Archive for October, 2007
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
Complete earning transcript here
Total yearly revenue from Q3 2006 - Q3 2007 was down 41% for LendingTree.com while IAC's other real estate play Service Magic is up 33% from a year ago.
TRANSACTIONS
...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
And here they are:
Insulate your water heater.
Wrap it in an insulating blanket and save 10% annually on your water-heating bill.
Service the furnace.
Have your furnace checked every 2 years. Even tightening the pipes can save 10% on your heating bills.
Set the washer to cold.
Put a clause in the rental contract that ...
Posted in Rental Tips | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
There are many ways to fail in anything. Here are some ways to fail in real estate investing.
Pay Cash for Your Properties
If you pay 100% cash for properties than you are not using OPM (Other People's Money) in your favor. The goal is to use the least amount of your ...
Posted in Real Estate Investing | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
A article by the Rocky Mountain News talked about Denver toping the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index. The Denver home appreciation rate in August was a sad .3% increase but beat all all other cities including Miami with a -2% appreciation rate, Los Angeles with a -1.1% appreciation rate and Dallas ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
A new start-up in stealth mode called Roost is on "a mission to fundamentally change how customers find & move into their next home."
This could be very exciting as the current moving lead generation model is broken. More to come..........
Posted in Real Estate Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
Forbes.com released their list of the top cities to invest in. Here is their list:
1) Fort Worth Texas
Median home sales price: $156,500
Price change from 2006: 1.7%
Expected home turnover in 2008: 6.03%
Turnover ranking: 5
2) Kansas City, Missouri
Median home sales price: $157,700
Price change from 2006: -0.7%
Expected home turnover in 2008: 6.21%
3) Houston, ...
Posted in Real Estate Investing, Real Estate News | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
Popular real estate blog, Curbed, raised $1.5 million from angel investors. Blogging networks that are specific to a niche are become much more profitable than ever before.
From the Alarm Clock:
NYC-based Real estate blog network Curbed.com, has raised $1.5M in financing to expand into new cities from its base in New ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
I had the pleasure to interview Chis Smith, the founder and CEO of EquityScout.
Q: What is EquityScout?
A: EquityScout is a website that offers real estate evaluation software to real estate investors. Investors have a lot of factors to take into account when they're evaluating an investment. Taxes, expenses, vacancies, ...
Posted in EquityScout | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonimc blog had a great Q and A with Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist.com.
Q: What do you think of the challenges to Craigslist posed by Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites that have the ability to implement similar free classifieds (such as Facebook’s ...
Posted in Craigslist | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
A homeless man living on the streets in Phoenix, Arizona surprised a lot of people after he died. And now he's become the city's best example that you can't judge people by their appearance.
Read more at ABC24
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
We wanted to add a list of certified property managers in the Las Vegas area for your resource.
These are all certified narpm (national association of residential property managers in Las Vegas) and they are here to assist you in all of your rental property management needs.
Please feel free to call ...
Posted in Property Managers | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
We wanted to add a list of property managers in the Phoenix area for your resource.
These are all narpm (national association of residential property managers) and they are here to assist you in all of your rental property management needs.
Please feel free to call them for any information you may ...
Posted in Property Managers | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
We wanted to add a list of certified property managers in the Denver and Colorado area for your resource.
These are all certified narpm (national association of residential property managers in Denver and the rest of Colorado) and they are here to assist you in all of your rental property ...
Posted in Property Managers | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
The Orlando Economic Development Commission released a metropolitan apartment report. They studied 6 major metropolitan areas including Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, Las Vegas, Miami, and San Diego.
Here are some of the interesting things they found:
Of these 6 areas, Atlanta had the highest vacancy rate at 7.3% for 2007
Of these 6 areas, ...
Posted in Rental Market | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
If you are looking to get into real estate investing or have a property you want to rent out, there are 10 reasons why I think you should use a property manager to manage your property. All of these reasons can be summed up by "Less Headaches".
Less Headaches
You don't need ...
Posted in Property Managers | No Comments »
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
If you have read the book Wisdom of Crowds, then you know that the collective intelligence of many is far more powerful than that of one. In fact, so powerful, predicting the future becomes much more accurate.
A new tool called predictify, can help us in predicting anything.
Predict the future for ...
Posted in Real Estate Technology | 1 Comment »
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
Many times, a renter may search for a property that accepts section 8 vouchers. If you are a real estate investor what does this mean?
What is Section 8?
Section 8: The section 8 housing is designed to increase the housing choices for low-income household by making privately held single family housing ...
Posted in Rental Tips, section 8 | 17 Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
If you are currently looking for a rental, you should know all of your renter's rights. Below is a list of the top 10 rights you have when you are looking to rent. These vary by state so it is best to contact your local government, local law firm or ...
Posted in Rental Tips | 21 Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
What is Rent-to-Own?
Rent-to-own (RTO) is a term used to acquire assets over a long period of time without taking on debt. In regard to home rentals, (lease to own) a tenant will have a right to purchase the home at the end of the term for a predetermined price.
Usually, ...
Posted in Rent to Own | 2 Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
If you have any rental related questions. We will be answering them on this blog. Send questions to dan @ rentbits.com and we will do our best to get them answered.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
If you are starting an internet business and need funding, you may want to check out TheFunded.com. You can view hundreds of firms and view what others think of them. For each VC firm they show the track record, operating competence, pitching efficiency, favorable deal terms, and executive assistance.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
If you are thinking of starting a rental site or any site for that matter, you might want to think about starting it now. The senate just approved 7 more years of tax free internet access and email. The bill would prohibit state and local governments from taxing any service ...
Posted in Legislation | 2 Comments »
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Rental advertising has become much more profitable and cost effective than ever before. In the past, rental advertising depended on the local newspaper, rental magazines and other expensive forms of advertising. Now, the cost to obtain a renter can range from $0 - $199.
During our recent trip to Austin, we ...
Posted in Rental Advertising | No Comments »
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Kristal Kraft wrote a blog on Equity Skimming that sparked some ideas.
Equity skimming is when a landlord has no intention on paying the mortgage. Many times these landlords are overleveraged and may have multiple properties they own but can't make payment. These criminals, decide to not pay the mortgage company ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
We just landed in Austin and it is a warm 75 degrees. The airport seems nice and we are on our way to Round Rock which is about 30 miles north of the Airport.
We will be at an Apartments conference tomorrow and will relay how that goes. In the interim, ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
I am always interested in seeing results when a popular brand is consolidated into another less popular brand. I was curious to see how the affect of rentals.com consolidating rentclicks had on google searches for the brand term "rentclicks".
As you can see, after the consolidation took place, most people, about ...
Posted in RentClicks | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
We are looking for amazing people to fill some positions for both Rent Marketer and Apartment Marketer. If you know anyone, let us know:
Apartment Marketer:
Inside Sales Specialist
Java Programmer
Rent Marketer:
Java Programmer
Account Specialist
Posted in Apartment Marketer, Rent Marketer | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
I wanted to follow up on my post Apartments for rent VS homes for rent I did yesterday. MSN also has some more data on this and actually breaks it down by search impressions, search volume and demographics. It looks like some search engines are becoming more liberal with their ...
Posted in Rental Market | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
Microsoft has tool that predicts the demographics of an audience that is searching for a particular search term or searching on a particular site. Here are some numbers.
For people searching for "homes for rent"
65% are female
highest distribution of age group is 25 - 34 at close to 35% of all ...
Posted in Rental Market | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
I accidentally went to craiglist.com and got a shock of my life. It is a sex site hoping users do what I did and misspell craigslist.com and go see some tatas. I recommend not going there by accident unless of course you like that kind of stuff.
I do have to ...
Posted in Craigslist | No Comments »
