Real Estate-Education Center

Free Real Estate Listings

With real estate markets struggling in tumultuous waters, real estate sellers are looking toward more non-traditional venues to widen exposure for their properties. You can now look at a real estate listing online rather than going through traditional agents. Using a free real estate listing has its ups and downs; here are some tips for evaluating online properties and how to make your search work for you!

With traditional newspaper listings, you will read through various listings and segregate the ones that seem the most appropriate for you. You then have to write down the phone numbers and contact data on a piece of paper and then call up the owners/brokers to make an appointment to see the property. Without a photo, your work may be fruitless when you find yourself driving up to a shanty or a piece of property that does not at all resemble the parcel that was advertised.

Also, newspaper listings normally run on a weekly basis. So if a parcel has sold during the week, there is no way you can check it without actually calling up the owner/broker. On the other hand, a free real estate listing online is updated every day or possibly twice a week.

As we all know, presenting a timely offer can make a huge difference when it comes to negotiating the price for your new home. When you employ online listings, time is on your side. You don’t need to go through all the listings in order to determine the ones that meet your needs. You can specify various search criteria to view only those that you are interested in. This is an enormous advantage when compared to newspapers, where listings are sometimes presented in no particular order. You can save a lot of time online by browsing only through listings that are of interest to you.

There is also no need to take down phone numbers etc; you can easily get printouts of the real estate listing online you want. Some websites also furnish facilities to track those real estate listings. You could even contact the sellers by placing a message through the website (some websites offer this type of email feature). An additional significant feature of online listings is that a lot of them have images of the property. You can browse through the images and see if you like the property before contacting the owner.

A real estate listing online offers a lot of ease. But along with the convenience, a free real estate listing has some caveats. Use the websites wisely for compiling information or finding a realtor. Remember that in some cases sellers who choose to advertise may be a little more dedicated about making a sale. Use the ease of the Internet to help you save time and simplify your selected properties. Whether you are looking for commercial real estate, an industrial property or apartments in other states or cities, the Internet offers many opportunities for prospective buyers to compare and contrast the latest listings, increasing your choices and your purchasing ability!

The development of real estate in India is estimated to be around US$ 15 billion and it is growing at a rate of 30 per cent every year. Almost 90 per cent of real estate developed is residential space and the rest include office, hotels shopping malls and hospitals. This kind of double-digit growth is primarily attributed to the off-shoring and outsourcing businesses, such as high-end technology consultation, call centers and programming houses which in 2004 are estimated to have accounted for 12 million square feet of real estate development.

The demand from the information technology sector certainly has changed the urban landscape in India. According to estimation in India, there is a demand for nearly 70 million square feet of IT & ITES space over the next four and five years. Several multinational companies continue to move their organizational operations to India to take advantage of lower manpower and other costs. Providing human resources and home at their work place assume great significance and therefore the requirement to create space for people to live and work that in turn cause the development of other related infrastructure. It has been a predominant trend to set up the world’s best business centers, often campus-style establishments, bearing a distinguishing corporate stamp. Some of these locations are so distinctive that they are termed as the “temples of new or modern India”. It is just an indication of the extent that the development of real estate taking place.

Another case in point is Gurgaon, one of the national capital regions of India, which has seen a fundamental change in not just its skyline but also in its fundamental urban demographics. Gurgaon, a few years ago, was described as just a small town built on a cow pasture. But in the past seven and eight years, it has witnessed 20 malls with many more under construction and has a skyline of shining new office buildings and call centers. Gurgaon is considered a shopper’s paradise and the malls are similar versions of their US counterparts: five story big bazaars which house almost every international brand like McDonalds, Levis, Nokia, Nike and Tommy Hilfiger along with multiplex cinemas, escalators and large parking lots. The arrival of call center industry, information technology houses and other such BPOs in India has led to an inflow of more than 900,000 new jobs. Outsourcing business has changed the real face of commercial real estate in India, but its greater impact has been the demographic shift characterized by rising disposable incomes and increased consumerism.

The real estate market in India remains unorganized, fairly fragmented, mostly characterized by small players with a local presence. Traditionally, real estate developers were viewed with an element of skeptical attitude. Developers were often identified with dealing with large amounts of unaccounted money, lacking transparency and would use unscrupulous means to acquire a variety of regulatory approvals.

The 4th Element – Marketing Plan

The last thing a successful investor like Warren Buffett would do is to invest into businesses that always guessed at their future profitability and had a loose, unfounded marketing plan for generating prospects, and unproven ways for converting those prospects into customers.

As a real estate investor, your business needs to decide on the type of marketing that will powerfully increase your visibility, draw in motivated sellers and investor buyers like a ten ton magnet on steroids, and follow proven processes for converting those leads into deals, and those deals into profits for you. Are you using proven online websites? Proven sales scripts and automatic response programs? Do you have a compelling value proposition? Who is your ideal target client profile? How are you positioning your business to disrupt your competition and dominate?

For Buffett, he only buys into businesses he can understand and evaluate accurately. With your real estate investing business plan here, you need to make sure it’s doing the same thing.

The 5th Element – Your “Product”

One of the things that Warren Buffet said, that any entrepreneur investing in real estate should remember is: “We are willing to hold a stock indefinitely so long as we expect the business to increase in intrinsic value at a satisfactory rate . . . we do not sell our holdings just because they have appreciated or because we have held them for a long time.”

With television programs such as House Flipping so popular, many real estate investing entrepreneurs imagine that the real estate game is all about flipping properties very quickly.

That’s not always true.

In many instances, successful investors have created enormous fortunes by real estate investing over the long term. That is, some of the biggest success stories have bought commercial real estate, marketed it better to increase the vacancy rates, and are generating a large, steady income while building their net worth.

For you, this where you need to clearly outline the types of “product” you’ll be investing in, the length of time involved for each type of real estate, and the proposed exit strategies along each step of the way, with a focus for long-term wealth creation.

The 6th Element – Your Power Team

This is defined by the outsourced members in the real estate investing field who will be the “enablers” for you to start, run, and scale your investment business. People like Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, Real Estate Attorneys, etc go here. Be specific as to why you have chosen these individuals in terms of what value they bring to the table, and how they propose to deliver this value to your business. Always have references (at least two) for each member of your power team

The 7th (Final) Element – Resources & Financial Targets

Now we’re well beyond your Power Team in terms of additional hard and soft resources you’ll require. For example, do you have an investment advisor or real estate mentor to guide you through the growth of your business? Do you need websites and marketing systems to promote your business?

How much money do you expect to generate in the next three months? What do you need to generate a 6 figure bank account and 7 figure real estate gains within 7 months? This final section of your real estate investing business plan shows your existing resource constraints, and profit targets – both short and long term – and how you arrived at these conclusions.

More and more people today are trying their hand at real estate investing which means that more and more people are also seeking real estate investing advice. There are many places from books to courses to seasoned gurus where you can find real estate investing advice, and depending on the type of investing you plan to do all or some of these sources are good places for you to find the real estate investing advice you need to be successful. No matter what type of real estate investing you plan on doing there is some blanket advice that can help you to make the biggest return on your investment.

One of the best pieces of real estate investing advice for any novice investor is to know the difference between speculating and investing. Buying a house or piece of land without much research and hoping or expecting it to rise in value over time is speculating. Most properties will build you equity and increase in value over time if you do noting more than let it sit, but this is not always the case and is why you should always remember this important real estate investing advice, don’t speculate, invest. Buying a property with the intention of making a profit from rent, reselling, or another source is investing. Before you invest, however, there is some more real estate investing advice that you should consider.

No matter how motivated you are, if you are just starting out in the world of real estate investing the best real estate investing advice for you to consider is to start small and close to home. Residential properties are the easiest properties to buy and although they do require you to have knowledge of taxes, fees, and the buying process, the process of buying residential is much easier than getting into commercial real estate, condos, or apartment buildings. You should also try to start your investing career close to your home so that it is easy for you to monitor your investment and learn the ins and outs of the real estate investing business.

There is no shortage of real estate investing advice out there, and if you are just starting out you must be able to discriminate between quality advice and truthful estimates and advice and estimates that are not in your best interest. It is not a good idea to believe everything you hear, especially if you are trying to determine how lucrative a property deal will be. Don’t go off of what a homeowner or realtor says the current and predicted market value of a home is, do your own research about the area to determine this. If you are looking into buying a rental property not all landlords will be honest with their earning and may promise you more than they actually make. Ask for proof such as tax forms to determine how much income a property generates in a year. Not everyone is out to pull one over on you but enough people are that you should always do your own research and thinking.

Today, to be truly successful, you need to have an entire empire. What does this mean? Quite simply, creating a multi-million dollar real estate investing empire from scratch means that you have more than one business opportunity and more than one income stream working for you. These take time and persistence to cultivate and nurture, before your property investment business eventually assumes a life unto its own and grows and scales, becoming more and more profitable, with less time invested in the business by you – the business owner.

As a real estate investor, this can be very important because of the risks associated with real estate investing. If your property investments lag because of a sluggish economy, having a 7 or 8 figure real estate investment empire can ensure that you live very comfortably while the economy recovers.

Even if you are just getting started in real estate investing, initially, you’re best to focus on becoming successful profitably practicing and dominating within one real estate investment niche. For example, in the early days of building out your own 7 or 8 figure real estate investor empire, you may focus on simultaneously closing residential real estate deals. However, you should already be thinking of the day when you expand into commercial real estate or land development as well.

Here are a few quick tips to get those mental juices flowing:

1. Cultivate all contacts — including ones with businesses.

Ask residential tenants and buyers what their businesses are like, and nurture these potentially strategic relationships with occasional cards or e-mails to ensure that when you do expand your millionaire real estate investor empire, you already have a network of potential leads.

2. Another component of building out your millionaire real estate investor empire is to develop media exposure.

Early on in your days as an investor, you should be focusing on building good relationships with your local news outlets. Offer to act as an expert on real estate, or even volunteer to write a free article or two about real estate investing or real estate purchasing. Let reporters know that they can always turn to you for reliable information and interesting quotes and stories. Get to know some reporters and send them story ideas via email when you learn something interesting in the field. By the time your millionaire real estate investor empire expands and you require some free PR, you will have the media contacts necessary to make it happen.