Archive for July 21st, 2013

Real Estate Text Message Marketing

Business Text MessagingWe were wondering how real estate agents would use real estate text message marketing in their business endeavors, so we did a little research and came across one application of this service that is marketed by a company in the business. Most real estate agents will use text messaging with their technical savvy clients. They use it to communicate with them, even negotiate prices for homes. This application brings another marketing tool for the agent and another means of gaining clients.

Basically the way that they have implemented real estate text message marketing is they provide a text ID to the agent. Which he includes on all of his advertising including for sale signs that go on the property. All handouts that might be provided as well to their customers. If potential clients send a text message to this ID they can then be sent information via SMS to their phones. They can also receive web site information about homes they may be interested in on their smart phones. They will receive basic property information that may be of interest to them.

Real estate agents can also set up text message blasts as part of their real estate text message marketing plans. The are advising clients of new listings and of sales that have taken place. It is an easy way to keep all of your clients up to date and help them remember you.

Real Estate Text Message Marketing or Snail Mail

One agent we know sends out a letter every month with a short blurb about what is going on in the market. Which costs her a stamp and letters every time. She could really benefit by sending this same information by emails. Also by SMS using real estate text message marketing techniques. If some clients still want to receive the snail mail approach she can keep those clients satisfied using that medium. But also satisfy her regular clients with smart phones and computers by sending out messages using electronic media.

If you are not catering to customers with mobile phones and increasingly smart phones, then your real estate text message marketing program is missing a great opportunity. Perhaps a lot of business opportunities. We have found that the younger generation are technically savvy with their phones. They prefer the impersonal means of communication since it is much more efficient.

They do not have to have a voice conversation. Which is going to take a minimum of several minutes not including voice mails etc that are left with the client and take up air time. Text messaging has become a far more efficient method of communication with clients.

Real estate agents have even advised clients that their offer has been accepted or that they need to start thinking about countering an offer by text messaging.  We have seen people receive a text message advising them that they just had their home sold by text message. This is by far the best approach. You can always receive the details by email later on and if you must have a conversation, that too can be arranged at a later date or time.

For more text messaging posts and topics, click here.


Tire Prices

Best TiresConsumers really have to be alert when it comes to buying tires and figuring out whether the tire prices they are being quoted are really a good deal or not. Tire companies will have sales on at various times. If you catch one of these sales you can sometimes get a really good deal. You have to know what the normal prices are for the tires that you are looking for. You should be really able to compare and determine if the deal that is being offered is a good one. In other words do your homework. Then make a decision using the criteria that fits with your needs. Prices, quality and ongoing services are several items to compare.

Tire Prices

Tire Services

In addition, most tire prices may or may not include services. For example services such as warranty, road hazard warranties, balancing, nitrogen filled tires, tire rotation, tire checks and top up of nitrogen or air depending on the type of tire you have. If these services are not included, they can be expensive if they have to be paid for separately. For example tire rotation and balancing can start at $15 per tire and go higher in many cases. If this service is included in the price, it can mean a substantial savings for as long as you own the car and have those tires on your car. These are details that the buyer needs to pay attention to in addition to the price of the tire.

Tire Mileage

Tire prices are also based on how many miles the tire is warranted for. Cheaper tires will only last 20,000 miles while more expensive tires will last much longer, upwards of 50,0000 or 60,000 miles. If cash flow is an issue or if you do not plan to keep your car very long, you may want to go with a tire that is warranted for lower mileage and save some money. If you plan to keep your car for some time go with a tire that will last longer. You will need more tire rotations and balancing as a result so this also becomes an important issue for most car owners.

Older Tires

Finally sometimes tire companies have a sale to get rid of older tires. These are tires that have been sitting around literally for a few years. They want to sell them at a discount to get them off their inventory. A tire should not be used if it is more than 7 years old. The rubber begins to deteriorate and will not last very long on your car. You can ask the tire sales person to show you the age of the tire and explain how to tell how old the tire is. Tire prices are complex and have many variables. So do your homework before buying new tires for your car.

Can you imagine driving around on really old tires! It is one thing to travel at city speeds of perhaps 30 miles per hour. But what happens to an old tire when it heats up. Especially when driven at highway speeds of 60 miles per hour or even higher. In many of the western states it is not uncommon to see highway and interstate speeds of 75 miles per hour.

If your tire blows out at that speed, you could suffer a bad accident if you lose control of your vehicle at those speeds. always check on the age of the tire in addition to all of the other things we mention when considering tire prices.

For more posts about tire sales, tire prices and tire safety, click here.


Hardwood Floors Refinishing

Are you considering hardwood floors refinishing because your floor is beginning to show a lot of wear and tear. Maybe it is due to age or just a lot of traffic. Take the time to investigate how to complete the job without damaging the floor further. Most hardwood flooring stores will put on seminars for those people who plan to do the job themselves. They will show them how to sand the floor properly and make any repairs that may be needed. Of course they want you to rent their equipment and may even give you a discount if you attended the course. Don’t hesitate to ask for a discount. The worst that can happen is that they say sorry, there is no discount. You got the training for free so you really cannot complain too much.

Remove all Furniture

Start by removing all of the furniture from the room and also all paintings or wall hangings along with any window coverings. There will be lots of dust and there is no use getting these things covered in dust as well. We would also recommend that you seal all doorways to other rooms to prevent as much dust as possible from being distributed to other areas of the house. If your furnace is running for air conditioning or heating, you may also want to block the cold air return vents to keep dust from being sucked into the heating system and also be distributed to the rest of the home.

Hardwood Floors Refinishing

Refinish by Hand

If you are refinishing the floor by hand be prepared to use lots of elbow grease. This will be hard work and you will also reduce the amount of wood that is actually removed from the floor and reduce the total amount of dust that is generated. Always sand in the direction of the grain, never across the grain. There may be gauges or marks that you cannot remove with simple hand sanding. Most professionals will just sand the board down until the defect is no longer present.

The problem with this approach is that it removes a great deal of wood. It decreases the number of times the floor can be sanded that a floor can tolerate before it must be replaced. If you can tolerate the marks, then we would suggest you leave the marks. Clean them out if there is any dirt and then reseal it with whatever coating you are applying to the floor.

Belt Sanders

Belt sanders make a faster job and also are much easier to use than a hand sander. The problem with belt sanders is that they can remove a great deal of wood in a hurry if you are not careful. They also remove more wood when they are used on a floor. Operators need to take care that they only remove what is needed to expose bare wood. It can then be treated with a coating of stain and protective cover. Some belt sanders will also come with vacuums that can exhaust the dust outside of the home into a dust bag.

This is a huge advantage because the last thing you want is a lot of dust through out your house.  The dust will get into everything all over the home unless you take some precautions. For example such as using a vacuum while the belt sander is running. The vacuum should also be exhausted outside into a bag that is designed to catch the dust. It should avoid the dust be distributed all over your neighborhood. Most rental companies have this kind of equipment. They can show you how to use them if you are doing this work yourself.

Also be prepared to do some hand sanding as well to get at the corners and other hard to reach locations. Be careful to always sand in the direction of the grain and never across the grain of the wood. Other wise you will end up with scratches across the grain which will not look very nice.


Reducing Energy Use

reducing energy useReducing energy use has become a favorite pass time for many people these days with the increasing cost of oil, gasoline, electricity and so on in the news almost all of the time. Every day the price of oil is quoted to give everyone some idea of where the price of gasoline is headed. When it goes up gasoline increases in price. In addition everything that is remotely related to gasoline goes up as well.

If oil is used as a byproduct to make something the price is impacted. Whether it is to run an engine in shipping or farming as an example it is going to cost more. The prices for goods are going up as well. At the time of writing, oil prices are at $108 and headed higher, which means the price of anything produced with oil is going to increase. Gasoline is over $4.00 a gallon in the US and over $1.30 a liter in Canada. In case you are wondering at $1.30 / liter is equivalent to $5.00 a gallon. They expect prices to go even higher which makes a lot more worth our while to reduce our energy use and save money on the bottom line.

How Can Consumers Reduce Energy Use?

Aside from just using less fuel and less electricity etc, consumers can use less packaging, less plastic bags and on and on to make a contribution to reducing energy. The first step of course is to apply reducing energy use in things you control and directly affect your wallet. This is gasoline you use in your car, electricity you use to do virtually everything in your home and office and fuel for heating your home or running small garden tools around your home. We have written several posts about reducing energy use in this manner on this blog. Consumers can literally save hundreds of dollars a month by cutting back just a bit in their energy use.

Other Ways of Reducing Energy Use

In some cases consumers must take a stand and not purchase products that are energy hogs which will send a message to manufacturers. If you must purchase something, then send a message by buying items that use far less energy in your everyday use. The best example is deciding to purchase a car that gets really great gas mileage vs. one that maybe looks better, has more power but uses a lot of gasoline per mile.

You may not want to pay a premium for a battery operated car or one that is battery assisted, but you can purchase a car that gets in excess of 30 miles to the gallon or higher to reduce your own personal energy use and decrease your overall cost to operate a car. Walking or biking to work is another approach that really has benefits. Not only do you save money, you get some exercise as well which will help in your overall life.

Energy Star Ratings

Most appliances are not manufactured with an energy star rating. Purchase those that have the best ratings overall. In fact every time you purchase an electrical device, check out how much energy it uses and if there is something more efficient available. Upgrade your furnace to high efficiency for example. You will save on fuel as well as electricity when you upgrade. Take advantage of incentive programs offered by your local government. Many offer to provide rebates when you upgrade a furnace or air conditioner to a more efficient model. These subsidies can amount to hundred of dollars.

If you have not converted all of your light bulbs from incandescent to either LED or fluorescent bulbs you should do it now. This is actually a quick win in terms of energy use reduction. Look for coupons and incentives to buy these newer bulbs at a discount. You can immediately begin saving money when you install these efficient light bulbs and the payback is relatively short.  You can easily calculate the savings by using some of the calculations on the packaging and applying your current energy rate for electricity that is provided in your state. If you plan to be in your home for a long time, investing in LED lights, which are expensive, can payback as well relatively quick.

Take a few minutes now to review some of our other posts about specific things you can do when reducing energy use in your home and office.


Land lines vs. Mobility Cell phone rates

Mobility Cell phone ratesLiterally thousands of consumers have dumped their land line in favor of just having a cell phone to reduce their costs and to have much more flexibility. We thought we would talk about this approach on this post. Because it is another way to reduce your overall costs of communications cost and save you money. We still have a land line simply because my wife does not want to give it up. She also has a cell phone as do I and we are paying for both of these services.

Fortunately I have reduced the cost of the land line as much as possible by avoiding any services such as voice mail and calling line ID etc. It still costs us $55 a month including taxes for this land line. Which is over $650 a year in total costs. This also includes long distance all over North American which is the one redeeming feature of keeping this service.

I also have set up this line so that if a call comes in and we do not answer it, the call is forwarded to my cell phone. The only time I use this home phone land line is if I am at home and sitting beside the phone. Otherwise  I always answer the call on my cell phone. We feel we have the best of a bad situation. The family could save $650 a year in telephone costs if we cancelled this service. But we would then have to pay extra for long distance. We could talk a long time on long distance for $650!

Land lines vs. Mobility Cell phone rates – Long Distance

As far as long distance services are concerned, we would obviously spend more money on long distance on our cell phones, however with Skype, with face time and messaging on the cell phones, our long distance charges could be kept to a minimum. What I really need is a solution to how I can convince my wife to let us disconnect the home phone line and use cell phones only?  In addition to the $650 I pay every year for this phone, the telephone company has informed us that they are raising the charges by another $3.00 a month plus tax. They are really pushing us towards getting rid of this line.

It is getting more expensive to keep a land line and we think the telephone company is trying to push us off their service. So if you have ideas about how to persuade my wife to give up the land line, let me know and it will help save me $700 a year with the latest increase. For those of you who have this situation, consider dropping your land line and using your cell phone exclusively to reduce the cost of your monthly expenses.

Privacy Issues

If you do not want to answer your phone all of the time, e.g. when you are out with friends or trying to sleep, just turn it off or silence the ringer. You can actually have more privacy this way than you can with a regular land line. When we are out with friends, I usually keep our cell phone on vibrate so that I can make a decision t answer the phone or not. It can be very impolite to answer a phone when you are in the middle of conversation with someone or have it ringing while you are chatting with your friends.

Another reason I want to get rid of this land line is that we also go away for 4 months of the year. Now I am paying for a phone that I cannot use because I am not at home. This seems really silly to me to spend about $220 for something that I do not use at all while I am away. We just do not need this phone. My wife wants us to keep the phone because she prefers to talk on it vs the cell phone. She feels more comfortable with a regular phone cradled on her shoulder than she does holding a small cell phone. She also finds the cell phone too complicated to use as well. I think I am fighting an uphill battle here, so would really like some suggestions on this problem.

 

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Property Portfolio Management

Vacant Home Property ManagementProperty portfolio management must be considered for those organizations who have a large suite of properties to manage. This may consist of several buildings in several cities. Each city represented by a property portfolio manager. They are reporting as a unit on the set of properties they are responsible to manage. On the other hand for large companies managing properties that consist of rental properties for consumers as well as commercial properties. There may be a different organizational approach to managing these properties.

Divide portfolios into commercial, residential apartment, residential homes etc. It depends on the quantity and the location of these properties. There must also be on site or at least in city property management personal to take care of local details.

Property Portfolio Management

Divide into portfolios that represent types of rental properties. Depending on the size of the company and the amount of specialization that is desired, this could mean the portfolios are divided between commercial and residential for example. Divide commercial by the type of commercial property such as mall or big box type commercial properties. Office buildings that have predominantly office workers with a small amount of store fronts serving that office building.

The type of tenant varies a great deal and the needs of the buildings are very different as well. Note that the property portfolio management approach still requires an onsite property manager to deal with day to day issues and solve immediate tenant concerns and issues, including rental of units and approval of prospective tenants.

Increased Size Adds Complexity

It can become much more complex when you have multiple cities involved. Also a mix of commercial tenants with residential tenants. If a building is predominantly residential with a few commercial stores on the first floor, does the residential property manager look after the commercial tenants? Or does the commercial property portfolio management team look after them? Turns out the answer is probably yes to both.

Local superintendents will look after the entire building. Commercial property portfolio management will look after all contracts with the commercial companies. The residential property portfolio management will view this lease of the space by commercial customers. This is just another tenant in their predominantly residential building. Most companies will need to work through these details. While ensuring that they provide the best service to their customers and maintaining a profit for the owner.

Online Tracking

Online tracking of rents, expenses, work orders etc is further complicated when there are multiple buildings in multiple cities to manage. Senior managers want to be updated each morning with a dashboard.

These could include rent collection status, delinquent rents, outstanding work orders, value of the work orders in terms of cost and so on. They also want to be able to drill down and examine details on any given report.

Data networks that provide connectivity to these systems from corporate offices as well as remote superintendent locations. Rental managers must be able to have access to rental contracts. Also systems that will allow them to track tenants as well as report up the line to senior managers. For larger companies they may even have an IT department to manage everything. This includes email, data storage, accounting systems, PC needs, smart phone needs and telephone requirements.

Every rental property management company needs these services, however the size of the company will dictate how sophisticated the IT system will be. For more posts about property management topics, click here.


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