If you are like most people, you have a 9-to-5 job working for some company with a lot of stress and pressure to complete your projects. Perhaps you’ve found that even though you complete your work to everyone’s satisfaction, you still don’t get the raise or promotion you deserve. Maybe you’ve been getting more work dumped on you since others were let go due to the economy and find yourself drowning in work. Are you working overtime or have to continue working once you get home? Are you beginning to feel like your life is owned by, and revolves around your job? Are you afraid of losing your job? If so, you are not alone. This is why so many individuals are researching ideas for a home based business. Unfortunately, that is as far as most people get. Lets look at some reasons why.The advantages of having your own home based business seem compelling – you’re the boss and can’t be fired by anyone else. You can set the hours you want to work that better fit your lifestyle. More time with your family. You control the growth of the business. The list goes on and on. Why then, do most people give up on their ideas for a home based business before even trying? It is because of fear.Fear is a good thing. It kept us alive back in the days when the struggle to survive involved decisions that were truly life or death. But these days in our modern society our fears are mostly tought to us from the media and our upbringing. We tend to imagine the worst before taking the first step, and therefore not taking any steps at all. When it comes to starting a home based business, we fear it will fail for one reason or another, or someone close to us will criticize the idea, or that we will be scammed somehow. These are valid fears, but should these fearsome thoughts always stop us cold in our tracks?I’m not saying don’t have fears. Instead, allow the fear to be there, just don’t let it stop you from taking the next step. If you are reading this, you have already taken the first step of researching ideas for a home based business. That’s great! You are probably finding a lot of different ideas on the web. Many of the ideas include selling a product or offering a service out of your home such as tutoring or selling art. Other ideas utilize the internet where all the work is done online. As you look through the lists of ideas, ask yourself which ones feel like they would be something you would enjoy. You should note those down on some paper so you can compare and contrast the ideas as you continue your research. A word of caution, if you are looking for an idea that jumps out at you as the absolute, hands down, this is it business, you most likely will not find it. Why? Because every home based business has its pros and cons and our minds will typically race through the cons until fear is felt, thus tempering our excitement for the idea. Don’t fight the fear, let it be there, just write the idea down if it’s one you think you could enjoy.Another common reaction to be aware of when looking at ideas for a home based business is when you see an idea that you don’t understand or are not familiar with, and therefore deciding it isn’t for you. If you see home business ideas and you do not understand what they involve, write it down and research it. You may find something that is a perfect fit for you, now that you understand what it’s all about. As someone interested in art, I found I had no idea what ACEO meant when looking at the art on sites like etsy.com. I assumed it was some type of acrylic paint and thus ignored the category entirely. I was completely wrong. I’ll leave it to you to look up ACEO if you don’t know what it means.
Commercial Property Managers – Why They Have No Time and Work So Hard
If you are reading this, you are likely to be a commercial property manager or you know one; either way the question has hit the spot and you understand what I am saying.
It is a fact, many if not all commercial property managers have very little time to spare in their average working day. They are the hardest working of most commercial real estate people because they have to control and produce the property performance for the landlord; it’s the central part of their job. That takes time, effort and commitment.
Property management is not like selling or leasing a property where you can move across a number of projects and keep all of them moving in some form or another. In property management you have to stick with some very complex issues that can take days if not weeks to resolve. You can manage some really difficult properties with real challenges.
Add to this fact the tasks that each property presents every day with tenants, landlords, maintenance, and leasing, you have some real work to do. It is unrelenting and consistent. It does not go away. That is why you have no time to spare.
Given all of this observation, it should now be said that good commercial and retail property managers are some of the most qualified professionals in the industry. They generally know far more about property performance, tenant mix, and lease optimisation than sales and leasing people. They know how to make a property work.
To give you some idea of what I am saying here, the role of a commercial or retail manager would typically involve many things including:
Lease management
Lease optimisation
Vacancy management
Fit out approvals and controls
Refurbishment and renovations
Lease negotiations
Tenant mix strategy and analysis
Maintenance management and planning
Building income and expenditure budgets
Risk management
Due Diligence practices and systems
Energy management
Retail trade analysis and customer sales strategy
Landlord reporting and communications
So this list goes on. You can see why a property manager is really the central part of the property performance equation. A landlord needs a good property manager to help them with a complex property.
It is interesting to note that the inexperienced landlords of this world will consider outsourcing property management requirements to the cheapest real estate agency or property manager. Considering that these landlords are putting their income and expenditure in the hands of potentially one inexperienced person or group, and that person may have little real knowledge or relevance to the future of the property, the risk of damage to the property performance is very real.
So the message here is for all experienced and qualified property managers to ask for a reasonable and relevant fee for the services offered. Stay firm on your fees; those landlords seeking and taking discounts from other agents will soon realise the error of their ways and will likely come back to you when the property is financially derailed and the vacancies are rising.
When you are asked to fix a problem in a previously poorly managed property, charge a solid and fair fee for the issues involved. You are the professional and your services are worth good money. Professional commercial and retail property management is not an experiment for the feint hearted.
A Question on Foreclosure Squatters and Real Estate Law That No One is Addressing
If someone owns a piece of property and allows unabated trespassing across the property for long periods of time, and then arbitrarily starts enforcing their property rights, real estate law tells them they may not have the rights to do this, even if they own the property. Currently, we have a new type of trespassing that is absolutely out of control – Foreclosure Squatting.
This is where someone, could even be a homeless person moves into an empty property and just starts living there. After the subprime lending debacle the number of foreclosed homes has risen by nearly 3500%. With all these home vacated, it is prime pickings for someone moving in. Worse, many of the banks that own these properties have let them go, and have not even been out to see if anyone has moved in illegally.
Even if they do inspect the property, getting a squatter to leave is not as easy as it seems. Now many enforcement agencies will not even serve foreclosure demands to remove people from a property. Worse, the note holders who’ve bought the mortgages and own the homes may not even be in the United States.
If a foreclosed empty home becomes a de facto residence for the homeless, a habitat for wildlife, an alternative parking lot for the neighborhood, a short-cut to the next block or community center for the locals, then once it’s sold these groups could indeed sue to maintain their new rights. Especially after many years of unabated activity in the empty homes. Think on this.