As an owner of many investment properties, I find myself always busy doing renovations and improvements to the properties.  This is not only to get better rental rates from my existing rental stock, but to ensure that they stay in the best shape possible.

During the past week, I have contacted many companies for specific jobs that I have needed to get done.  I had to contact a roofing Riverside RI firm, a flat roofing Riverside RI firm and one that specialized in commercial roofing Riverside RI.

That may seem like a lot of companies, but with the number of buildings that we own, this week ended up being an easy one so far.  Provided everyone shows up when they are supposed to, we might actually get to end the week on a happy note.

With the hot housing market just warming up last summer, we bought a couple of properties to flip.  It was going to be a new experience for us, but we thought that we would be up to the challenge.

The first house was a good opportunity to learn.  One of us had some construction experience, so we consulted him on all the building decisions.  We replaced all of the bathtubs in the home with shower cubicles thinking that it would be a good idea.

It didn’t end up being a good idea at all.  We had a lot of problems selling it as most people expected to see showers in their homes.

But we did learn that electric showers were a welcome addition to homes - we were able to get more money out of each home that we sold.

We are still learning though.  I have to say though that this has been a profitable venture, the most valuable part of the experience is learning how to flip a house properly - it is something that we can duplicate over and over again.

One of the biggest things that has been bothering me about potentially becoming an owner of investment property, is the whole concept of becoming a landlord.  I have never been very handy and I don’t really have the time or desire to learn how to do maintenance.  But, most of the property investors that I know do it all themselves - something that I never want to do.

It wasn’t until I spoke to Bill at a conference that I found my solution.  You see, he is in the same boat as me, and he didn’t want to become a landlord when he bought his first house.  Instead, he looked for solutions at the time and found a property management company that would take care of all the "messy" stuff when it comes to owning an investment property, and he would just collect the checks.

I am going to take his advice, and I have arranged a meeting with a residential property management firm for next week to see what the price is and what is involved.  I may own my first rental property yet!

Okay, it might not be so late, but it is a little bit late to be looking for a bargain.  I guess the thing is, I am looking for a bargain on something that a lot of people wouldn’t look at in a place that most of my friends wouldn’t consider.

You see, I am looking for land for sale in the UK.

Now, that might seem a bit weird, but I heard through the grapevine that it was a good place to invest money.  The fact that there is very limited space there promises that I should get a good return on my investment, but I wanted to make sure that the UK land was as good as I had heard.

So, I have been reading on a bunch of land investment websites to read suggestions on areas, as well as crunching numbers on the properties that I have found that have potential.

The property management company that I work for has recently acquired a client with a large number of office buildings downtown.  We will be in charge of leasing the office space for them and we need to fill the mostly vacant space with paying tenants.

In an effort to fill the spaces, management has conceived the idea that we should have a party on the location, open to businesses in the city that need office space.  It will not only give them a first person look at the location, but will also allow us to have the opportunity to convince them why they need to have an office with us.

Before this party will occur, we are getting a commercial photographer to come in and take pictures of the venue to generate interest for the party.

If this event ends up being the success that we forecast it to be, I think that we will use parties in the future to lease other commercial properties.

I received some good and bad news today.  You see, my realtor called and said that the offer that I had placed on a home we had looked at last week had been accepted, provided that I could get the home inspection tomorrow.

This really wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except that it is Sunday and he just called me ten minutes ago.  My challenge will be to find a home inspector that can basically come look at the house tomorrow, and I feel kind of bad that it will be a last-minute thing for them.

So, I have been looking online for “home inspectors Clearwater” in an attempt to come up with a list of companies to call early tomorrow morning.  I figure the best chance that I have will be to make the phone calls as early as possible in the off chance that I can find a home inspector with free time.

I just hope that everything works out as planned - I just really love the house, but I won’t buy anything without it being inspected first.  Wish me luck!

We have decided that it is time to do some home remodeling.  Our home looks like it came out of the 80s complete with the bad linoleum and ugly carpets.  Even the cupboards scream of a time long past and it is time for a facelift.

We did a search online for “Home Remodeling, Tampa” to see if we could find a company that could help us out with the renovations.  We found a few companies that looked promising and made some phone calls.

Yes we used the “old fashioned” phone.

After talking to a number of the companies, we found one that we were interested in doing business with.  They will be stopping by early next week to go over our plans, and then they will get the work underway.

It will be nice to see the completed work, though I know that we are a few weeks off from that.  Still, we are taking steps in the right direction.

I have closed a chapter in my life and I am finally ready to start a new one. About seven months ago, my husband and young son were killed in an automobile accident, and I have spent these past seven months in a bit of a fog. I am now coming out of that and am getting ready to move on with my life.

If I had it my way, I would spend the rest of my life grieving my loss, but I still have two little boys who need me to be their mom. So, today, I will go out and look at property for sale. I figure if we are going to try and be strong and make a fresh start, then we need to do it with new and fresh surroundings.

I decided to sell the house and buy something new. Something that would not be a constant reminder of all that we had lost, but would, instead, be a place for healing and rebuilding of the relationships that we still do have. I am so thankful and blessed to still be the mom of these two wonderfully crazy little boys and I want to live up to every expectation that they have of me. We have survived this far and, because of this, I know we will be okay.

When we were first getting into buying real estate for profit, I did a lot of research on how to be a good landlord. I figured that the better landlord I was, the better the tenants would be and vice versa.  I downloaded a bunch of paperwork and e-books from the Internet. I also talked to some friends of mine who had been doing it for awhile.

One important part of making sure that you get good tenants is to do a thorough job of tenant referencing. I wanted to go deeper into this than just calling the numbers that the perspective tenant wrote on their application.

Another great tip that has helped me to get good paying tenants is to do tenant credit checks.  If their credit is bad, or they have failed to pay their bills on time, usually you can count on them to not pay their rent on time either.

Sure these two techniques help you weed out the bad candidates, but they still slip through once in awhile.

My mom works at the bank and her job is dealing mainly with mortgage loans. She loves what she does and especially loves being able to help families get into their first homes. I, however, think the job would be boring and tedious. I have always been more of a hands on type person.

That is why I decided, for a career, that I was going to be the person who finds all of the best mortgage leads. I had learned a lot from my mom, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps a little bit, but still be uniquely me in my job.

I learned all there was to know on different types of mortgages, such as FHA loans and that type of thing. I wanted to be able to help people without just sitting behind a desk all day, because that is just not me.

I now have a great little business and it is definitely the real estate place in our small city. I am trying to talk my mom into going into business with me, but she is pretty settled where she is and has been there a long time.