Whether you are looking to rent a property or to rent out a property you own, the first step is to ensure you find a professional reliable property management company that you can count on! Ensure to find a real estate management company that meets your needs and can provide you the client services you need whether you are an owner or a tenant.

What is Property Management?

Property management services, essentially is the oversight, control and operation of properties and real estate, where the company monitors and cares for real estate on behalf of a client throughout the agreed period. This is where some company’s may differ slightly, in the overall service they provide. As subtle as the differences may be any potential impact further down the line may not be obvious at the outset.

How do you find the right company?

Once you have a list of potential company’s there are a number of key aspects you should be looking for to identify the most reputable property management company. Most of these aspects form the basic principles of property management services and any company that cannot provide these basics should not be considered as a reputable company.

· Does the advertising include geographical location, local amenities and full overview of properties?

· Do they offer a full screening process of potential tenants? Credit checks, employment references, previous landlord references and submission of a fully detailed application.

What to look for next?

If the answers to the above questions are satisfactory to you then you need to consider the daily management and accounting aspects. Any reputable property management company will provide the following services:

· Security Deposit obtained prior to the occupancy of a new tenant.

· Collection of monthly rent.

· Inspections of the property in the move-in, move-out phases of a tenant.

· Total management of tenant payment arrears and debt recovery if necessary.

· Manage requests for property maintenance from landlords and tenants.

· Complaint management.

· Resolution of tenant disputes.

· Management of eviction notices where necessary, in accordance with current laws.

· Property improvement management.

· Deposit and rentals fees directly transferred to your bank account.

· Management of maintenance payments or other payments to vendors.

What else to look for?

Look for a company that offers thorough communication, good reporting and tracking systems and will provide a monthly detailed statement regarding the services. The statement should include accounting and billing information that will include the current rental balance to be deposited directly to your bank account.

Where to start looking for Property Management Services?

The Internet is currently the most popular and easiest method to conduct searches to find a reputable property management company, with directories covering most cities and territories throughout the United States and Canada. For example, if your property is located in the city of Edmonton you will find a reasonable number of businesses offering property management services, including REMAX Excellence, The Rental Advisors Team.

Have you ever thought about starting your own home based business? In today’s economy it seems like many people are going the work from home route rather than being employed by someone else. Besides, home based businesses are now accepted all over the world as good as any brick and mortar business.So why is that many people all over the world are starting to build their own business?Just try to imagine how would your life look like if you had money coming in every week like a clockwork? What would you do with your free time?Many people are spending their time with family, see their kids play or perform at school, travel around the world, to buy bigger houses, nice cars or invest their extra money into real estate properties, forex programs, stock markets or foreign businesses.As you see, you could multiply your income really fast.The only thing is that it requires a lot of hard work on your part in order to make good money working from home. You need to have the desire and motivation to work without any distractions.Most people read emails, clean the house, fix their car and at the end of the day they realized that they completely forgot to build their business. You can not be like that if you want to start your own home based business. There are many programs that help you to overcome this distractions, so you can earn great income from home.But is it worth the effort of starting your own home based business?I reply with an outstanding yes! You have so much opportunities when you work for yourself and the best part is that you can earn unlimited income. Unlike at your job, where you will never make more money than your boss. Unless he retires and give you his position. But that is like winning the lottery.So let’s get to the best 10 reasons why you should start your own home based business:1. You will be master of your time, income and success. No boss to tell you what to do, when you do it or no more office politics.2. You can work around your schedule, that way you can be with your family if you want to be with them.3. It does not cost a fortune to start your own business, working from home.4. You can start part-time after you finish your regular job, so you still have a secure income while building your business on the side.5. You will become more stress free, because you will not be afraid of being fired.6. You will grow as a person to a much higher levels. So celebrate every success that give you the extra strength to work on your business.7. There are no limits and the income potential is as high as your imagination.8. You have a great Tax benefits when you operate your own home based business.9. You can work on your business from any location, so it is time to go for vacation to your favorite location and spend an hour or two building your business on your computer.10. How does the early retirement sounds to you? Great! With your own home based business, you have a better chance to retire comfortably at an early age.As you can see there are many great things about owning your own business. My favorite home business idea is the internet home based business because it gives you even more benefits and it is possible to completely outsource the mundane tasks to free your time as much as possible. With internet business, you will work less than 4 hours a day to earn full-time income.

Being an entrepreneur from a young age I have been able to experience life on both sides of the employment world ie both employed by a company and self-employed with my own business.For me the highlight has always been the times when I have been completely independent and working for myself, but this may not be suitable for everyone.The advantages are many. For example no commute to and from work. How much time and money (through car usage or otherwise) is wasted by everyone as they go to and from work? What if that time and money could be used for other things? This is one of the most obvious advantages. Some companies have even begun hiring people to work from home as call center operatives. This is great for the company as they save huge money by not needing offices and telephones etc as these are all provided by the employee instead. In reality though the money saved is not really passed onto the employees and the wage works out about the same as if you worked for the company at their office. Perhaps that will change in the future.Another great benefit to working from is that you can spend “break” times with your family. So for example you could have lunch with your kids or spouse if they happen to be at home. But at the same time what can be an advantage can also be a distraction. Some find it hard to concentrate on work if they are at home and they get easily distracted and find they don’t actually do a full 8 or 9 hour day.Having your own business and working from home (as apposed to working from home for another company) offers a lot of tax advantages (depending on where you live of course). Many countries allow you to write off a portion of your rent if you use 1 room as an office. You can also write off a portion of all your utilities. However if you mortgage your house things get a bit tricky if you choose to write off a portion of your mortgage. For example when you go to sell your house, theoretically your business now owns a portion of your house because it paid a portion of your mortgage, so a portion of the sale price would need to be declared as income for the business. These complications don’t exist when you are only renting.Due to these write off and tax benefits you can find yourself earning very decent money by paying lower taxes than if you were employed. However, if you live in Canada and America one main disadvantage would be the lack of health coverage. That alone can be worth a lot of money, so for some an employed job is necessary for the health insurance alone.In my life I always tried to start my business on the side while I was employed by another company. This way of starting a home business offers the least risk as there is no guarantee you will make any money in your business venture. So for me, life was very busy and hectic doing both things at once, but eventually the home business grows and you can take the plunge and do it full time.If you are considering starting a business buying and selling a product, it is highly beneficial to test the market first. One of my early successful business was with buying and selling computers from my house. I first located what I thought was a cheap source for the PCs. But I didn’t buy any until I was confident I could sell them at a profit. I did this research simply by calling people who were advertising their used computer and seeing if it had sold or not. I found that people were indeed selling their use computers for a price that would allow me to make a profit. But in order to be totally sure I also put an ad in the news paper advertising the computers I planned to sell (without buying them). If I received a lot of phone calls I had the confidence to take the plunge and buy (just 1) computer as a test. If I sold it successfully for a profit and continued to get phone calls I would then buy more each time and repeat the process. You too could use a similar way to test the market for whatever product you think you can sell for a profit.Another easy home business idea is offering some sort of a service. Service based business are some of the best home based businesses because there is no risk in buying a product and having it sit and lose money when you are unable to sell it. My last business was a computer repair business and it was wonderful. However, if computers aren’t your thing then cleaning is always doable. My wife started her own cleaning business easily by placing a few ads in some windows (eg post offices etc) where elderly people might frequent. She quickly had a base of customers who quickly recommended her to their friends (because of her good work and friendliness of course) and her business exploded. She ended up turning people away.One thing to be careful of when starting a service based business is make sure you charge a good rate from the beginning. Find out the average rate and charge at least that or more. Because it’s always easy to drop your price but next to impossible to ever raise it.Hopefully you can see the benefits of working from home and have a few ideas as to how to go about realizing that dream.