Commercial Property Agents – What Are Your Property Management Fees Today?

A real estate agent that is to be managing a commercial or retail property will need to cover operational costs and make a profit. That is where the fees charged are so important. It might sound a bit crazy, but some agencies never make a profit from commercial or retail property management; that is because they do not understand what they are really to be doing and do not set up the systems to support the special skill sets. Commercial or retail property management is quite special; the simple rules of residential real estate do not apply.

Many real estate agencies can also regard the property management service in the office as the ‘poor cousin’ to the sales and leasing division. Whilst that concept may work in residential property management, the same does not apply in and with commercial or retail property. Commercial and retail property management is just far too specialised and complex to be a ‘poor cousin’ to anything.

If you run a real estate agency and want to start a commercial property management division, then here are the basic rules:

Employ good people for the commercial and retail services you are to provide. They need intelligence and drive to specialise.

Gather the commercial and retail market knowledge and trends so you understand what is required to build your division and business.

Make sure that everyone that you employ on commercial or retail property really understands what they are doing, and get them trained to pick up on any shortcomings.

Charge reasonable fees that are reflecting the complex and special tasks of the property management job
So what are the fees for managing commercial or retail property today? To answer the question you should first find out what other agents are charging locally for the management services. You will soon see those that are ‘cheap’ with their fees; the reality is that they do not take the tasks of the job seriously. Low fees do not apply if you are a serious and professional commercial agent. In saying that, it is necessary to supply excellent services to the clients that you serve to justify your fee.

Here are some fees to consider in providing your property management services to commercial and retail property:

A base management fee should be set for managing the property on a day to day basis. That will include rent collection, income and expenditure management, tenant and lease management, and maintenance management. You should also include an allocation of time for reporting to and communicating with all the tenants and the landlord, given the demands and operation of the property.

A fee should be set for negotiating the various types of lease rent reviews when and if they fall due. Given that the rent reviews are of different types, it pays to set fees for each type. Market rent reviews are the most time consuming and should attract the higher fees.

A fee for negotiating new leases and renewals of leases with sitting tenants should be set. It is common to negotiate leases with your sitting tenants.

New leases with businesses seeking to occupy your vacant space in the property will also attract its own fee. This will be higher than the fees that you set with your sitting tenants, as more work is required.

Set an hourly fee for special tasks that are outside of normal management duties. This can be out of hour’s property attendance, court attendance, project management, and business planning or budgeting of the property once per year.
As a general observation, retail property is far more demanding on the property manager’s time given the nature of the tenancy mix and the operations of the property. Take care when setting a fee for a retail property management and give due regard to your office and staff costs.

So how much profit should you make in running your commercial or retail property management division? The answer is about 30% to 40% on top of your gross operational costs of running the division. When you know this number, setting the other fees is not a problem.

There may be other fees for you to consider in addition to the main ones above, so be aware of what the property needs in daily management, and what the local property market is doing. Do not discount your property management fees to win the business; a quality service requires a fair and reasonable fee.

How To Succeed At Online Product Creation The Easy Way

Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.

Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.

Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.

Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.

Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.

Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.

Home Based Business Ideas – Change Your Future By Starting A Business At Home

If you’ve ever thought about working from home then there are many different home based business ideas available to you out there but it can be a little scary to make that jump; the intention of this article is to take your mindset to the right place to allow you to explore this possibility.First of all let’s touch on the different types of home based business ideas that are available to you. Essentially they fit into 7 unique categories each based around a different way of making money so let’s list them out here:1. Advertising
2. Services
3. Subscriptions
4. Products
5. Commissions
6. Licensing
7. Being a BankWhichever of the home based business ideas you decide to go with it will be fundamentally based on one of the above models but in this article I just want to cover the most common one linked with home based business ideas and that is services.Home Based Business ServicesIn most of our lives we offer a service to someone and in exchange they pay us money to do so. We tend to refer to this as work and unfortunately it’s usually something we don’t like doing so how do you break the cycle and take back control of your life?Well one of the more common ways nowadays is to start your own services business from home. This can be a life changing moment because suddenly you start to see your ‘work’ not as work at all but something you bounce out of bed for with a smile on your face, imagine that. The first thing to do however is to decide which of all those different home based business ideas would be your calling and start to create a plan, a road map if you like to get you there. The following is just a small list of the many varied home based business ideas you could look at:1. Teaching from home (piano, academic, whatever your passion)
2. Web design
3. Writing articles for Internet marketers
4. Updating various social media for online marketers
5. Transcribing audio
6. Translation services
7. Scoring / editing films or shows (very achievable from home believe it or not)
8. Coaching (Skype is becoming ever more popular and gives you global potential)
9. Cooking (you can setup your own home cooking business)
10. Home nursery / child careNow think what you really love doing and before long you will find the idea that is right for you. I can’t help you with your decision but I certainly can and will help you plan your journey.Getting Started-Making That Leap Of FaithOne of the hardest parts of any journey is the beginning and you are bound to have worries and concerns about making the change. Let’s be frank here, you are probably going to leave a stable (albeit boring) job working for someone else and become in control of your own destiny. This means leaving behind security and walking into the unknown. Now this can be a scary experience but it’s also exciting and that should be your focus. The key to making the right start is to focus on the reasons why you are changing. Never lose sight of the goal, your ‘why’, as this will be the fuel for your vehicle throughout.Procrastination Is The Lock, Daily Action Is The KeyEinstein once said that the 8th wonder of the world was compound interest and although he was referring to money the exact same concept applies to time. The key to unlock your procrastination door is daily action and this works for home based business ideas just the same as for money. By doing a little every single day your business is going to soar but there are two caveats here. Firstly you need to take action EVERY day without exception, don’t miss even one single day. Make it a habit and you will slowly join the ranks of the highly effective people out there. Secondly, you need to be constantly reviewing, evaluating and then redrafting your goals and targets. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly it’s very easy to ease off the gas when you approach your target, a lot of us have trouble achieving closure on them and so by constantly pushing those targets forward you are always challenging yourself so that you never get complacent. Secondly, it helps you keep a regular track on your reason for doing what you’re doing, your ‘why’ as we called it before. This will stop you having your head in the sand and allow every day to feel fresh and new.