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  1. Drew Drew

    Finding a Great Contractor to Work on Your Rental Properties

    If you don’t already know the right people, here’s how to find some. A bunch of contractors and other people in hardhats talking.Finding a great contractor isn’t easy. Contractors can be hard to get in touch with, overly expensive, slow to complete projects, or even just vanish partway through...
  2. Drew Drew

    Keep Pests Out of Your Rental Property!

    This time, we’re not talking about the kind with two legs and a history of rental fraud. A large cockroach standing on the top of an Apple computer monitor.Pests — roaches, ants, vermin, termites, and so on — can be an extraordinary annoyance at some rental properties (and then mysteriously...
  3. Drew Drew

    Tax Deductions on Investment Rental Properties: There's a Lot!

    All the better to make your investment back and start pocketing profit! Every year, millions of real estate investors spend more on taxes than they need to, because they don’t understand just how many tax deductions are available for a rental property. There’s not nearly enough room in a mere...
  4. Drew Drew

    How do You Know Your Tenant Is Subletting with AirBNB?

    It’s hard enough when you’re screening the actual tenants — having complete strangers on your property is a straight-up no-go. AirBNB, and similar services like VRBO and wimdu, allow someone to rent out a property they control by the night. This is great for homeowners looking to get some extra...
  5. Drew Drew

    Newbie Mistakes In Real Estate Investing

    Let Me Hear You Say ‘Flipping Ain’t Easy!’ It’s easy to mess up any sort of investment — the entire concept behind investing is that you accept some risk in return for getting a better return than you get from your bank account. But certain kinds of investing, like real estate, are just as much...
  6. Drew Drew

    It's a Great Time to Buy a House…If You're an Investor

    Opportunity is Knocking! …Or Is That the Plumbing? Last week, we went over the fact that owning your home is, on average, about twice as affordable as renting — and why. The lack of first-time buyers created by strict debt-to-income ratio laws and high down payments is creating a slowdown in...
  7. Drew Drew

    It's a Great Time to Buy a House…If You Can

    If You Can’t, It’s Obviously A Great Time to Rent a House! A home with For Sale sign It’s actually been a very long time since buying a home cost more than renting one — since 1991, to be precise — but there are a lot of extrinsic factors that have made renting a better option in general for...
  8. Drew Drew

    Vacancies Are Starting to Go Up Again -- Keep Your Profits High

    It’s Easy to Make Money When Everything is Going Up — Can You Keep It Up As Things Turn Around? Neon Vacancy sign in the darkness.Vacancies rose by a tenth of one percent last quarter — which might not seem like much at first, until you notice that it’s the first time that the overall rental...
  9. Drew Drew

    Real Estate Investing with a Self-Directed IRA

    Retire Comfortably By Investing Intelligently Today. Hearing an investor say that they want to use their Individual Retirement Account (IRA) to invest in real estate is kind of like saying that they want to use their savings account to invest in the stock market. It doesn’t tell you anything...
  10. Drew Drew

    The Right Way to Handle A Move-In Checklist

    The Wrong Way is “Not Handling It At All.” If you’re not familiar with property management paperwork, rest assured there’s a lot of it — so much, in fact, that many landlords are tempted to not deal with it whenever the opportunity presents itself. One classic example: the Move-In Checklist...
  11. Drew Drew

    Renting To Tenants with Pets: Countering the Expense

    How Much Is that Puppy In Your Window…Going To Cost You? Tenants who have pets bring a unique kind of risk with them. On the one hand, people with pets tend to be more laid back. On the other hand, pets tend to occasionally damage goods and property just by their nature. (If you’ve ever...
  12. Drew Drew

    How to Not Get Sued (Much): Property Manager's Edition

    The Best Way to Win in Court Is to Stay Out of Court Every property manager has had — or will have – that sinking sensation you get from being served with notice of a suit at some point. Being sued is a reality of the job, but it is possible to reduce the likelihood of being sued. Not...
  13. Drew Drew

    Is It The Right Time To Consider Selling Your Investment Property? (NO!)

    Show Yourself The Money! One of the constant questions a real estate investor asks themselves is: “Will I be better off if I sell right now?” There’s the constant temptation of liquidating and cashing out any gains you’ve already made, especially with the recent real estate market crash so...
  14. Drew Drew

    Do Your Renters Run Businesses Out Of Their Homes?

    There’s No Business Like Home Business When Home Business Is Your Business The Small Business Administration recently pointed out that almost half of all businesses in the United States are home-based businesses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development tells us that 35.9% of Americans...
  15. Drew Drew

    How to Keep the Move-Out Process Smooth and Easy

    It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday’s Tenant Some overstuffed moving boxes.When a tenant decides to leave, it’s never an easy time to be a property owner. There’s a lot to do after the tenant is gone — but there’s also a lot to do as the tenant is leaving, as well. At Royal Rose...
  16. Drew Drew

    The Startling Effects of Poor Tenant Screening Practices

    You hurt more than just yourself when you screen poorly. We’re going to start this with some scary statistics collected by a research firm in Boston, all of them about landlords who “go it alone” and don’t rely on the services of a property management company: 66% of them do not conduct...
  17. Drew Drew

    Natural Disasters: Where Should Your Focus Be?

    Put people over property…but don’t forget the property! Natural disasters are rare, fortunately, but they happen — and when they do, they can bankrupt an investor and leave a property manager shy a client and a building. So what can we do, if the worst comes to worst, to help our clients...
  18. Drew Drew

    Renovation for Rental vs. Renovation for Flipping: What's the Difference?

    Don’t judge a house by it’s curb appeal…unless you’re selling. Renovating a property should always add value to it, or else what’s the point? But that doesn’t mean that all renovations are the same — because not all value is the same. Different people value different things. The question is...
  19. Drew Drew

    Even People Who Move Don't Go Far: The Importance of Local Reputation

    Capture your share of the moving-within-town market! We stumbled across a fascinating infographic by HomePropertyManagement.com recently, and it got us to thinking. According to the graphic — and we’re pretty confident that HomePropertyManagment.com knows their stuff — more than 1 in 10...
  20. Drew Drew

    9 Steps to Prepare an Investment Property For Its First Tenant

    No Second Chance for a First Impression Whether you’re a novice investor wondering what to do with your first property or a seasoned property manager with scores of active properties under your belt, it pays to know exactly what it takes to get a freshly-purchased investment property ready to...
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