Some people feel that they have what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. If you are starting a home-based business then you will want to read this article. Statistically 95% of all home-based businesses will fail within the first year. The reason has nothing to do with the business opportunity. The failure comes from the inability to embrace change.The current economic meltdown has presented a new way of doing business. More and more people are discovering that a home based business or some other type of entrepreneurial adventure is their only option. In my personal opinion I would have to agree. Recent history has proven that large corporations, industrial businesses and stock investments can change in the blink of an eye. For this express reason one has to take matters into their own hands. However, with magnitude of opportunities, which one is the best one for you? Home-based businesses seem to be all the rage but so are “Mom and Pop” start up shops.There are other questions such as, what types of business are you best suited for? Will the business you chose be a good investment? Does it have a proven return? What will a start up company cost me? Which one is more beneficial? These are all legitimate questions and questions that should be considered before you make a decision to control your own destiny. I am no professional on the subject but I can speak from experience. Some say experience is the best teacher and in my case experience has taught me a valuable lesson.The main lesson that life has taught me is that it is important for one to be happy no matter what they do. Someone once said that if you love what you do than you will never work a day in your life.Having your own business has its rewards but it also has its set of problems. The best thing to do is to count the cost. Ask yourself if you want to deal with employees or if you want to maintain a brick and mortar facility. Do you want to deal with payroll or compensation plans? Is spending time with your family important? Most self employed individuals spend more than the traditional 40 hours per week making sure their business efforts succeed. Their weekends are normally pre occupied with paperwork and their social evenings are generally cut short. For this expressed reason many people chose to work from home.Working from home gives you the opportunity to see your children because your work schedule is not set in stone. The cost associated with working from home is also minimal because you have no overhead, no office garments to buy, no lunch to carry etc… Maintaining a home-based business also gives you the almost the same tax write off benefits that a brick and mortar business receives. I am not sure what side of the fence you are on but I like the idea of working from home in my pajamas. My schedule is not fixed because my hours are what I make them. Working from home also allows you to spend more quality time with your family.

New real estate investors often aren’t sure when they’ve found a good investment property. They think that the numbers work or they know they like the location, but it’s often tough to know for certain when you are just getting started. Everything seems risky. But, using a simple five point checklist, it gets much easier to know when you’ve found a good property investment. I call them Ah Ha’s of real estate investing because you will go “Ah Ha!” when you find a property with each of these features!Ah Ha 1: It meets your objectivesMaking decisions based on your real estate investing objectives is the foundation of our strategy, so it makes sense that the first AH HA is that the property meets your objectives.
For example, if your objective is to make $200 per month in positive cashflow you need to go out and find a property that will produce the money! Usually, it’s easier to obtain positive cashflow from a multi-unit property. It could be a house with a basement suite (2 tenants – 2 rents), a duplex, a tri-plex, or a small apartment building with 4 or more units. One of the easiest and quickest ways to determine if it will cashflow is using the Gross Rent Multiplier or GRM.To Calculate the GRMAsking/Purchase price = $150,000Monthly rent = $1,100$150,000/($1,100 x 12) = 11.36 (GRM).Speaking generally, a property with a GRM of approximately 10 or less will likely produce neutral or possibly positive cashflow. This is just a quick way to determine if a property will cashflow. You can search through realtor.com or realtor.ca to find potential properties and some will include current rents. These rents you can apply to the GRM formula above to quickly check where the GRM sits. If it’s well above 15, you will not be putting any money in your pocket from that property. If the listing does not show rents, you will need to do some additional research to find out the approximate rents for properties/units of that size, type, and location. Use rentometer, viewit, or craigslist to do some comparative research (you can find all of these resources online by doing a quick search in Google).Ah Ha 2: It’s in a Growing marketOK – so the property meets your objective. The next thing to check is that the market is growing. Searching the local papers for news about new jobs entering the market (either a new company moving in, lots of new construction or corporate expansions), learning of new plans for infrastructure (public transit lines or major roadways being added) as well as getting some sense of population shifts are all good things to do to make sure you are investing in a growing market.Government websites are usually a pretty good source of information about the area (although the data is usually a year or two old). Check municipal and city websites along with provincial or state websites and look for census information including population, household income, number of children, number of schools, number of households, average person per household, etc. The information you really want to see is the direction these numbers are trending in. Is the area growing or shrinking or fairly stable? If the trending shows that the area is growing, and you have a pretty good idea of what is driving that trend, then you have likely found another Ah Ha!!Ah Ha 3: The area is improving or recently improvedYour objectives will be very relevant to whether you find a good area or one in transition. If you want a no mess, no fuss type of property you are likely looking for an established area. But if you want to chase some potential appreciation or you just can’t afford the established areas yet, you might be looking for a neighbourhood that is still having some growing pains. But, it is still a growing market.No matter what your objective, we would not advise buying in the crappy area if it has no signs of hope. No property is cheap enough to justify buying if it’s in a bad area with no signs of growth. Bad areas attract difficult tenants and your property will likely go down in value and be impossible to sell later on. Instead, seek an area that is improving. Look for people renovating homes, cleaning up yards, government investment in roads and parks and developers buying land are just a few ideas of what you could look for in an improving area.Another word of caution, just because the area appears to be improving, does not guarantee that you will make money buying a property there. However, if you’ve done your research on the economy, vacancy rates, population changes and negotiate well, you will likely have an AH HA property.Ah Ha 4: You find a professional Property Manager that is willing to manage your prospective buildingOwning an investment property does not mean you HAVE to have a property manager. In fact, we don’t always hire one. But the properties where we have professional property management in place are less stressful and much less time consuming for us. A good property manager will cost you around 10% of your gross rent and even up to 1 full month’s rent to place a tenant in your property, but unless you want to buy yourself a part time job when you buy your property, a good property manager is worth every penny.The key to this AH HA is to locate a property manager BEFORE you buy the investment property. Even if you decide you want to save some cash and just manage it yourself, it would be wise to speak with a few property managers to find out if they would manage your property, determine what their fees are, and what their fees pay for!Why do you look for a PM even if you are going to manage it yourself? Well, if down the road you accumulate too many properties to manage, you can’t take the stress of managing it anymore, or you start to enjoy your time down in Mexico for 2 months per year and don’t want to have to always answer your tenants phone calls you will want to know that you can hire a reputable property manager to take over for you!Do NOT assume there will be one waiting when you are looking! The best way to find out about Property Managers is to ask around. Speak to realtors, lawyers, fellow investors and accountants in the area you want to invest in, and ask for their recommendations. You can also do an online search or check out the Yellow Pages, if you still keep one of them around! Once you get the name of a property manager, make sure you do reference checks by speaking with other individuals who are working with the prospective manager. It’s also worth your time to drive by some of the other properties this person is managing if you can. Make sure they take good care of their properties and come highly recommended. Remember, this person will be handling your monthly rental income so you want to trust what they are doing.Ah Ha 5: The vacancy rate in the area is dropping and/or is sub 5Our last Ah Ha is really geared towards the long-term holder of real estate. This type of investor buys with the intention of renting the property out for a fairly long period of time. Having a low or dropping vacancy rate is very important to help keep your place rented (high demand, low supply), and it also will help your cashflow and improve your bank financing.Sure, you can buy a cashflowing property with a GRM of 5.5, but what if it is in an area with a vacancy rate of 25%? We’ve looked into investing in places like Prince Rupert or Kitimat, BC or Windsor, Ontario. Well, a quick look at CMHC’s reports and you will see that the vacancy rates are 14.3%, 23.2%, and 13.2%, respectively in those areas. As a long-term investor, you have to try to discern whether those vacancy rates will continue to be that high or will they drop in the not too distant future. If you don’t see a drop in the vacancy rates coming very soon, then I would stay away from that area (at least until the rate drops well below 10%). At the end of the day, you want to hold properties where the demand for rental units is strong. You’ll experience less vacancy and better rent rates.Remember, real estate investing is simple, but that does not mean it’s easy. Simple tricks like using a checklist of criteria will help ensure you find good quality properties that will make you money today and over the long term. And, when you find a property with all five of these investment criteria, I think you’ll find yourself saying AHHA!

An important thing to consider when hiring a property manager to take care of your rental properties is the amount of experience they have and the available resources they will be able to draw upon to take care of your investment.

First off, experience matters. You want someone who is knowledgeable and knows all of the legal requirements for managing properties (and there are more than you might imagine). However, I don’t necessarily think that someone who has been doing property management for 20 years is automatically better than someone who has only been doing it for 2 years. Let me explain.

20 years of experience could mean 20 years of bad habits and sloppy practices, just as easily as it could mean 20 years of refining their management system until it runs super smoothly. My point is this: the number alone can’t tell you if they are going to do a good job or not. It can tell you that they’ve been around for a while and will likely be around tomorrow to continue to take care of your properties, but it does not guarantee the best performance.

When considering what kind of resources your property manager can draw upon, I am referring to a few things, but primarily, I mean time. Is property management the focus of their business or is it a side-show to their main occupation of selling real estate? (Remember that property managers are required to hold real estate licenses in most states.) You really want a company that does property management full time, so that all of their resources are devoted to keeping your properties occupied, in good working order with paying tenants. Think of it this way, if you were diagnosed with a brain tumor, and your family doctor told you that he dabbled in brain surgery on the side, would you really want him to be the guy cracking open your cranium and slicing into your gray matter? Probably not.

Time should also be thought of in terms of the total man-hours available. Is your property manager a one-man show – so that when he gets sick or goes out of town, nothing gets done? It’s important to know that you are hiring a team of at least two, preferably more, active agents who will be getting stuff done for your properties.

Lastly, resources can be thought of in terms of your manager’s business practices. Do they operate with standard systems and checklists to make sure everything gets done right and on time, or do they wing it and run into problems down the road because of possible oversights? Don’t be afraid to probe a little bit into your prospective manager’s procedures and practices. If they don’t appear organized to you – they probably aren’t and won’t make a good property manager.

To sum it all up: you want to hire a manager with a reasonable amount of experience who is dedicated full-time to property management and who has adequate resources in terms of staff and well ordered systems to manage your properties exceptionally well.

Advertising is very different from personal selling. In personal selling, the customer is guided by a sales person, but in this type of promotion, the advertisement is shown to the customer and the decision is in the hands of the customer. Therefore, advertising may be called written personal selling. Thus, it is very effective for all kinds of products.

Television advertising is the most preferred way to advertise these days. Thus, every business entrepreneur or company must take interest in television advertising. Commercials are big sellers and the most important part of television advertising.

Print advertising occupies a major role in the promotion process and can also spread a lot of information. The main elements of print advertising are pamphlets, leaflets, brochure, newspapers, magazines and visiting cards. This medium is a must for every company. Every company must take appropriate interest in this form of promotion.

Another important mode of promotion is radio advertisement. These days everybody listens to radio advertisements in a temptation to come across songs. Thus, radio advertising is very important for spreading mass awareness about a product. Every company must invest in this means of promotion. Adequate care must be taken that radio advertising is not skipped. Outdoor advertising is another important means of advertisement. This means of advertisement is extremely helpful and effective. All business entrepreneurs must invest good amount of money in Outdoor advertisements. The important elements of Outdoor advertising are banners, hoardings as well electronic hoardings.

Airport advertising is very important because customers tend to do shopping in their free time and they have a lot of free time at the airport. That’s why airport advertising must be given adequate importance. Company must make adequate investment in this mode of advertisement. People tend to look around at an airport which makes airport advertising extremely important.

Internet is a very important mode of communication these days. And this very fact has made internet advertising very important in today’s scenario. Internet advertising will help a company increase its sale manifolds since internet is within the reach of every second person these days. Thus, every company must invest wisely in internet advertisements.

Mobile advertising has become the most common as well as effective means of advertisement these days. It is because mobile is in the hands of every second person these days. Mobile advertisement occupies a very major role in the promotional process as mobiles connect very well. Every business entrepreneur must pay adequate attention towards mobile advertising since mobile is the most common as well as effective means of promotion during recent days.