Wanna Buy My House?
Issue #2126
- WEALTHY: An income-producing investment the housing bubble hasn’t touched (Toby Unwin)
- HEALTHY: A total body workout in 20 minutes (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Winston Churchill on our relationship to our buildings
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Marketing novices, resist the overwhelming urge to rely on gimmicks (Michael Masterson)
- Don’t include an e-mail address when writing your e-mails! (David Cross)
- It’s Fun to Know… about defunct TV transmission techniques
- Add "exegete" to your vocabulary
You Already Know Fortunes Are Made from Trading. The Question Is: WHAT Are "They" Trading Most? (And It’s Not Shares or Commodities!)
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"We shape our buildings: thereafter they shape us."
Winston Churchill
Wanna Buy My House?
By Toby Unwin
If you know anything about real estate, you know that residential sellers are in big trouble. Some homeowners are getting downright desperate to unload their properties. And instead of wanting to buy more, most investors are looking to unload rental properties that are bleeding red ink every month.
You might be wondering just how the residential market got into this situation.
A few years ago, when the stock market was going down and mortgage rates were cheap, people started buying more property. Which was a good idea. But, as a result, real estate prices jumped up and people believed they would continue to do so. Now that was a bad idea.
Buyers grew accustomed to assuming that you could buy a property pre-construction and it would automatically be worth 30 percent more upon completion. It never occurred to them that if the profits were so sure, builders would only sell the completed houses.
It got to the point where just about everyone you’d run into would tell you they were quitting their job to become a realtor – a sure sign that a market top was imminent. It was a bubble built on emotion. And when it burst, lots of people got hurt.
The same thing did NOT happen with commercial real estate. Sure, commercial property increased along with residential property. But it didn’t go up quite as much and nowhere near as wildly. And it’s not dropping.
Here’s the thing. An investment property is not valued on how nice the kitchen is, if it’s in a good school district, or any other touchy-feely stuff like that. An investor wants to know one thing: "How much money will I make from this?" That’s all. If it will cost him more in financing and expenses than he will get in rent, he won’t buy it. Simple as that.
That’s the thing with income property. You know how much you’ll make from a property before you buy it. And it moves in different cycles than residential real estate.
Why Commercial Real Estate Is a Great Investment – Even When Residential Isn’t
The value of a commercial property is generally based on the amount of income it brings in. If the income doesn’t rise, the price of the property doesn’t go up much. The flip side is also true. If the income doesn’t fall, the value of the property usually doesn’t fall much either.
Why? The seller knows you’re only going to buy the property as an investment, not because it’s pretty or near your friend’s house. It has to be a deal, or you won’t be interested. They tell you right up front how much the property makes in gross rent (total cash coming in) and NOI (net operating income – the profit you’re left with after expenses).
Essentially, buying a commercial property is buying an income stream. So it makes sense that the gyrations of the residential market have little effect on it.
Right now, for instance, Miami apartment condos are in a major slump – along with the rest of the South Florida housing market. But booming international trade has made for a healthy warehouse market in Miami, including a booming market for condo warehouses. Similarly, office, industrial, and retail space are strong in many of the same parts of the country that are suffering major slowdowns in the housing market.
Seek and Ye Shall Find
Commercial properties are listed on the Board of Realtors’ Multiple Listing Service (MLS), but you’ll find a much wider selection and more extensive information on websites that are dedicated to commercial property. Two of the biggest are Re3w.com and Loopnet.com.
Both sites have listings in all commercial categories, including apartments, from all over the country. Loopnet.com has many listings that can be viewed for free, with perhaps 20 percent or so reserved for paid subscribers. Re3w.com is a paid service that can add value to Loopnet’s free searches, and it offers a 30-day trial. Browse this site to begin to familiarize yourself with commercial properties. You can look for properties in your hometown or in your favorite growth market.
You’ll see a few ratios mentioned. Don’t let them throw you off. They’re not that complicated. You’ll also find "net income" mentioned a lot. That’s the cash the property produces after expenses but before income taxes or debt service.
The most commonly mentioned term is "cap rate," short for capitalization rate. That’s simply the net income divided by the purchase price. All other things being equal, the higher the cap rate, the better. However, all other things are usually not equal. So cap rates depend on the type of the property and its condition.
A high-end apartment complex being sold as a condo conversion might be offered at a 5 percent cap, while a small complex in a working-class neighborhood might go for a 12 percent cap. A well-maintained retirement mobile-home park might go for a 7 percent cap, while a low-income mobile-home park could go for a 20 percent cap.
If you could put up with the aggravation of running it, or know someone capable of managing it for you, the low-income property could be a good deal. If not, you’d want to set your sights on a nicer property, even though it would not be as profitable.
The best way to get comfortable with these and other key commercial real estate ideas is to surf commercial sites and look at the offerings. Do this at least as often as you surf for residential properties… and you may find yourself quickly transitioning into a real estate baron of the commercial kind.
[Ed. Note: Toby Unwin is an active commercial real estate investor and author of the best-selling ETR Real Estate home study course "One Deal From Retirement." In a reservations-only teleseminar this Wednesday, August 22, Toby will reveal how a single commercial property deal can provide you with enough equity and cash flow to retire permanently from the 9 to 5 grind. To secure your spot today, click here.]
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Dear Michael Masterson: 3 Direct-Marketing Questions
BC recently wrote in with three direct-marketing questions that he was hoping I could help him with.
"I know back-end sales are important," BC said, "that discount offers should be used at a minimum, and that you can’t extend every offer you make to your file with a ‘due to the overwhelming response’ letter. But I’d like to know more specifics.
"First, how much of our business should be focused on back-end vs. front-end sales?
"Second, when should you draw the line on discounting products. If my marketing manager just ran a close-out offer of an old edition of one of our programs and then the next week wants to offer a discount on something else, should I stop her?
"And, finally, are there any hard and fast guidelines for knowing when you should and shouldn’t extend an offer? I know our ‘last chance’ reminders often double our sales, but what about extensions? Is there any kind of rule of thumb for those?"
Dear BC,
I am not going to give you specific advice unless you pay me a million dollars to do so. And even if you were willing to do that, you’d have to wait in line. But I will give you some general advice that should be helpful to many other ETR readers too.
You are asking appropriate questions for someone who is a novice at marketing… but they are questions that betray a misunderstanding of how the relationship between business and customer should really work.
First, the back end is the easy money – and so it is tempting to spend a lot of time there. But your business will die without an ongoing stream of new customers coming in on the front end. Your best ideas and best copywriters should be used for acquiring new customers. Anyone can do back-end sales – but you need to be clever to do front-end sales.
Second, discounts, coupons, countdowns, etc. are all essentially gimmicks. They work, but they work best once in a while. If these are the only ideas your people are coming up with, they are lazy or not trying hard enough.
The core essential selling proposition has to be strong enough to stand on its own. Good marketing is not about gimmicks and trickery. It’s not about clever ways to persuade your buyer to take an action that benefits you… not him. Good marketing is about doing what’s best for your customer. All fake urgencies and false deadlines erode the value of your relationship with your customers. You shouldn’t do that. You should make everything true and transparent.
That’s a big answer that won’t help you now. But maybe this will…
When you find yourself asking about using last-chance or countdown offers, it is because your products are not good enough. If they were good enough, they would be very specifically geared to your customers and they would be, of necessity, somewhat limited. Thus limited, you would have genuine and true reasons to have limits and deadlines.
With genuine limits and deadlines, everything is transparent. For instance, when you do put a genuine deadline on a sale, and it is hard and fast, make sure you tell your customers about it. "Sorry, some people tried to get in on Sunday, but they were turned away because the deadline was Saturday night." Your advertising copy is stronger when it is honest, and your customers will sense this.
What you need to do is create better, more specific, more topical, and more time-sensitive products.
When I was a blue belt in Jiu Jitsu, I used to ask my teacher, Marcus Aurelio, all sorts of questions about various moves and holds and offenses and defenses. For a while, he patiently answered my questions, giving me the specific answers I wanted but that he knew I could not employ properly because I didn’t understand the principles behind those moves. Finally, he tired of my questions and said to me, "There are many questions in Jiu Jitsu, but only one answer: Training."
That is an answer that applies to you, too. If you stay in business long enough and keep trying to do better, you will eventually learn for yourself what I’ve just explained as a general principle: There are many questions about marketing but only one answer. Find out how to better serve your customer.
If you are smart, you will realize that I’ve just given you more than a million dollars worth of advice for free.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Michael Masterson and his team of business-building and marketing experts will be revealing their strategies for getting a brand-new business of the ground ... and making an existing business grow like crazy. Reserve your spot at this fall's Info Marketing Bootcamp - Making a Fast Fortune on the "Other Side" of the Internet - today. Have a question for Michael? Write to him at AskMichael@ETRfeedback.com.]
Why Important E-mails Should Be Anonymous
By David Cross
Just the other day, I sent an article to ETR’s Managing Editor, Suzanne Richardson. At least, I thought I had. But I’d accidentally hit "Send" instead of "Save," shooting off an e-mail that didn’t have the intended attachment. This is just one example – and a harmless one at that – of why you should wait to add the recipient’s e-mail address to your e-mail until you’ve proofread it and you are sure it is ready.
It’s easy to inadvertently hit "Send." And if the e-mail is not spell-checked or – worse – contains notes, unstructured thoughts, or even expletives, you might find it difficult to repair the damage that’s been done.
You could even take this cautious approach a step further and e-mail yourself a copy first. That way, you can make sure it’s exactly what you wish the recipient to see.
[Ed. Note: David Cross, one of the business-building experts who will be working with Michael Masterson at this year's Info Marketing Bootcamp, is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Inc. in Baltimore.]
Dethroning the "King" of Exercise
Cardio (a.k.a. aerobic exercise) is no longer the King of Exercise. Research now shows that you can lose fat, improve your heart health, increase your quality of life, and reduce your risk of disability with resistance training.
Sure, you can get some benefits by using machines at your local health club. But total-body "functional" exercises (like squats, push-ups, and bodyweight rows) are even better. And resistance training doesn’t mean barbell bench pressing with heavy weights. You can use dumbbell free weights or a variety of creative bodyweight exercises at home.
An extra benefit of bodyweight or free-weight exercises is that they give you the ability to complete a total-body workout in less time. For example, if you do a bodyweight or dumbbell squat, you will replace the need for the leg extension and leg curl machines in a health club. Push-ups or dumbbell chest presses replace the chest fly and triceps extension machines. And chin-ups replace the need for machine-aided pulldowns and biceps curls.
In three or four "functional" moves, you can complete a total-body workout. Do each exercise two to three times for 8 to 12 repetitions per set. Rest one minute between sets. You can do your exercises in a circuit (all exercises done back to back without rest) or in supersets (two exercises done back to back without rest) to cut even more time from your workout. Aim for three total-body strength-training workouts per week.
[Ed. Note: Craig Ballantyne is an expert consultant for Men's Health magazine and a contributing writer for ETR's brand-new natural health e-letter. Every week, he and our team of medical, fitness, and health experts will give you practical strategies and real-world scientific discoveries that can help you melt off the pounds, pack on muscle, and eliminate the underlying causes of disease.
And if you're looking to quickly step into the body you have always wanted with just three workouts each week, check out Craig's fat-loss system, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss.]
It’s Fun to Know: Defunct TV Transmission Techniques
Imagine a network of airplanes equipped with TV and FM radio transmitters patrolling the country, broadcasting sitcoms and talk shows from coast to coast. Stratovision, which was tested for several years in the late 1940s, was intended as a way to bring programming to small towns and rural areas out of range of big city transmission towers. However, delays during the FCC approval process and the installation of an underground cable network by competitors forced Stratovision’s creators, the Glenn L. Martin Company and Westinghouse, to drop the project in 1950.
(Source: Air and Space Magazine)
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Word to the Wise: Exegete
An "exegete" (EK-suh-jeet) – from the Greek for "to interpret" – is a person who explains difficult parts of written works.
Example (as used by Adolf Deissmann in Paul, A Study in Social and Religious History): "He [Paul the Apostle] is far more a man of prayer, a witness, a confessor and a prophet, than a learned exegete and close thinking scholastic."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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