All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

No quick answer to this question.

A lot is going to depend upon your level of technical knowledge and ability, the time you are willing to put into this and your expectations and the amount of money you are willing to carry as a monthly cost.

A low cost non-database site can run for under ten dollars a month, we are currently spending about 35 a month for a database-based site running with SSL for login.

It is fairly easy to set up a site. But after that it starts to become hazy.

1- How big is your area ?
If you are in a small town with no major cities right next store, then SEO to get listed on the first or second page of search engines is fairly straight forward and pay-click like adwords from google could be viable. You might even make a few bucks a month on advertsing using a service like google or CJ to help offset the costs.

If you are in a major city, forget about it. You will be lost in the hundreds of other sites and the costs of adwords will quickly become prohibitive.

2- How interested are you in leaning SEO to help get your ads in decent positions in the search engines?

There are literally tens of thousands of rental websites out there on the net and a lot of them let you list for free. Most offer some type of syndication ability, copying your ad to other sites, often creating a ripple effect across the net.

For example, list your unit on Oodle and it will appear on Facebook and dozens of other sites that use Oodle as a consolidator, my husband and I do this for our own site.

Given the continuing non-justifiable costs these days of the paper adverts, it is wise to add the internet to your advertising for tenants, the costs and viability of your approach depend on some of the factors listed above.

GL

copy from the beginning of the line "http" to the end of the line ".pdf" and paste it into the browser address line.

Interesting report. Definitely worth a read.

http://marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/smss09/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport.pdf

We rehab with the view of keeping our ongoing maintenance costs as low as possible which means trying to make the places as indestructible as is feasible.

Nothing is indestructible but, replacing all floors in a unit with tile, minimizes the damages caused to carpet, wood floors, etc..

The tenant wants rugs, they can furnish and take them with them. Remember to keep the grout dark, grey or darker, as that minimizes the dirty look of light grout needing cleaning and re-sealing.

Replace fluorescent lighting with cheap easy access standard bulb fixtures. We use the same fixtures in all units, again for stocking and replacement. Nice fixtures,but cheap, and try and find fixture covers that will not break when the tenant drops it while replacing a bulb.

No horizontal blinds but rather vertical blinds where we must provide window treatments, and always the same manufacturer so that we can maintain a stock of replacement parts.

All rooms, all units, painted the same, and clauses forbidding repainting of any type, as well as no smoking whatsoever, all the same paint, color and manufacturer. We use home depot UltraHide antique white. Available in 5 gal buckets and we always have some in stock.

Bathrooms, floor to ceiling tile, no soap dished in the bath, tenants sometimes use them to get out of the tub, or stand on them to shave their legs, and pull them out enough for water to get behind them.

No bathroom window in the shower, it is a leak waiting to happen.

The end result for us, is that when a tenant moves out, it is a quick clean of the tile floors, fix the holes in the walls, touch up the paint job, re-caulk where needed and the units look wonderful, immaculate, and rent easily.

For tiles, whenever possible, we buy closeouts, from Home Depot or Lowes, watch your lot numbers, and store them in our storage garage. You can often find nice travertine tile at less the .70 a square foot. Buy the mortar and grout as and when needed, do not store, do not listen to the HD or Lowes sales person when he offers to pick them out to go with your tile order.

Learn how to do the tile work yourself, my husband has done the floors in all of our units, he now hires temp help as his back is not what it once was, but he knows how do the layout, can oversee the workers doing the laying. A throw-away tile cutter is $80.00 at Home Depot. They sometimes last three or four units!

The cost winds up comparable, a bit more expensive, to having someone lay new carpet, and tile will last three or four times carpet and the cleanup costs for carpet or two or three times those of tile.

Cheers, the basic message, rehab for lower maintenance costs.

So business is a free-for-all, buyer beware, no safe-guards whatsoever, no need for any oversight.

Why then bother with contract law, truth in lending, or any other
of the safeguards put in place to protect the public?

Why have deposit insurance then? If you do not do your own investigation of the bank, then tough.

The SEC and FDIC are in place to precisely protect the public and their pensions from this behavior, but then is this also useless?

You can't have it both ways, protect me but allow me to do anything to anyone else.

Either all is a free for all, or there must be some safeguards in place. And if the safeguards are put in place, then they must be enforced.

Individual investors are and always will be at the mercy of the institutions, they (banks, etc) control the largest positions. Individual investors by the way have very limited margin and punitive margin rates so that they do not get into this situation.

Paradoxically, the VAR models, based on history of moves and standard deviations, will now tend to overstate the risk associated with positions while volatility reverts back to its mean, but I would still raise the capital ratios and re-instate Glass.

Fortunately for us, by the time the banks started crying about the unfairness of mark-to-market and pleading for a suspension, the SEC and the FED were under far too much pressure to allow it.

If we have learned anything from this crisis, it is that the "best and brightest" as wall street calls them, will always find ways to circumvent the models and to make undeserved and ill-gotten profits.

The real failure of the SEC has been the absolute lack of any oversight or safeguarding of what was going on.

Example:

The financial institutions would send over a breakdown of a basket (CDO for example) to the ratings agency and ask what they needed to do to get a AAA rating.

The Rating agency would then send back a recommendation, the house made the changes, got a triple A rating and then payed the rating agency a fee.

Lipstick on a Pig, everyone knew it, except the buyers who looked at AAA, but it caused a failure of the VAR models as it caused deviations far outside of the norm.

The SEC, meanwhile, sat there and let it happen, the banks were corrupt, the ratings agency were corrupt, but the economy was going great guns, everyone was happy, credit flowed, but we know what resulted. You can argue it is Congress or the President, but the system failed miserably.

Close the SEC, or fire them all and restart from scratch, they have lost all credibility, they allowed all of us to get raped.

Re-institute controls with teeth.

This "VAR" (Value at risk) models used to calculate the amount of risk an institution has on its books and its susceptibility to shocks in the system are the basis for calculating the minimum capital a bank must have as a backup for its positions.

This minimum capital is calculated using a ratio. Cash to Risk.

As the current crisis has once again proved, all models fail according to the old rule, "If there is only one way for a model to fail, it will fail that way with a certainty approaching 100%".

So, what I am saying is that, especially after the SEC raised the amount of leverage an institution has on its books, the failure of the VAR models to correctly predict how the banks positions would react to shocks suggests a reasonable solution is to raise the capital ratios again and to look at the VAR model in depth, it doesn't seem to be working or there would have been no need for a bailout.

The President appoints the head of the SEC and therefore has the final responsibility. The only reason the SEC is bring it back is due to pressure, and the replacement of its head by Obama.
McCain also called for Cox replacement, but the final responsibility is and always was with the administration, and the President.

"The Commission may conduct a public meeting as early as next month to consider whether to formally propose reinstatement of the uptick rule, or consider other measures related to short sales," SEC spokesman John Nester said. In her Senate confirmation hearings in January, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro pledged to review the rule.

Ahead of the agency’s announcement, momentum was building among policymakers in Washington reinstate the rule -- or some version of it -- in the nation’s stock markets.

In 2007, under the Bush Administration, the SEC repealed the rule after decades in use; the agency argued it was outdated and contributed to market inefficiencies. But with markets dropping sharply in the last year, many investors have called on the SEC to reinstate the rule, among other things charging that its absence has allowed short sellers to coordinate “attacks†on certain stocks, particularly financial stocks, possibly driving down their share prices beyond levels warranted by a company’s fundamental earnings and operations.

Hi Karen,

Totally agree about Crist. What a disaster he has been. He campaigned on solving the insurance problem in Florida, and then after one try, lost in court, threw up his hands and said "Oh, well, I tried!".

Insurance is now worse then ever and his new property tax abatement program just penalizes business which is incredibly short-sited and will lead to business going elsewhere. My average insurance bite in Florida is now at two+ months rent, it was one month 10 years ago.

Limiting the property tax increase to 10% for non-homestead is really just a smoke-screen for the continuing rise in taxes for business property owners.

My average property tax bite is now at two+ months rent, it was one months rent 10 years ago.

The housing recovery willed be slowed in Florida as buyers realize the implications of the higher bite of property taxes in any rental property evaluation.

Currently, we have close to 5 months rent just to cover insurance and property taxes, it is a bit absurd and is reaching the point where you are better off putting your money into a savings account rather then a rental property, or you take on more risk, self-insure.

Hopefully, he will not be re-elected, he made it quite clear that he had no problem leaving his elected post should McCain want him, but have never seen a more Republican state.

We continue to avoid adding rentals in Florida and look to unwind our investment properties there. Looking at the situation there, just can't see any good news on the horizon to improve the situation.