Florida commercial actual property marketplace is showing signs of restoration after a quick quiet length following two latest hurricanes that struck the Sunny state. commercial actual property for arcades and shopping shops is seeing a transformation in an effort to adapt to the wishes of the cutting-edge-day consumer. commonly, real estate fees in Florida have always been displaying an upward fashion for the past couple of months. Florida commercial actual property re-income are on the upward thrust as properly. The maximum eager of real estate shoppers come from minority companies including Latin individuals and Asians. Open-air commercial real estate is a new concept in Florida that is lately taking fee. purchasing centers are the typical packages of this actual property idea. Open-air shopping centers are a version on institution retailing. for this reason, purchasing facilities constitute a core section of the Florida business actual estate sector. Enclosed malls are slowly relinquishing their dominance to open-air centers because of the distinguishing function that open-air centers provide greater retail area than traditional walled malls. industrial actual property for purchasing is for this reason manifesting novel traits. adaptation is the important thing to survival inside the business actual property enterprise in Florida. Redevelopment of the commercial property is the maximum practical action that the belongings owners should do. convenience and ambience are top factors that present day-day shoppers take into account.For people who are searching out a industrial property in Florida, spotting the form of commercial enterprise to mission into in addition to the selection of preferred location are essential things to consider. There exists a wide variety of commercial property kinds that clients is probably inquisitive about, from retail institutions to workplace spaces.business actual property homes are commonly categorized into two foremost classes, particularly retail residences and investment houses. The category of retail properties covers purchasing shops and purchasing centers, chain store locations, franchise websites, retail stores and locations, and showrooms. The class of investment houses includes commercial rental houses, residential developments, internet leased homes, office areas, and commercial enterprise parks.The categories for commercial actual estate places are high-tech belongings regions which encompass those for clinical laboratories, studies and improvement parks, and call centers; land brokerages, which cover web sites allocated for industrial parks, waterfront properties, land tracts, and hotel homes; lodge and lodge assets class, that are exemplified by locations for lodges, motels, stadiums, conference facilities and theme parks web sites; and business and distribution belongings places for warehouses, airports and factories.in spite of excessive prices, Florida is usually an attractive place in which one could begin up a business. Florida offers a whole lot of potential web sites to situate companies, and all of those have a high chance of making sizable returns. some regions that could stir your hobby are Martin, Miami-Dade, Broward, St.Lucie and Palm seashore Counties in South Florida; Sarasota and Manatee Counties in Sarasota; Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas Counties in Tampa Bay; fortress Myers and Cape Coral place in Southwest Florida; Orange, Seminole, Lake, Polk, Osceola and West Volusia Counties in Orlando/vital Florida; Leon, Franklin, Jefferson and Wakulla Counties within the Tallahassee region; and Duval, Clay, Putnam and Nassau Counties in Jacksonville/Northeast Florida.Whichever place specific you select the beauty of this region to vacationers and foreign buyers make certain that getting a assets inside the Florida business actual estate [http://floridamortgagebroker.us] is something on the way to gain you inside the lengthy run.
Can real estate Markets Revive If Banks Are Reluctant to Lend?
because of my real property activities, i am frequently wondered approximately the general fashion of the markets. over the last few years, my answer has been, “it is very tough to tell. All bets are off.”In reality, we were through an exceedingly vexing time in which banks truely do no longer appear willing to lend. the shortage of to be had capital has created a scenario in which real estate markets as we recognise them seem not to exist.these days, but, a few tremendous signs indicate a change is inside the air. We look like embarking on a Darwinian method that, in time, could be pretty useful. First, however, we need to face the information.notwithstanding the outrageously low interest rates which might be touted for residential loans, I recognise of only a few humans who have without a doubt been able to gain a loan and take benefit of these traditionally low costs. at the opposite, banks which have been burned within the recent collapse of actual property values do now not seem inclined to lend for real estate purchases or refinancing.In latest years most of the people of purchases have been for residential homes financed via FHA or VA loans, properties bought with present cash or credit traces that don’t require traditional bank underwriting, or large bulk purchases made by means of extraordinarily sophisticated entities with equipped access to funding capital. the new actual estate marketplace is a coins market wherein shoppers demand good sized fee reductions – or they purchase some other place.cash is king, and the clean fact at the existing time is that the lack of without problems to be had capital and the enormously few coins customers hold to keep down values.however something is stirring. real estate proprietors have begun to reply to the scarcity of capital by providing vendor financing and different inducements to entice new customers into the marketplace. As this trend takes keep, prices will stabilize and values will begin to climb.further, i am seeing commercials for younger technology-pushed lending companies who embrace new technologies and appear purpose on accomplishing their lending corporations in a lean and mean fashion thru reliance at the internet.The mixture of seller financing and new lending corporations coming into the market appear probably to adjust the panorama of lending, supplying get right of entry to to capital and furnishing a much needed increase to the markets.whilst real property expenses begin to climb, the banks will maximum possibly comprehend they are missing out and resume their traditional role of lending based upon reasonable underwriting necessities. The improved competition will be properly for the markets, widening get admission to to capital and fueling increase, and so one can be appropriate for absolutely everyone.
Real Estate Investing For Beginners – Part 2, Types Of Properties For New Real Estate Investors
Not all real estate property types may be appropriate for new real estate investors. There are many factors to consider when making the decision to add real estate to an investment portfolio.
When deciding on a residential real estate investment strategy, some options for new investors to consider include:
Rental units
Rental units can be considered both long term and short term investments. Types of properties that may be considered for this category would include:
Detached single family homes
Attached single family homes
Multi-Unit properties
Condos/Townhomes
Being a Landlord
Not everyone has either the desire or inclination to be a landlord. Dealing with tenant and property issues can be very stressful and time consuming. One way to minimize the impact of being a landlord is to hire a professional property management company.
Hiring a professional property management company has several advantages:
Allows owners of rental properties to be ‘shielded’ from dealing with tenant and property issues directly.
Provides a buffer allowing the owners to maintain a hands off approach to managing their properties.
May provide a less stressful experience
Offers the ability to purchase real estate investments not immediately local to the investor.
Provides a single contact point for all issues regarding the investment property.
Professional property managers are well versed and prepared to manage tenant and property issues as they arise. They will typically take care of all issues relating to the property.
Many offer their services at reasonable prices and rates while others can be quite expensive depending on additional services being offered. You may expect property managers to provide the following services:
Advertise properties available
Recieve applications for tenancy
Perform Credit and Background checks for applicants
Recommend rental pricing
Pay maintenance and/or repair bills for the owner
Send monthly statements and rental income (Less any outstanding bills. Typically these are deducted and itemized from the rental income and will appear on monthly statements)
Flipping or The Bane of New Investors
Often times, new investors in real estate are overly anxious to ‘flip’ properties and make a significant profit. Rumors of how friends or acquaintances have made allot of money is often the incentive for ‘flipping’.
The real estate market fluctuates greatly. Yesterdays great ‘flipping’ market may be (recent market trends as an example) tomorrows ‘Hold on to it’ market. While this is certainly a desirable quality of an investment property, it is and should not be the primary consideration for new real estate investors. The competition for this type of real estate investment is fierce and occupied by seasoned, experienced professional builders and investors
Property Types
Let’s discuss the various property type which may be considered by new real estate investors.
The selectionof the type of real estate property for investment purposes may be based on several factors.
These factors include:
Financial considerations – How much can you afford?
Availability of properties – What types of properties are available?
Location – You’ve heard this one a thousand times – Location…Location…Location…
Income potential – Does the property in question match your real estate investment strategy?
Detached and attached single family homes
Single family homes whether attached or detached are often the first real estate property type new investors seek. In many areas, they offer the most availability of any property type.
Prices obviously vary greatly with these property types as well.
Multifamily Properties
Apartment units such as duplexes and triplexes should be considered as a viable option for new real estate investors.
Many investors and real estate professionals use apartment buildings as a point of entry to a portfolio of commercial real estate holdings and to build their equity before moving on to larger commercial real estate investments.
Duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes are two, three and four-unit buildings that may or may not be owner occupied.
Summary
Selecting an appropriate type of real estate property in which to invest is a primary consideration for all serious real estate investors.
Real estate investment strategies include the decision of whether or not to become actively involved in the management of the property. Professional property managers offer alternatives to assist in a “hands off” approach to owning residential income property.
Knowing there are options on the various types of properties to purchase as investment may provide new real estate investors the information needed to make that final decision to become a real estate investor.
End of Part 2
The continuing purpose of this article series is to assist new investors in making sound real estate investment decisions. Making sound real estate investment decisions initially may lead to the more lucrative opportunities of Commercial real estate investing
As a Keller Williams Success Realty real estate agent and REALTOR® working in Panama City Florida, my mission is to provide the public with quality Panama City Florida Real Estate services!
Redefining Real Estate E-Marketing Standards
Marketing strategies in the past
Marketing strategies for real estate agents were always the same: print tons of fliers, put out more newspaper ads – a typical numbers game. The more phone calls, fliers and newspaper ads you’re doing, the more chances you have to pick up new clientele. However, in our 21st century, full of new technologies, these strategies are likely to fade away. These tools are becoming obsolete for reaching a bigger and broader audience of seller and buyers.
Based on the latest market analysis by the National Association of Realtors (N.A.R.), 80% of buyers used the Internet to help find a home. Amazingly, only 15 years ago that wasn’t possible. Information on properties wasn’t available to the public, since all listed properties were stored in printed multi-listing system books. Buyers didn’t have any choice, but to get help from licensed agents. Back in those days, looking for properties took a lot of energy and required more than a regular “real estate” license. Agents had to remember various codes that Multi Listings Service (MLS) companies were using. For example, agents needed to memorize that property type CONDO1 represents a condominium with 1 bedroom. In addition, agents were required to page through heavy hard cover MLS books. Both of the previously mentioned skills were often described as “dealer maker” qualities. Sellers and buyers were blind to these books and only agents had the power of knowledge. This all happened of course, before the WWW era.
Marketing strategies nowadays
Nowadays, the same information is found on thousands of real estate web sites. Customers are given the power of knowledge. According to the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.), nearly half of the REALTORS® said that their business originates from Internet. In our “Google this” age, more consumers are spending their time online to do their own due-diligence prior to looking for a real estate professional. Real estate market customers ask for more information that is publicly available from anywhere and at any time.
Introduction of public Internet access greatly contributed to this change. Internet users started to ask for everything with the “click of a button”. This eventually pushed local MLS companies to change their rules regarding sharing listing data. With MLS changing their rules, real estate professionals were given the opportunity to own their own listings portal – their own web site. In the beginning, the only adapters of the new technology were big brokerage firms. As the years went by, technological advancements and high demand reduced the cost of ownership. From this very moment, having a web site became a standard for every real estate agent. Furthermore, having a Web site became as much of a necessity as having a cell phone.
Benefits of today’s tools/strategies
The major shift to “e-shopping”, is benefiting all involved parties in a real estate transaction:
Buyers are spending less time to look for listed properties. They can find available properties on a user-friendly Listing Search web page that offers access to hundreds of listings based on search criteria. Select city, state and optional bedrooms and bathrooms and wait for the listings. Clicking on a particular listing that got your attention, will bring more detailed information about this property. Most of the time a regular listing information will be accompanied by:
property photos
virtual tours
quick loan calculator
community information
comparable sales
local schools
property on the map
send an email to the agent
an option to schedule a showing with the listing agent
Sellers are benefiting from faster transactions, since every listed property transforms to a property that is visible on “every block”. Since most of the web sites are taking their listing data from the same centralized data center, such as MLS, a listing that is uploaded to MLS will turn up on all sites that are sharing the same MLS data. More exposure, of course, means more prospects and a faster sale.
Agents are taking advantage of lower marketing costs. No longer do agents need to rely on expensive fliers and newspaper campaigns, since the cost of electronic media is much more affordable than its “hard-paper” rival.
Today’s standards for a web site
To accommodate e-commerce growing needs, real estate professional agents required knowledge that associated with building web sites. This required a prior knowledge of various computer related technologies such as: domain name registration, web hosting, web design and much more. Luckily for them, a variety of Web services companies came up to fill up these growing needs. These tech-oriented companies made it easy for real estate agents to maintain, update listings, and even to keep their web site complaint with most recent MLS rules. Agents that took advantage of such professional help were given more time to represent their clients in real estate transactions.
Agents and web service companies, the demand and supply of real estate industry, created some “must-to-have” features in the industry. These features became the foundation of any web site that each web site should follow:
Fair graphic design of web site’s pages
Convenient and easy of web site navigation
Web page that offer to search for available listed properties
Property detailed description that features agents that own the web site
Option to customize different personal and office details: photos, email accounts, phone numbers, etc…
Automated email notifications feature that sends listed properties information as soon as they become available on the market to a specified email address.
Free Real Estate industry reports
Real estate news
New standards for a web site
Starting from 2004, web site strategies changed and just a having a web site became irrelevant. Having a web site and having a web site that translates to leads, are two totally different ball games. Since the introduction of the first real estate web site, the Internet has greatly changed. Real estate web sites started to pop-up like mushrooms in a rainy forest. A world full of real estate-related web sites, signaled that competition for Internet visitors had began.
Fortunately, using five marketing tools bundled with your web site can definitely reduce your marketing efforts and give your web site greater exposure. These tools are FREE to use and easy to integrate with your existing web site. These extra features in addition to your current web site are going to create new industry standards.
Interactive Maps
Providing potential buyers with detailed property information is vital for successful real estate transactions. Eventually, a buyer that contacts an agent after reviewing all available information becomes a more qualified buyer. Supplying property address look-up on a regional map helps buyers to decide about the location of the property. Such look-up feature provides customers with additional information such as: cross streets, freeways, parks and more.
A web site that is designed to embed “mapped” property instead of redirecting visitors to another web site is a key selling point of this feature. “Redirecting” has a negative impact on Internet users’ attention. Unfortunately, once the other web site is grabbing users’ attention, users tend to lose any interest in your web site. A range of “Map” products from different companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are able to deliver interactive maps that can be navigated by dragging the mouse and zoom in/out using the mouse wheel to see detailed street information.
Web site Analytics
With Web site Analytics, agents can find out what keywords attract their most desirable prospects, what advertising copy pulled the most responses, and what landing pages and content make the most money for them. In addition, they will be able to track all online campaigns, from emails to keywords, regardless of search engine or referral source.
Google Analytics is considered one of the successful tools on the market and yet it is free, and it offers enterprise-class web analytics. It allows web site owners to track the effectiveness of their online marketing activities and helps to optimize the content and layout of their website. Out-of-the-box functionality includes conversion goals, funnel path analysis, Google AdWords integration and e-commerce tracking. The goal of Google Analytics is to empower you with information to maximize your marketing ROI and increase website conversions.
Search engine exposure / recognition
One of the many benefits of a well-known brand’s web sites such as, RE/MAX (www.remax.com) and Realtor (www.realtor.com) is brand recognition. A brand that is recognized by customers often becomes associated with “products of desire”. Regular customers will go directly to the realtor.com web site, when looking for a Realtor. Others alternatively, are going to http://www.remax.com to look for properties. Of course, a regular real estate agent with a limited budget and a 2-3 year old web site can’t compete with such companies. Customers are not going to hit his/her web site, since they don’t know about its existence.
One of the many ways to tell the world about your web site is by using search engines. Search engines are sophisticated creatures that are able to find relevant resources on the Web. Becoming one of the registered or indexed resources is one the keys for your web site success. According to comScore, an Internet information provider, search engine market is held by 5 major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask. Since AOL search results are almost completely based on Google search engine results, we count only 4 search engines. Making your web site recognized by these search engines gives your web site greater exposure by improving placement for specific keywords. Greater exposure, of course, translates to more phone calls and emails from prospects.
Recent adoption of sitemap specifications by the “big 4″ greatly reduced indexing efforts. Sitemap is a page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. Sitemaps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. Just 30 minutes, that is what it takes to make your web site ready to be indexed. This is the maximum time that it takes to create Sitemap file, create a reference to it and upload these changes to your web hosting account.
Additionally, webmaster tools such as Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, offers help to diagnose problems and improve your site’s visibility.
Real Estate Blogs
Thousands of real estate bloggers can’t be wrong. RE blogs become the added value in real estate industry and let’s you quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more. Real estate professionals can position themselves as industry experts and interact with prospects. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 44% of U.S. Internet users have contributed their thoughts and their files to the online world.
In addition, running blogs is also good for your search engine marketing, since search engines are on a continuous-run to add unique content. Given that most of the blog platform available on the market are search engine friendly, your written content becomes visible faster and easier. Visible to search engines, blog options such as RSS feed subscription and URL track-backs will constantly promote you web site.
One of the respectable choices for blog platform on the market is Blogger. Blogger offers FREE and easy blog management tools for those who are not tech-savvy. Furthermore, with the addition of hundreds of web-templates to choose from, your blog can get a unique look that it deserves. Since your blog will be hosted by Blogger, you don’t need to have a web site to have a blog. And finally, given that Blogger was recently acquired by Google, you can count on better exposure on Google search engine results.
Virtual Tours and Video Profiles
One of the latest technology contributors to sales is the virtual reality tour. “Virtual tours” offer buyers a much greater user experience than just regular property pictures. Buyers are more likely to visit the homes and are more ready to buy than their more traditional counterparts. Based on Real Networks, a provider of Internet media delivery software and services, web visitors stay on a site 75 percent longer when the site includes video. The majority of these web visitors will watch the videos on the site. This number is even greater and closer to 100 percent, for professional web site such real estate web sites.
Uploaded video to a highly successful web site such as YouTube creates a world full of possibilities. Since every video comes with YouTube profile that can include a web site, video viewers that liked your video will most likely follow to your web site. In addition, you will save money by receiving a free movie hosting from YouTube. Furthermore, linking to your video has never been easier – YouTube provides you with necessary code that links to your video. And of course, one of the biggest advantages of YouTube is its growing popularity. Your uploaded video, becomes searchable on YouTube Search and even on Google Search.
Steve Rezhener is a CA licensed Real Estate agent and a Software Developer with a Bachelors’ degree in Computer Information Systems and Software Development.
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