No landlord ever wants to get notice that they are being sued by one of there tenants. With that being said, landlords must take every precaution to ensure they are following all of the local and federal laws in place. There are general guidelines that rental property owners or landlords must follow to avoid possible lawsuits from tenants. ●       Screen your prospective tenantsIf your prospective tenant seems too good to be true, then he or she may not be a trustworthy individual. It is amazing that in the screening process, a few simple questions can help you tremendously in assessing your tenants. You can ask about their previous leases and experiences from their past landlords. The most effective way to know about your potential tenant’s background is to use tenant screening. By scr... 02/19/2014

La Jolla Homes for Sale - What Happened in the La Jolla Real Estate Market in January 2014? The La Jolla real estate market is one of the most expensive in San Diego County. A virtual visit to La Jolla (see links below), or better yet in real life, will quickly give you a good sense of why this is so. Having current, local information about La Jolla homes for sale is essential so you can make informed decisions about your home buying and selling in La Jolla. Despite the shift in prices, La Jolla remains an expensive real estate market, particularly for ocean view and ocean front homes. La Jolla, “The Jewel,” is an extraordinarily beautiful coastal community with many homes offering fabulous views of the ocean from the hills, and a trendy, up-scale village offering the finest in shopping... 02/14/2014

Vacancies in rental units are bad news for property managers and owners since they can ruin the rental property business cash flow. With that being said, it is important that vacant properties not stay vacant for a long period of time or else, you will lose income.  Property managers in the rental property industry have shared there secret of keeping rental units from being vacant for a long period of time and that is to use cost-effective property management software. Rental Software has made it easier and more convenient to publish rental vacancies online. A lot of property managers and owners now use property management software to feature their property vacancies on the top real estate rental listing websites!  Of course good rental software is not free, but vacancies are expensive ... 02/13/2014

After declines yesterday, it has been a quiet morning ahead of tomorrow's Employment report. Weekly Jobless Claims dropped to 331K, which was very close to expectations. Fourth quarter Productivity rose to 3.2%, above the consensus of 2.5%. The December Trade Deficit was larger than expected. The European Central Bank (ECB) made no change in rates. The Dow is up 150 points. No more economic data will be released today.  As a result of the above economic activity, pricing has opened 0.125 / 0.250 WORSE to the points/credits associated with each interest rate option. This daily mortgage interest rate report is designed to provide Borrowers & Real Estate Profesionals with factual data regarding where rates are at any given time and what trends are propelling current mortgage pricing on any... 02/06/2014

Rentec Direct, maker of leading property management software, announces new and improved tools to help property managers and landlords keep track of and file there 1099's. Property managers can now easily fill there biggest IRS obligation; filing 1099′s.Rentec Direct provides a detailed report that can be given to a CPA through the “1099 Tax Assistant”, There is also a "Schedule-E Assistant" report for private landlords. Most CPAs have to gather all this information from records, and many have a flat fee per form ranging from $10 to $100 per form. With Rentec these reports supply a CPA or other tax specialist needed information and therefore most of the work has been done and a discount on the per-form fee may be given.Rentec Direct subscribers, can file 1099's automatically and electro... 01/17/2014

La Jolla Homes for Sale - What Happened in the La Jolla Real Estate Market in December 2013? The La Jolla real estate market is one of the most expensive in San Diego County. A virtual visit to La Jolla (see links below), or better yet in real life, will quickly give you a good sense of why this is so. Having current, local information about La Jolla homes for sale is essential so you can make informed decisions about your home buying and selling in La Jolla. Despite the shift in prices, La Jolla remains an expensive real estate market, particularly for ocean view and ocean front homes. La Jolla, “The Jewel,” is an extraordinarily beautiful coastal community with many homes offering fabulous views of the ocean from the hills, and a trendy, up-scale village offering the finest in shoppin... 01/16/2014

We had an extremely volatile day in trading yesterday, which was spurned by the Fed's decision to taper its bond purchases. The net result was a worsening of 38 basis points (bps). We opened this morning with continued losses of 50 additional bps. At present, we are slowly recovering with a 28 bps climb (but we've got plenty of ground to cover if we are to get back to Monday's pricing). This daily mortgage interest rate report is designed to provide Borrowers & Real Estate Profesionals with factual data regarding where rates are at any given time and what trends are propelling current mortgage pricing on any given day. Feel free to browse the library and research historical rate updates dating back over 2 years at www.JasonGordon.info whenever desired.  To make things easier, I have als... 12/19/2013

La Jolla Homes for Sale - What Happened in the La Jolla Real Estate Market in November 2013? The La Jolla real estate market is one of the most expensive in San Diego County. A virtual visit to La Jolla (see links below), or better yet in real life, will quickly give you a good sense of why this is so. Having current, local information about La Jolla homes for sale is essential so you can make informed decisions about your home buying and selling in La Jolla. Despite the shift in prices, La Jolla remains an expensive real estate market, particularly for ocean view and ocean front homes. La Jolla, “The Jewel,” is an extraordinarily beautiful coastal community with many homes offering fabulous views of the ocean from the hills, and a trendy, up-scale village offering the finest in shoppin... 12/14/2013

The quote in the title of my blog is by Oscar Wilde and it reiterates the sentiment of my blog from yesterday "In Life There Are no Mistakes Only Lessons" Part I Buying Property. Today I want to share with you some lessons I've learned as a landlord.  Lesson #1 Screen your prospective tenants diligently I cannot emphasize this one enough, it is so important to complete tenant screening. Screening your prospective tenants will give accurate information that you need to know about; there income, how they manage there finances, and criminal history. It is important to establish a set criteria for each of your rental properties and stick to it. At one point,  I was put in charge of renting out my father's house (4 hours away) and my cousin, who lives next door to my father's house, had a "g... 12/10/2013

The answer is, it depends. First off it depends what state you're in, in Oregon starting July 1, 2014 it will be illegal to reject an applicant because they are on HUD. In California it's still legal but Connecticut it's not and on and on, so please check your state laws regularly. In my post a couple weeks ago called A New Year is Coming, Time to Review Your State's Rental Regulations I highlighted some other changes that we as landlords and Property Managers need to be mindful of. Secondly, it depends if the prospective tenant meets all of your tenant screening criteria. If the tenant does not meet any one of your established criteria then you can, and should, choose to not rent to that individual. This same bill (Oregon House Bill 2639) that will make it illegal to discriminate again... 12/04/2013

  Interested in buying an oceanfront and or luxury condo in heart of La Jolla Village?   La Jolla Village life is perfectly fit for the sophisticated and busy, but yet relaxed La Jolla lifestyle, that's all about "Location Location", convenience, shopping, beach access, and to sum it up, WALKABILLITY . Living in La Jolla Village in one of these La Jolla Village condominiums that I'm about to outline below, may be exactly the type of property your heart and soul long for. The best real estate in La Jolla Village are La Jolla Ocean View Condos and La Jolla Oceanfront Condos practically right on, or just across from the sand. Walk score fore most of these condos are rated some of the highest scores for La Jolla, and all of San Diego Real Estate. La Jolla Village properties offer walking di... 11/24/2013

La Jolla Homes for Sale - What Happened in the La Jolla Real Estate Market in October 2013? The La Jolla real estate market is one of the most expensive in San Diego County. A visit to La Jolla on-line, or better yet in real life, will quickly give you a good sense of why this is so. Having current, local information about La Jolla homes for sale is essential so you can make informed decisions about your home buying and selling in La Jolla. Despite the shift in prices, La Jolla remains an expensive real estate market, particularly for ocean view and ocean front homes. La Jolla, “The Jewel,” is an extraordinarily beautiful coastal community with many homes offering fabulous views of the ocean from the hills, and a trendy, up-scale village offering the finest in shopping and dining. La Jo... 11/23/2013

Luxury condo for sale in 92037 La Jollla: Jewel of a Home in La Jolla This luxury condo for sale in 92037 La Jollla is a rare find! Did you know that La Jolla means 'The Jewel' in Spanish? If that's the case, this Luxury condo for sale in 92037 La Jollla is a 'Jewel in the Jewel'! The architectural design of this unit is very elegant and exudes its status of being luxurious. With the spacious layout of all of the rooms, the practicality and potential is evident. If you would like to tour this home, contact me via phone at (619) 537-9694 or send me an email and I'll be more than happy to set an appointment for you. Know more about of this Luxury home for sale in 92037 La Jollla 11/19/2013

I find out new things about myself all the time and today I realized that I love idioms as noted from the title of this blog and a previous blog; While The Cat's Away The Mice Will Play. I'm not sure what to say about this self realization, except I'm a nerd and I apologize. Now that I've cleared the air and my conscience let's get down to the nitty gritty of tenant selection. Being a landlord and working for a Property Management Software company has made me realize that not all tenants are created equally and none of them are perfect. So if you've completed your tenant screening and the applicant meets all of your established criteria it is important to set aside any unreasonable expectations or you may find yourself barking up the wrong tree. Let's quit beating around the bush and cu... 11/18/2013

You might have noticed while browsing Craigslist the past couple days, that all of the previously well styled listings from professionals like yourself are gone and all the listings now look the same.  Craigslist, without any notice to their users, made a massive shift in their posting policies which affects all Craigslist users.  They now prohibit embedded images, text markup, colors, backgrounds, and pretty much everything that would make a professional looking ad stand out from the crowd.  Companies in Florida and Texas, where these changes took effect  first are dubbing this policy change as "Hurricane Craig".Nobody is clear on Craigslist's motivations behind the changes, they made them with out announcement or forewarning.  If these changes effect you negatively, the only way to ex... 11/08/2013

The video below will show you how to download the Keller Williams La Jolla home search app for Android phones.  Even though I'm based out of the La Jolla home market center, you can use this app throughout the United States.  The phone that I use in the video is an HTC One.  The video is easy to follow along with.   However, it is a little blurry since I had to use my Flip Camera to film the video.  The most important thing my clients and potential clients need to do is put in my "agent code" when the app asks for it.  I go through the code very slowly on the keyboard within the video.  In case the code doesn't come out clearly, or the audio is bad, type in the code as KW2HBR4HS (no spaces, all the letters are capitalized in the sequence.)   11/06/2013

I have to admit, as the Social Media Director for the Property Management Software company Rentec Direct I've focused more of my time and money on Faceboook rather than on Google+. After reading various blogs yesterday regarding the usefulness of both for search engine optimization (SEO). I've decided to consolidate the information I've read and am going to compare the two social networks against each other so I can first, decide which of these features I even use and second, weigh the pros and the cons of the features i do use for business purposes.Facebookpros1. Can send private messages to friendscons 1. facebook reaches less than 10% of your followers2. facebook only allows you to have 5,000 friends before you must create a fan page2. facebook penalizes you when you try to add a per... 11/04/2013

La Jolla Homes for Sale - What Happened in the La Jolla Real Estate Market in September 2013? The La Jolla real estate market is one of the most expensive in San Diego County. A visit to La Jolla on-line, or better yet in real life, will quickly give you a good sense of why this is so. Having current, local information about La Jolla homes for sale is essential so you can make informed decisions about your home buying and selling in La Jolla. Despite the shift in prices, La Jolla remains an expensive real estate market, particularly for ocean view and ocean front homes. La Jolla, “The Jewel,” is an extraordinarily beautiful coastal community with many homes offering fabulous views of the ocean from the hills, and a trendy, up-scale village offering the finest in shopping and dining. La ... 10/24/2013

I want to get your thoughts on allowing tenants to reside on your property who have a medical marijuana card. In property management, there is always something to consider. In Oregon, the voters passed the Medical Marijuana Act in 1998 authorizing the use of medical marijuana, and exempting such use from criminal liability under state law. Today, Oregon is home to 35,500 marijuana grow sites producing marijuana for nearly 55,000 medical marijuana patients. How to handle this law as a landlord or property manager has been a little hazy, pun intended.Last year I performed an inspection on my duplex and during the inspection I noticed 5 six foot tall marijuana plants in the second bedroom (kind of hard not to notice that).  The tenant had medical marijuana cards for herself and two others ... 10/22/2013

As an employee at a property management software company and as a real estate investor the benefits of the new IRS regulations are exciting, well, as exciting as tax regs can be. Yesterday, we delved into routine maintenance and prior to that the small business safe harbor. Today I'm going to discuss materials and supplies. Materials and supplies are defined as tangible property used and consumed in the taxpayers operations.  There are five types, described below:1.Components that are acquired to maintain, repair, or improve a unit of tangible property 2.Items with a useful life of 12 months or less such as stationary and cleaning supplies (as a side note, i had to share this picture because i found it disturbing that anyone would put a toilet brush in there mouth)3. Property that cost ... 10/16/2013