To quote the wise William Shakespeare, “To invest in real estate, or to not invest in real estate, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…”

There are plenty of rewarding things about managing your own rental properties. Some landlords are thrilled by the prospect of finding the perfect tenants for their properties and building lasting relationships with them. They find the experience of managing and maintaining a property to be very rewarding — and it certainly can be!

You may not be all that excited about the start of 2014. A new year can bring new stresses, new worries and the complications of the unknown. It could be that you were good and comfortable with 2013, but 2014? You might not be ready to make friends with 2014, let alone embrace it.

The phenomenon of social media is here to stay, folks. Which sites and applications are the most popular may change -- and it's no wonder considering new ones are popping up all the time -- but the fact remains that social networking has altered the way companies and individuals think about advertising and marketing forever.  It is estimated that within the next year or two, dollars spent on social media advertising will eclipse traditional marketing channels.  

Mortgage originations jumped to over 30,000 in2012 (the latest year with data) and when 2013 numbers are released, they are expected to show another year with over 30,000.  That is almost 8,000 more originations than 2011 and the first time the city has gone over 30,000 originations since pre-2007.  This activity in the Memphis market is a very good sign as the cities normal real estate cycles begin to shift back into focus.

While spring and summer are ideal for showing properties with neat, beautiful green lawns, shady trees and happy bright flowers, your prospective tenants might show up in the dead of winter looking for a rental home. It’s not your fault the grass is brown and that there are mountains of leaves on the ground. That’s just the cycle of life! They’ll just have to imagine what the place look like when it’s pretty, right? There’s nothing you can do about it.

I was doing some research this week on improving tenant relationships with their property management companies and I came across this info-graphic.  Part of the research was on how to respond quicker and provide better service to tenants who have issues with their rental properties.  For a company like Premier Property Management where 100% of the properties we manage are owned for real estate investing purposes, quick reaction and tenant satisfaction will go a long way in helping an owner have a consistent and reliable income stream.