The life of a landlord is a life of intense micromanagement. In order to keep many tenants happy, you are required to ensure that everything is maintained well from week to week. Not only that, but it’s a strange business to be a part of. There aren’t many other industries in which things may proceed routinely and without necessary interference for months, only to have every problem surface in one fell swoop. If you’re not prepared, you can be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of responsibility you have to deal with.

Financially handling the life of a landlord could be considered another thing entirely. It’s important to know that while profitable, a landlord must invest as carefully as they profit. The income flow is relatively stable, but the outgoings could differ wildly from month to month. There are many reasons as to why this is, but seemingly less methods to control those fluctuations. In order to manage your finances well, it pays to know how to operate. Within time you will get the hang of this, but new landlords especially can find themselves overcome with financial burden in a business they once assumed to be smooth sailing.

The following tips may just help you make better decisions in this field:

Take Money Matters Seriously

Many landlords prefer to cultivate slightly less-than-ideal tenants so they do not risk a tenant leaving. This is because that can often lead to a lack of income for a month or many months as new tenants need to be found. This can be relatively wise. A tenant who pays on time might not clean as well, and that’s certainly more ideal than a supremely clean tenant who never pays on time. However, taking money matters seriously is essential. After all, you’re not in this business for the charity of it.

A good way to strike a happy medium between legal backing and solid tenant relationships is to lay out exactly the methodology your tenant must follow. You can clearly define these terms in your tenancy agreement template. This means clearly laying out late payment charges, perhaps asking for a form of security income in case they do not pay (such as a guarantor,) or even asking for months of rent in advance. It might mean asking for lower, more frequent payments to keep the cash flow effective, or even to ask for tri-yearly instalments to cover the future.

Taking money matters seriously is important to be respected as a landlord. Let one-time slide and you can, unfortunately, set yourself up for this to be the norm. It’s always best to cover yourself, so try to ask for at least one month’s rent in advance before your tenant moves in. This gives you a buffering time to evict if they neglect to pay on time, and keep your cash flow active. As a landlord you must always be thinking about sustainable income, and plan in advance for this.

Set Limits

As a landlord, you must also invest in your properties. This is a no-brainer. While it might be that the light bulbs should be replaced by a tenant, the bigger responsibilities are yours to handle. After all, this is your property. Now, you should set some hard and fast limits here. Let’s say the sofa in your property has a spring loose, and your tenants are demanding a new one. It might be perfectly reasonable to simply repair the sofa using a professional upholstery service, rather than outright spending thousands on a new fixture.

It might be that you choose to steam clean a mattress rather than purchase a new one. After all, as long as you’re providing a habitable, nice and clean standard of living, you should not be troubled into wasting money on unwise investments. It can also be wise to adjust rent over time to stay more compatible with inflation and the rising cost of living.

It might also be that within your contract you stipulate that utility usage is on an unlimited tariff. Of course, this should be subject to fair use. For example, a tenant who keeps their heating on full blast over the winter might find the property wonderful and comfortable to live in. When it comes to reading the electricity bill, you might have an argument to give. ‘Fair use’ is the sacred mantra for all tenants offering a form of unlimited payment. This allows tenants to stay responsible for unfair action, and prevent you from wiping your monthly profits simply trying to pay the bills.

Also, consider damage. Damage to property is something that is completely on the shoulders of your tenants. While you might allow for a lick of paint or cleaning out of good investing faith to cultivate the relationship, deeper damages may require you to bill the tenants or punish their security deposit. Do not be afraid to do this in the interest of being a ‘friendly landlord.’ You are a business, not a charity. Your tenants are allowed a license to your home, but it’s still your asset, and any damage could be considered vandalism within punitive laws if not rectified financially.

With these correct limits set, you have a much greater chance of setting the clear parameters within which your tenants operate.

Savings & Excess Funding

Things will go wrong. It might be you experience a hefty leak in two of your buildings on the same morning, and the carpet damage will take professional care to fix. It might be that you need to relocate a certain tenant to ensure their home is fixed. In these instances, heavy investment is required. This can be debilitating. However, if you’ve been smart about this, you will likely have at least a buffer of savings for you to dip into and try to improve your standing.

Financially handling this might be difficult, but by nesting away your profits you can potentially keep the sustainable profit going long term. Just as someone investing in automotive repair to allow them the potential of getting to work and earning, you must keep a ‘sustenance’ funding supply of sufficient breadth. This ‘rainy and annoying day’ fund will give you the means to keep your assets working for you, rather than against you. It also helps sustain tenants who see you take affirmative action in their interest.

With these small tidbits of advice, financially handling the life of a landlord will become that little bit easier.

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Investing in real estate is a sure thing, right? It’s really easy isn’t it Wrong and wrong again. Sure, if you are good at it, investing in real estate can be a very safe investment, but it is by no means a sure thing, and it can be pretty tough going if you aren’t prepared for it.

That being said, you shouldn’t be put off from such an investment because investing in property can often be the safest option. What you should do is avoid making the following fatal mistakes that will kill your real estate profits and make your life more difficult than it needs to be:

Not Casting a Wide Enough Net

The worst thing you can do when investing in real estate is not spending enough time looking at enough properties. If you’re too eager to get started and you just throw all of your money at the first promising property you find, you’ll probably end up with fewer returns and more problems that you would have if only you’d taken your time.

Choosing a Property Because You Love It

It might seem like buying a property because you love it is anything but a mistake and that might be true if you plan to live in it yourself, but if you’re buying it as an investment, you need to put your serious hat on and choose your property because it’s being sold at a good price, it’s in a neighborhood that’s up-and-coming, and you can actually make some money from it. Sure, if you love it, that’s a bonus, but it should never be the sole reason that you buy.

Thinking Your On Flip or Flop

Flip or Flop is undoubtedly entertaining TV, but if you think that your property investment project will be just like the ones on the show – you’ll buy at a ridiculously low price, renovate the building to an amazingly high standard in a ridiculously short period of time and sell it on for a ridiculous price, you’re in for some major disappointment. Although that kind of stuff can and does happen, it’s uncommon, and unless you’re a skilled investor with lots of construction skills and lots of time and money, your journey is likely to be a lot more slow and steady.

Not Using a Property Management Company

Property management from Opulent Real Estate Group takes all of the hard work out of your hands and ensures that you can find good tenants quickly and that any repairs or issues are solved quickly, usually with very little input for you. A lot of real estate investors think they can manage their portfolio by themselves to save a little money, but it soon becomes evident that they are out of their depth and things can go south quickly. Don’t let that be you and hire a property management company.

Not Doing Your Due-Diligence

It should go without saying, but you must do every check it is possible to do before you buy a property. If you don’t do that, you might be surprised (and not in a good way) by damp, bad neighbors, a new development that sees the value of your property plummet and so on!

Avoid these fatal mistakes and a decent real estate investment profit you are likely to make!

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The idea of having an investment portfolio may conjure up images of suited and booted individuals, well-coiffed, pinstriped and ready for a day on the trading floor. While you may wish to invest in stocks and shares, you don’t have to be a professional to do it. Many novice investors are now choosing to speculate on a range of financial ventures rather than allow their tasty little nest eggs to accrue only the minimal interest as they wallow in savings accounts. Take a look at these options that you could explore to build your very own investment portfolio.

Property

Nearly everyone has a friend nowadays who has purchased a second property to rent out. Becoming a landlord is getting easier with the emergence of companies like 719Rent.com who will allow you to relinquish the practical responsibilities of being a landlord and just recoup the financial rewards. For a small fee, they will screen your tenants, sort out any maintenance issues and always remain up to date with current relevant legislation.

All you need to worry about is sourcing the property in the first place. It’s a good idea to stick to well established rental areas with high-quality housing stock. If you can purchase the worst pad on the best street and carry out some minor renovations, you can also outperform the market. Long-term, property is a sound investment if you ensure that the rental payments you receive each month cover your mortgage costs.

Cryptocurrency

While you won’t want to place all of your monetary eggs into the bitcoin basket, you could still jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon by using an exchange like the ones mentioned at techradar.com. The rollercoaster ride is not for the faint-hearted as daily falls in value can be as much as 35%, but equally astronomic rises have also been well documented. With Bitcoin ending 2017 at a value of nearly $20,000, it’s obvious why novice investors want a piece of the action. If you do invest in Ripple, Ethereum or Bitcoin, you need to keep abreast of the fluctuations daily and buy and sell at the right time. This is made difficult by a volatile market and no accurate way of forecasting values in the future.

Wine

The idea of investing in wine may seem like a novelty and a tad odd, but people have been doing it for decades. If you can do your research and locate a decent vintage year such as a 1982 Beaujolais or a 1991 Riesling, you could be onto a sound long-term investment. Buy a case or two, store it at a central facility and sit on your investment of wine. As the vintage becomes more scarce, it will gain an antique like quality, and plenty of wine collectors will pay top dollar for your rare bottles.

Having a portfolio of investments means spreading your risk. While you might want to have a dabble down all of these investment avenues, ensure that you hold some money back in your savings account for a rainy day and always keep your eye out for new and exciting ventures.

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It’s safe to say that no business is going to get a smooth ride. Because the business world just isn’t like that. You don’t just get started, see instant success, and keep on riding on your success cloud until you decide to get out of the game. Although that would be nice, it’s just not realistic. Instead, what is realistic, is that you’re going to struggle. You may not struggle all day, every day, but you will struggle at some point. Business having a business is like being on a rollercoaster. It’s natural for you to experience ups and downs. Of course, when you’re enjoying the ups, you’re more than welcome to take it all in and feel proud of yourself. But this isn’t about how you take the ups, it’s how you handle the downs.

In short, tough times will make or break your business. So as much as you might like the enjoy the good times, you also have to know how to bounce back during the bad times. At the same time, you need to be able to take action and actually work hard to be able to turn things around. Because that’s what matters. You have to be able to actually turn things around and see a difference in business. And yes, that means that you’re able to go from down to up and continue to do that whenever you’re faced with a challenging situation. So let’s take a look at some really inspiring ways you can do that.

Hone In On Your Targeting

First of all, you have to be thinking about your customers at all times. Because if you want to make sure that you can make money and improve your financial situation, you need to attract the right customers. Maybe the reason for your struggles is that you’re not targeting the right customers? When this is the case, you’ll find that if you can change that, are hone in on your targeting a bit more, you’ll have a better chance of turning things around.

Rebrand

Another really strong idea is going to be to look into rebranding. Again, to be able to attract your customers, you should be thinking of ways that you can stand out from your competition, and branding can really help with that. So think about the kind of rebranding process that you may need to take. When you do, you should find that you get a strong return on your investment.

Try A New Marketing Technique

How’s your marketing looking lately? If you tend to use the same techniques over and over again, you can’t expect to get different results. Instead, you’re going to want to think about using a new tactic. But the tactic in question will need to be something that’s entirely personal to your business, and what will work for you – and testing things out is the only way to do that.

Refine Your Product Or Service

Sometimes, the reason why you’re struggling and not bringing in money, is because your product or service just isn’t as strong as it could be. And that can be hard to admit. But if you do want to improve going forwards, you have to be objective. You need to be able to identify your weaknesses in order to become stronger. So really work on your product or service line to improve the areas that are letting you down.

Improve Your Website

Another big improvement that could really increase your sales, revenue, and general custom, is your website. Because if your web design is letting you down, you could be losing customers, and subsequently sales, because of it. By improving your web design, testing new features, and seeing what generally keeps your customers on site is going to help you to not only hold on to those customers, but encourage them to buy from you too.

Reduce Your Costs

And then there are your costs. Because if you’re not making an awful lot right now, but your overheads are huge, you have a problem. When you’re struggling, you have to react. You can’t just leave everything as it is and expect things to just pick up. You have to take action. Reducing your costs or cutting things out completely will help you to stay above board during times when you need to the most.

Hire Better Staff

You should also be sure to get the right staff in place. Because people make a business. So use the right services, like payroll recruitment agency, Portfolio Payroll, to help you do that. When you bring in the right people, your business will be able to head in the right direction. It can take time, but the when you find the best staff, your situation can improve.

Bring In Experts

As a step on from that, you should also look to hire experts. Why? Because you can’t do it all – and you can’t be an expert in everything from marketing to customer service. But when you hire a marketing agency or outsource your customer service, you will be able to get experts working on each area for you, and you’ll have more chance at getting the results you want.

Host An Exciting Event

Sometimes, you just need a bit of excitement to shake up your business. Events can help with that. A successful event not only brings the customers to you and gets them excited about your business, but it’s also a great PR opportunity and will generate sales too. So get planning and see what this can do for your business.

Launch A New Product

Finally, you may also want to think about launching a new product. You may think that this is a risky move when you’re struggling, but sometimes you have to take risks to make a difference. When what you’re currently doing isn’t working, you need to change things. Sometimes, you’ll find that a new product, even if it’s aimed at a new market, is exactly what your business needs to change, grow, and generate the revenue you want.

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If you’re at all interested in investing and using your money to its maximum potential, then right now, you really do need to know about cryptocurrencies. It might turn out that they aren’t the right thing for you, and it might turn out they are the perfect way for you to use your money, but you won’t know that unless you know a few things about them first…

Cryptocurrencies are Pretty Volatile

Before you even think about investing in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, take a look at this Bitcoin Blog, and you will see that cryptocurrencies are very volatile which means you can see a huge rise or fall in price every day or even hour, depending on the market. This means you can make huge profits, but you can also make huge losses too. So, if you’re risk averse, they probably aren’t the best investment option for you. However, if you’re willing to play the long game, adding some digital currency to your portfolio probably isn’t the worst idea.

Cryptocurrencies have No Backing

The money you have in your bank account, wallet has backing from either the government or central bank, who regulate it. This is not true of cryptocurrencies, which not only means they are more easily lost, but they are also more difficult to quantify in terms of value. That being said, the fact that they are so deregulated and about as anonymous as you can get does have it’s advantages when you’re looking to manage your money as effectively as possible.

Bitcoin isn’t the Only One

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and as a result, it is the one that most people have heard of, but it isn’t the only one. There are more than 1,300 cryptocurrencies currently available, although Bitcoin does account for more than 54 percent of the market’s worth. What does that mean for you? If you want to make big profits, it may well be better to look at up and coming cryptocurrencies over Bitcoin. The Cryptocurrency Facts website is a good source of currencies. Check it out and see which currencies seem most likely to make a profit for you.

Blockchain is Where the Profit Is

There has been somewhat of a frantic rush to invest in various cryptocurrencies, most notably Bitcoin, and although lots of people have made pretty good profits investing in it, where the real profit is in the Blockchain technology itself. If you invest in the creation of better Blockchain technology you’re more likely to make money with less risk than if you just invest in the currencies themselves.

You Can Mine Them

Something that novices to cryptocurrencies don’t know is that you don’t necessarily have to buy them – you can mine them too. However, in order to do this, you need to invest in a lot of expensive computer equipment and use a lot of energy, which means that unless you have a huge stake and you plan to treat mining like a business, it’s probably not for you.

Now that you know a bit more about cryptocurrencies, are you tempted to invest in them, or would you rather stick to more traditional means of growing your money?

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