Real Estate Update

Vikram kuamr asked:




If you are someone who is looking to sell your house in a hurry without losing too much on the value of the house, as would happen in the case of most distress sales, then you need to carefully weigh up your various options. The usual thing most people do, is to advertise their house for sale with an estate agent. This would entail paying for the solicitors fees to draw up the sale agreements and to verify the deeds and title to the property. It would also require you to shell out money towards the fees for the estate agent and suffer cutbacks on profit as well in case of a successful sale.

 

The fees paid and the money spent would add up and before you know it you would have lost more money than you had planned on when you thought of selling your house in the first place. In most scenarios the real estate agents would reduce the value of the house to enable a quick sale which would not be good for you but will fetch the agent his usual fees and commission nevertheless. There is however other avenues for selling your house fast that you can explore which include using the services of online estate agents.

 

Most estate agents also run their show online on the internet by putting up their own websites or by having a space on a very vibrant property portals. Nevertheless, most of these agents do not concentrate on their online sales activities which give significantly less profits for them but are content with their real world sales activities that are more profitable. This leads to them neglecting on the active marketing of real estate through their websites or online addresses and thus makes most of these online estate agents non reliable. There are however other agents who have profited immensely from having an online presence either exclusively or in combo with a real world presence in the field.

 

Opting to sell your house online is a very simple process and the cost associated with such a course of action is usually much less than using a flesh and blood agent who would **** you dry of money. The only requirement in most cases would be to fill up an online form and in most cases you would not have to shell out any money. The online form would require minimal details such as the address at which the property is located, the name of the owner and contact numbers. The responses start coming in within 24 hours usually. This makes it one of the easiest and fastest ways to sell your house.

 

In addition to being a quick and easy way to put your house up for sale, selling your house through and online estate agent also means that you would be spending less money on fees and commission. The exposure that your house would gain is maximum. Even people from other areas could view your advertisement and if someone is planning to move to your place from another area, they could be a prospective buyer. Another advantage is that you would not suffer from loss of profits in a distress sale when you use an online estate agent.

 

Chris Chico asked:




When considering an entrance into the real estate investment market, it is important to remember some basic house flipping tips and strategy.  To begin with, house flipping means to buy a property with a depressed value and then to resell that property for a higher price.  This process is usually a quick transaction with the investor only holing the property for a few days.  Many boast of huge immediate profits. The following guidelines will help lead you to financial freedom and fiscal independence.

The first thing to learn is how to identify a property that is likely to create a huge profit margin.  Why depressed value may make you think of properties that badly need repairs, condemned buildings, or buildings in undesirable locations, there are many other reasons that a building would have a low price.  Foreclosures are a great source of potential opportunities.  Visit local banks to get a list of available assets that have been foreclosed upon.  The prices of these buildings are usually much lower than current market prices and are not related to the current condition of the property.

Another great source for possible prospects is real estate auctions.  These usually include properties that have come under the ownership of the state, either through tax enforcement or the death a person with no designated heirs.  These assets are totally unrelated to current market values and simply go to the highest bidder.  Another helpful tip is to check online auctions.  With the growing popularity of the internet these have become much more common and easy to find. Simply use any search engine to locate these sites.

Once you indentify a property, the next step is acquiring the capital to purchase it.  Obviously you can front the money from your own personal wealth.  However, this is not always necessary.  A handy tip is to again visit your local bank.  Banks will often offer short term loans for such investment opportunities.  Use the loan or mortgage to purchase the house and then repay the loan immediately after selling it.  In this manner you can ensure a much higher profit margin.  Another tip is to put a five to ten percent down payment on the loan.  This will help you secure lower financing fees and better fiscal terms.

As soon as you own the house, you will need to find somebody to buy it.  A helpful tip is to limit purchasing a property unless you already have a potential buyer lined up.  This will limit the time that you own the house to a bare minimum.  This will also limit the time you have to carry the loan or mortgage.  Potential clients can be found anywhere.  Again a useful tip is to utilize the power of the internet. 

Advertise on real estate web pages to reach huge audiences.  This method is also the cheapest method to advertise.  Other ways to attract clients is to buy advertisement space in newspapers, on bill boards, or in classified listings.  These are just some helpful house flipping tips that will have you generating an alternate form of income in days. 

Stephen Furnari asked:




I was recently a speaker at a conference for entrepreneurs. My topic was about the different ways to raise investment capital. At the end of the program, a young entrepreneur spoke with me about how he was raising capital to produce a film.

A couple of weeks later, I received a letter from an accounting firm who was soliciting investments for the young filmmaker.

On its face, the letter seemed like a excellent idea: the polished letterhead from the accounting firm (and their endorsement) made the young filmmaker seem more credible; this was a great reason for the accounting firm to contact new people; and, if the filmmaker raised the money he needed, the accounting firm would surely have a great new client.

Problem is, both the filmmaker and the accounting firm violated a number of state and federal securities laws by mailing that letter.

Let’s face it, raising investment capital for a business isn’t easy-and most entrepreneurs would take all the help they can get.

Entrepreneurs are a clever bunch of people who are often required to make things happen with limited resources. Problem is, many of the techniques that you would rely on to fill a pipeline of prospective clients often times violate state and federal securities laws when used to find investors.

For example, if you’re selling shares in your company to raise cash, it seems logical that you should get your company’s sales staff, or outsourced services, to help you out. Perhaps you can even pay them a high commission on stock sales and they’ll be extra motivated.

After all, few things motivate someone to sell like a big commission check.

Better yet, what about hiring one of these guys who call themselves “consultants” or “finders” and claim to help companies raise money? Just about anyone who’s done some networking in the venture capital seminar scene has likely run across someone like this. They work on great terms: you don’t pay unless they raise cash. And even if the fee they charge for their services may be high, who wouldn’t give up a big chunk of cash (or a kidney) for the ease of having someone find investors for you?

On a fairly regular basis, my entrepreneur and investor clients ask me if they can pay their employees, or a finder-consultant a piece of the deal if they help the company raise investment dollars.

In almost every case, the answer is a definitive no. The payment of a finder’s fee or commission in connection with the sale of securities to a person who is not a broker registered with FINRA (formerly the NASD) is generally illegal.

Another common misconception among entrepreneurs is that the payment of finder’s fees falls within a “gray area” of the law. This is just wrong. It’s a myth that seems to be perpetuated by entrepreneurs and finders who have engaged in this activity and haven’t been caught.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard from clients “well, I know ABC Company who paid a finder a commission and didn’t have any problems.” My reply is always the same: “ever drive a car on the West Side Highway at 75 miles per hour and get passed by someone going faster than you and neither of you got a ticket?” Just because you didn’t get nabbed by New York’s Finest doesn’t mean you weren’t breaking the speed limit by a fairly wide margin.

In my practice, I’ve represented clients who have had problems with regulators by unknowingly violating these rules. In nearly every case, the company went out of business or sought protection from creditors under the bankruptcy laws as a result of the mistake.

The business of getting paid commissions for introducing investors to companies is something that our government has taken a keen interest in regulating.

If you are serious about growing your business, you will need to become adept at raising capital when your company requires it. Educating yourself about what your employees and consultants can and cannot do to help you raise capital is critical to your company’s health.

Here are the basics about using employees and finder-consultants to help you with your capital raising efforts:

What is a “finder?”

A finder is an individual, company or service that receives compensation in connection with the solicitation of potential investors. The most common examples of legal finders are broker-dealers or investment bankers working for broker-dealers.

What is a broker?

A “broker” is defined under the securities laws as “any person engaged in the business of effecting transactions in securities for the account of others.” Helping a company sell shares to raise capital, engaging in other activities like participating in presentations and negotiations, making recommendations to investors concerning securities, receiving transaction-based compensation (i.e. commissions or finder’s fees), and continuing or regular involvement in sales of securities are evidence of activities rendering a person a broker.

If your employees or finder-consultants perform these tasks, typically the person is obligated to be registered as a broker with (and thus regulated by) FINRA.

How can an employee help a company raise capital lawfully?

Under certain conditions, a company can permit its employees to help it raise investment capital without triggering the broker registration requirements. For example, the SEC’s Rules allow an employee, officer or director of a company to participate as a finder in a private offering provided that the employee:

** is not considered by the SEC to be a securities industry “bad boy”;

** does not get paid commissions in connection with the offering;

** is not an associated person of a broker or dealer at the time of his participation; performs a job for the company other than in connection with the company’s offering (i.e., marketing or customer relations);

** was not within the last year a registered broker; and

** does not participate in the company’s securities offerings more than once every 12 months (with certain restrictions).

Keep in mind, that each state has its own set of regulations that may differ from federal regulations. For example, in some states only officers and directors of a company are permitted to engage in the sale of securities.

Does a finder-consultant always have to be a registered as a broker with FINRA?

There are some circumstances where a finder-consultant is not required to register as a broker. However, if you’re acting as a finder (or you’re a company hiring a finder), you must take extreme care to ensure that the finder’s activities are limited so that he or she is not functioning as an unlicensed broker.

Finders can avoid registering as a broker by limiting to:

** merely introducing prospective investors to a company without engaging in negotiations;

** not recommending the company’s securities to prospective investors;

** and basing their compensation on a flat fee that is not contingent on the closing of a securities sale (for example, the finder gets a fee of $50,000 for making the introduction to an investor, regardless of whether the investor purchases shares or not).

What kind of compensation cannot be paid to finder-consultants?

Transaction-based compensation, or success-based compensation, like a finder’s fee or commission, is compensation that is contingent on the transaction closing. Often the fee is a percentage of the amount of securities sold. Unregistered persons are not permitted to receive this type of fee from a company.

Permissible forms of compensation may include professional fees based on hourly billing rates or fixed fees; non-transaction based consulting fees; non-transaction based due diligence fees; or expense reimbursements.

You’ll notice that common theme among permissible forms of compensation is that the fee is paid regardless of whether funds are raised. My experience is that most companies are unwilling, or at least reluctant to pay a finder a fee for services that may or may not turn into an investment.

Many companies have attempted to disguise a commission as a permissible fee. For example, entrepreneurs often hire “finders” as “consultants” and call the finder’s fee a “consulting fee.” However, if the compensation the consultant receives is ultimately tied to their activity of selling shares in the company, and they would not have received the fee absent the company raising capital, then the payment of the fee to an unregistered person is not permissible.

Regulators will easily sniff out a thinly disguised form of success-based compensation, and the fee will not be considered valid.

What can happen if a regulatory agency determines that a finder-consultant or employee is acting as an unregistered broker?

If a regulatory agency, like the securities division of a state or the SEC, determines that a finder-consultant or employee has acted as an unregistered broker, the SEC or state could impose fines on the finder, which may include disgorging to the issuer commissions paid. Further, regulators could bar the finder in some cases from ever registering as a broker in with their agency in the future.

What can happen to a company if the SEC determines it unlawfully used an unregistered finder?

If a regulator determines that a company used an unregistered finder to locate investors, they could force the company to offer investors the right to rescind their purchase and obtain a return of their entire investment. This may be a problem if you’ve spent the investment money and there’s nothing in the company’s coffers to purchase shares back from investors.

Also, under certain circumstances, the regulators could impose fines on the company for participating in a transaction that violated the securities laws or prohibit the company from engaging in securities transactions in the regulators’ jurisdiction in the future.

Finally, any irregularity in early financing activities can make subsequent rounds of financing more difficult to complete. When disclosed to subsequent investors, errors made in early-stage funding efforts may cut the company off from funding options in the future.

damianqualter11 asked:




There are a wide range of opportunities for buying investment property which should satisfy anyone looking to make an investment in property.

When buying investment property you could buy a second home or holiday cottage. This you can rent out throughout the year – albeit with some blank periods – and at the same time watch the value of the property rise over a number of years. You could also use the property yourself for a holiday when it’s not being rented out by other holidaymakers.

An increasingly popular method of buying investment property over recent years has been to invest in buy-to-let properties. These are properties in towns or cities and rented by locals who can’t afford to or don’t want to buy their own property to live in. As a buy-to-let landlord you hope to maximise your rental income by renting out the property for large chunks of time at once – a minimum of six months, and you hope for much longer. Your rental income should cover your mortgage outgoings and other expenses to bring you a net income, and, of course, the property should go up in value over a reasonable number of years.

Popularised by a number of television programmes, buying investment property that is need of renovation or redevelopment has also become a well-known way to make money in recent years. The theory here is that you buy a property in need of repair or modernisation, do it up, dress it up and sell it on for a nice profit. The dangers are that your renovation budget will be stretched so much that it will eat into your profits, and the time taken will also be “dead” time when you still have to make mortgage repayments on the property with no income from a tenant.

Another way of buying investment property is to buy off-plan.

This is where you literally buy a property from a plan, before it is finished, possibly before it’s even been started. You would look for healthy discount on the purchase price so that you can maximise your profits when you sell on. Buying investment property off-plan overseas has also become popular as the initial investment is often a lot less, though the purchase process can be more complicated.

Investing in commercial property is another way of buying investment property, where you buy a property and rent it out to local business. Such premises can include offices, shops, warehouses, factories. Commercial tenants tend to less hassle than residential tenants, and they stay longer and review rents more often.Buying investment property can also involve buying a business with the property. For example, when you buy a bed and breakfast property or even a hotel, you are buying the property and the business that goes with it. You might end up with a bigger property than in other circumstances but, of course, you will have to share it with other people.

Another way of buying investment property is to buy freeholds of large buildings divided into units. These can be cheaper than other property, but might only yield smaller ground rent from leaseholders.

When you buy at auction you are buying investment property at a cheaper price than when sold at an estate agents – or at least you hope you are. You may end up with a bargain, and the process is quicker, but the adrenalin of the auction room can tempt you to go beyond your limit. This is not for the faint of heart, and experience can teach you a lot.

Whatever way you decide to go about buying investment property, you should understand your reasons for doing it, and be clear about what you want to achieve. Indeed, with some of these options, be aware of what you’re getting into.

Kinan Beck asked:




Work has begun on the hotly debated Spring condominium community at Third and Bowie in Austin. The planned 42-story 250-unit tower will feature one bedroom condos as well as two-bathroom, two-bedroom units. Smaller condos will begin at 575 ft.², with a starting price of $237,000. Two-bedroom condominiums will range in price from $430,000 to $530,000. A few larger penthouse units, starting at $700,000, are also part of the plan. Spring is the brainchild of Robert Barnstone, Perry Lorenz, Larry Warshaw and Diana Zuniga. Vancouver-based Rafii Architects is providing design for the project, which is expected to be completed in 2009.

The new condominium tower has not been without its controversy. The project was proposed at 400 feet, and some suggested that the tower height be limited. The Austin city Zoning and Platting Commission allowed the project to go ahead, despite the criticisms. Spring attracted much controversy due to its proposed 400 foot height. The height would have made Spring one of the tallest buildings in the city. Developers for the project claim that the height was necessary, since the condominium tower was designed on the skinny towers that dominate the skyline of Vancouver. The dream team behind the condominium tower also pointed out that Spring is one of only a number of residential high-rise condo plans for the downtown core, and some have proposed heights just as towering as Spring itself. The Vancouver-inspired “”point tower”" style of building, developers claim, is the best way to add more housing to the prestigious Austin area at less cost. Some claim that the new thin towers will allow the historically high cost of real estate downtown to be more reasonably priced for buyers. Real estate experts say that demand for residential properties in the downtown Austin area continues to be very strong, which may be part of the secret behind the big building boom. There are a number of building projects underway, besides Spring. Despite this, the marketing team behind Spring isn’t worried — the marketing department is seeing two reservations a day for the tower.

To add even more to the condominium market in Austin, two different buyers have purchased Windsong Apartments and Parkside Apartments recently. Both buildings are reportedly being converted into condo communities. The sellers in both deals were represented by Transwestern’s Central Texas Multifamily Group. The Sutton Co. bought Windsong from from Halisco Ltd. for a reported $4.3 million (approximately $82,700 per unit). The 52-unit complex across from the University will be converted into condos. The Parkside was sold for an undisclosed price. A local investor, who remains unnamed, purchased the 18-unit property at 4209 Burnet Road. The two sales represent the third and fourth sales for condominium conversions in the city this year alone. Experts are saying that the market for condos in downtown is so hot right now that investors hope that conversions will allow them to tap the market fast. While a number of new condo communities are being built in downtown area right now, investors hope that conversions will take less time and will therefore allow them to place their condominiums on the market first.