Real Estate Investing – Karen's Perspective

Advertising Clutter – Are You Being Seen?

Five years ago, a customer had to be “touched” 6-7 times with your marketing before they would buy from you, trust you.

Today, with the monumental increase in advertising, a customer has to be touched 12-14 times before they make a buying decision.

What’s caused the huge increase? Naturally, the internet. Internet advertising alone has jumped 6,381% since 1997. More than 6,000 display ads were delivered to U.S. internet users during the 3rd quarter of 2010 and over 5 trillion ads per year.

As a business owner, what does this mean for you? In 1960, advertisers spent $107 per consumer. In 2009, that number increased to $1257 per consumer (a 1200% increase). Unfortunately, you’ll need to spend far more for your marketing while achieving much less for your efforts.

Consumers today are overwhelmed by the availability of products and services. In 1965, they recalled 34% of commercials they had seen. By 2007, consumers could barely name two ads they had seen in a day.

By the time a person today reaches 65, they have seen over 2 million commercials. That’s the equivalent of watching advertising 7 days a week, 8 hours a day for 6 straight years. (Time to turn off the TV..)

And.. some stats show that only 14% believe marketing, anyway.

So, is your marketing being seen? Or is it lost in the noise of advertising?

Are you believable?

What are you doing to stand out?

02 / 03 / 2012
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What Home Inspectors Look For

Buying a home? Selling one? If so, you’ll probably be involved with a home inspection. What, exactly, do home inspectors look for, and why?

The primary focus of a home inspection is the structural, mechanical, and electrical condition of the property. Inspections are designed to find major flaws or deficiencies in the home. Inspections will not, of course, find all flaws or problems that might exist, but they’re a great place to start and required by most lenders.

Therefore, unless a property is purchased with cash or “as-is,” an inspection is a part of the normal buying/selling process.

Your primary goal is to make sure the house is safe and adheres to government regulations. Typically, inspectors start by examining the structural integrity of the house. Things like cracks in the foundation, deteriorating support beams, and holes that can compromise the building and make it unsafe.

Items inspectors check also include:

01 / 31 / 2012
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The Internet Goes on Strike

You may have noticed that Wikipedia and others have taken down their sites today in protest of a bill before Congress to censor the internet. Watch this video to get an idea of what this censorship could mean to you.

****Update****

In case you didn’t hear…

This bill died a swift and sure death. I quote CNN:

“Google, Wikipedia and others altered their homepages and websites in opposition of the bill last week, making the issue a topic of popular discussion across the country. The controversial anti-piracy bills that attracted tens of millions of dollars of lobbying for and against the proposed laws ironically were killed by free publicity.”

It’s not nice to mess with our freedoms on the internet!

01 / 18 / 2012
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How to Respond with a Counter Offer

When negotiating to buy or sell a home, you will, at some point, be in the negotiating process – the offer and counter offers.

Most people understand what an offer is. As a buyer, you make a decision what you’re willing to pay and you make an offer to the seller. As a seller, you receive an offer from your potential buyer and then have three choices – accept, reject or counter.

What is a counter offer?

During the negotiations, you are not required to respond after receiving an offer. Typically, the offer states a time frame for your response, after which the offer automatically expires. Most often, rather than accepting or rejecting the first offer, the seller will instead make a counter offer.

Counter offers are a normal part of the buying/selling process.

01 / 12 / 2012
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Real Estate Investing

Closing Costs

“Closing costs” are various fees charged by those involved with the transfer of property from the seller to the buyer. Some fees are paid by the seller; some are paid by the buyer. Who pays what is always negotiable.

Closing costs are fees paid to transfer property ownership. These fees are for items such as: title policies, recording fees, inspections, courier charges, any fees that lenders charge. The amount of these fees depend largely upon where you live.

Closing costs can range from one to eight percent of the home’s cost, though they are usually about three to five percent of the total purchase price.

Do not ignore closing costs as part of the cost to buy or sell a home.

What the Seller Typically Pays

01 / 11 / 2012
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Real Estate Coaching and Training

For those of you who, somehow, may not be aware that we offer real estate coaching and training, the following is a shameless plug.

This letter was written by our newest student in Raleigh and I just had to publish it.

Dear Doubting Thomas –

My name is Mark Bynum and I am a new member to TriadMasterMind.com. I have currently been with the group for a whopping total of 3 days. In those three days, I have had access to their website and my first one on one mentoring session with my mentor, Coach Fred.

I wanted to take a moment to tell you a little bit about my journey to this point and what I’ve found so far. I have wanted to invest in Real Estate for many years, but never thought it possible until approximately two years ago. At that time, I finally got fed up with dreaming about investing and decided to get started.

Like many others, I had an insatiable appetite for knowledge on how to do this business correctly. Likewise I started spending thousands of dollars trying to gain knowledge. I attended many “guru” events and bought many courses from people who boasted they could deliver all I needed to get going for only $1999 – $15,000. I’m sure you get the picture. Needless to say, I did get some good information, but never enough information that I felt would work for me here in North Carolina.

01 / 08 / 2012
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Is This a Good Time to Buy Real Estate? YES! Here’s Why:

I’ve had several book signings lately (please check out The Essential Handbook for Buying a Home) and the first question most people ask always fascinates me: “is this a good time to buy real estate?” Or, I hear, “oh, real estate. This isn’t the time to be buying real estate.”

I blame the media for this kind of ignorance. It’s not stupidity, simply mis-information. Actually, this is a FABULOUS time to buy real estate and, if you aren’t buying, you WILL be kicking yourself 10 years from now.

Real estate is cyclical. Values go down from time to time, but they always come back up. In fact, unlike stocks that can go all the way down to ZERO value (and companies simply cease to exist), real estate goes down but never to zero. Even in “blighted” areas that are filled with crime, the land itself always maintains value and will be worth more in the future.

Why? For one thing, no more real estate is being made. For another, the population continues to grow and, therefore, the need/demand for available real estate continues to increase.

But, that’s an even bigger picture.

12 / 28 / 2011
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www.BuyNCTriad.com

We always have lots of available properties – to buy, rent, lease-to-own, owner finance, manage, sell – whatever your real estate needs, we can help!

www.BuyNCTriad.com

12 / 21 / 2011
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What do First Time Homebuyers Look For?

Are you selling a home?

Are you a real estate agent working for a buyer?

If so, you’d better know what buyers consider important and how they make their decisions!

A recent study shows how important the following home-buying factors were to buyers:

• List Price: 72%
• Location: 69%
• Neighborhood: 55%
• Floor Plan: 37%
• Square Footage: 28%
• Schools: 22%

Does knowing this change the way you’ll market to sell?

12 / 13 / 2011
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Return on Investments – Stocks vs. Real Estate

The above is a graph published in November, 2011 by MSN Money.

In case you didn’t already know, I love real estate. But why do I pick real estate over stocks? A number of reasons including:

Leverage - If you have $100,000, you can buy $100,000 worth of stocks. Or, in real estate, you can leverage your money meaning, if you have $100,000, you can put 10% down ($10,000) on ten $100,000 houses and have control over $1 million worth of real estate. You have mortgages on those properties, yes, but put in a tenant and they’re the ones who pay those mortgages over time for you.
Discount - Real estate can be purchased at a discount, especially in our current economy. There are properties, in any economy, that can be purchased at significant discounts off true market value. Stocks cannot be purchased at less than their current market rate.