually involves handy work or decorating. For many this is far more interesting than to work in a real estate office.

If you are looking for a first project that you can buy with a small budget

Check out this website: https://www.propertyunder20k.com/. It only lists real estate below 20,000 Euros.

Conclusion

It’s definitely worth a try to work as a real estate agent while still in University. Maybe even helps you to find out what kind of work you like to do in the future.



Real Estate Guest

Guest post welcome. Do you have a topic you like to share with our visitors? We’re continually searching for articles that give a one of a kind and helpful point of view on any subject relating to real estate.

As we are listing real estate from all over the world, there is a lot to interesting areas to cover. With your help as well as other writers we can look at this subject from many diferent angles.

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Pictures: You can send us one or two photographs to include in your article.

Altering: We maintain the right to alter your post (content, title and captions) to improve readability and SEO. In this case we will send the altered article for your approval before publishing.

If you like to include a backlink to your article please let us know before so we can approve it.  

Please contact us at [email protected] to submit your guest post or for any questions.

Thank you.

We love to cover as many topics relating to real estate as possible. If you are looking to find the perfect home for you, have a look at our real estate listings.

If you like to sell your property- list it for free.

 

How the Internet has revolutionized the Real Estate market


The arrival of the Internet has changed the real estate market for ever. Until 1998, the hunt for a suitable home to buy or sell took place through the advertising in the local newspaper or a big sign in the front of the house.

And these approaches are still used today. With the arrival of online property portals, the significance of the newspaper for many real estate agents has dropped radically: both buyers and sellers create their choice to purchase a property and locating an agent largely online. Obviously, personal recommendation can be still a large thing which shouldn’t be underestimated.

Consequently, the objective of any real estate agent needs to be that potential buyers encounter his real estate offers before everybody else, be it on some real estate portal or straight on his own website. But how can you do this?

Real Estate Market: Listing alone is no longer enough

The competition on the sector is fierce. New thinking is necessary, because listing an ad alone, is no longer sufficient.

Real estate hunt online

When it comes to the real estate market, it’s important to put yourself into the buyer’s shoes.

Fundamentally, the earlier the agent manages to get the buyer to his website or on the portal, etc., the greater the chance to get a deal!

The buyer is on the lookout for advice: he’s at the research phase. He’s now considering selling his own property. That’s the reason why he is searching with Google for advice about his or her concerns. It would be great if this possible client would land on your website at this phase.

For you, this means making services and information about the sale and purchase of property – obviously with reference to a region.

Some potential topics could be: Advice about energy efficiency, market cost determination, house staging, aftercare for clients and a whole lot more.

SEO-optimized composing: Little interventions make a huge impact

But every individual text must also be aligned in this manner that it matches the research requirements of your target group. The intention is that Google shows your text up in the results listing. Possible buyers may find your content before anybody else. Including search engine optimized composing, for that there are a few principles. The simplest & main guideline is: The preview which the searcher enters in his Google search should, if possible, look in the heading and at the very first paragraph of your text!

Where’s the real estate agent’s digital home in 2020?

The most fundamental place for many is your own homepage. This ought to be so intuitive that the consumer can find all of the important information and various methods to get in touch with you. But several websites are distinguished by the fact that they feature mostly static, i.e. virtually classic content that’s rarely changed (like contact, imprint, about us).

Your home can also be on a real estate platform where your available properties are featured along your contact information. This can be at https://www.listproperty4free.com/

Social networking is standard now

At the era of Social Networking, you will find tons of places online where you can also present content.

Most successful agents are on Facebook – the business page is currently standard.

Another great place is youtube. It has been a part Of the Google family and also shows up high in the results listing. It is possible to learn how specialists use real estate videos. Naturally, videos are a great deal and more chances to find you.

For all activities on the Internet, you should produce as many connections to your content as you can.

The searcher’s first experience with the Broker or his property occurs from the results listing.

It is important to be visible on top of the results listings and to look better than the offers of your competition.

With bump-up (to be on top) and spotlight displays, your visibility is increased. Like that possible buyers actually click on your ad and possibly contact you. That of course requires a good quality of pictures and text.

Find some great offers on the real estate market on www.all-real-estate.com



It’s free real estate – properties for 1 Euro

The ‘it’s free real estate!’ meme, a line from a Tim & Eric Awesome Show, definitely comes to mind when looking at the latest property ads on the cheap real estate market. I could not believe it myself and was actually contacting the advertiser and told them to change the price to the actual value.

To my surprise all three properties the real estate agent offered for 1 Euro each turned out to really be for only one Euro. Of course, the one Euro is just a symbolic price.

But where is it and Why?

The location is beautiful Sicily. Apparently, that’s where several towns are testing the 1-euro scheme.

With this initiative, small towns with shrinking populations aim to repopulate the old town and recover abandoned real estate.

Those who purchase a building are free to use it as a home, hotel, B&B, restaurant, or shop — although tax incentives may be given to those who decide to stay and live there.

It perhaps sounds too good to be true, and there is, of course, always a catch. In reality, if a home for €1 sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. €1 won’t get you a house that’s ready to move into. You have to be aware that you are buying a fixer-upper that comes with a few conditions.

The small town of Bivona is the latest destination for real estate tourists hoping to get one of the cheap houses. Make no mistake, Bivona is no ghost town. It is located at the foot of Monti Sicani, an area full of history and beauty. You can see more information about the project here: https://1eurohouses.com/case-a-1-euro-a-bivona/

If you are interested to get on with the sale right away, you will be happy to know that “My House” is the agency which has been appointed by the Town Hall of Bivona to handle the sale of these 1 euro properties. You can find their website on www.propertiesinsicily.com.

Did we made you curious to see some real offers of cheap real estate in Sicily, then visit our website https://www.all-real-estate.com/

When will you get your free real estate?

What are the most searched real estate locations?

I recently tried to find the most searched real estate locations in the world. Seems easy enough, right? Well, actually it is not. We can find the answer to that question only to some degree. The reason being that we have limited sources…

First of all, we usually can only see what people search on the internet.

Nobody is able to analyse all the requests real estate agents get from their clients all over the world in person. And to be fair, in many countries the face to face business is still more common than online business especially when it comes to real estate.

Another factor is the many languages spoken in this world. If I search for “most searched real estate locations” I will only get results in English – only representing English speaking countries. According to Wikipedia, there exists approx. 6500 languages though…

Another thing is that even among English speaking countries there are differences, one country might call it “real estate” but another country rather uses the word “property” instead.

Also, we can look at statistics of Google or similar search engines but what about the thousands of real estate portals that exists all over the world? How can we know what users enter in their search form? You really need to make a lot of research to come even close to an answer for that question.

Anyway, what kind of locations are you looking for? A country, a city or even a town…?

Usually people ask about the most searched real estate locations because they like to know where is a really good place for investment. But then, this again comes down to the good old fashion supply and demand rule. If demand increases and supply remains unchanged, then it leads to a higher price.

Taking this in account, we need to see where demand is actually increased.

To determine whether demand is increased you have to compare the number of searches for real estate with the number of available real estate. And this can mean that you don’t need to go all around the world to find a good investment. It might even be a small town in your own country.

From my experience any place (city, town) that has good jobs available has a thriving real estate market.

For example, I live in a small town with a lot of industry and jobs around. Therefore, the demand for real estate – especially one-bedroom apartments – is very high. The last apartment that was put up for sale sold within 12 hours. Amazing! That’s the kind of location you like to invest in.

But to come back to above question, here are some locations I found today using results of search engine results in English:

London, Vancouver, Toronto, Utah, Newburgh Indiana, Wake County and Allegheny County Real Estate…

I have to say though, after all research I did on this topic those locations not necessarily are a good place for investment. You will always need to make more research to determine whether it is a good location for an investment or not.

If you are looking for real estate bargains, cheap properties, we can recommend

https://www.propertyunder20k.com/

or, if your budget is a bit bigger

https://www.propertyunder50k.com/



What is House Hacking?

When I first read about house hacking, I was very surprised. I thought this was a new thing, but I discovered that I’m actually already doing it for years.

House Hacking is a great new name for a concept that has been around for a long time. Although it isn’t new, the popularity has increased dramatically. While owning real estate has becomes less affordable – especially in city centres, inventive home buyers are finding new ways to own a great property.

Basically, House Hacking is a tactic that includes renting out portions of your property to generate income. This income is used to pay your mortgage and other expenses linked with owning your real estate. If done properly, it lets you live in a great location completely for free, or even generate some profit.

Of course, although it gives you some financial relief it doesn’t come work free. You must be willing to become a landlord and take on all duties that come with it.

Ok, so how can I House Hack?

The entire idea of an effective House Hack is to find real estate with as many rentable spaces as possible to generate income. These can be a multi-family building with several apartments, extra bedrooms in a single-family house, additional space that can be converted into liveable space or even a garage.

That’s basically what I did. I bought a multi-family house with a garage. The property had 4 apartments. I moved into one apartment and rented the other three units and the garage. Like this I was able to live for free and the rents that I received paid all expenses of the property.

Best is to make some calculations before you go house hunting to see what you actually need. First question you need to tackle: How many units do I need to rent to pay the mortgage and other expenses of the property?

Also keep in mind that the location is very important. A great location will give you a better rent and you will find tenants quicker.

If you don’t like to consider a Multi-family property, what about a single-family house with a granny flat? Have a look around in the real estate market and see what could work for you.

Conclusion

If you like to be an inventive real estate investor but doesn’t want to pay the mortgage out of your own pocket, House Hacking could definitely work for you. Your real estate isn’t just your residence, but it’s also providing you with an income.

Start looking for your House Hack property.