Friday, December 9, 2011

Turning Real Estate Into A Rental

Many homeowners looking to sell their home have quickly found that the downturn in the economy has turned the real estate market into a buyer's market. This means that it might take a little longer than usual to sell a home. As a result, many homeowners have given up on trying to sell their home, and have instead turned their home into a rental property.

With a buyer's market, the buyer has the upper hand in the purchase of a home. Therefore, the homeowner has no choice but to either sell their home for less than they paid for it, or let their home continue to sit on the market until they receive a better offer price for the home. This leaves many homeowners with no choice but to offer there home as a rental property because it can be financially difficult to pay a mortgage on two homes, especially if they have purchased a new home before finding a buyer for the old home. Renting a property will sometimes have added expenses related to maintenance and wear and tear. However, this is sometimes a better option if the home cannot sell because it allows the homeowner to maintain the mortgage on an unsold home.

With more homeowners choosing to offer their unsold home as a rental, there are more real estate agents who are also offering property management services. This is beneficial to the homeowner because the real estate agent will handle the tenant screening process to find the right tenant. Many times the real estate agent can find a rent-to-own tenant, which gives the tenant the option to eventually purchase the home.

Friday, November 11, 2011

The Advantages And Disadvantages of Managed IT Services

It can often be convenient and affordable to arrange to lease servers that are located elsewhere and watched over by another company rather than going to all of the trouble and expense of building and setting up your own server room. If you have chosen to do this, your next step will be to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of managed IT services for your business.

* Management By Experts - A contract with a company to provide you with managed IT Services will mean that your servers will be managed by people who have this type of activity as their sole job. This will often mean that it will be handled more efficiently and schedules for activities like patching and running backups will be followed more strictly than they would be if your company handled the server management for itself.

* Costs - The way that the costs work out for a management contract can vary. If you already have people within your business who can take on the extra role, it may not make financial service to contract with an outside firm to do so. On the other hand, you can save yourself the expense of hiring and training people if your company does not already possess this expertise.

* Software Choice - You should make sure that you have a clear idea of your software needs in advance so that you can discuss them with the company that would be doing your Managed IT Services. If you have a particularly unusual software package that is required for your business, you may discover that their contract will not include support for it. On the other hand, most common software programs should be available.

Nearly anyone can buy a couple of computers and set them up as servers, but setting up a system that is secure and reliable is a much more complicated and time-intensive process. If handling large numbers of servers isn't part of the core operations of your business, it may make sense to outsource this work by making arrangements to hire another company to provide Managed IT Services.