Austin Real Estate Resources

If it's time to fill a vacancy for one of your rentals, you will want to get the maximum marketing exposure possible. Chances are, that if you are reading this article online, you already understand the value of the internet. Three lines of description in your local print newspaper is no longer enough to get the phone ringing with enough interested renters in most markets.

With the widespread availability of the internet and the ease of accessing information on it, most of your potential tenants expect much more than a brief description of the raw data of their future dwelling – i.e. beds, baths, square footage and rent. Instead of spending all day on the weekend driving around looking at potential rental units, most of your tenant pool will prefer to browse through full color photographs of available rentals from the comfort of their favorite computer station. Many internet sites even offer virtual tours of available units, so to be competitive in our current marketplace, you need to make sure that you have the marketing out to reach all of these internet-surfing apartment hunters.

In addition to posting ads with full color photographs on popular sites like Craigslist,

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I want to share with you some information about a property in Austin located at 9101 Magna Carta Loop #19. This particular property is for sale and was submitted by one of our researchers, but I'll be using it as an example. If you want to run your own full investor analysis on this property, you can do that using our Offer Generator.

Let's look at this 4 bedroom, 2.50 bathroom property located at 9101 Magna Carta Loop #19 that has an asking price of $158,000.

As you can see from the table above, if you know what a typical Austin property sells for on a price per square foot basis, you can quickly use the information provided above as a starting point for making your offer. Click on the Price Paid above to start your own analysis on this property using our Offer Generator investing tool.

As you look at various deals that we analyze on Austin Real Estate Resources you will notice that not all deals are good cash flow candidates. Some are equity deals, which frequently need significant repairs. Find out how to make money investing in these types of deals through Jassen's audio CD: Flipping Houses: Buy, Fix, and Flip.

Sincerely,

James

Unless you own all of your rental properties free and clear, chances are that you have some escrow accounts with your lenders. These escrow accounts are fed every month from your mortgage payments and this money is supposed to be used by the bank to pay your annual property taxes and insurance premiums. While it is tempting to let this system run on autopilot, you really shouldn't rely on your bank to get this right. Banks do make mistakes, some more frequently than others. While I personally may just have bad luck, I have had more than my fair share of challenges with different banks messing up my insurance payments over the years.

Of all the bizarre things that I have seen happen to my escrow accounts over the years, recently one of my lenders paid someone else's premium from my escrow account. Needless to say, after receiving telephone confirmation that this issue has been resolved, I am monitoring my escrow account very closely to make sure that the premium is returned to my account.

Most of the time though, when your bank messes up, it is just an annoyance that requires some extra time on the phone.

Here are some of the things that can go wrong when your bank doesn't pay your insurance premiums:

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Here's another Austin property that was submitted by a user that we will use as a teaching tool for our Austin, Texas Real Estate Resources real estate investors. The property address, in case you want to look into it in more detail is: 5934 Hammermill, Austin, TX 78744.

Let's take a closer look at some calculations for this 4 bedroom, 2.00 bathroom property located at 5934 Hammermill that has an asking price of $79,900.

As you can see from the table above, if you know what a typical Austin property sells for on a price per square foot basis, you can quickly use the information provided above as a starting point for making your offer. Click on the Price Paid above to start your own analysis on this property using our Offer Generator investing tool.

Do you need to find more motivated sellers in Austin? Could your day as an investor be spent more productively? If you're like the rest of us, then the answer to both of these questions is probably YES! That's why I'm confident that you will hear some valuable tips in Jassen's audio CD: Back to Back to Back Motivated Seller Appointments. Learn stategies to keep yourself busy doing the most profitable part of this business: meeting with very motivated sellers who have great deals!

Keep on investing Austin,

James

At our monthly real estate investor meeting last week (here in Northern Colorado), I discussed with the group my preferred strategy for getting a huge marketing advantage to sell houses quickly for full price. This is the strategy I recommend BEFORE deciding to drop the price on your properties. It is especially effective with low interest rates.

Here's how it works. Let's say you are trying to sell a $200,000 home and you'd consider dropping the price $10,000 and selling it for $190,000 to get it sold quickly. Rather than dropping the price $10,000, you might instead consider

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