Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Thankful for an Awful Year: Next Top 2 Business Takeaways from 2009 (Part 2)

“I thwink… 2010 will be a treeemendous year… I mean, it’s gotta, just Gotta (with a capital “G”) be better than this one… you know what I’m sayin’? Hey, honey, pass me another glass…” (Drunken Charlotte business owner bypassing the shot of hemlock for some more red wine)

“The MacArthur Foundation gave out its annual genius awards. This year’s awards went to a journalist, a mental health scientist, and a couple who sold their house three years ago.” (Conan O’Brien from The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien)

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light.” (Ralph Blane)

In last “Charlotte Property Management Weekly’s” episode, I discussed the first two takeaways from businesses looking to survive this tough economic environment. This article will focus on the other top two business adjustments I’ve seen businesses take in 2009. Without further ado, they are:

1. Revenue hedging became important. By this, I mean that business models adapted. Let’s look at real estate. People need to live somewhere, right? If they are not buying and selling homes, they’ll be renting. Businesses made sure they were in position to benefit no matter what their potential customers chose to do.

2. Cash was promoted from “King” to “High and Mighty Emperor.” Before banks completely shut off the loan faucet, forward-looking businesses took the maximum out of their lines of credit and put the cash into interest-bearing accounts; their cost of accessing capital was the interest spread between the borrowed money and the short-term certificate of deposits. Smart move! Banks cut everyone else’s lines of credit to tighten their balance sheets. So what did businesses do so they would have sufficient working capital to pay people?

Small business became like big business. They played with their accounts payable (paid their vendors later) and accounts receivable (provided incentives to customers to get paid earlier). What does this mean? Here are examples:

· Accounts payable: You pay your vendors an average of $1K/day and wait 15 days to pay invoices. However, if you started paying invoices in 20 days, you would now have $5K more in your bank account (5 days X $1K/day = $5K).
· Accounts receivable: You take in $2K/day in revenue and your customers pay you in 30 days on average. If you can get them to pay you in 27 days, then you would add $6K to your bank account balance (3 days X $2K = $6K).

It has been said that 90% of all businesses fail for lack of cash flow. Take these steps to stay in the game. And be thankful that the tough economy, though presently painful, ultimately makes your business stronger (think of how tired the Karate Kid was washing all of Mr. Miyagi’s cars)! When economic times get better, you will be very thankful (think a beaten-down Daniel-Son taking down Johnny Lawrence with the “Crane Kick” to win the All Valley Karate Tournament!)!

Thank you for your readership and I look forward to dishing on more of our business issues in 2010. Have a wonderful holiday!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company”specializing in rent-to-own (lease options) and rent-to-sell homes. You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://Twitter.com/BDFRealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.RentToSell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Thankful for an Awful Year: Top 2 Business Takeaways from 2009 (Part 1)

“Oh… Deck the halls with boughs of holly (picked for free from the yard), fa la la la la, la la, la, la… ‘Tis the season to (fake) be(ing) jolly, fa la la la la, la la, la, la… (“Unthankful” Charlotte Business Owner)

“…give thanks in all circumstances…” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

“Left a good job in the city
Working for the man every night and day
And I never lost one minute of sleep
Worryin' 'bout the way things might have been”
(Proud Mary by Credence Clearwater Revival)

Wow! It’s been a tough year for traditional real estate brokerage. In Charlotte, the year-over-year statistics for closings and home prices have gone down every month (except this past month when closings were up 1%- woohoo!). Many of the people who left their jobs to become Realtors and contributed to the real estate boom are now wondering what they were thinking. The same can be said of business owners who took the leap and are struggling to make payroll every week.

When I’ve talked to other business owners prior to this year, I would always hear about how “great” things are. Things are “great”, sales are “great”, “employees are great” (this is the first clue that they are lying), my wife thinks I’m doing “great” (second clue), and have you been to “the club” recently? Unfortunately, I have no idea what “the club” is. I try to pull the Groucho Marx “I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member” line and then try to change the subject. That’s always followed with “Who the heck is Groucho Marx? Is he a member of the club too?”

Now, things are very different. “Brett, I’m not making any money.” “This economy %&**#!!” (meaning “not great”) “Are you going to finish those?” Entrepreneurs are eternal optimists but I suppose that can only go on for so long. Scraping by every month is tough and the business lines of credit that provided some comfort have been cut, bagged, and appear on the back of milk cartons.

But like all negative things, there are silver linings. Tough times make businesses adapt and strengthen. For this we should be thankful! If “pain is weakness leaving the body” then the same can be said of financial struggles for a business. When money is tight, you’ve got to be creative to improve (and survive!). The top two business improvements I’ve seen as a result of this economy are (drum roll please):

1. The elimination of unnecessary fixed costs. These were much more than anyone thought. Old assumptions on this were challenged: With technology improvements, do employees need to work out of an office all the time? Any of the time? Do I need to pay salespeople before they sell anything? What can be outsourced to make it a variable expense? What costs can be shifted away from an employee to (much cheaper) technology?

2. The return of “return on investment”. Our old friend, ROI, made a comeback and it was brutal. If an expense wasn’t generating any revenue, it was eliminated. The “pay for play” model became much more dominant. You had to prove it, too! No longer was money hurled at marketing with no tracking capabilities. Employees had to prove they were part of revenue generation to keep their jobs. The pay-per-click Google model was emblematic of this; you didn’t need to pay marketers so people saw your ad, you would only pay when someone clicked on your ad. (On a side note, I see this being taken further. You really should only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and purchases something from you. I mean, why do I pay you if they click on my ad and don’t give me any money? The only barrier to this is how to track it, but I see this obstacle being eliminated over the next year or two.)

These two business practices are now commonplace among the firms that are still open. So you’re still in business and never made any changes along these lines? Count your lucky stars! But remember as they say on Wall Street, “the market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” And the three-word advice of the late NC State basketball coach, Jim Valvano, on the key to staying alive in the NCAA Tournament. “Survive and advance.”

Part two of this article will discuss the other top takeaways from this year. Have a wonderful holiday season!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company”specializing in rent-to-own (lease options) and rent-to-sell homes. You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://Twitter.com/BDFRealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.RentToSell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Can You Beat UNC Coach Roy Williams in a Pie-Eating Contest?

“I’m not making any money. The economy is killing my firm. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in anything but survival mode at this point. My New Year’s resolution this year is to be able to make a 2011 resolution with a roof still over my head.” (Charlotte business owner)

“Creativity without implementation is irresponsibility.” (Ted Leavitt at the Harvard Business School)

“In a typical game we want to have between 90 and 105 possessions, and we try to get that number up as high as we can, because if I’m better than you are, the more possessions we play, the more likely it is that I’m going to beat you. If I play golf against Tiger Woods for one hole I might beat him, but over 18 holes, I have no chance.” (University of North Carolina Basketball Coach, Roy Williams, from "Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court")

Roy Williams is one of the greatest college basketball coaches ever. Besides winning 2 national championships in the last five years (2005 & 2009), his accolades are mind-blowing: 594-138 record in 21 seasons, Hall of Famer, 7-time Coach of the Year, 1st in winning percentage among active coaches (81.2%), 3rd best winning percentage all-time, only coach to win a NCAA Tournament game in 20 consecutive seasons, and the list goes on and on…

What makes him so good? There are many reasons obviously. But the one that I want to focus on is that he is incrementally better. What the heck does that mean? And what’s with the italics again? Well, it goes along the lines of his quote on top of this article. If you play UNC long enough, they should be able to beat you. They have great coach, talent, and system. UNC doesn’t blow out every opponent, but they do win most of their games. For example, in the 2005 NCAA Tournament in which they won it all, they beat their opponents by 28, 27, 1, 6, 16, and 5 points respectively. They were good, but didn’t win every game by 50.

The reason is the essence of the game of basketball. It has fixed rules. There are only so many points you can realistically score in a 40-minute game, and your defense cannot fully stop a talented team from scoring. Basketball is a “fixed pie” meaning that there are usually a certain amount of points scored in a game. If you have just one more than your opponent, you win!

So let’s say your business is really good and always takes 80% of your city’s market share. Last year, there was $10M in sales (fixed pie) and your firm predictably took in $8M of that. Awesome stuff! But this year, sales have shrunk to $8M (smaller fixed pie), and your firm made $6.4M. That is still good, but not as good as last year. So maybe good old Roy has got it better than you? He wins 80% of is games over his career and is a Hall-of-Famer. You take 80% of market share this year and your shareholders are wondering whether it’s time to find another CEO to run things.

But maybe, just maybe, you have it better than Roy. Roy is locked into a “fixed pie” scenario and you’re not. In business, if you don’t like the pie you’re eating out of, you can shift to another pie. Or you can be eating several different pies at once (sort of like what we’re all doing this holiday season, even those who have sworn off sweets).

In real estate, most were eating out of the brokerage (buy/sell) pie. You were just like Roy, incrementally winning by keeping a steady market share in a growing amount of business. Your 80% market share was nice when your city’s brokerage pie grew from $10M to $12M ($9.6M in sales, up from $8M the year before. Yeah, baby!) There was more than enough pie for all and everyone was happy! Then the housing market fell apart and there was less pie for everyone. Some went hungry and left the business. Others started rationing their smaller portion while complaining about how hungry they were.

But you’re not Roy and stuck in his world! You can use innovation and change the game! As I’ve written before, people still want to transact real estate; the American dream of homeownership is still alive and well (arguably even stronger!). Macroeconomic conditions have made it necessary to transact real estate through other methods like rent-to-own, rent-to-sell, owner financing, short sales, or any other way you can think of! These pies are growing and taste pretty good! And there are less forks banging together trying to take their piece of it out!

If Roy could legally add more methods to score, he would. I’m sure he would create his own version of “Calvinball” (yes, a Calvin & Hobbes reference) and start blowing teams out by singing “Thriller” while throwing a horseshoe over the backboard (10 points!).

But, alas, Roy is stuck between the baselines with fixed rules and one fixed pie, so you can easily beat him! Are you ready to eat heartily from some different pies in 2010?

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company”specializing in rent-to-own (lease options) and rent-to-sell homes. You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://Twitter.com/BDFRealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.RentToSell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Jack Welch is Envious of Your Real Estate Firm?

“I’m not sure what we are going to do… Revenue is down and costs are the same. We are scraping by on a few first-time home buyer sales that come through. Worst of all, my employees are having a hard time making a living in this traditional brokerage business model.” (Frustrated Charlotte Real Estate Firm Owner)

“Most small companies are uncomplicated, simple, informal. They grow on good ideas regardless of their source. They need everyone, involve everyone, and reward or remove people based on their contribution to winning.

We love the way small companies communicate with simple, straight-forward, passionate argument rather than jargon-filled means.

Everyone in a small company knows the customers- their likes, dislikes, and needs. Small companies have to face into the reality of the market everyday, and when they move, they have to move with speed. Their survival is on the line.” (Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric from 1981 - 2001)

Jack Welch was one of the most successful businessmen in the 20th Century. Under his leadership at GE, he took the company from $14B in market value (1980) to $410B (2004). He helped create the largest and most valuable company in the world.

Welch felt that while being big was good and had its advantages, GE would only be successful if it maintained the traits of a small business. These traits included personally knowing their customer base, shifting to meet changing customer needs, and the ability to nimbly reposition their services efficiently to serve niches of customers before their larger competitors. And they had to do it quickly!

The problem was that any major initiative GE undertook would go on for years; it was the nature of their sheer size. When you have hundreds of thousands of employees, it takes a long time to disseminate information, train employees, and get things working correctly; just fighting through layers of bureaucracy is a time-consuming ordeal! Welch hated this and wished he could move at the speed of the market.

Big real estate firms have this same issue. They made billions of dollars in a buy and sell market and positioned themselves in the public’s minds as the place to go for brokerage. Their agents were trained killers that were negotiating offers, putting up listings, and putting ads all over the country. Unfortunately, as the pure brokerage market began to fade and real estate revenue sources moved elsewhere, they ran into the same issues as GE.

Besides being costly and time-consuming, repositioning a large company’s value proposition to customers is risky! The risk is in confusing the public about what they do well. For decades, big real estate companies told the public (with many, many ads!) that they were good at helping people buy homes; this year they are telling different stories. Some are saying that they are expert property managers now? Some are now good at finding foreclosure and REO properties for investors? Short sale specialists?

Here’s the rub. Name one company that says they do multiple things well- it’s tough! You just don’t see this in today’s marketplace because this type of marketing message doesn’t work! Customers do not like generalists; they go to specialists. Think about it. When you shop for shoes, do you go to Wal-Mart or a shoe store? Most people actually go farther than this. They’ll visit a very specialized shoe store (women’s dress shoes only stores, running store for running shoes, etc.), rather than a regular show store. Customers feel that if you say you are good at many things, you are actually mediocre and not an expert at anything!

In a changing market, small businesses are in the best position to capitalize. They can reposition their business to specialize in growing customer segments, get employees up-to-speed quickly and inexpensively, and communicate to their existing customer bases what they are doing. There is no red tape. Today you can be “Charlotte Brokerage, Inc.”, and tomorrow you can morph into “Short Sales 4 U, Inc.”, “Distressed Properties R US, LLC”, or “Rent-To-Own Rock Stars, Inc.”

You can innovate and implement today with little hassle. This is why Jack Welch is envious of your small business!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company”specializing in rent-to-own (lease options) and rent-to-sell homes. You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://Twitter.com/BDFRealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.RentToSell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Lies, Damn Lies, & Rent-To-Own Statistics: 5 Ways to Increase Your Odds of Sale

“I’m sorry. My Broker-in-Charge does not permit us to do lease options. She said the percent of people that actually purchase is 8%.” (Charlotte Realtor)

“Statistics are like a drunk with a lamppost: used more for support than illumination.” (Winston Churchill)

Wow- 8%! I still can’t get over that figure. The things that come to the top of my head when I hear 8% are a:
1. Lousy tip
2. High sales tax rate
3. Decent annual investment return

I began to wonder about where this 8% statistic could possibly be derived from and how accurate it could be. The last time I checked, the National Association of Realtors doesn’t keep this statistic and I’m not sure how they could. Non-licensed investors seem to do more of these which would take it out of NAR’s jurisdiction. Home sales are public record and I’ve never seen them broken down into “Regular Sales” and “Lease Option Sales.” The only person you need to tell that you want to exercise your option to purchase is the seller; then a normal closing occurs. So I’m at a loss. Did they take a representative sample? Of whom and how did they find these people? Most people don’t register the options at the courthouse. Hmmm… 8%...

So I’m going to assume that this BIC was using this clumsily manufactured 8% statistic to support her firm’s wanting to sell homes and get the full sales commission right away. She was not trying to illuminate the public about her doctoral thesis, “The Myth of Lease Options in the 21st Century Post-Modern Era” where she painstakingly interviewed all home owners in the largest 20 cities in the United States.

I’m also going off the assumption that her point was that lease option deals don’t close often enough. That I am most certainly going to agree with! So the question is why. It boils down to the lease option tenant either not wanting to pull the trigger and purchase or being unable to get financing. It’s usually the latter.

To combat his, the top 5 things you can do to increase the odds of your lease option tenant buying the home they are renting are:

1. Make sure they have the ability to buy the home during their lease period! Taking an option fee when the tenant has no reasonable way of purchasing during their rental is basically stealing! This also makes a sale impossible.
2. Make sure the tenant has skin in the game by collecting a moderately sizeable option fee. You can use your own discretion, but 1-5% usually works with a $3K floor.
3. Entice the tenant to purchase by offering monthly rent credits (10-20% is sufficient). This makes it so they are walking away from a good amount of cash if they choose not to buy.
4. Use some of the option money to pay for half of the credit repair. Ask the tenant to pay the other half. People only value things that they pay for.
5. Align yourself with a good mortgage or credit repair professional that is going to provide on-going credit and budget counseling to the tenant.

If you practice these 5 things, you may help push the national lease option closing average to 9%!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company”specializing in rent-to-own (lease options) and rent-to-sell homes. You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://Twitter.com/BDFRealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.RentToSell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Hoop Dreams & Lottery Ticket Listing Agreements

“Sure your home will sell. Besides (wink, wink), do you really want some dirty tenant destroying your house and using the would-be rent money to up fit their new meth lab?” (“Aggressive” Charlotte Realtor pushing for a “sale only” listing agreement)

“Everything became pretty clear at that moment. Being a rock star looked like a great job.” (Singer Tom Petty reminiscing about meeting Elvis Presley as an 11-year old)

Hoop Dreams was a documentary based on two Chicago high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, who had dreams of playing in the National Basketball Association. They both went to a top Indiana private high school that NBA great Isaiah Thomas had attended, practiced all of the time, and did well in the all-star camps. Their friends told them they were great, school mates looked up to them, and they just knew the NBA was in their futures.

Of course, neither of them made it to the NBA; it’s not a surprise. I think we’ve heard this story a million times. A kid puts all his eggs in the sports basket and is left with no future when it doesn’t pan out. This has fostered the NCAA’s student-athlete model (kids are students first, athletes second); I’m sure you’ve seen the ubiquitous commercials where student-athletes are filmed saying, “I was a NCAA athlete, but upon graduation, I’ll be going pro in something else.” Then it shoots to this early twenty-something teaching tuba to kids or putting on a real estate firm pin (well, maybe not yet, but give the National Association of Realtors time).

I mean, let’s be real. I’d rather be a NBA player than, let’s say, a residential property manager in Charlotte. Wouldn’t you? Let’s see… You get to be a physical specimen (as you basically work out for a living), have adoring fans follow you from town to town, make millions of dollars, decorate your mansion(s) as tackily as you want, and drive a different sports car every day of the month. We could probably make this arrangement work, right? So why wouldn’t we encourage all kids growing up to be a NBA (or WNBA) players? We’ve seen the “Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive, You Can Achieve!” banners hanging in our middle school classrooms. Didn’t we conceive this? Then it should have happened for us, right?

Well, real life took over. We grew up to be five feet six inches tall. Our vertical leaps are barely clearing the jump ropes. We’re getting winded walking to the mailbox. We’re not even the best basketball player in our own families; Mom’s set shot is just impossible to guard!

I see a similar misguided scenario coming from the mouths of Realtors. “Sure, you can sell your house. Let me just list it ‘For Sale” for you. I’m sure it won’t take that long.” Oh really? What about the eight other houses in your subdivision for sale that include two in foreclosure selling for $80K less than yours? Buyers will be lining up to purchase your listing? Why? “It’s because I buried a miniature statue of Saint DefinitelySellQuickly in your front yard for luck. It always works.”

The odds of selling some of the houses that are listed on the market are not far off from the odds of making the NBA. Yet I commonly see vacant houses for sale sit on the market for over a year. I wonder who is going to buy them when they are not even priced in the ballpark of the other homes for sale. Yes, miracles do happen; I’m not sure that’s a business plan, though. And, if it is, why not aim higher and try the NBA thing?

Yes, some sellers will insist on putting their house up for sale only and eating the monthly costs. I’m not talking about the clients who have cash to burn. But I am talking about the Realtors who are not educating and offering their sellers other options to sell such as rent-to-own, lease options, and seller financing. Sellers need to know about these! These options create opportunities for tenant-buyers which, in turn, give us a fluid market to transact real estate for the sellers (when banks aren’t lending). It’s good for everyone!

“Tenants are risky. I would never rent-to-sell my own house!” I agree- selling outright is better!! But that can be said of a lot of things in life. Marrying a billionaire supermodel would have been a better option than marrying your spouse. Taking a part-time job making $10M a year would have been a better option than your current gig. Watching the Super Bowl in the commissioner’s luxury box last year would have been a better option than going to your buddy, Phil’s, place (with stale pretzels, a cracked 20-inch television screen, and his whining wife). The point I’m trying to make is that the best options are not always the ones that are realistically available.

Unless you are stapling a winning lottery ticket to the client’s copy of the listing agreement, make sure the rent-to-own and lease conversations happen in this economy. Making the NBA is hard, especially when Mom is beating you up in the driveway!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: “(Real Estate) Investing with the Stars”

“What do I look like to you? A moron? Don’t answer that… But seriously, my real estate investment properties are illiquid and have declined in value. You still say I should double down?” (Charlotte Real Estate Investor)

“Buy straw hats in the winter…” (Russell Sage, Wall Street Financier)

Buying (and selling) at the right time is the heart of many popular Wall Street mantras on how to become wealthy:

1. Buy low, sell high
2 Buy when you see blood in the streets
3 Buy when everyone else is selling. And vice-versa.

Of course, dummy! Everyone knows that. That’s not the hard part; the hard part is to know when that low time to buy is. If we only knew that, then this life would be so much easier. But is it really that difficult?

The people who have made great wealth in this country are like poker players. Poker is a game of waiting and then seizing the right opportunities when they present themselves. And when the opportunities come, good poker players bet heavily on them. It’s not complete luck; they know that certain hands have greater odds of winning.

Let’s look at 2 examples of billionaires “playing poker”:

1. Michael Bloomberg (Billionaire and current Mayor of New York City): After 9/11, the stock market tanked as investor fears abounded. I remember seeing the front page of the New York Post in the fall of 2001 where Mike urged his constituents to buy stocks after the Dow dropped below 7,000; he certainly was! He basically said that people ask him for investment advice all the time (because he’s a billionaire) and that was the best advice he could give them.

2. Warren Buffet (needs no introduction): Buffett experts will tell you that if took away Warren’s 20 biggest investment deals, his overall returns would be flat! He started his investment company in 1956; that’s a big deal every 3 years on average. That shows he does not have supernatural ability to pick stocks right all the time; rather he took really big bets (and was right) on a few great opportunities.

So how do you identify a great opportunity to invest in? Bloomberg will tell you that when the stock market is heavily discounted due to temporary events, you buy. The American stock market will recover, it always does. Buffett will tell you that if you see a good company’s stock trading at a steep discount, you buy. Good companies work through tough times and reward shareholders.

Can you think of anything else that is heavily discounted due to temporary events? Yes, this is when we get to the topic of real estate- good guess! The temporary events are the mortgage meltdown, banks not lending, and the rising unemployment rate. A lot of people need to sell and are ready to let great real estate go at bargain basement prices.

As Will Rogers famously said, “Buy land, they ain’t making any more of it.” So, if the stock market always will come back, it makes sense that real estate should rebound even more convincingly. Companies can always issue more stock, but great pieces of real estate can’t be replicated. And at these prices during the holidays, Wal-Mart has got nothing on the Multiple Listing Service this year!

So are you urging your clients to buy investment real estate? Are you buying any yourself? Buffett waits years so he can cherry pick an opportunity like this. Do you really think that the real estate market will continue to stay down?

It’s time to “Invest in Real Estate with the Stars” instead of waiting to buy it from the “Stars” when they sell!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Tenant Tradeoffs: Another Piece of Chocolate Cake or Look Good With Your Shirt Off?

“I don’t like the prior bankruptcy on this prospective tenant, but they make great income. The other tenant has a 430 credit score, but has perfect landlord history. Should I accept either into the property?” (Charlotte Property Manager)

“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” (Crosby Stills Nash & Young)

One of the main things I learned during my MBA classes was that business, like life, is all about tradeoffs. Examples of this are rife everywhere:

-- If you want increased national security, you have to give up some individual freedoms
-- If you want a guy with a great personality, you probably have to give something up on looks (and vice-versa)
-- In Season 7 of 24, Jack Bauer must make the decision to rescue now-fugitive Tony Almeida from FBI custody or let the bad guys kill his daughter at the airport
-- If education is going to be our national priority than we must give less resources towards health care and building roads
-- Another piece of chocolate cake or look good with your shirt off?

How does this look with property management? Well there are perfect tenants out there, but most are like us, blemished in some way or another. With the poor and worsening economy, using old standards of tenant selection (600+ credit scores, no criminal background, rent less than 25% of gross monthly income, good landlord history, gainfully employed) are sure to keep most of your houses vacant (not good!). However, the last thing you want to do is put in a tenant who is not going to pay and then rip up your house (not good either!). So this is where tradeoffs come in. What should they be?

The first thing is setting priorities. What are the most indicative signs that someone will be a good or a bad renter? What should we care about the most? In my experience, the order should look like this:

1. Employment: It’s tough to pay rent with no money coming in (duh!) and finding a job quickly is proving to be difficult in this economy. Hint: If unemployed, ask the tenant for 4-6 months of rent upfront.

2. Landlord history: Some people always pay their rent before anything else. However, it’s important to make sure you are actually talking to the past landlords and not the tenant’s friends. Hint: Ask the “past landlords” how much rent they charged. Friends usually don’t know this and their guesses are way off.

3. Rent they paid at their last house: I like this one. If all things are equal (same job, family, etc.) and what they paid their last landlord is near what they are supposed to pay you, it’s a good sign. Be wary of big jumps ($700/month rent to $1,200, for example).

4. Credit: Everyone always has this at the top of their list, but I don’t see this as that important. If they have 700+ scores, approve them. If their scores are bad (sub 550), find out why and have an open mind. You can get some great tenants this way; if you’re still too scared to move forward, ask for an additional month of security deposit.

5. Income: The numbers need to make sense. If the make $3K/month, have a car payment of $1K, and are supposed to pay you $2K/month for rent, they can only go hungry for so long.

6. Criminal background: This is usually much ado about nothing. Just watch out for violent felons who could potentially ruin your week.

Now is the time for tradeoffs. If #1, #3 and #6 are good, #2 and #4 are awful, and #5 is marginal, what do you do? Panic? How would your profile look on these 6 criteria? Look at the entire picture of the prospective tenant and make an educated decision with the data provided. Do you need to wait until you find Mr. and Mrs. Right who score “superlative” on all six criteria?

Of course not! Stop worrying and eat a little chocolate cake. You can still have a great beach body without the well-defined abdominals. Or a great tenant without the perfect qualifications!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: 5 Signs the “Home Sales Swine Flu” Has Infected Your Rental Market

“Yes, I would like some cheese with this whine. Thanks.” (Brett Furniss, Charlotte Property Manager and author of Charlotte Property Management Weekly)

“President Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency…” (Charlotte Observer, 10/25/09)

Swine flu is now officially both a national emergency and a pandemic! I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds pretty bad and pretty official. I imagine the only party happy about this is the pigs, who take an undeserved public relations hit, but see the demand for its flesh fall among the cautious populous (making its mortality rates decline significantly). If only the scheming cows from the Chick Filet commercials had thought of this, they could have saved themselves millions in dollars of advertising (with better results!).

Fortunately, I have not been personally infected by swine flu (yet…). I have been affected, though. I’ve seen this new, safer way to catch your sneeze by depositing this spittle storm into your own shirt! Yes, the one you are wearing. I’ve seen some guys on the street do it recently and I still can’t stomach the idea of my shirt doubling as a tissue. This is healthier? What is the point of tissues then? That is the next superfluous budget item to go, I’m sure. I’m thankful I haven’t seen any females do this. Apparently they believe in Fernando Lamas’s (Billy Crystal’s Saturday Night Live character) mantra, “It’s better to look good than to feel good.” But, I digress.

However, I have been affected by the “home sales swine flu” that has infected the Charlotte rental market. “What the heck does that mean?” you may ask. “And why do you keep italicizing so much in this article?” Well, let me explain. Being that few people can sell their homes, home sellers are flooding the rental market with their houses. This is creating supply and demand issues that are making it difficult for property managers to fill properties quickly and efficiently (sniff, sniff). Unfortunately, it has become painfully obvious Charlotte is infected. I’ve heard from other real estate professionals in other cities that they are observing the same thing.

So what about your market? If it has been infected by the HS H1N1, the following five symptoms should have started to appear:

1. Rentals are on the market for a much longer time (duration)
2. Monthly rental prices have fallen and continue to drop significantly
3. There are a lot more rental homes on the market! (number)
4. Realtors who never worked on rentals before are now listing several
5. Tenants are consistently trying to negotiate down already depressed monthly rents

As your real estate doctor, I can tell you that if your market is showing these symptoms, it is infected. The only known 100% cure for HS H1N1 is a mixture of “Excess Cash” and “Time.” If you wait long enough with this mixture, it will go away on its own. You should check with your local economist to get a general range on how much “Time” it will take to subside. And always double your initial estimate on how much “Excess Cash” will be required.

If you are not lucky enough to have a healthy amount of “Excess Cash” and “Time”, the following steps can be taken to slow the effects of HS H1N1 until it subsides:

1. Lock your existing tenants into 1 to 2-year leases ASAP at current rental rates
2. Lower the rental rates on your vacant homes by 10%
3. Increase marketing expenditures on vacancies while advertising the lower rate
4. Do NOT work with tenants who are more than 30 days behind. You must evict and get someone else in your rental!

Trust your doctor. Follow these simple steps to survive the outbreak in your market!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: “Sully Love”: Customers Will Like You More if You Fly Them into the Hudson River?

“I messed up. I placed a tenant into an owner’s home and they wound up tearing it up and not paying rent. There is no way they will ever hire me again…” (Charlotte Property Manager)

“It was crazy, you see. I took off and then two hours later, I landed in Charlotte. I guess technically you could say that I did my job. But the guy who crashed into the river, no, he’s the hero. It’s weird, right?” (Bitter Captain Roger Baines, played by Jason Sudeikis- Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday- 10/2/09)

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger came to fame as the pilot who flew the 1/15/09 US Airways Flight 1549 from New York to Charlotte. Most people remember the story; it became national news for weeks because the plane went down in the Hudson River minutes after takeoff. You would figure that if you were on that flight, you’d be really upset! You paid money to be in Charlotte in roughly two hours, but instead, you were heavily delayed, drenched, your luggage was ruined, and your life flashed before your eyes. All meetings you had that day had to be cancelled. Your plans were shot. Your life was endangered. You could have been thinking about who you could sue. You would certainly never fly US Air again!

You’d appreciate Captain Baines “good pilot” joke later in the SNL skit:

Q: What did the good pilot do when he saw the flock of geese?
A: He avoided them and continued on to Charlotte where he landed seven minutes early

However, Sully became a national hero. What??? Though he saved the lives of his passengers, he still did land in a river which has to be viewed as a failure. Was he a seasoned public relations professional who spun the story well afterwards? Hardly. Sully comes across as a soft-spoken guy. His “speech” to the passengers before the crash was a brief and hardly eloquent, “Brace for impact.” Inexplicably, it didn’t matter. The passengers loved him. They were thankful and effusive in praise. No one said they wouldn’t fly with him again; in fact, most would rather have him captain their flights in the future. Many Americans said the same thing. How could this have been?

The simplest answer is that most people know that things go wrong. It’s inevitable. Sully could do little after he hit the flock of geese that caused the engines to fail. As Charles Swindoll said, “Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.” Sully calmly put the plane down and salvaged what he could out of a tough situation. His passengers knew he was in control and would work to ensure their safety.

In property management, picking tenants who will always pay and treat a rental home with respect is an inexact science. You try to mitigate risk by performing credit and criminal background checks, verifying income and employment, and calling past landlords. You collect security deposits and drive by houses to see if they look okay. At the end of the day, however, you don’t live with them and can’t force people to fulfill their obligations. It’s tough.

But when bad things happen (and they will at some point), it can be a positive as well. It creates an opportunity to show your clients that you care, it allows you to learn more about them personally, and lets you demonstrate that you have a plan to correct things. Most of our clients receive their monthly rent (directly deposited into their account) and we rarely get an opportunity to talk to them outside of our initial meeting. But when issues arise, we get to build a bond with them while working to get their properties back on track.

Paradoxically, the clients whose homes we have had an issue with tend to be life-long customers, while those who receive their rent smoothly every month are the ones I worry about losing. Relationships require give-and-take and often form out of adversity; without this, you can become a faceless entity that has no emotional connection.

Out of a disaster, Sully built a bond in one day with his passengers that few, if any, pilots will ever have with theirs, even their frequent flyers. Think about it. Who was the pilot of your last flight? Of your last ten?

So don’t cringe when something goes wrong. It will give you an opportunity to get some of that lasting “Sully Love.”

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Obama’s Entrepreneur-less Recovery Plan

“Too big to fail.” (President Obama)

“…(Then US Treasury Secretary Alexander) Hamilton regarded the national debt as ‘a national blessing,’ for it permitted the clustering of resources into the hands of a small group of enterprising men who would invest and not just spend it.” (Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis)

It’s no news that President Obama has faced a huge challenge to revive the US economy, precipitated by the banking crisis of the past two years. He’s had to answer a lot of tough questions that have affected millions of Americans. What courses of action will save and create the most jobs? Should he have bailed out failing companies like Citigroup, Chrysler, AIG, and others? What about residents who were losing their homes? Do they get modified loans or do they go into foreclosure? Some companies were “too big to fail,” while some “Main Street” residents had the required qualifications to get bailed out too. It all really boiled down to one question: how should government capital best be allocated to serve the common good now and in the future?

US Treasure Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, had a similar dilemma in 1790 after the Revolutionary War. The US government was broke and its debt was at a startling $71M. It couldn’t meet its obligations without borrowing (sound familiar?); it couldn’t even compensate its own troops with cash. The soldiers were issued war bonds as payment for military service, and there was little hope the government would be able to pay those back. Speculators began to buy the war bonds at five to ten cents on the dollar hoping for a (very profitable) miracle. Meanwhile the government was worried about utilizing its meager finances to stay solvent.

The popular plan was to just default on the war bonds. The US government didn’t have the money anyway! Then the issue of fairness came up. “Why would we fund the bonds when the money is not going to go to the soldiers that it was intended for?” Essentially, the heated discussion that ensued was one that still stirs debate today; should the government endorse any plans that just make “the rich get richer,” while doing nothing directly for the common citizen?

However, Hamilton felt paying the war bonds was a great opportunity! The fact that the speculators were getting the money was a great allocation of capital. They were the entrepreneurs of this start-up nation, the risk-takers. They would be the ones starting businesses, hiring people, and building the economy from the ground-up. With their intellects and hearts, Hamilton felt America could achieve greatness. Funding the speculators was the best investment this country could make.

Obama’s capital allocation plan has been about saving huge corporations and struggling homeowners. The entrepreneurs and small business owners in the middle have been frozen out. Could the projected “jobless recovery” be a product of this? The SBA’s oft-cited statistic is that American small business creates 90% of the country’s jobs. Is an “entrepreneur-less recovery” even possible?

When I talk to my friends that are small business owners here in Charlotte, we are hamstrung. The government programs for small business are a joke; many banks don’t participate in SBA loans, or if they do, force us to qualify at heightened requirements that we can’t reach. Meanwhile, banks of all sizes (TARP and non-TARP recipients alike), are still cutting our credit lines. I’m not saying we are all going out of business (because that’s not true), but I am saying that our impact on this economic recovery will be minimal at best. We are being forced to hunker down, and have been doing so for the past two years.

And, yes, Hamilton got funding for the war bonds to pass Congress and our nation went from near-bankruptcy to a world power through the past two hundred years. If Obama wants the US to stay there, he’ll have to find a way to involve us entrepreneurs as well.

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (http://www.bdfrealty.com/ and http://www.renttosell.com/). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Coke vs. Pepsi vs. Your Real Estate Firm- What’s the Difference?

“I can’t believe that millionaire CEO who just moved to town is looking for houses with Jimmy “The Home Seeking” Missile. Doesn’t he realize Jimmy knows more about weaponry than he does real estate?” (Baffled Charlotte Real Estate Agent)

Coke and Pepsi have been warring over market share in the soda business for a long time. Coke had a gigantic lead until Pepsi started making inroads in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Today, Coke’s market share is around 43%, while Pepsi’s is 31% in a highly competitive $100B+ industry. This competitiveness has helped make brand allegiance personal; badmouth someone’s favorite soda and “they be fightin’ words”, as we say in the South.

However, industry experts will tell you that Coke and Pepsi are close to identical products. “What???” One of my UNC professors posed this fact to our MBA class and the responses were unanimous. “That’s ridiculous!” “Coke is awful, absolutely atrocious.” “I would definitely know the difference and spit the Pepsi out!” So the professor proceeded to pour Pepsi into three glasses and Coke into three glasses. The most indignant students “who loved their brand of soda more than life itself” were given the chance to conduct a blind taste test to prove their mettle.

The taste test unfolded and the results were tallied. Afterwards, several things came to mind:
1. Phrases like “Talking the talk, but not walking the walk” and “Singing it, but not bringing it”
2. NBA players that “guarantee” a win
3. The “unsinkable” Titanic

The best student was right only 50% of the time (naming 3 out of the 6 cups correctly), and the other students’ results were downhill from there. For such sheer, stated loyalty to a product, they couldn’t tell the difference between the one they drink several times a day and its biggest competitor!

If the products aren’t really different, how does Coke sway consumers to buy their brand and not Pepsi’s? They market differentiation (even when there isn’t any!). They have Paula Abdul sing about it, make their bottles in cool shapes, and sponsor the Olympics. They run tons of commercials that make you feel like “buying the world a Coke”. Pepsi does the same types of things with their brand. They both do a tremendous job of getting their name out there and associating it with things you like. And you, in turn, buy their product exclusively (even if it costs more)!

So, what separates your real estate firm from the others? “We’re just better! And consumers should know that!” Unfortunately, data suggests that it’s more about the sizzle, and less about the steak. Or, simply stated, exactly like the “Cola Wars”. If you don’t believe that, look at the National Association of Realtors’ statistics. 70%+ of consumers use the first firm they contact and most of them do this over the internet (they don’t even meet a Realtor in person first!). In layman’s terms, if your internet presence is seen by the consumer and it resonates with them, you’re hired.

Why are consumers hiring Jimmy (and not your firm) even though you’re better? Why don’t they do the research, find out you’re superior, and staunchly hold out for your services?

It’s because Jimmy’s marketing made it easier for the CEO’s assistant to find him and his content (which included his military background- hence the nickname) made him seem like a better fit. The old mantra, “perception is more important than reality”, holds true. It’s not necessarily about being better or different, it’s about having people believe that you are.

As you sip on your can of Pepsi, you can ponder the unfairness of it all.

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: How Rudy Giuliani Gained Market Share during 9/11

"I just spoke to that guy last week; he was going to look at houses with me. Now he won’t take my calls and has reportedly been cavorting with a member of another realty firm. Scandalous!” (Unhappy Charlotte Realtor who just lost a client)

When the September 11th tragedy happened, everyone was shocked. I was living in New York City at the time and was up in Stamford (CT) that morning on a sales appointment. It was surreal. The news started with one plane hitting the World Trade Center which everyone thought was an accident; then the second plane hit. Pandemonium ensued.

My office was three blocks from the Trade Center and I had several friends that worked in it. As I tried to figure out what was going on, my cell phone stopped working as the area’s cellular phone networks were overloaded. New York City was then closed off and I couldn’t get back to my apartment and had to stay in Stamford that night. Meanwhile, new information coming from the media was sporadic and inaccurate; death estimates were coming over the news as high as 20,000. People were panicked and were looking for someone to make sense of it all.

When I was in class this summer, the professor asked the class who we thought was the best example of leadership in our lifetime; the person I chose was Rudy Giuliani after 9/11. The funny thing is, he wasn’t the natural choice to be the leader. Yes, he was the Mayor of New York City at the time, but there were other players more qualified to lead during the crisis. George W. Bush was the President and this was a national disaster; it was rightfully his position to lead. New York Governor George Pataki was another viable candidate. This was affecting everyone in his state; he could have easily stepped up and been the guy. So why will Rudy go down in history as the face of 9/11?

I believe it came down to 2 things:

1. Rudy gathered the information that mattered
2. Rudy dispensed the information consistently and calmly

The public was starving for timely information. Rumors were rampant, ground zero was closed off to non-emergency personnel (as well as the rest of lower Manhattan), and people were scared. Rudy put a calm face on, exuded confidence, and gave news reports personally. There was no need to go elsewhere to try to gather data; it came regularly every hour, was candid, and spoke to what people wanted to know most. He became the person that the public (his customers) looked up to and followed.

So why did your client go to work with someone at a competing firm? Why weren’t you the person that they felt could help them best? Did you have the information the client needed? Did you deliver it when you said it would? Did you put them at ease? Did they know they didn’t need to go anywhere else to get what they were looking for?

Former Governor Pataki and “Dubya” could have had the September 11th leadership mantle. They didn’t do anything wrong to lose it per se, but Rudy did more things right to gain it. Rudy didn’t badmouth Bush and Pataki; there wasn’t anything “scandalous” going on. The customers followed who they felt would best fill their needs. Don’t you?

Even presidents are susceptible to losing customers; why would you be different?

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Controlling the Public’s Thoughts About You The Michael Bloomberg Way

“I am the best Realtor in town! Why can’t anyone figure it out?” (frustrated Charlotte Realtor)

Michael Bloomberg, the current Mayor of New York City, came to fame as the founder of Bloomberg, LP. His company builds and maintains data terminals for members of the financial community who need access to real-time financial data. He built this from nothing to a $10B+ company in around 20 years. He is obviously an astute and extremely successful businessman who knows a thing or two about serving up data, both to his customers and to the press. Let me explain.

Bloomberg knew that favorable media coverage was extremely important to the growth of his business. So, he had to figure out a way to make sure that all (or at least most) of the news stories about Bloomberg, LP were positive. Short of threatening reporters, it was tough to see how he could coerce them into writing what he wanted (aka good stuff). It seemed like a crapshoot; any reporter could write anything they wanted and it could be influenced by nothing to do with his company. For example, the reporter could have had a breakfast that didn’t sit well or his ex-wife could have had the maiden name of “Bloomberg” which would result in a negative article. How could he increase his odds for positive coverage?

Well, he hired a staff whose sole job was to work with the media. Doesn’t every company do this? Yes, but he took it a step farther. When reporters called, his staff asked them what they were writing about, who they wanted to talk to, and what angle they were looking to take. When the reporters showed up at Bloomberg LP’s headquarters, a packet of information was waiting on them regarding the subject they were looking to cover (all pro-Bloomberg LP, of course!).

In this information packet, and what set Bloomberg apart, was an article (already written!) on the topic they were planning to write about. His staff would say something to the effect of, “We know that reporters are busy and have a tough job with all these deadlines and such. So, we thought we’d make it easier for you. Feel free to use as much of the provided article as you like; there is no need to reference our work. It’s yours to do with as you please- use the article in its entirety, if you’d like! We won’t tell anyone.” And as the story goes, most of the reporters used parts of the article in their stories and, sure enough, some of the reporters published the full article verbatim.

“Ummm… I’m not a billionaire and can’t afford to hire a staff of writers. Great article, though!” Thanks, but the point of the story is two-fold:

1. You can largely control the information about you in the public domain. Just write positive things about yourself and have the search engines index it!
2. You can make it easy for people to find positive information about you; simply provide it to every customer you meet! This can be on your business card, e-mail signature, or company brochures.

When people Google your name or your real estate company’s name, what comes up? What does your Linked-In profile look like? What are you “tweeting” out regularly? How are customers figuring out how “good” you really are?

Don’t make people do the work of drawing a conclusion about what type of agent you are. Give them the conclusion you want them to have about you (in an easy format). It worked well for billionaire and Mayor, Mike Bloomberg! Will you let it work well for you?

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: Sarah Palin- A Huge Rent-To-Own and Seller Financing Fan?

“I need to do something to sell my empty house NOW.” (Unhappy Charlotte Landlord)

Moderator: “Who do you think was at fault? I start with you, Gov. Palin. Was it the greedy lenders? Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn't have been buying a home in the first place?”

Sarah Palin: “Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that.” (VP Debate vs. Joe Biden 10/2/08)

When watching the Vice-President debate in October 2008, one thing was crystal clear- Sarah Palin doesn’t care for banks very much. It appears that she would rather trade two small fur skins for a gallon of milk than go to a bank’s ATM and buy the milk outright. After all, Wall Street is corrupt (some, yes), they rip you off (true…), and the mortgage crisis was all the bankers’ fault (not true). She certainly wouldn’t advise you (and her 800K+ Facebook “friends”) to go to a bank and get a mortgage. You’ll be duped! It would be the equivalent of subjecting yourself to a financial “death panel”. Not good!

When you’re trying to get elected, blaming corporations instead of voters who put you in office is a much better strategy. But as for the aftermath of the mortgage crisis we faced, WWSD? What would she want us to do differently now that she isn’t running for office? Maybe she would tell us to take some of the blame? And be part of the solution?

I’m convinced that former Governor Palin would naturally be a fan of rent-to-own (lease options) and seller financing. These methods allow people (who can’t get a mortgage) to rent homes until they have built up their credit and a down payment so they can own; this promotes personal responsibility and puts the power in the hands of the people, rather than the banks. And I’m sure she believes in the resiliency and will of the American people to overcome and right their own ship. The question is, do you?

As your home sits on the market for sale month after month, would you be willing to “rent-to-sell” it? “But a lot of the prospective rent-to-own tenants have poor credit…” “Some of them have been in foreclosure and bankruptcy before.” “I met one and his nails weren’t cleaned properly.” All valid points. But they are humans. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. For example, do you know anyone that has lost a job and might have started being late on their bills? Do they deserve a second chance? And, yes, sometimes bad people do bad things. But if this wasn’t true, Michael Knight would have been on the unemployment line and Kit would have spent most of his time parked uselessly in a garage. But I digress…

As Ms. Palin exhorted in the debate, “One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars.” Maybe we can pick up the slack for Wall Street?

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.

Charlotte Property Management Weekly: What is “Rent-To-Sell”? A Primer by “Ugly Kid”

“You think ‘Rent-To-Sell’ is the best way to sell in this economy? Why is it better than just listing my home for sale?” (Skeptical Charlotte Home Seller)

“My son will have a date to that darn prom if it is the last thing I do…” (Rueful rallying cry from the father of “Ugly Kid”)

A father had a problem. Rather it was his son’s problem, but he couldn’t stomach the thought that his offspring was so unappealing to the opposite sex. So now the problem was his. The high school junior prom was only three short weeks away and his son was still unable to secure a date. “Pathetic,” the father thought as he trolled his retired black book to see if any of his prior flings had a daughter his son’s age. How could this be happening?

It certainly wasn’t for lack of effort. Not only had his son asked out every girl in his class, but he had followed it up with invitations to every girl in his grade, then every girl in his high school, and every girl in his nascent Facebook account. No go. The real world and cyberspace were proving equally as cruel. Apparently, when one has earned the moniker of “Ugly Kid”, the deck is stacked against you. However, the father was undeterred and began his campaign to get his son a prom date.

It started with accessing message boards from high schools around the country and posting ads. “Attention High School Girls: Great Guy Needs Prom Date, Awesome Personality, No Pictures Available (hard drive crashed), Will Pay Airfare, Room, & Board to NC.” He alerted radio station disc jockeys to his son’s dilemma. He submitted thousands of entries into the “Win a Date with Britney Spears” contest. He put profiles on Match.com and HighSchoolGirlzHere.com. And then, he waited…

Something happened. His e-mail began to fill up and his phone started to ring off the hook. Nationally, high school girls were requesting more information (and pictures) concerning his posts. Disc jockeys were putting him on their shows and having intrigued girls call in. Activity was booming and the excitement was palpable. And then one week before prom, his son got a call from a Carolina girl from Charlotte who said the sweet words he had been yearning to hear, “Yes, I will go to the prom with you.” And Dad’s work paid off; “Ugly Kid” was going to the dance.

This is the essence of “Rent-To-Sell”. The traditional buyers who go get a loan and purchase your home outright are scarce! You need to remember the oldest selling axiom out there (“Sales is a numbers game”) and have it work for you. Instead of just listing your home like you did in the past, you need to open your home up to the greatest number of potential buyers out there; this includes rent-to-own tenants (building their credit), tenant-buyers (renters with good credit who don’t want to buy right now- usually just moved to the area), and investors looking to buy a home with a paying tenant already in place. The American dream of homeownership isn’t dead; it is just is going to be played out differently until the credit markets firm up. Change your game plan accordingly!

Your home and “Ugly Kid” are in the same boat. Enlarge your target buyer audience and that call will come!

Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, “Charlotte’s Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company” (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled “How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home” (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.