My six-year old daughter just finished the 1st grade. One of the things the first graders do is they have spelling tests each week. What does this have to do with real estate investing? Stay tuned.

She had kind of a rough start with spelling at the beginning of the years. She was getting B’s and C’s at first. I decided that I need to do work with her to help her to develop the skill of spelling. What I did was work five days a week with her a little bit each day.

At first it was a real struggle to get her to practice with me. But after awhile, she got used to it. We even invented a game based on the TV show “Minute to Win It” to help make the practice more fun. After that rough start, she got straight A’s, week in and week out.

The last week of school was very busy with activities outside of school. In fact, we only got a few chances to practice spelling. The day of test she was stressed out because she felt like she wasn’t well enough prepared for the test. I told her to relax – that she would do just fine. Sure enough, she got an A.

The reason that you got so stressed out is that she now has the identity someone he has a good speller, and someone who is an A student. She she was very uncomfortable with the idea of getting less than than an A.

Why am I telling you this story? It contains one of the most powerful success principals. It’s the same thing with any other area in your life.

For example, when you are successful in finding great deals, you begin to believe that you are great at finding great deals. This helps you find more and more deals as your belief in yourself grows. As you find more and more great deals, your identity shifts from unsure to certain that you can always find great deals.

You begin to expect success all the time, every single time. This is your new standard of excellence. You become uncomfortable when fall below that level of success which is your new standard.

I notice this in myself. I’ll get onto a hot streak, and seem to find great deals all over the place. I’ve also been a cold streak, and wonder when I’m ever going to find my next deal.

When I feel that I’m not living up to my personal standards as a real estate investor, I go into action mode. I’ll put myself onto an action-based program. I’ll keep moving until I’m back to my comfortable level of production.

My mistake is that I slack off once I reach that level of production.

Want to create more for your business? Change your identity for yourself. Set a new standard. As Tony Robbins taught me years ago…”Step up!”

That’s how people become more and more successful in real estate investing.

One of my clients was struggling with getting a with getting and mailer out to a list of motivated sellers. He came to me for help.

I found that the the list he was using was a good list it. It was a list of sellers who have a high likelihood that they would need to sell their house quickly.

The mail piece that he was trying to put together was yellow letter. A yellow letter appears to be a hand written letter sent to the seller. It’s placed in a hand addressed envelope. These letters have a high likelihood of being opened because it looks like personal mail.

The fact that the letter appears to be hand-written means that it gets a good response rate.

The disadvantage with a mail piece like this is that it takes longer to put this type of letter together. My client taking two months or more to get these letters sent out. By that time, most of the people at already sold the properties or they’d listed them with a realtors.

My advice to him was to simply the mailer so he could get out much more quickly.

Yes, don’t start with the most labor intensive mailer. Start with the easiest to get out, a post card.

The specific service that I referred him to is called www.click2mail.com. This site is affiliated with the United States Postal Service. You can upload your mail list and your your mail piece to www.click2mail.com. They will do the printing. They will do the delivery. This automation makes for a lot less work.

To ensure that he actually finished the task, I asked him to send me an email when he got the post cards sent out. When you add accountability to a task like this that is a struggle, you make it all the more likely that you’ll actually get it done.

Late last year my the rental management business was in total disarray. It was chaos! We lost telephone numbers. We lost track of work orders because we didn’t have a work order system. Basically, we had an information nightmare.

Finally one day I’d had enough. I started researching on-line to try to find a solution for that problem. I decided to find a database that would help us to organize the information for our business.

There are two basic types of databases. There are web based database system. The other database systems are software installed on your computer which are used by just a single user.

We decided that we wanted to use a web-based system so that we could have the multiple users. We found a product called Buildium. I’m not trying to sell anything in this article here. If you want to check out Buildium, Google it and go there web site.

I’m just trying to tell you about the experience that we’ve had using a little bit about the difference, but it’s made a big difference.

There are 7 reasons that you should consider using a database for your rental business.

1) All the information is in one place.
The database can store all of your telephone numbers, your finances for the for your properties, information about the properties, property photographs, documents you scan (e.g., leases), and many other types of data. They’re all in one place with the in your database. This is a tremendous advantage.

No more looking through stacks and stacks of papers to find telephone numbers (as long as you save that information in the database).

2) Everybody is on the same page.
If you have an office in which you have staff like me, it makes a big difference to have everyone on the same page. What that means is that everyone is working off the same plan; everyone is marching to the same tune. A database can help get everybody marching in to the same tune.

3) It has a good way of handling work workers.
Once you get past managing about 100 properties, you’re really start to run into issues with staying on top of things like work orders. You need to follow up and make sure that that those small items are being taken care of.

What if you get 10 to 20 small projects going? It’s very easy to forget to follow up and check and make sure that work got done. But if you have a computerized system of handling and tracking work orders it becomes much easier because every every day we’ll verify that the work orders are getting completed.

4) It saves time.
It saves you time because you don’t have to go through stacks and stacks of paper to find that information that you’re missing.

5) It’s inexpensive.
The cost for having the database ranges from about $20 to $150 per month based on the number of units that you have in the database. If you look at different types of databases that are available for a property management, you’ll see the some are quite expensive. Compared to most web-based systems, Buildium was quite inexpensive, especially given the gains in productivity that we’ve realized.

6) It automatically does Craigslist ads.
It has a feature that will generate attractive looking craigslist ads for you. Because the database is able to save four photographs of each unit that you have, it’s able to put that information together with other information in the database to create a really nice looking craigslist at. The other nice thing is that you don’t have to keep retyping the same information over and over again when you want to put up a craigslist ad.

7) It’s web based.
It a web-based application, and that’s a big advantage because it allows you to have multiple users all of whom have access to the database. That means everyone in your office can see the information and put more information into the database as needed.

You can also log onto the database wherever you have an internet connection. That means if you go out of town on vacation, you have access to the database if you need it. If you are just away from your office and you need to get some type of information from that database, you can do so as long as you have an internet connection.

So again, I’m not trying to get you to buy Buildium. I’m just saying that we’ve had positive experiences with that system. And if you’re having trouble organizing your information, I wouldn’t hurt you to check out and start using some type of database system.

Today I got a question from one of my clients who had a property in which the client in which her renter moved out of her property without paying the rent. In addition, her tenant left a whole bunch of stuff in the house.

The question she had for me was what she needed to do in order to lease the property again. My advice to her was that you needed to get legal possession of the property.

It’s important that you play this by the book because if you cut corners and get caught, the punishment may be way worse than the little bit of convenience you gained by cutting corners.

What that means is that she needs to file for eviction with the court even though the tenant was already gone. This is especially important when the tenant has left a bunch of stuff in the house.

The reason she needed to go through the court is because there is always a chance that the tenant could come back and claim that they had some hardship that took them out of town.

Now let’s suppose that my client had gotten rid of all of the items in the house. In that case, the tenant could make a ridiculous claim against the landlord for throwing away their their “valuable” items. If the landlord did not have legal possession of the property when those items were removed, they could be liable for damages. Who knows what the tenant might claim was left in the property.

The nature of the items in the property is also important. Let’s suppose that the landlord gets legal possession of the property. In Oklahoma, if the items in the property can truly be considered trash, they may simply be disposed of. If, however, some of the items have value, the landlord is required to store those items for a period of time before disposing of them so the tenant has an opportunity to settle their debt with the landlord in order to get their property back.

I recently went to the clinic for some treatment. When I got to the front desk, I couldn’t believe how rude the girls were behind the desk. They acted as if I didn’t even exist. When they were finally finished talking, one of them came over and asked me what I wanted. I almost left their business because during those few seconds when I just arrived, I felt like an unwelcome guest.

In this article, I’m going to share with you three tips to improve the customer service of any rental company.

You think your business is different, right? You don’t have to worry about customer service. Sorry, you do. In fact, good customer service is the secret sauce for keeping your rental customer long term.

You have to keep in mind that your customers expect to be treated with courtesy and dignity. Those first few moments they meet you are critical.

When they come into your place of business and they feel like they’re not welcome, they are going to leave you fast. If you don’t show them how much you care about them as a customer they’ll go somewhere else. That means you won’t get their money.

When they call you to get information about a property, give it to them cheerfully. Here are three tips to improve your customer service skills.

1) Don’t be rude when they’re calling to schedule an appointment.

2) Be professional and helpful when they ask you questions. That’s courteous and shows that you’re and outstanding business person.

3) Remember the golden rule. Treat them just like the way you would want to be treated if you were walking into a business the first time.

When you do these things you’ll be better than most of your competition, and that can help set you apart from other property management companies or landlords in your city.

I really like buying properties that were built in the 1920’s and 1940’s for rental properties. Why buy such an old house? Simple. I can get these really cheep.

However, there are certain upgrades you need to make so they will be more valuable to your rental customers. When they are more valued by your customers, they will stay longer and you will get a better cash flow for the property.

In this article I’m going to give you three tips on the types of improvements that I would recommend you make to these types of properties.

1) Increase the Energy Efficiency
The first improvement is to increase the energy efficiency property. One of the best way to do this is to make sure you don’t have too many windows. Many times these older homes have way too many windows because they were built for time when the only air conditioning was by opening the windows.

For instance, if it has more than one window in the bedroom I will usually close off unnecessary windows. Usually I have one window per bedroom, and sometimes as many as two. I’ll be sure that I do that in a way to so that wind can not get through.

Another good idea is to make sure that there’s plenty of installation in the attic. When you buy a house, make sure you look in the attic to see how much insulation you have up there. It should at least cover up the 2 x 4’s.

2) Improve the Layout
The second tip is to improve of the property. In older homes, there are often way too many walls and partitions. For example, in a duplex that I recently renovated, there was a wall partition separating a living area from kind of strange room that didn’t make too much sense. It was either a terrible bedroom that you had the walk through to get to the rest of the duplex, or it was a dining room which probably wouldn’t get used as a dining room anyway.

I decided to take out the wall partition. I made it into a much nicer, larger, more open living area. It makes the duplex much nicer and more appealing.

3) Upgrade Plumbing, Electrical, and Heat and Air
OK. The house is almost 80 years old. That means those pipes and wiring might be that old if hasn’t been replaced.

That’s expensive, though, isn’t it? Yes, it is expensive. But it’s probably inexpensive compared to the alternative.

It’s far better to go ahead and replace those systems with newer more up, to, date electrical, plumbing, or heating and air if it cuts down on your maintenance cost. Also, if you continually need to get maintenance done, your tenants are going to get very frustrated because things are not working properly. I recommend that you update those items in a cost effective way so that the house will be more functional.