Rentable vs. Usable Square Feet

Rentable vs. Usable Square Feet

The first step in appraising a commercial property is to determine the total rentable square feet. This may seem like a genuine calculation; unfortunately, it does not end up being very simple. This is specifically true for multi-tenant buildings.

To determine the rent in maximum office leases includes both usable square feet along with tenant’s proportionate share of common areas in the construction.

What is a rentable and usable square feet?

When estimating the size of a space for lease, start with the measurement of usable square feet.  This is the area of a building occupied by the tenant. It is the calculation of the space available for only the tenant’s use and is not accessible by other tenants. It is measured from the portion of the exterior walls and windows to the middle of walls.

Once the usable square feet are established, a common area factor is added to the measurement. Common Area Factor is the shared space on tenant’s floor and the areas of a space that services the whole property like lobbies, access corridors, public restrooms, public restrooms, conference centres, fitness centres, and loading areas. Stairs, elevator shafts, and utility runs, is not calculated within common area factor. Architects use a method referred to as Building Owners and Managers Association International to calculate the common area factor.

Rentable square feet is a combination of usable square feet and common area factor. This is the square feet the tenant actually pays rent on and should be studied when comparing different buildings.

The commercial real estate advisor provides you with the necessary guidance and ensures the best deal possible with the highest value per usable square foot.

Home Ownership Advisor and Their Role

Homeownership advisors are of highest quality, certified, trained homeownership professionals in the state. They provide families and people with the guidelines they need to make smart choices to attain their personal goals, whether purchasing a home, being financially stable and avoiding foreclosure.

What Homeownership advisor does to help buyers?

• He helps you to determine if you are ready to purchase.
• He helps you to calculate how many homes you can afford.
• He reviews your credit report for you.
• He provides information on existing mortgage loan programs.
• He gets you connected to down payments and closing cost support.
• He personalizes a plan to get you into homeownership.
• He maintains and updates the customer records while and after every counseling period in customer tracking database, individual files, and comply with all guidelines for confidentiality of files and records.
• He assists with organizing home buyer workshops including course content delivery and group facilitation.
• He ensures that measures of quality control are followed and customer satisfaction should be a priority of counseling program.
• He assists with the implementation and development of a complete outreach and marketing plan for recruiting partners and customers for the program.
• He assists other employees with allotted special projects and tasks considered to operate a successful homeownership program.

The high-quality homebuyer counseling makes a difference in your long-term success. Informed customers are successful homeowners. The counseling provides you with personalized resources and information.  These homebuyer counselors are called Homeownership Advisors and they are members of the Homeownership Advisors Network.

3 Real Estate Problems that need a Good Lawyer

It is not just the buyer and seller in a real estate property deal. It is an affair that needs other important people like property inspector, an agent and lender and most importantly a good real estate lawyer.

 The legal advisory is indispensable throughout the property deal. There might be issues that you may overlook while buying the property but later may grow up to be a pain. Such issues demand a good legal knowledge as well as experience, here are 3 problems that essentially require a good real estate lawyer:

1.    Property  or Liability

Often there’ve been cases where the property sold had some unpaid mortgage which later became the buyer’s problem. A property under mortgage debt is not only a painful deal but might be lost to the bank if the debt is not paid. This is where a real estate lawyer comes as a savior.

2.    What’s Hiding There?

Latent Defects or in simpler terms, hidden expenses are another problem that the buyers face post buying the property. Defects like leaky roofs, molds, pests etc. may become a headache and may not just be tackled by a good inspection. A legal expertise is necessary to ensure that you have all hidden corners covered.

3.    Contract Flaws

The contracts for the deal might be tricky to understand. What the seller tells may not exactly be what the contract says and thus you need a good lawyer to know that all the cases and terms are well stated in the contract

So, a good real estate lawyer saves you the stress of extensive research over legal matter and makes your deal smooth.

Perks of photography in real estate

Photography is the first and foremost rule in real estate marketing strategies. Most of the buyers and sellers look for houses via the internet and the one thing they look for is high (preferably HD) quality pictures of the properties.

Real estate agents take a few pictures but with a normal camera. In the era of high definition DSLR pictures if you click with simple ones then you got to leave a bad impression. Spacious rooms seem dark, unexciting and small, windows offering awe quality views becomes dull walls under white light. In total, the masterpiece looks like some strange, dreary construction.

Some importance of photography is:

• Online sites with professional photography account for about 60% more views than just normal clicks.
•   High priced homes like above $200,000 are brought when advertised with professional images.
•   Clients lean on the trust that their consignment is in responsible hands, so professional photography of your property ensures a good impression.
•   You can command a higher price for the property depending on the pictures as it attracts more customers.

·       The goal is to make the buyer want to view that particular property more than the others, and convince him to visualize himself getting in before entering through the front door.

·       To add photography means making your way above the competition in real estate listings.

Good photography draws a buyer in and bad counterpart drives them away. A professional photographer is skilled to display a property at its best. The passion is to ensure these mansions look as wonderful in print as they do in reality.

Websites in Real Estates

All you need is to market yourself effectively. As the time is passing by, the focus of marketing is gradually shifting from outbound to inbound. You have to appear online either through your own website or content marketing or through any social media to get connected to your target client in real time.

A real estate agent makes you understand the picture of real estates and how to conduct your business, so agents need to be in the field constantly via websites.

Reasons to build your own website:

·       To become a client resource –Create a website with valuable resources about you; the agent and the services you provide.

·       Brand yourself –Create your online brand as it is a direct reflection of your goals and authority, someone whom clients can trust fully.

·       Stay current – According to National Association of Realtors, almost 96% customers find properties via the internet. So it’s important to remain available such that potential clients can reach you anywhere anytime.

·       Grow your personal brand – Personal branding is important to set yourself apart from other competitors.

·       Become the ‘go-to’ website for clients –Add tools like; information on loan programs, home buyer tips, MLS listings and mortgage calculators to make your website the one place client won’t miss.

·       Networking through blogs – Create blogs to attract your audience.

Virtual office website (VOW) is a real estate search site that allows the public to search properties approved by MLS listing in a given area under conditions.

What Role a Real Estate Agent Plays ?

A real estate agent is a license holder who represents seller and purchaser in the transactions of real estates. Most of this agents work for real estate realtor or broker; who are well trained and has got extra certificates. A real estate agent entirely works on commissions. Therefore their income depends on how well they can assist their clients and handles closed transactions.

Difference between an agent, broker, and realtor-

A real estate agent is also referred to as real estate associates. He passes all the required real estate classes and acquires a professional position with a license.

A real estate agent is a realtor when he is the member of the National Association of Realtors. To be a member an agent has to follow the code of ethics and abide by the standards of the association.

A real estate broker is someone who works as an independent agent and can also keep other agents at work under him.

What are the duties of a real estate agent?

The agent performs various duties depending who are he working for; seller or buyer. If he is working for a seller then he advises how to price a property for sale, gives last minute tips on how to boost the price and initiate a speedy sale. If he works for a buyer then he searches for properties to match buyer’s wish list and price range. To help the buyer, the agent looks for previous sale data to know the fair offer for a certain property. 

How to put an Effective Real Estate Advertisement?

Investing in real estate is a big decision. For most people it could be a once in a lifetime investment which can be for their home. Thus, as a seller, if you need to persuade the buyer to invest his hard earned money into your property. These are some points that you should consider for putting up an advertisement for your property:

• Who is it for? : There’s a number of ways your property can be used. It can be a house, and office or anything else. Thus, you must know what kind of audience you are targeting so that the advertisement is oriented to them.
• Start with the Title: It might sound silly but an attractive title can affect the number of readers you’re ad will attract. After all it is the first thing that the reader will set his eye upon.
• Highlight What’s Best: After the title, the next point you need to take care of is telling the “main attractions” of your property. It might be a kitchen with latest design or a decent yet luxurious looking bathroom. Highlighting the best features will attract the readers more.
• What Else? : There is additional information that can attract you some more readers. For e.g. there’s a hospital or school nearby. A map can also be provided to help the readers reach your property.  
• Whom to contact? : There must be a point of contact for the reader to reach you. It can be your mobile number, your email-address or both.

CRM: The Real Estate Business Automation

Customer Relationship Management or CRM has become an essential part of business in today’s times. It is a tool that keeps the customer record so that the firm can use the data later to make important decisions that will help in expanding the customer pool. CRM helps a company to maintain its relations with both old and new customers by knowing their interests.

As far as Real Estate is concerned, CRM is very helpful in planning their sales strategies on the basis of the customer data recorded. Real Estate is a large market where the customer data is huge. Thus, generally CRM is used online to provide more access and greater storage. It helps the real estate companies to form a step by step plan to reach their goals efficiently in less time.
Talking about the sales, CRM is very effective in planning the schemes for marketing campaigns. These campaigns help in better sale for the company. Basically the tool records store the customer data like their conversations that may be important for the company. This data in turn helps in understanding the company’s best interests and hence strategizing the marketing according to them. In addition to that it also helps the company to come up with offers that might interest the customers hence increasing the customer pool.

Thus, CRM tool plays an important role in big companies like the real estate where the customer pool is large. It is very effective in the automation of the company’s working making it more efficient and customer oriented.