How to maximise your profits on rental properties

As the rental market continues to receive high demands throughout the UK, landlords are more so facing severe competition in renting out their properties within a saturated market. As the housing industry, in particular within rental properties, is becoming more widespread and popular, more people are choosing to take advantage of the financial opportunities that come alongside the strong renting generation. For landlords, it is important to understand that marketing rental properties directly to the right audience is the most efficient way of attracting the most desirable tenants.

Look at the location

Location is one of the most important factors when looking to boost your return on investment. However, it is worth noting that different tenant types focus on different aspects of a property. Thoroughly considering your target demographic will be the driving force behind a successful investment. You can easily gauge their desires as well as help to define what will be the most important feature to them in terms of where they are renting.

To put this into perspective, if you are opting for a student rental, you must ensure the property is located in the midst of a bustling city and in proximity to local universities, library facilities as well as a convenient distance to thriving nightlife. If your property sits away from the most desirable student areas, then you will fail to attract the tenant type that you desire, causing diminishing profits within your investment. RW Invest based in Liverpool are buy to let specialists focussing on delivering high-quality student investments across the UK. Student property investments are one of the most desirable assets to own today, and one that looks to set to flourish in terms of returns over the forthcoming years.

Increase rent, but still stay affordable and competitive

Pricing your property correctly is essential to get right. If you end up setting your prices too low then you will fill it quickly and may run the risk of missing out on higher rentals. In order to calculate whether you are charging the correct rent, you should work out your cost vs revenue on each property. Don’t think that the rental figure that you come up with is set in stone. Updating your rental price at a later date is acceptable in order to make the most out of your rental income.

Make sure your rental price makes perfect sense, both to you and a potential tenant. Research similar units in the same area and compare your property with theirs, this way it is easy to work out if you are over or undercharging.

Ask yourself if there is a peak season for rentals that you need to take advantage of? Students tend to require rent for only part of the year, therefore during these peak months where demand is high you can afford to boost up your rental prices due to more competition. Whenever the value of the property increases, you should think about upping your rental price, particularly if you have recently renovated or put in new appliances that may make the home more appealing.

Practical Ways To Save Money When Hiring Employees

The second chapter of the year is done. With 2019 in full swing, now is the time for business to open vacancies and focus on meeting their staffing needs. The hiring process can exhaust someone’s time, effort, and money. There is no doubt that hiring can be cumbersome!

On that note, here are practical tips that you can apply during hiring process.

BEGIN WITH THE INTERNAL CANDIDATES

One of the simplest ways to make hiring more efficient is to consider the talent within your company. Hiring internally entails that you do not have to worry about background checks or goodness of fit. Your current talent has already been coherent with the team and has already completed the reference checks.

If you are looking for a principal, perhaps you can source out from your current teacher pool! You just have to train him or her. Promoting existing employees will not necessarily help you avoid training. Instead, you are leading an employee to a smoother transition with his or her basic knowledge in mind.

SPEAK TO THE CANDIDATES THROUGH THE PHONE

Conducting multiple face-to-face interviews is a waste of time! Instead, you must filter out the applicant pile by conducting a phone interview. Screening through the phone is a quick, cost-friendly, and easy way to ensure that the employer’s basic requirements are met.

Image Credits: pixabay.com

Once you weed out the bright from the dull candidates, you can reserve a slot for the candidate to meet the Hiring Manager. This way, the Hiring Manager can focus on more important tasks at hand.

CONSIDER HIRING INTERNS

Many companies and startups can agree that interns carry a huge value in the team. Firstly, hiring them is cost efficient. You give them the substantial experience they need for the “real” world while they provide you with their inexpensive services. Secondly, you can train a potential employee. You will know all of his or her strengths, weaknesses, skills, knowledge, attitudes, behavior, and work ethics. Choose your interns wisely.

All the hard work is done! Consider hiring an employee from the interns that impressed you.

SCHEDULE THE INTERVIEW PERIOD STRATEGICALLY

It is no secret that the hiring process takes time. Screening the potential candidates or writing a job description can already take up your entire day. To ignite productivity within the hiring process, you must arrange for all key players to commit to being available within a week-long stretch. Doing so will prevent you from having gaps between the candidate phone screens and the candidate meetings.

You will be able to make decisions smarter and sooner.

GET SOCIAL WITH THE CANDIDATES

Did you know that more than 90% of companies prefer to recruit through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? Yes! Times have changed and you must too.

Have your Human Resources team (or do it yourself) analyze the social media presence of a potential candidate. You will be surprised with what you can uncover! This is a good strategy, especially if you are hiring employees in the Silicon Valley.

MAKE CLEAR AND CONCISE JOB DESCRIPTIONS

Last but not the least, you must create clear and specific job descriptions. There is a higher chance of attracting the right candidate when you invest your time in making sure that job listings are detailed and precise.

State the skills and qualifications that you are looking for. Furthermore, you may state the qualities or behavior that are deal-breakers for you. For instance, the candidate himself will skip through your listing when the skills you are looking for are not parts of his repertoire. The candidates will have a realistic sense of what they have applied for.

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Good luck with the tricky and complex period of hiring!

Sources: 1 & 2

Tips to Survive IVA Successfully

The IVA (individual voluntary arrangement) is a suitable alternative for individuals desiring to avoid bankruptcy. This contractual agreement can be as flexible as the circumstances of an individual. These agreements may base on different factors, such as income, capital, and payments from a third party or a fusion of these. In this procedure, the debtor has some money after necessary expenses and priority creditors.

IVA approval can be a massive achievement. You have to strictly follow the terms of IVA proposal within a set period for a debt-free life. After paying money as per your limit during this time, the creditors can write off some debt. Here are some tips for a smoother IVA ride.

Live on Your Budget

The IVA proposal of the last page will be your budget. The budget lists items of your expenditure and income. For a few people, it could be their first experience to live on their budget without any credit. You have to restrict your spending with an active IVA. Make sure to stick to your available resources as much as you can.

Learn the art of budgeting because it becomes the key to success for IVA. With proper budgeting, you can save monthly allowances for yearly expenditure. For instance, if you possess a vehicle and MOT costs are mentioned in the monthly budget. Make sure to put money aside for MOT. It will help you to save money for MOT.

If you have other annual expenditure, make sure to put some money aside for them each month. It is essential to stick to your budget and put money aside. These activities help you to decrease nasty monetary surprises.

Pay Attention to Bonuses and Overtime

If you are struggling with unsecured debts, the IVA will become an efficient solution. A bonus or pay rise can always make you happy. Even small increments can increase your happiness. If you are subject to IVA, make sure to follow the rules and responsibilities. The standard conditions and terms of IVA may require you to report your commission, bonus, and overtime. A 10% increase may not subject to changes. After a particular raise, you have to report this bonus to supervisors within 14 days and pay 50% amount of raise. If you are sure that bonuses, extra money, overtime or wage rise can affect your IVA, you have to contact your supervisor. It will be good to consider the advice of professionals.

Stay Away from Extra Credit

Taking out additional credit may kill your IVA, so if you want to take an extra loan, contact your service provider. Getting some extra credit in several cases may become a breach of terms. If you need emergency funds, make sure to consult IVA provider.

If you need extra money each month, you have to reconsider your budget. Your budget is not working well for you. Instead of waiting for an annual review, you have to share this concern with professionals.

Work with a Support Network

Other than consulting your IVA provider, you can check other places for support. You may join online forums to consult money saving experts for their advice. They can help you to choose a debt-free lifestyle. Some people may work with debt management plans or available solutions on IVA. These plans can help you to decrease your debt and live a debt-free life. Online forums may offer you good help to deal with a mountain of debt.

Keep it in mind that IVA will be a beginning toward a debt-free life. If you want to increase your savings, carefully follow defined rules and restrictions. In case of any problem, immediately inform your service provider.

How The Swift System Works

If you’ve transferred money overseas, there’s a hundred percent chance that you have used the SWIFT system. Nowadays, it’s very fast and convenient to visit a bank and transfer money anywhere in the world. Behind the scenes, this actually happens via a secured transfer system called the SWIFT system.

This system is an extensive network to send messages used by banks to receive and send information on money transfers accurately, quickly, and securely. This article will discuss what a SWIFT system is and how it works.

What is SWIFT?

SWIFT is actually an acronym that is short for “Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications.” To put it simply, it is a global network for messaging among financial institutions to securely transmit instructions and information via a standard set of Bank Swift Codes.

The SWIFT system was the answer to give the world a universal, secure way to send and receive money from one country to another. It provides a secured network for at least 10,000 financial institutions in 212 different countries to do financial transactions.

Who uses the SWIFT system?

At the start, SWIFT only allowed and designed the network to facilitate communication about Treasury transactions only. However, since the system was very robust, it was scalable and was used to provide services for different financial institutions all over the world.

These financial institutions include the following:

Banking Institutions
Trading Institutions
Brokerage Houses
Security Dealings
Asset Management
Foreign Exchange Centers
Clearing Houses
Depository Centers
Corporate Business Centers
Exchanges
Participants in the Treasury Market
Service Providers in the Treasury Market
Money Brokerage Centers

How does one use the SWIFT system?

The SWIFT system doesn’t transfer your money. Instead, it acts as the bridge between banks to allow money transfers. It sends payment orders between institution accounts using what is called the SWIFT code.

A unique code is assigned to each financial institution with eight to eleven characters, and this is what institutions call the bank identifier code, Swift Codes, SWIFT ID, or ISO 9362 code.

To give you a better understanding, here is a scenario. For example, you want to send $20 from your bank account in the United States to a bank in Singapore. There are two ways that this transaction can take place using SWIFT:

Both banks have a direct relationship

If both banks have a direct relationship with each other, your bank will send a SWIFT message to the bank in Singapore informing them of the transfer. Once the SWIFT message is received, the transfer can happen directly between the two banks.

Banks have no relationship

If the banks don’t know each other, the transfer has to go through an intermediary bank to facilitate the transfer. Your bank will send a SWIFT message to the bank in Singapore informing them about the incoming transfer. Since both banks don’t hold accounts with one another, SWIFT will look for an intermediary where both banks have an account. Once an intermediary bank is found, the funds are transferred within the day.

What kind of transactions are allowed in the SWIFT system?

Aside from bank transfers, SWIFT also offers other services such as the following:

Business Intelligence

SWIFT also offers services enabling financial institutions to have a dashboard and reports on the monitoring of messages, activity, and trade flow. The reports are also made available to be filtered based on country, message, types, region, and other parameters.

Compliance Services

Since financial crime is also prevalent, SWIFT offers services like Know Your Customer (KYC), sanctions, and anti-money laundering. These services will prevent you from getting fraudulent transactions or illegal transfers.

Applications

SWIFT enables access to applications that allow real-time instruction for matching payment instructions, treasury and forex instructions, clearing instructions, and derivative transactions as well.

Are there any disadvantages for the SWIFT system?

One of the challenges for the SWIFT is posed for clients with a huge volume of transactions since the system requires entry of manual instructions. For a large volume of transactions, it might not be practical to enter details and instructions one by one. Not to worry, as automation for the SWIFT system creates a faster way of processing and transmitting a large volume of transactions to their clients.

Conclusion

The SWIFT system has made it not only possible to transfer funds globally, but also makes it all more accessible for all, while making sure it’s secured. Right now, it continues to dominate the market when it comes to overseas fund transfers because of its efficiency and effectiveness.

Home Loans – The Financial Tool to a better Living

A loan is a financial tool for getting the required monetary support to fulfil your immediate or a specific need that you don’t have the means/financial capability to do at the moment. A loan provides you with the ability to go about fulfilling your need without having to worry about the financial stress on your savings, as it is the bank that provides you with the required finances in lieu of collateral.

The loan agreement requires consideration/collateral to be approved in lieu of which the person seeking loan receives financial assistance and has to promise to pay back the loan within a stipulated period of time at a fixed interest rate or the bank will confiscate the collateral to retrieve the loaned amount.

Home Loans

Home loans refer to the loans taken for buying a house, flat or dwelling of any kind to be used as a place of residence. Home loans are one of the most popular types of loans in the world due to the sky high and still rising prices of real estate and homes. Real estate is one of the most expensive investments and in the current economy, the dream of owning your own home or building your own house requires significant financial resources which can put a lot of strain on your finances and savings.

How does a home loan work?

When you’re applying for a home loan, you’re required to use the home you’re going to buy as a collateral, i.e. the bank will have the possession of the papers of the house and will have the right to confiscate the house and sell it to recover the loan if you fail to repay the loan or are unable to pay it back.

If you already own a plot of land, the papers of ownership of the land are required to be used as collateral for getting a home loan. In a situation where you are unable to repay the loan, the bank will have the legal right to evict you from the property and sell the land to settle the loan.

Home loans are the easiest way to buy or build your dream home and the banks are more than happy to help. A home loan can be pre approved by the bank and once you have obtained the papers of the property, the papers can be submitted as collateral to get the bank to release the loan amount which can be then used to proceed with the purchase of the house.

There are many such websites of its kind in the world where you can compare loans from different banks online and customize them according to your personal details and find the one that suits your needs the best. They allow to you to buy home loans online at the lowest interest rates that you can choose from across all banks.

Live on Your Budget

Pay Attention to Bonuses and Overtime

Stay Away from Extra Credit

Work with a Support Network

Home Loans

How does a home loan work?

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