I’ve written before about my business philosophy of treating my clients as if they were family. Sometimes that means that I need to tell a buyer to walk away from a bad purchase and sometimes it means I tell a seller to become a landlord rather than taking a huge loss by selling.
Renting Instead of Selling
Today, I canceled one of my listings in University City. After tracking sales in the area for almost 3 months, I told my client that I thought he needed to find a renter unless he was prepared to drop the price by $10,000. Since the price drop would have resulted in a loss for this first time investor, he decided to become a landlord rather than sell the house he had rehabbed.
Deciding How Much to Charge for Rent
If you don’t work in property management full time, deciding how much to charge for rent can be a challenge. When I’m involved in setting a rental price, I usually run a search on craigslist to see what nearby properties are charging.
Thanks to a website that I just discovered, makeuseof.com, I found a website that helps you evaluate rental rates for any 1 mile radius or zip code in the U.S.
Rentometer.com
Rentometer.com makes it easy for tenants and landlords to determine if the rent being charged is too high.
Using the site is simple. You simply enter an address, then list the number of bedrooms and the rental rate. Rentometer.com then shoots out an odometer like chart that shows you the median rental rate, plus gives you the price range for the majority of nearby rentals.
The embedded Google map lists available rentals, and identifies them with as lower priced (minus sign), similar price (equal sign) or higher priced (plus sign). You can click on the icons to see the rental listing.
Landlords can advertise their rentals for free.
Credit goes to Brian Boero of 1000WattConsulting for pointing out makeuseof.com in his post on some new photo tools.
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This year I decided to use the tradition of making New Year’s resolutions as catalyst for becoming a better world citizen. I wrote a post pointing out a few personal changes I made in 2008 and my resolutions for 2009.
One quarter into the year, it’s time to grade myself on my progress.
2009 Resolutions:
1. Connect more with people of diverse backgrounds
Since attending St. Louis BarCamp in December, I have become an avid user of Twitter.
St. Louis Bar Camp at Cabin Inn Bar
See Flickr set of Social Media pictures
My twitter followers have become trusted resources and local tweetups have turned many of them into real life friends. I purposely started following some local twitterers that have different racial/ethnic/religious backgrounds from me. Still, I could do a lot better. The tweetup attendance has been a pretty Caucasian group. I’m not sure how I’m going to make this resolution a reality, but I’m going to keep working on it.
2. Help connect people with jobs
I haven’t gotten anyone a job yet, but I’ve been doing my part trying to connect people I know with someone that might help. My May 2008 college grad nephew was looking for a job, and I contacted my former clients who worked in industries that interested him. He finally found a job on his own and moved up to Kalamazoo last month.
I’m still working on connecting my lawyer cousin Jeff who is back in school adding another degree so he can go after a .NET software job. I’ve got a few twitter friends ready to talk to him.
3. Support independent restaurants and businesses
I’ve been most successful at this resolution. I’ve been actively seeking out independent, and hopefully smoke-free, restaurants. I also published posts on independent smoke-free restaurants and local farmer’s markets to get them some additional exposure.
Winslow’s Home is a locally owned general store and cafe in University City
See more Winslow Home Pictures
I love coffee shops and have been going after the small local ones lately rather than always ending up at Bread Co (Panera Bread for those of you not in St. Louis). I even chose the locally owned Moolah Temple movie theater (with leather couches and a real bar) the last time I went for a big screen evening.
4. Use my reusable bags at more than just the grocery store
I’m pretty good about using my 2 reusable grocery bags that I bought for a dollar each when I go to the grocery, but I just felt silly taking them into the mall or Best Buy. So, I just bought a new bag that folds up to to size of a small wallet. I used it for the first time this weekend when I went shopping at the University City Farmer’s market.
5. Donate money every month to a worthy charity
Ok, I’m definitely behind on this one. I did adopt a child for the NCJW Back to School Store and used this blog to promote the event. Please join me in helping 950 deserving kids go back to school excited about learning. Everything from the $150 child sponsorship to $1 donations are appreciated!
But, I didn’t make a donation EVERY month this year. I’m 3 months behind. Watch for a post in the next week highlighting my latest charity donations as I get back on track.
All in all, I give myself a B+ since I’m making good progress on all of my goals, but have lots of room for improvement.
How have YOU been doing on your resolutions?
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