what new european countries offer the best potential to invest in property for short term gainsBecause of the many complications of investing in real estate directly, I'm a big fan of real estate mutual funds, which own companies that own real estate. The values of these companies rise and fall with the properties they own, and they are required to pass most of the income along to you, the investor. In addition to the ease and liquidity of owning a mutual fund (rather than actual properties), these funds provide diversification, both by type of property (office complexes, parking garages, shopping malls, etc.), and by geographic region.There are not many international real estate funds, but there are a few. See the article link below for some info on three good ones.Good luck

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20070625053908AA5TUAB

(PRWeb UK) May 2, 2010

DIRECTORS of residents management companies, landlords and agents have been reminded of their health and safety responsibilities in a white paper published by Cardinus Risk Management.

The white paper has been designed to help those people responsible for the management of residential properties to understand the many and varied types of legislation that govern these types of buildings.

James Truscott, managing director of Cardinus Property said, Its important to remember things like communal areas of residential properties are deemed to be a place of work. Therefore various pieces of legislation are applied to them, such as the Health and Safety at Work Act, the relatively new Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, which require regular risk assessments to be carried out by a competent person.

When you add fire safety, gas and electrical safety and asbestos regulations, there is a need for very specialised knowledge, so residents management companies need to be able to trust in good advice from experts.

Ultimately, it is the duty of the responsible person within the residents management company, landlord or managing agent to ensure compliance with the various regulations and legislation. The purpose of the Cardinus white paper is to highlight the importance and complexity of the responsibilities and provide clarity.

Directors and other responsible people can obtain their free copy of the Cardinus Risk Management white paper, Directors responsibilities health and safety in relation to property, via a dedicated website at: http://www.cardinus-property.co.uk so order your copy now. For more information about Cardinus Risk Management you can also call 020 7469 0200.

Notes to Editors
Cardinus directors, experts and consultants are available for interview and quotes on industry issues. The full range of Cardinus consultancy services can be seen on its website, http://www.cardinus.com or you can telephone 0207 469 0200 (UK) 1-866-966-3420 (US).

http://prweb.com/printer/3947134.htm

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) August 5, 2008

y925, LLC has officially launched a set of Internet services designed to simplify managing rental property. Propertize provides individual rental owners simplified income and expense tracking and secure access to important rental data from anywhere. Vowcher accelerates rent collections by sending monthly invoices to tenants a few days before the rent is due.

The trend in software development over the past few years has been toward elegant web-based applications that provide important functionality while maintaining simple, user-friendly interfaces. Propertize and Vowcher bring this trend to the rental property industry, explained Brett Yates, President of y925.

He observes that today's volatile real estate market is changing the rental industry in several significant ways.

• Investors are taking advantage of foreclosures and other conditions
• New investors are entering the industry at even younger ages
• Properties are rented for longer than expected as the market recovers
• Many rental owners hold full-time jobs and need access to data at work

All these factors combine to prompt rental owners to use the Web for help managing their rentals.

Yates observes that a key component to effective property management and a main feature of Propertize is the tracking of monthly rental income and expenses. Entering a rent payment is as simple as choosing a tenant's name or unit. Propertize will even enter recurring income and expenses to your ledger automatically, he said.

Tracking income and expenses with Propertize is especially useful during tax time. Tallying up income and expenses can be time-consuming. The tax report in Propertize provides an aggregated list of all ledger entries for the year, organized by categories from the Schedule E tax form every individual rental owner is required to complete.

Vowcher, a stand-alone product fully integrated with Propertize, sends monthly invoices to tenants via email or postal mail. Invoices are sent to arrive a few days before the rent is due, thus increasing timely rent collections.

Propertize plans start at just $49.99 for the year. For more on Propertize, visit http://www.getpropertize.com. For more on Vowcher, visit http://www.vowcher.com.

Contact: Brett Yates via email brett @ y925.net or via phone 1-866-717-7440 ext. 3

http://prweb.com/printer/1154414.htm

Please add suggestions if you know of other good areas in the UK for residential property investments and explain why.The best areas are ones that are located close to the City but are still a bit rough . sorry, hope I'm not offending anyoneReason being, the fact that they're a bit rough means that they're still *relatively* cheap now, but they will, within the next few years, become regenerated and therefore be much nicer places to live. And then when they have been done up nice, their proximity to the City will make them popular with City workers who earn bucketloads. So, yep, definitely Hackney as mentioned above. Also Stoke Newington.Down south go for Lambeth or Kennington.Hornsey was mentioned – sorry but I do not believe that it is a good area to invest in (I live there). It's a very pleasant place to live but cannot be thought of as an investment due to the fact that prices will not increase at the rate that they will in other areas. This is because it lacks decent public transport and other basic amenities.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20070106082915AAwDALX

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) September 23, 2009

Prime Properties, the Southwest's largest residential property management company has announced that they're changing their name to ONEprop.

Prime Properties has built its solid foundation on successfully managing single family homes, said CEO David Kadleck. We're much more than that over 20 years later. We're leasing, marketing, management, and accounting. We're involved in asset management, multi-family, sales and investor advisement. We're more than Prime Properties. We're one stop, one source for all management needs. ONEprop fit our company.

ONEprop will launch the new brand in Austin this fall and expand company-wide by the start of 2010.

We've expanded our business to become better-rounded in 2009, said Mike Bush of the Business Development department. While we still pride ourselves in offering the best service in the single family market, our valued clients kept pushing for us to manage more for them to help them keep their investments in-line with our standards and practices.

Building strategic alliances and partnerships with vendors, asset managers, and gaining valuable insight into the clients' wish-list was the inspiration for the name change. We needed to let our clients, their tenants and our future clients know that they're not going to need 10 different vendors to help them achieve a sense of ease while owning rental properties. Our team approach to management ensures that all aspects are handled in one place, hence ONEprop, said Kevin Martin, COO of ONEprop. It's been a long time coming.

ONEprop is a Dallas-based property management company with locations in 6 Southwest Metro locations: DFW, Austin, Phoenix, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Baton Rouge/Lafayette. ONEprop has been in business since 1986, and employs a staff of Realtors and corporate professionals extensive industry experience. With over $3 million in rent processed each month, ONEprop leads the single family residential industry.

Contact: Layla Bush (214) 432-1967
http://www.oneprop.net

http://prweb.com/printer/2918284.htm

(PRWEB) September 22, 2004 -

The 32nd Annual Americas Cup Regatta will be held from 2005 to 2007 in Valencia, Spains third-largest city and a bustling metropolis surrounded by unspoiled beaches and beautiful countryside. Many people from across Europe and around the globe will be purchasing Spanish property in Valencia and the surrounding areas to have long-term access to the oldest and most famous sailing race in the world today.

Peek At Spain SL, a Spanish property company that specializes in the Valencia region, has access to over 5,000 listings for Spanish property currently on the market.

There are several reasons for choosing Valencia, said John Knight, CEO of Peek At Spain SL. Some move here because of the price of Spanish property. In Valencia; homes cost about half as much as property in some of the better known regions like Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol. Others choose this area for its lack of hustle and bustle. It is truly Spain here, full of traditional culture.

The Spanish property handled by Peek At Spain ranges from apartments and townhouses within the heart of Valencia to three and four-bedroom inland villas and large country mansions, covering budgets from 85,000 to multimillions. Whether you are looking for a holiday home, a retirement property, or a place to raise your family, Peek At Spain will have Spanish property that will take your breathe away, said John Knight.

To receive a free newsletter about current Spanish property listings from Peek At Spain SL and to see listings for homes for sale in and around Valencia, visit the Peek At Spain website at http://www.peek-at-spain.com. Listings change frequently, so registering with them here may be helpful. Peek At Spain can also be reached within the UK at 0871-990-3-550, in Spain at

034-96-299-8133, or by fax at 034-96-299-9076.

Peek At Spain is a Spanish property companyrun by British people who made the permanent move to Spain some time ago. They bought a lovely Spanish property overlooking Valencia and are now enjoying life there while helping others to do the same. Peek At Spain collaborates with Spanish real estate agents who have had years of experience in providing a professional service to Spanish people. Peek At Spain provides the same service to foreign buyers at no additional cost. Foreign buyers will pay the same with Peek At Spain as they would through any local agent, and in many cases, even less. They will then receive a unique information package after they purchase, to help them settle into the area. Also, all their prices on http://www.peek-at-spain.com are fully inclusive

http://prweb.com/printer/160702.htm

I've been trying for a while to find a place to advertise my property to Spanish students, but I do not know if there's a singular agency or company to go through..Go to your local Spanish schools and let them know your house is for rent.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20061115025528AA3Ldx6

(PRWEB) May 26, 2005

Property Investment: One of the Biggest Business in the World

FACT: More than 1,800.000 Europeans will buy a second residence in the next five years; 1,300.000 of them will be experienced investors.

FACT: In the next five years 52 million baby boomers will be looking for a retirement spot, requiring sun, sea and a relaxed lifestyle. Only one problem: high demand means high prices.

FACT: The three most popular retirement destinations world-wide are California, Florida, the Spanish Costa del Sol.

Due to bad or non-performing stocks and shares, ever decreasing pension funds and low saving rates, people have increasingly been looking for alternatives to invest in their future. Properties are rapidly becoming the new pension. With the recent rises in properties, people have had a lot of equity in their current properties to invest with. Not just content with investing in the future, many people are investing for the present.

Peter Gordon, Prestige Management PLC Managing Director, reports that the bonanza in property investment continues to rise at least until 2010. The highest returns (25%-30% per year depending on location), can be gained by buying off plan; getting in at this stage ensures rock bottom prices with the certainty of making a profit before completion of the building.

Given this, Prestige Management PLC is proud to announce its latest investment and advisory service for the Spanish property market.

Prestige Management PLC is a global real estate investment management company that provides services worldwide to a diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals.

If you'd like more information about this topic, please call Prestige Management PLC. at +41 (0) 44 580 62 23 or e-mail news@prestigemanagementplc.com

http://prweb.com/printer/244195.htm

You can buy a tax liens property which is then transferred to a trust and ‘wrapped up’ in a pension scheme which will yield you, with any luck, an excellent return when you retire.

Pros: When buying tax liens in this manner, such investments are protected from the taxman and thus, as tax-free vehicles, yield far more money than they would if you had to pay tax on them. Investments put into SIPPs can be bought and sold in the same way as other properties, and rents can be received from buy-to-let investments – all tax free.

You can bequeath these investments to your heirs, thus creating the famous, or notorious, ‘trustafarians’. You can also avoid paying inheritance tax, or your executors can, when you die.

Cons: By ‘wrapping up’ your investments, you are not only protecting them from the taxman, but also from yourself and your heirs! The point about putting property – or indeed, any other type of investment – into a SIPP is that you can never yourself get at the bulk of the capital.

The reason for this is that the investment does not belong to you any more, but to a trust you have created. You can administer the trust, but you remain a trustee, not the owner. As such, you only benefit from the interest or yield received.

Also, these vehicles for buying tax liens need professional management and you will have to pay a (usually not inconsiderable) fee to fund managers. Another aspect is that, really, you need to be quite rich to invest in a SIPP There are also upper limits to the amount and type of property you can put into a SIPP Because there are many rules, it is imperative to take professional advice, and you need to know that your adviser is completely trustworthy.

REITs – Real Estate Investment Trusts – introduced into the UK in January 2007, are companies which own and manage income-producing property. This can be commercial or residential and the idea is that the bulk of the income is distributed to investors.

Instead of investing directly in property, you put your money into a REIT which buys, manages and lets out property on behalf of the investors. REITs were first established in the United States, then migrated to Australia and finally to the Netherlands as a means of investing in a property portfolio.

REITs are closely linked to buy-to-let, and – so property experts maintain – are set to change the face of property investment in the UK. As you invest in the company rather than the property itself, REITs are an indirect means of property investment, rather like stocks and shares, although there are several important differences.

As REITs get going, they will probably appeal most to those who feel they understand bricks and mortar, but don’t want all the hassle of dealing with it directly.

This is the form of property investment that most people think of when talking about investing in property. You buy a place that is not your main home in order to make money by renting it out or, alternatively, you bank on the property making a huge capital gain in a few years and rent it out to make it pay for itself in the meantime. These days, most investors look at the total yield, that is, rental return plus potential capital gain, when deciding whether to buy.

Pros: Buy-to-let, in all its various guises, has become by far the most popular method of investing in property in recent years, and is the main way used of making money – or turning you into a ‘property millionaire’ – at property clubs and investment seminars. The idea is that you get regular income through rental yield which offsets the many costs involved in buying and maintaining a property, and in the process you become a landlord.

Although you incur capital gains tax on resale, there are very many costs you can set against this tax, such as refurbishment and improvement, utility bills, council tax, service charges, accountancy fees, purchase costs and legal fees. Plus, the process of indexation on capital gains tax means that the longer you own the property, the less of this tax you pay on resale.

A further benefit is that buy-to-let mortgages are easily available and constitute cheap borrowing. The idea is that you make a killing by selling at a profit when you have bought with cheaply borrowed money. Mortgages are still the cheapest kind of long-term loan available, and a prime reason for so many people investing in buy-to-let.

Cons: There can never be any guarantee that your place will successfully rent out. Although many property developers are now offering a ‘guaranteed rental’ for a period of time, you as the owner do not know whether this is a genuine rent, or whether the property will rent out at that amount when the guarantee period ends. Or, indeed, that it will rent out at all.

In many areas, landlords struggle to find tenants as the buy-to-let phenomenon has caused serious oversupply of properties, with many developers now building apartment blocks specifically aimed at this sector, and canny tenants negotiating rents ever downwards. Rents also do not always cover mortgages, as Tony and Cherie Blair found to their cost when they had to keep lowering the rent on their West London house.

More recently in the UK there is now the requirements for home information packs, where a landlord must supply his potential tenants with a home information pack or energy performance certificate to state that the property has been certified as energy efficient.

Being a landlord is hard work and requires input from you. Renting out a property is emphatically not the same as hiring out a car, for instance, as the complicated rules of tenure always apply. Tenants are human beings, and being a landlord involves very human transactions – it is emphatically not simply a matter of moving money around.

There are very many regulations governing renting out properties and also many ongoing costs associated with buy-to-let. Figures have to be worked out very carefully indeed, to make sure the expected rental will adequately cover your costs – and not merely the mortgage.

Tenants nowadays expect smart, modern, clean properties, and this means constant work maintaining and renovating your property to a high standard. The unexpected – such as no tenants, the boiler breaking down, the roof coming off in a high wind – can always happen.

The other major factor here is that if buying mainly for capital gain, you are taking a big gamble as you can never know for sure that the capital gain on resale will be worth it. You are looking into the future, a place where nobody has a reliable crystal ball.

Although many property professionals are in the business of prediction, as with all financial predictions, they can actually only go on past performance. Anybody who could genuinely and accurately predict future trends would indeed soon be a billionaire, but that person has never yet come forward.

Property investment can be very lucrative if you know what you are doing. Get the facts about investing in buy to let properties, including your obligations as a landlord in areas such as home information packs and energy performance certificates from a certified Lincoln EPC agent.

With the exception of the last few years, property has generally increased in value so much that there is a general belief that you just can’t lose with property investment especially through tax liens. This impression is underlined by the growth of property clubs, where you pay to invest in newbuild and off-plan properties bought at a discount. Such clubs tend to be heavily advertised and appeal to people’s greed and laziness by suggesting that you can become a property millionaire in no time, for little or no money down, and whether the market is rising or not.

The truth is that you can lose, but even so, property does historically come good most of the time – eventually. Also, investors in property can now, quite literally, have the whole wide world in their hands – or in their portfolios. It is now possible to invest in property in most countries in the world, so that your property portfolio can look as international as you like. Nowadays, anybody can be an international investor and financier! Anybody can swagger around brandishing an impressive-looking international property portfolio!

So why do I believe that property, in general, makes a good type of investment?

In the first place, everybody understands property, simply because everybody has to have a roof over their heads. Everybody also understands that home occupiers have to pay rent or a mortgage in order to continue living there. It is also self-evident that even when fully owned and mortgage-free, there are continuing costs attached to living in a home.

This is knowledge that we all have. By contrast, you have to be quite financially sophisticated to understand how equities and other aspects of the money markets work. You also have to be numerate and actually enjoy number-crunching. Successful people are doing sums in their heads the whole time; it is second nature to them. But few ordinary people really understand how and why stock markets crash, or how the stock market performance in, say, Japan, can intimately affect other stock exchanges around the world.

Few people, too, readily understand futures, hedge funds or derivatives. You have to be quite deeply interested in money and all its ramifications to be able to play money markets. It is a mindset which not all of us have. Yet everybody knows what estate agents and letting agents do.

Then, historically, at least, property is solid and substantial and far less liable than equities to stock market fluctuations, to crashes and recoveries. Obviously house prices fluctuate, but there has rarely, if ever, been a complete crash. One reason for this is that all real estate is built on land which will never go away. A further reason for the dependability of property is that everybody needs a home, whereas we can manage without a car, foreign travel, the latest electronic gadgetry, if we have to.

Then, there is almost always a shortage of housing. And while house prices can go up and down, there is always going to be some value in land. By contrast, the entire value of an equity can be wiped out, in a severe downturn of the market, performance in the High Street. And there is little the individual shareholder can do about this, except to buy and sell at the right time.

When you invest in stocks and shares, you may have very little control over whether their value rises or falls. To take a famous example, when former jeweler retailer Gerald Ratner made his notorious remark at a City dinner that his sherry decanters were ‘crap’, £500 million was immediately wiped off the value of Ratner shares, with the result that many shareholders lost very large sums indeed, through no fault of their own,

But even if somebody calls your house ‘crap’ – as ‘specialists’ on TV home design programs often come perilously close to doing – it is still unlikely to lose all its value.

One way to invest in property is through tax liens. Investing in tax lien certificates is becoming more popular, especially within the current economy. If you currently invest in property but aren’t using this investment vehicle you should definitely look into it.