Real Estate Investing Facts

Log cabins make terrific all year round places to live even in the United Kingdom and in fact, they are really small houses but instead of bricks, you have logs! They are built to a very uncomplicated design and can at times be referred to as garden cabins as well as log cabins. Although log houses and log cabins are built from the same materials they do have their differences; log cabins are typically built with round rather than hewn or hand-worked logs where as log houses tend be a one story assembly, with an almost “less finished” appearance (unlike the log cabins) as these were at first built with the intention of being short-term.

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Years ago the log cabins were built far out in the mountains and were used as retreats for the weekend or for holiday homes. Today they are built to live in all year round and if you have managed your money properly you will be able to build a very nice log cabin house that will work.  Stick to the general rule of doing your homework before you buy, and find a company that will listen to your requirements and be honest with you about what building a log cabin home is all about. If you can do this you are on course to successfully start on your journey to having your own log cabin home

There are many important facts that you should learn about log cabins. It would be great to know that they are environmentally friendly. Knowing this may help those who are not yet fully convinced to have a log home built, finally do it. The thermal mass features of wood which often exceed the minimum code criteria of energy efficiency. Likewise, almost all the materials used by most log home producers are renewable.

Before constructing your dream log cabin home, there are a number of factors to consider. The best way to address them is through lots of research. Here are some aspects.

Choosing Location

When going about the task of construction with the help of blueprints, the first step is to choose a location for your log cabin. One of the features of a small log cabin is that it can be built without affecting the natural beauty of the site. Another point is, that it should enhance the landscape and not overwhelm it. In fact, it should blend into the surroundings.

You can choose the design for your blueprints. However, this mainly depends on the site you have chosen. A Colorado mountaintop, the shores of a Minnesota lake, the Louisiana backwoods and the Utah desert will all require different designs tailor made to suit that environment.

Simple Construction

This building is built in a simple, no-frills way, and mainly offers protection from the wind, rain, cold and heat. This was the way it was meant to be in the early days of its existence, and even today, it provides minimal human comforts. The construction is made even easier with the help of good blueprints prepared by experts.

Efficient Use of Available Space

Since space is limited inside, it has to be utilized efficiently. Let us examine some of the ways in which this can be done. You can get built-in storage and furniture. A window seat can be turned into a place to keep firewood or wet boots, board games and frying pans. The space beneath the stairs can be used to accommodate drawers, pantry or firewood. A closet can be used both as an attic and as a cellar. A little bit of planning by regularly consulting your blueprints will provide you with many ideas to utilize the available space to the maximum.

Log cabins can be a great investment, not necessarily in resale value, although depending on the market that can be true, possibility of renting it out, but it is mainly an investment in the quality of your life and the time you spend with those you love.

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Four Steps to Success! by Jim Rohn – June 2010

Let me pass on to you these four simple steps to success:

The first is good ideas. Be a collector of good ideas. My mentor taught me to keep a journal when I was 25 years old. I’ve been doing it now all these years. They will be passed on to my children and my grandchildren. If you hear a good health idea, capture it, write it down. Don’t trust your memory. Then, on a cold wintry evening, go back through your journal and read through the ideas that changed your life, the ideas that saved your marriage, the ideas that bailed you out of bankruptcy, the ideas that helped you become successful, the ideas that made you millions. What a good review, going back over the collection of ideas that you gathered over the years. So be a collector of good ideas for your business, for your relationships, for your future.

The next step to success is to have good plans–a good plan for the day, a good plan for the future, a good health plan, a good plan for your marriage. Building anything is like building a house–you need to have a plan. Now here is a good time-management question: When should you start the day? As soon as you have it finished. It is like building a house, building a life. What if you had just started laying bricks and somebody asked, “What are you building?” And you said, “I have no idea.” See, they would come and take you away to a safe place. So, don’t start the house until you finish it. Now, is it possible to finish the house before you start it? Yes, but it would be foolish to start before you had it finished–not a bad time-management idea. Don’t start the day until it is pretty well finished–or at least the outline of the day. Leave some room to improvise. Leave some room for extra strategies, but finish it before you start it.

And here is the next piece that is a little more challenging: Do not start the week until you have it finished. Lay it out, structure it, and then put it to work. Then the next one is a little tougher, yet: Do not start the month until you have it finished.

And finally the big one: Don’t start the year until it is finished on paper. It’s not a bad idea to, toward the end of the year, sit down with your family for the family structure plans, sit down in your business for the business plans, sit down with your financial advisor for your investments and map out the year–properties to buy, properties to sell, places to go with your family, plans for the year. I finally learned to do that. It was also helpful for my family to show them where they appeared on my calendar. You know, I used to have my business things on there, and I used to have my lectures and my seminars all laid out on my calendar, and guess what the children said? “Where are we on the game plan? Please show us our names on the game plan.” So you need to do it for your children, for your spouse, for your friends.

Now, here is the third step to success, and it can be really challenging: learning to handle the passing of time. It takes time to build a career and it takes time to make changes, so give your project time, give your people time. If you’re working with people, give them time to learn, grow, change, develop, produce. And here is the big one: Give yourself time. It takes time to master something new. It takes time to make changes and refine your philosophy as well as activity. Give yourself time to learn, time to get it, time to start some momentum, time to finally achieve. It is easy to be impatient with yourself. I remember when I first tried to learn to tie my shoes. The shoe strings, it seemed, would take me forever. Finally, I got it, and it didn’t take forever, but it seemed like for a while I’d never learn. I’d get it backwards; the bow would go up and down instead of across. How do I straighten that out? Finally, I got it–it just took time.

Mama taught me a little bit about playing the piano. “Here is the left-hand scale,” she’d say. I got that; it was easy. Then she said, “Here is the right-hand scale.” I got that; that was easy. Now she said, “We are going to play both hands at the same time.” I said, “Well, how can you do that?” Now one at a time was easy, but at the same time? Looking at this hand and looking at that hand, finally I got it. Finally I got where I could play the scales with both hands. Then I remember the day she said, “Now we are going to read the music and play with both hands.” I thought, “You can’t do all that.” But, you know, sure enough, I’m looking at the music, looking at each hand, a little confused at first, but finally I mastered it. It took a little time to read the music and play with both hands. Then I remember the day she said, “Now we are going to watch the audience, read the music and play with both hands. I thought, “Now that is going too far!” How could you possibly do that? But, see, adding them one at a time and giving myself time to master one before we went to the next one, sure enough, I got to where I could watch the audience, read the music and play with both hands. So the lesson here is: Give yourself time, and you can become a better pro, you can better master the art of parenting, you can better master the art of managing time, of conserving resources, of working together as a partner. Give yourself time.

And here’s the last one: learning to solve problems–business problems, family problems, financial problems, emotional problems, etc.–challenges for us all. Here’s the best way to treat a problem: as an opportunity to grow. Change if you have to, modify if you must, discard an old philosophy that wasn’t working well for a new one. The best phrase my mentor ever gave me was when he said, “Mr. Rohn, if you will change, everything will change for you.” Wow, I took that to heart, and, sure enough, the more I changed, the more everything changed for me.

So learn to master good ideas, have good plans, handle the passing of time and solve problems, and you will be on your way to more success than you could ever imagine!

personal goal setting

Jim Rohn was one of America’s foremost business philosophers. He has been internationally hailed over the years as one of the most influential thinkers of our time and has helped motivate an entire generation of personal development trainers as well as hundreds of executives from America’s top corporations. To subscribe to the Free Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine, go to www.jimrohn.com or send a blank email to subscribe@jimrohn.com. Reproduced with permission from Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine. Copyright © 2003 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved worldwide.

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There’s no mystery story to getting a loan from a private hard money lender. Ever wonder why successful real estate investors are able to do 1 or 2 deals every single month ?

By modeling what pro investors do.

There are four basic steps

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Step 1- Don’t just sit on the sidelines. Investors who are getting it done are submitting loan packages to private hard money lenders. They might submit the same property to several lenders to get it closed. Or, they could package several deals each and every month. They make a couple of good offers a week, week after week

Step 2- Try not to become obsessed with the property. Instead , fall in love with getting regular deals done. Forget the deal that month after month you have to keep trying to find a lender who will fund that one property, that you think is so great. Or why keep trying to hit a home run for $100,000 if you can make $10,000 hitting singles, stop working against the grain, $10,000 dollars a pop will add up.

Instead, find out what the lender conditions are and what kind of properties they are willing to lend on, check out rehab hard money, and choose properties that fit the criteria.

Step 3- Do your preparation. If you are poorly prepared with incomplete documents you usually won’t get approved, and if they do get approved , sometimes it just takes too long and you’ve already lost the contract. Lenders can usually help you get your loan closed in just a few days once they get a complete package. Some can do it in as little 1 to 2 days depending on how fast the information can be compiled and verified.

Step 4- Try to focus on great geographical areas so you can build a database or card file, of qualified buyers already approved with their loans. Once you have a lot of buyers who you know are looking for property, you can flip your property faster and get on to your next deal. The private hard money lenders will love you! And all the time you’ll be building a bigger and more profitable buyers list. And you’ll be building solid relationships with private hard money lenders who will back you .

So, don’t let “analysis paralysis” get your investing business bogged down and don’t “out-think” yourself. Not every offer you make is going to get accepted and not every loan package you submit is going to get approved but if you copy success you’ll get many offers accepted and loans approved, and many properties sold.

That is just what some successful investors do and make a lot of money doing it. The Hard Money Loan Blueprint shows you how to package a loan request to a private hard money lender and to submit the package for a private hard money loan. Once you understand the process and what the lender needs, you will have much more success. Taking the unknown out of the equation and doing your deals step-by-step, from start to finish, successfully.

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Did you ever stop and wonder why more people aren’t encouraged to sell their properties themselves – without a real estate agent?

Real estate negotiation is a big factor.

Negotiating skills aren’t the easiest thing to learn and acquire.
This is why there has been book upon book written on the subject and why it can sometimes be a mistake to sell a property on your own without a real estate agent.

A real estate agent – at least a good one – should have some good negotiation skills learned from experience.

One real estate negotiation technique that you should know about is “the compromise”. The compromise is probably the most common negotiating technique. It is so much a normal part of negotiation, that people will often forget that it is a “technique.” Both sides in a negotiation expect to compromise on many points, and it is the easiest way to settle a difference. However, how you arrive at that compromise is crucial.

Arriving At A Compromise

It’s common to say something like, “Look, we’re only $6000 apart now. You want to $204,000, and I want $210,000. Why not split the difference? That would make it $207,000.” “Splitting the difference” has become a cultural norm. It seems reasonable and non-offensive to suggest it.

The question for the smart negotiator, is “how is this ‘difference’ is arrived at?” Where did negotiations start from, and how did they proceed? Did you start with a price of $230,000, with the other side offering $200,000? Did you yield a little bit or a lot at each step? And the other side?

In the example above, suppose you only dropped your price to
$216,000, instead of $210,000. The difference between that and $204,000 on the other side would be $12,000 in this case.
“Splitting the difference,” would mean a price of $210,000. It’s
important what you do before the compromise.

Extreme initial positions can help here – if you don’t chase the
other side away. Buyers use this technique all the time, because it works. An investor or home buyer doesn’t expect to get a property for 20% less than the asking price, but offering that price plants a seed of doubt in the sellers mind as to the value, and it lowers his expectations. Soon he might be happy with a compromise that gets him 10% less than the asking price – even if he would have rejected 8% less out of hand as a first offer.

Another trick is moving in smaller increments. For example, if you are selling a property, you can let the buyer come up $2,000 at a time from his first offer, while you drop your price by only $500 with each counter offer. At some point you might arrive at a compromise, and it will be at a higher level thanks to your strategic moves.

However, being too obvious in using a negotiation technique like this can scare the other side away. To be subtler, negotiate for other points that are of little concern to you. This gives you something you can “throw back in the pot” when it’s time for a compromise.

For example, suppose a buyer expressed some interest in having the washer and dryer in a house you are selling. Politely dismiss the idea – even if you have no use for them. Now you have something for later. If you are getting close to a deal, and the buyer hesitates over a proposed compromise, you can say, “Look, take the washer and dryer too, and we can sign this right now.”

You should learn at least several real estate negotiation
techniques if you are an investor, or even just selling your own
home. Why not start by learning the art of the compromise?

To Your Success!

Aiden Win

Mr. Foreclosure

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P.S. Another strategy is to have deals sent right to you in the
comfort of your own home. As a Foreclosure Insiders Club member, you get access to the hottest pre-foreclosure deals, some which are perfect for a rehab / renovation project. Join Today

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Weighing the Value of a Home Security System by Paul Sullivan/New York Times -2010.

People may be surprised to learn that when they most need their security system to protect their house, they oftentimes cannot rely on it. Jackie Ostrander discovered that when a storm knocked out power to her home in Greenwich, Conn., for a week in March — too long for her backup battery to keep going. And it took her security company three weeks to restart her system.

“I asked, ‘Are we going to get a credit for this?’ We weren’t,” she said of her company, Protection One. “When they came out, I asked, ‘Are you going to charge me for this call?’ They didn’t, but they did charge me $100 for a battery.”

Jonathan Marvin, director of business solutions for Protection One, said, “We could have done better.”

There are about 36 million security systems in the United States, half of them in homes. Revenue for the industry was $28.2 billion in 2009, according to the Installation Business Report, an annual survey published by Security Sales & Integration Magazine. So a lot of people apparently think their homes are going to be impervious to burglars.

But even when the systems are working properly, the police response times can be slow.

Stan Martin, executive director of the Security Industry Alarm Coalition, acknowledged as much. He said that in big cities like New York, Atlanta and Chicago, police could take 30 to 45 minutes to respond, while in smaller towns the best that could be hoped for was six to eight minutes. Given that those times are in addition to the two minutes it takes for the alarm to register at the monitoring station and the operator to call you, the thief and your jewelry could be long gone.

Mr. Martin also attributed part of the slow response to the high number of false alarms — an estimated 80 percent of alarm calls — and partly to the low priority of burglaries.

To combat false alarms, many police departments charge after the first or second one, he said. In Stamford, Conn., for instance, the cost is $75. Yet these fines are often levied when a police car just drives past your house, not even pulling in the driveway, let alone walking around the property.

So if you are one of the millions of Americans paying a monthly monitoring fee of $25 to nearly $100, what are you getting for your money? It turns out you get many things beyond securing your home — like providing an alert in a fire and keeping an eye on your children’s comings and goings.

WHY HAVE AN ALARM? If no one is going to show up when your house is broken into, why bother paying the monthly fee? One reason is that insurance companies offer discounts for security systems. The percentage varies depending on the sophistication of the system.

The Insurance Information Institute says the average discount is 15 to 20 percent. On our homeowner’s policy, the discount savings amounted to $221.93 a year. A study released last year by the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University found that the real value of security systems was that they protected entire neighborhoods. The study, which focused on Newark from 2001 to 2005, found that residential break-ins decreased as the density of alarms in an area increased.

In other words, the more people paying that monthly monitoring fee on your street, the more likely a burglar is not going to take a chance that a police officer is right around the corner.

DO ALARMS DETER CRIME? When so-called smash-and-grab thieves do strike a home with an alarm system, they are more likely to leave quickly.

On its Web site, the Electronic Security Association says that the average loss on a home with a system is $3,266, compared to $5,343 for a home without one. Nearly $2,100 is nothing to sniff at — unless your years of monthly monitoring fees exceed that.

“The point of a security system is to reduce loss,” said Mike Miller, president of the security association. “It may be that instead of losing your TV, you could have lost a lot more.”

Mr. Martin said that most thieves wander neighborhoods looking for an easy entry point, like an open window. Your security system would have told you to close that window when you tried to turn it on.

Wealthier people, though, need another layer of protection since burglaries to their homes are not as opportunistic. Chances are the person who steals your Picasso when you are away did not happen upon your house by chance.

Christopher Falkenberg, president of Insite Security, which provides security for Martha Stewart’s homes, said prominent people needed levels of security beyond what alarms could provide.

“Alarms are not sophisticated,” he said, adding that basic monitoring panels have not changed in decades. “That said, you have to have one or you’re definitely going to be targeted. But your expectation can’t be that installing an alarm will be your end-all and be-all.”

Upgrading to the level of personalized protection that a firm like Insite provides is not cheap: its monthly rate starts at $7,000.

From an insurance point of view, this is where the discounts start to increase. “We recommend a layered approach so you are going to build out from a security system,” said Rich Standring, risk services manager for the East Coast for Fireman’s Fund. “The one shortcoming of a security system is you have to turn it on.”

BEYOND SECURITY While keeping burglars out of your house is the foundation of any security system, the monitoring service can include fire alarms, heat sensors and other features.

Robin Lampe, a spokeswoman for Protection One, said the company’s systems offered additional ways to monitor your home. The system can tell when someone has entered or left a house and when a person is trying to open a liquor or gun cabinet. It can also send video clips of who has entered a house or even a specific room — a great tool for parents eager to see what their children are up to.

But in every instance, the security system is only as good as the operator responding to the alert. Jonathan Crystal, who advises customers on their security needs as an executive vice president for Frank Crystal & Company, said he was traveling and got a call from his monitoring company telling him that the smoke alarm was going off in his home. He knew his baby sitter was there and asked the operator if she had spoken to her.

“I asked the woman if everyone was O.K.,” Mr. Crystal said, “But she said she hadn’t asked, because the person who answered was not authorized on the account.”

Mr. Crystal, who would not let me name the security company in print, said he was completely exasperated and ended up switching to a local company, Scarsdale Security. “They didn’t change my system at all, but they provide remote monitoring and they’re excellent,” he said. “They give me peace of mind. I got no peace of mind from” the national service.

While paying a monthly monitoring fee may make little financial sense, finding a service that provides you peace of mind is invaluable.

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