For a real estate investor, expanding your portfolio to properties outside of your realm of knowledge can be a daunting notion. You may, for example, be considering Memphis real estate, but you live out of the city or state. Risk is an ever-important element to investing, and deciding where to invest is paramount. So much more goes into the equation when weighing the risk of investing in out of area investment properties.  One of the biggest risks revolves around property management.  We will get to that in a minute.  First, the decision centers on deciding if investing in another city is right and then deciding which city is best.  Because real estate investing does vary by location.  Not to mention, the real estate market is not the same everywhere — it varies not only by state, but by city.

In this day and age, security is a major concern for a lot of people. Unfortunately, the days of leaving your home unlocked without worry are behind us. Burglars and other intruders are a very real concern for your tenants. A deadbolt lock on the exterior doors may help with peace of mind, but it could be that you’re thinking about investing in a home security system for your real estate investment property.

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.

Generally, it makes a lot of sense to make a property as attractive as possible to as many potential tenants as possible. Once it's ready, you want your property to be rented by a reliable tenant as quickly as possible.

This is a question we get asked on a weekly basis and I suspect most of the questions are coming up because of mis-information being put out by opportunists.  People who are selling get-rick quick ideas or promoting a shiny new idea or product as a quick-fix for new real estate investors.  When most of the questions are coming from a place of fear, you can almost always bet that bad information is the cause of the question.  For real estate investing, my answer is to ask a different question!

I try to make this blog a valuable resource for our customers and other people interested in real estate investing. From general real estate information to more specific advice regarding real estate investing, from the latest news in what's going on with Memphis Invest to up-to-date information about the Memphis area, I want you to walk away feeling more intelligent and/or more informed after every post you read on here.

Let's face it: You probably don't have a monopoly on all the rental homes in your area. (If you do, please be kind enough to let us know where you live, so we can take some of that market share off your hands; you must be exhausted.) With so many other real estate investors competing for a limited pool of tenants, it's important to make yourself stand out from the crowd.  Here in Memphis we are managing right over 1,800 properties and, while that may seem like a massive number of properties, we are still a fraction of the total number of rental properties in the city.  Just this week, we have had several meetings to discuss stepping away from the "ordinary" and figuring out how to eliminate altogether properties that are vacant over 30 days.  We have roughly 25 properties in our entire portfolio about 1.3% that have been vacant over 30 days and we have been asking ourselves the same question we posed to you above.